Short Lived Excitement

Tuesday evening, I sat in the garage watching the SO clean his bike while I studied for the L program. I had to take a quiz that day to get it done before Part 2 began this weekend.

I went through the quiz and it felt easy and I got more and more excited. I've not been sure how to feel about my preparation level. Some times I feel so unbelievably prepared for this program and want to take the final exam yesterday. Other times I wonder how I'm ever going to get good enough at judging to not want to walk out of the exam crying.

The quiz gave me a boost toward the former: I got a 93% while a passing score is 70%, graduating with distinction is 80%. I was so excited!!

Early Wednesday morning, Nicole was planting trees and getting ready to drive down to be my scribe. We had plans to go take lessons with Alexis on Thursday afternoon and chat with her about the program. Then we'd drive to Peony's where we'd have delicious homemade pizza. The weekend's schedule hadn't come out yet because it depends on the ride times, but that didn't stop us from making plans for a celebration dinner on Saturday.

His dapples are so pretty right now

Wednesday around 8, I got an email from the organizer asking whether anyone was worried about the virus for the weekend. I hadn't really thought much about it, because I wasn't about to not go to the L program if it was happening. The boyfriend and I chatted about it and agreed that my trip to IKEA the day before was probably worse than the L program, that I'd bring hand sanitizer and all that, and I'd just be careful. And for 1-2 weeks after returning home from the program, I'd self-isolate except for the barn (because you know, horse people). Until May, all of our group activities were canceled and we'd both already begun working from home basically permanently, so we felt safe. 

Two people emailed, one of which I was surprised at their tone (that's a story for another day) but they expressed not being worried about it, so I assumed it was going to continue.

Then at 9:30, I got a call from our organizer promising that she'd get us through the program this year, but that they decided to postpone the D1. What a bummer, but given how things have progressed in the bay area in the last 24 hours, it's probably for the best. It definitely makes me feel safer given that some of my family isn't in the best health and I have a very young niece who hasn't ever been sick.

If you're unaware, on my IG I've
been studying for the L program
with quizzes and answers!
@alchemy.dressage

So unfortunately my excitement was a bit short lived for that quiz, but that's okay! Being safe is more important and with the US basically not doing any testing, we honestly don't know how much this virus is truly spreading right now. For now, I'll just enjoy studying for the program, riding my horse, teaching my students (but not licking them), and working from home the rest of the time. It's honestly been nice to not drive as much (but I'd rather just have a better commute, not a pandemic).

Avoiding Premature Automation in My Judging

Last weekend I was supposed to do my first bout of scribing and that didn't happen, which was a bummer. I had spoken to the show organizer and signed up to scribe at two of their shows back in January, but when I checked in about scribing on the date that's literally been in my calendar for two months, I was told that the conversation that's literally in my phone had never happened.

To say I was bummed is an understatement, it's been a long tough two weeks and I was looking forward to getting half my scribing hours in over the weekend. And they wouldn't even let me sit (I need 10 sitting hours). So I'll be asking advice from the other people in the program about finding real scribe positions aaaand I'll be emailing everyone I've spoken to about scribing every week until the show dates. Lesson learned: be completely obnoxious.

It's fine okay

The reason why I was so eager to scribe or sit this weekend is because I'm literally driving up for Session D1 of Part 2 tomorrow! It would have been amazing to chat with a judge about their judging education the week before we start, but I'll have plenty of time to do that.

I've been studying hard and practicing judging... a little less hard. It's easy to quickly flip through flash cards while watching TV or taking a break at work or in between lessons, but the judge practicing requires a little more effort, so I need to put in more time there. Actually, as I write this post, I've got a bunch of youtube videos up and writing this is my break from judging.

It's definitely getting easier. I was having a conversation with a friend who was talking about getting a very low score from a judge, even though her stingy S judge trainer said that the test was very good. That judge gave her a 4 on gaits and I immediately was like "TWO OF HIS GAITS WERE PERVASIVELY IMPURE? YEAH RIGHT" and then realized how much I'd learned. I now have a really good idea of what each score for each of the collective marks look like (for the record, a four on gaits means that two of the gaits are pervasively impure, a five means one is pervasively impure, a six means all are pure but gaits are limited, or two gaits are good and one is pervasively impure, there's a whole system).

One of the ways I cope with stress is by buying plants apparently
this is not all of them (they did get spread out though)

But at the end of the day, it's just going to take a lot of time to get this knowledge so deep in my brain that I can sort of go on "autopilot" and that's okay. I mean, obviously I'm desperate to fully automate judging so that it's less fatiguing, but I have to resist that. Mary Wanless talks about premature automation in our riding as being a massive problem. We are taught to post as beginning riders when we have limited abilities and then we never change the way we post. I don't want to prematurely automate my judging because I want to be really good at that. I don't want to be the judge that automated too early to avoid fatigue and is just one of those judges that writes "5, off bit" or "7, smooth" on every single movement.

Because of this, I'm treating this almost like a physical skill at this point. I'm flexing my judge muscles until they get fatigued, then I take a break. At this point, I'm tired after judging two tests in a row at this point, my brain feels slow and foggy. So I'm taking a break right now and will go judge another two tests in a row and then take a break again. Perfect practice makes perfect, after all.

Me, currently, while judging

It's amazing to hear our top judges judge, I still vividly remember Mike Osinski judging for us as a demonstration. He has an amazing rhythm. He makes the test feel so much slower, while when I judge, I feel like I'm scrambling to keep up with the rider (pro tip, if you're going to go too slow or too fast in a test, go too slow! LOL honestly just do you, but if you ride in front of me any time soon, I appreciate a lazy horse). His comments are spot on every single time, they vary when there's a pervasive problem (one of the hardest things is to find 15+ different ways to tell a rider their horse has to be on the bit). His collective comments are very well thought out as well, they encourage the rider while also not skirting over the issues.

All of this seems to come so easy to him. It's part disillusioning and part inspiring.  At the end of the day, it's easy for him because he's worked hard and he's been judging for a long time now. I know I need to give myself some time to get to that point, not automate so quickly that I become a lazy judge.

Tomorrow I leave for the first session of Part 2 and I'm excited to exhaust myself learning. Luckily it's only two days for this first session!

Piaffe Training & Fixing the Canter

On Friday, I went down to see TC. I wasn't going to, because I was going to go into work and stay there all day for a meeting. But my boss and I chatted on Thursday night and I told him that the best part of my day had been something I ate for breakfast, so he took the meeting I was supposed to go to on Friday and let me work from home. So I slept in, the boyfriend made me a latte while I worked, I put a bunch of plants in pots for our front porch, and then went down to play with TC before teaching.

I just rode TC around bareback and chatted with my trainer friend at the barn about flying changes and how difficult dressage is in general. It's nice to have such a great community of trainers to chat with on a regular basis, even if it's just to have a good bitch session.

Saturday, I prepared for the worst. Like I said yesterday, I honestly thought about not going, but I did want Tanya to help me with his piaffe, so I told myself I could just tell her that I'd deal with the canter issues on my own and that we could focus on piaffe and the trot work. But it ended up being really good, so no regrets.

More beautiful pictures from the ride on Sunday

I parked the trailer and TC unloaded totally relaxed. He's only been to this barn once before and he was a happy camper to be out and doing stuff even as we got rained on a bit while tacking up. I grabbed all my stuff for in hand work and went over to the ring. Tanya had me do a bit of warm up walking and trotting and then we walked over to the outdoor (the rain stopped, phew) with a fence so we could begin his piaffe training officially.

I've played with it a bit but Tanya is adamant that this horse have a piaffe on him by the end of the year, so we are getting serious.

Tanya's way of doing it is very simple and really worked with TC's claustrophobia. I stood in front of him, held a longe line attached to his left bit ring and a whip to use if he blew through me as we walked slowly forward. We had a side rein attached to his right bit ring to keep him straight on that side. Then Tanya came through with the piaffe whip on the hind legs. Our goal was to get two really clear, rhythmic piaffe steps and then stop and praise. We did maybe 15-20 minutes total, most of it walking or resting, and TC was a freaking star! No rearing, like I'd thought we might get to, no blasting through me. I only had to use my whip twice to remind him to give me space.

SO's spare bike that I get to ride! We're looking for one for me
but I refuse to spend too much on it because, and I quote "if I
had $3k, it'd be in my saddle fund" so we're looking for a used one

So I was stoked on that in itself! I honestly thought about being like "thanks! bye!" and heading home. But after seeing how easy the piaffe came to him, knowing that the passage was going to be his easiest gait, and feeling how much his trot has developed over the last month... I was determined to figure out what was going on with his canter.

We headed back to the arena and did a little trot work. TC felt way more under himself after the piaffe work and felt quite energetic too, phew. But then we went into canter and did some collected canter to medium canter transitions and well... it was more like behind the leg to bucking transitions.

I've spoken before about TC's weirdness with the GO aids at the canter, like uh, yesterday's post. I don't know if it's years of being told not to go under any circumstance or just his lack of a quality canter coming out. Either way, he's pretty convinced that leg on and/or whip on = buck. And so, buck we did, until he figured out that I wasn't going to let go of the reins or stop asking him to go forward. At one point, we scattered the people watching from the sidelines because he was kicking out right at eye level. At another point, I heard "don't fall off, Megan!" and I thought HE'LL HAVE TO PRY ME OFF WITH A FUCKING CROWBAR.

It took a while, but it definitely went through and I suddenly had a canter to match his trot work. He was round and jumping up under himself, and most importantly, when I put my leg on, he WENT. Tanya and I discussed the importance of me  not ever letting go of the reins on this horse. She wants him to essentially be dragging me around everywhere. Excellent, not like I spent ten years on a horse who wasn't allowed to put any weight in the bridle because he was so damn heavy, nor did I totally hop on a very heavy client's horse the day before TC. This shit is hard, yo.

Loved this field

We took a short break and then looked at the fancy trot. Holy SHIT this horse can trot. He was so amped from being told he had to go in canter that he WENT in trot. I finally got to see it in real time in the mirrors and wow this horse has some fucking presence. He bombed around the arena with me just clinging onto him. Tanya had just a few things to say, she wants me to be able to compress it a little more to shift his mass back, but without losing the energy and the fanciness. I did it once and lost the trot, then did it again and popped my leg a little bit and the horse gave me more trot than I've ever felt before, it was almost a passage, but a quick one. The air time was insane. And I obviously got no video to share! It's so infuriating that soloshot hasn't come out with their indoor tracker thing, but I'm not holding my breath.

Leaving the barn, I thought again about how well TC is doing in every gait except the canter. His trot is literally a higher quality trot than I had on Rico at Grand Prix. His piaffe is very green but it's coming on correctly with a pure rhythm. His passage is going to be too much for me to sit, I just know it. It's just the canter... We need to fix the canter for him to make it into the FEI levels. Everything else is there, if the PSG was just trot work, I'd be putting on my tails tomorrow. But the canter is going to slow us down unfortunately.

So, time to double my efforts on the canter. I don't want to bomb around in that trot too often because it's hard on his legs, so TC is getting maybe 3-5 minutes of that trot each day and that's about all the trot work I want to do with him. I need to use the rest of the time in my rides to develop the canter, but I think we can do it!

A Ten Trot and a Nothing Canter

I had a lesson last Thursday AND Saturday! It's really quite helpful to take two lessons in a row. My trainer only comes down to my area once a month and she stays for three days and then is gone for another month. At first I only took one lesson because I like having time in between lessons to practice, but then last time I tried two lessons and was sold. We can make so much progress in just a few days and that holds for much longer.

The other thing it does, is allow me to have a bad lesson and then have Tanya come back the next lesson (two days later) with a plan. Today's post is about the bad lesson. well, more about what I learned about myself as a rider from the bad lesson, tomorrow's will be about the solution.

Food time after our lesson

TC has been an interesting horse to develop. As much as our scores have been good and he's been relatively happy to do dressage as his sport, his instincts and conformation are not great for the sport/ In other words, he's not at all purpose bred for the sport of dressage. His main redeeming quality is that he's mentally exactly what I want in a dressage horse. He loves to work, doesn't get bored doing the same thing over and over again, wants to please, and man, when he sees a dressage court, he lights the fuck up. He also loves crowds and judges booths. Mentally, this horse is meant to do amazing things. And honestly, his trot is pretty great too.

Buuuuuut I've got almost no canter to work with over here. And that came out hardcore on Thursday.

The main issue is one I've had before: when I put my leg on, TC unloads his hind legs rather than having them jump further under himself. Sometimes it leads to him unloading them enough where he starts bucking. So Thursday, I picked up TC's canter and was like OH NO because he was really behind the leg. When we start in that place, things don't go well, and they didn't.

SO is turning me into a cyclist, and I'll let him if we can keep
going to places like this

I think Tanya didn't realize how bad it was, because she had me start to collect his canter, which IS what needs to happen, sure, but not when he's so behind my leg that every time I put my leg on, he throws his head back at me and starts bucking.

I immediately was frustrated. This is a major pet peeve of mine, breaking at the canter, or more, feeling like the horse is about to break all the time. My technique for this is to basically go medium canter to collected canter, then shoot the horse into medium when they threaten to break. My favorite saying when I'm teaching is "does X live in Y?" or, does a medium canter live in your collected canter? Does a stretch circle live in your working trot? Does a collected trot live in your medium trot? And so on.

Tracey was very against this technique. All TC had to do to go from carrying to pushing is stall out while carrying. I get it... I do... but I can't emphasize enough how much I hate the feeling he gives me when he stalls out. Her solution was to get over it, and in my Thursday lesson, Tanya a little bit went in that direction too and I got my hackles a bit up.

The whole trail is paved, lets the SO road bike
and me not be scared of cars

She did have something good to say about my tendencies when we get to this place. I let go of his face, get too "up" (I'm a very up rider generally), and try to kick him out of it ASAP. She encouraged me to keep the contact even if that means he breaks for real, and to keep him softer over his topline in general in the collection.

The idea was that he can't come against me as aggressively (and can't buck) if he's over his back, so no matter what, keep him over his back, and in order to do that, I need to keep the contact. Okay, point made, I'm on board with that.

But it was still a shit ride. We tried to do some haunches-in at the canter, lots of bucking. We tried to do lead changes. More bucking and a lot of anticipation. Nothing is physically wrong with him, this is definitely a training issue (he's done this for years, we've treated him for ulcers, he's seen the vet a lot, he's seen chiro-vet a lot, his nutrition is dialed in, etc), he really honestly doesn't understand that he has to jump under himself when my leg comes on.

THIS PLACE IS SO PRETTY OMG

I walked away pretty disillusioned. It was one of the first times I started seriously wondering if TC wouldn't do the FEI levels for me, if Third is where we end because beyond that, we HAVE to have a collected canter for pirouettes. I got a bit panicky thinking that I'd take ANOTHER horse to the Grand Prix who I had to hoist through half the movements. No thanks. If that starts happening, TC is for sale.

So I considered canceling my Saturday lesson and just riding him on my own, using my medium exercise to help him stay more forward in the canter. BUT Tanya's last words to me were telling me again to get a piaffe on him and that this will help the canter quite a lot. I asked whether she could show me her technique for it and she said yes, let's do that on Saturday. So I figured I'd go Saturday, get her take on putting the piaffe on at the very least.

Luckily, Saturday was pretty amazing, and we fixed the canter issue to boot! But more on that tomorrow.

Twinning

I bought Rico on January 8th, 2015 when he was eight years old. He turned nine on February 12th, 2015.

Today is March 5th, 2020. TC is eight years old. TC turns nine on April 10th, 2020. I am officially at the point in TC's life where he is the same age as Rico was when I bought him.

What Rico looked like at TC's current age

I often hold Rico as the standard for what I want from TC, even early on. I wanted a perfect trail horse, a horse I can let my friends and family members ride without worrying, I wanted an upper level dressage horse, I wanted a horse I can haul to a new facility and jump on bareback, I wanted to be able to laugh at his antics.
A lot of the time, I thought about how TC was falling short in comparison. TC is harder to ride than Rico, way more explosive and nervous, and while he's good on the trails, I can't hop on him bareback at a new place or whatever.

TC being the age Rico was when I bought him hit me in a new way. I was holding TC to Rico's standard... but from Rico at age 15 or 16, not 8 turning 9.

Rico's previous life, while TC at his age was hanging with me

So now that TC is the age that Rico was when I bought him, I can actually compare them at this age. TC has WAY WAY more experience in every way!

Rico was the *worst* trail horse when I got him. He was so spooky and would rear and spin to try to go home. We had trails at our barn and more than once, he bolted back to the barn from the trails, so rude (but understandable, he had never trail ridden). TC is way better on the trails than Rico was when I first got him! No rearing or spinning, he just screams and occasionally shakes his head when he's bad, which just doesn't happen anymore.

When I first got Rico, he was a combined driving horse. He'd been ridden but not a ton and not in any kind of organized fashion until he arrived at the sale barn a month before I bought him. He was very green and had to learn to go on the bit, go forward from my leg, steer, you know, all that green horse stuff. At the same age, TC is obviously way further along schooling Third level.

Going to be a while before I can do this on TC

While Rico is the more talented of the two and there's so much I miss about him, TC has benefited from a) my experience with Rico and b) me getting him much younger. So I do think that TC is set up to be so much better, and that makes me really excited for his future! 

WW: New Houses

TC finally got into a big paddock yesterday! After seven months on the waiting list and in a smaller paddock (12x36 feet total space), he's now very happy in his large paddock (50x75 feet total space).

And I'm very happy as well, this means that he's basically on auto-turnout (the turnouts are about the size of his paddock, it's California, we do our best) all the time, so I only have to go down to the barn when I'm riding him (4-5x/week), versus having to either get down there every day or pay someone to take him out. This is super helpful because I also am living in a new house (I mean I've been basically living there since early December but we made it official this month) which is a 45 minute drive from the barn.

He's right by the arena so he can watch all kinds of stuff
happening all day! And on the other side is the covered and a
tie up area, so lots of activity!

The happiest pony! It does have a stall, it's off to the right

Stressful Week, Perfect Pony

Last week sucked! But TC was absolutely fabulous. The week was just rough for a whole bunch of reasons: work was tough, I had a couple of interactions with people that shook me, my uncle was diagnosed with cancer (he's got a very good prognosis so I'm not worried about him, I'm mostly worried that he is younger and healthier than my dad), and the SO was also stressed at work, so I was worrying about him too.

His first ever leather halter! And he got a nice
halter plate with it

The shining light was that TC was great all week long. He's just so damn reliable these days and so much fun. Like I said last week, we're now on more of a training program and one of the things I'm really focusing on is improving TC's canter even further. Especially because I definitely broke the lead changes, woops. Being told not to do them except when I ask has made them very unreliable, and he's even throwing in unclean ones from right to left, which I find mildly hilarious because that one has ALWAYS been good, almost too good, so he never had to work on it (that's my guess as to why it's broken).

But that's fine, we just have to continue working on it, and the stronger he gets in canter, the better the changes will get.

The major way I've been playing with the canter is the haunches-in on a circle. This is something Tanya had me do years ago on a horse who wanted to get a bit out behind in the canter and it helps to shorten the horse's base a bit, encouraging collection. I noticed while watching a video I took on the soloshot that this exercise was super effective in getting my very out-behind horse to sit down. So we're working on it!

SO finally convinced me to get back on a bike for the first time
in five years

The exercise has given me a lot of information about TC. While he generally wants to get haunches left and shoulders right, he actually struggles more in the haunches-in exercise to the left! Which, you'd think that'd be the opposite. But I think it's having to turn his shoulders, that's moving his shoulders to the left. He's now very comfortable moving his shoulders left if his haunches are right, but keeping them left and then moving his shoulders in the same direction is hard. So I'm really focusing on keeping the shoulders on the same circle and not letting them drift out, which is tough for him.

The other direction is great though, I can really feel him sit and it's easy to keep him on the outside rein, which is nice because that's the tough side for that. In that direction, the pirouette feels imminent! We don't ride the pirouette out of haunches-in obviously, but the level of collection is there where I think with a little more strength, it's just a matter of teaching him how to set up and turn (I do that using square turns out of shoulder-in). So that's really exciting! For now, I think the focus should be on the other direction until they feel more similar.

It was a fun (easy) ride!

The trot work has been absolutely easy lately. Well, for him at least. I'm working on sitting his damn trot again, it's gotten so much bigger and fancier and I have no ability to match those forces just yet. But he's currently learning to put a little more cadence in his half pass and haunches-in. He can really get fancy in the shoulder-in now, but still slows a bit to perform the half pass and haunches-in. In a perfect world, the trot stays the same in and out of lateral work, but most horses slow down a bit, which is going to take the score down. So that's a big priority.

Another one in the trot half pass is working to get the angle more under my influence. The half pass itself is easy, but there's no way to get it steeper. Right now he's totally fine for Third level, but I've got the Grand Prix half pass zig zag on my mind, so I want him to learn to get a bit steeper off my aid now (not that steep yet obviously). It's just a matter of keeping track of how steep it is now and then just asking him to go a liiiiittle steeper every time.

Still prefer horses to bikes!

Generally it was just a great week with the pony. I love how much he's becoming my rock now that he's older and more chillaxed. He kept me totally excited about his future during this awful week.

Luckily this week has started out way better! Although busy, I've got ten days before I start the L Program Part 2. Gotta get judging!