A Cold Day in Hell

My lesson with Heidi on Tuesday was absolutely amazing. I've been feeling that Rico and I have been a little "off" recently and now I feel 100% back on the right track. The lesson gave me a LOT of confidence in my riding and in Rico's abilities. Let me go through it...

We talked a bit in the beginning and I told her that I really just wanted to get him going better and then evaluate my/our goals. I told her about the straightness, energy, and roundness problems I had been having.

Incidentally, I bought Rico from Heidi almost 10 years ago

 

Teenage Megan and 8 year old Rico

She handed me a different whip, kind of like a driving whip (I'm going to acquire one), and within 30 seconds and only two snaps of that whip, we fixed the energy problem. The problem was, big surprise, that I nagged and used the whip too much. For the first time in months and months, Rico was reliably in front of my leg and I must have looked like a kid in a candy store grinning from ear to ear. I can't describe the feeling I got when he was like that, every step felt light and easy, like all I had to do was regulate his step. I could half halt and bring him up into the fanciest trot I've ever felt, and I could soften forward and add a touch of leg to get a medium trot. He was no longer stressed about the whip, because all it took was a light touch with the lash and he was back to me.

With that additional energy and responsiveness, the straightness and connection problems went away. He wasn't falling over his right shoulder because he was so engaged, he stretched into contact because I was sending enough energy over his back for him to remain connected.

I'm fucking buying one of those whips, it's going to sleep with me in my bed. That could be interpreted in the wrong way...

Alright so five minutes into the lesson, we had fixed everything that I had wanted to fix. What now? Well, Heidi wanted to see his piaffe and passage. Over a third of the Grand Prix test is piaffe and passage, so if my goal is the Grand Prix, he needs to be solid.

 She put us on a circle around her and asked me to put him in piaffe. She had a whip and he was already way in front of me so he gave me a REALLY good piaffe. Then we walked and put him into passage. It was a small circle so he struggled at first, but actually it really paid off because he got a lot more even having to keep his lazy right hind under him in order to turn.

Heidi said "okay so he piaffes and passages, why no Grand Prix?" And I was like "well, everything else is shit" and she said "we can build everything else around it, it will be a cold day in hell the next time you have a horse that piaffes and passages like this"

I wish someone had been there to capture the look on my face.

I mean he just looks like a Grand Prix horse, right?

We then decided that for the next couple of weeks, I'd work on the basics (lower neck/rounder, more energy) while we examined the movements. We still had time in the lesson, so we decided to look at the Grand Prix zig zag. WOO!

We started with some basic half passes and Heidi noted a few of the things I've struggled with- he gets hollow in the left half pass, and the right is steeper than the left. Then I did the previous Intermediare II zig zag (before it was taken out) which is 4-8-8-4 (start with 4 steps left, then 8 steps right, then 8 steps left, then 4 steps right back to centerline). It went well! I occasionally miscounted and it definitely ended right of centerline but other than that, great!

Then we moved on to the GP zig zag (3-6-6-6-3) which was tough. It turned out that I would start it WAY steep and then get behind him as I tried to maintain that steepness. I did it into the mirror and by the end I had one that we would have probably gotten at least a 6 on! I was so happy!

Yep

More time was still left over so we looked at the pirouettes. The biomechanic is wrong in both directions, and that's my fault. I put the haunches in. Once as we had the biomechanic though, the left one was perfect. The right one was still a struggle, he's just weaker that way. Heidi said to work on the walk pirouettes in the same way to practice the biomechanic but not stress him out. She said she'd get on him to give him more confidence in the canter pirouettes.

She was impressed with his sitting ability, which was cool! I've always heard that Rico wouldn't collect very well, but it has turned out to not be true. He's not a huge fan, but he'll sit right down when you insist.

The fanciest

Overall I was nearly crying with joy by the end. I haven't had a lesson like that in a LONG time. I left feeling downright excited to ride, and every ride since then has been really fun! We agreed not to do the lesson on Thursday since I have enough to work on and I just bought a new computer (YAY), but I'm going to ride with her every week and she'll ride him twice while I'm out of town in July. 

Moving Forward

I'm writing this veeerrrryyyy carefully on my stupid laptop which has decided that graduate school is too hard for it and that it wants to stop working. I haven't figured out exactly what is wrong yet, but it essentially freezes up randomly and refuses to shut off.

Looks like this year I'll be adding a new laptop to the massive pile of debt I've acquired since making this life choice. Remind me why I'm doing this again?

Speaking of questionable life choices, the 18 year old animal who is still miraculously sound after several horrible injuries so I continue to pay for him despite said debt is doing well!

A few pictures from the lake trip I took at the beginning of
June with boyfriend and his family

As I mentioned in my previous post, my last lesson with Tracey went very poorly. The evening ended with tears, talking with my best friend for a couple of hours, and deciding that I needed a new trainer. I won't go into details about what happened exactly but I've had enough trainers to know when it's time to move on. I'm feeling very burnt out from riding so I think a change is necessary.

One solid change comes in the form of a couple of lessons this week. I'm seeing Heidi twice (today, Tuesday, and Thursday) and might do the Gail Hoff-Carmona clinic on Saturday. I normally wouldn't throw myself into a clinic like this, but the clinic is a 5 minute drive away from my house so why not.

So many rams!

In the mean time, I've been working on regaining the formerly solid basics I seem to be merely grasping at currently: the roundness, the energy, and the straightness.

He's just not quite through anymore. At my last lesson, Tracey had me ride him rounder and more through than I have been. I continued that through this weekend and it's hard! Rico wants to be a little behind the bit and in front of the vertical (doesn't that sound weird? Basically he's too light and hollow, and when I try to establish more of a connection, he goes more hollow). I rode him a little long and low, really emphasizing him reaching into the contact and using his back more.

We've been working on the energy for a while, and he's certainly getting better, but at my lesson it was obvious that we only get about 70-80% of the energy we have at home at lessons and probably at shows. I think it might be because trailering over to a facility probably takes a bit of energy out of him. Either way, I need him to be on fire at home so that he's energetic elsewhere. So this weekend we worked on that. I stayed much taller in my body and worked to not get behind him and drive downward into the saddle.

The straightness is an ongoing process that I tend to forget about. It's most apparent in our changes and transitions. He loses straightness and then therefore loses roundness. I've been worked on the single changes and a LOT of transitions. We now always start warm up with walk-halt transitions and end with a ton of walk-canter and canter-walk transitions. This weekend I also worked on the pirouette canter and that is getting much better!

Such love for vacation

With Heidi I want to go in with a plan. I want to take a step back from showing (next show would then be August 2/3 so I have a month) and get the basics back in addition to adjusting to a new trainer. The first two lessons I want to just make sure we're both on the same page of what is expected of both Rico and I at the walk, trot, and canter, then I'll practice that before coming back.

At the clinic I want to see about working a bit on the ones and the pi/pa depending on how he is going. Gail is a judge I may consider riding under so I wanted to see what her ideas were about the piaffe and passage, and what her opinion is on the one tempis. Before anyone jumps at me, you're allowed to clinic with judges up until 30 days before the show. It's kind of frowned upon to ride with them regularly and then stop 30 days out, but I'll only be doing one day at one clinic about two months before I'd see her. Probably fine!

I'm super bummed about my decision to stop riding with Tracey, Rico and I came so far under her guidance, but I'm excited about moving forward and having fun during the last several months before Rico retires from the FEI levels.

Hopefully more lake trips in the future!

Blog Hop: The Simple Life

Another blog hop from Viva Carlos: Other than money, what would make your horse life simpler?


Money is obviously a factor, but my rarest commodity these days is having the time to ride. Grad school (even if it's summer "vacation" hah), my job, and my commute (which is an hour each way without traffic) all take away from the time I could be riding.

But actually it's amazing

A lot of the time I have to squeeze rides in super early or ride late at night or right before work. I usually try to make the short rides more intense with less breaks and the long rides less intense with more conditioning. Whatever I'm doing is working because he's definitely getting more fit. However, I'd like to have time to do more conditioning every day, we only get maybe 3 or 4 full long rides a week and I'd like to have six.

It also means that I haven't had the time for very many trail rides recently, I'm hoping to change that next week and take him to Harvey Bear.


The other thing that would make my life simpler is if horses could have tendon transplants. Rico has had severe tendon problems in both front legs. He's sound for now, but if he hadn't had these problems, I could jump him and trail ride him without feeling like I'm breaking him. I'd love to take him in an event, or go for a gallop, or climb a mountain... but until he's retired from high level dressage, I don't want to take that risk.

Or go to the beach again!

One day we'll gallop up a mountain over some logs! This horse is going to have one hell of a retirement.


My lesson the other night went terribly. I'm not really sure what to think about it and therefore don't have much to say yet. I'm going to take it easy with Rico this weekend (mostly because my brother is coming into town so my parents have all sorts of plans) and then reevaluate next week. It was disappointing but I'm in higher spirits today and this weekend will be a great pick-me-up.

We're going to a beer festival which I find entertaining. My parents, brother and his girlfriend, and my boyfriend all really enjoy beer (my dad brews it, my brother works for a beer company) and I can get through maybe one or two Coronas before I'm done. Luckily there's BBQ for me and everyone is grateful for a designated driver who won't be tempted by all the amazing beer.

Better and Better

Rico has been super lately! I've been doing a 3-days-on-1-day-off schedule which has been quite good for his brain, he's enjoying his ulcerguard (although not the administration process), and he approves of the conditioning schedule now that he's getting *scary* fit.

Most dressage horses don't need to be like... intermediate level eventer fit.

This... would be a little overkill

We're just sandbox fruits, no galloping necessary

Mine apparently does to get him hot enough for me to ride at this level. He's feeling stronger and more energetic on the conditioning schedule, and this is paying off quite a lot in the movements.

I worked on the piaffe, passage, and one tempis yesterday. Rico had gotten Friday off because poor boyfriend sprained his ankle so I took him to the doctor's and kept him company (plus we even made it to our concert, which was probably a bad decision given how much it swelled but we had fun! Even ran into my advisor and his wife there, which was fucking weird).


Saturday Rico was pretty excited to get out, even though my mom has been riding him a bit (yay mom!) so he doesn't really get full days off anymore. He was spooking a lot, especially at my neighbor's house which was confusing until a bunch of wild turkeys came running out in front of us. We herded them down the road.

In the arena I first worked the one tempis, since Rico seems to have a quota of how many he's willing to do before he wants to stop. I used the exercise we had done at my last lesson- a series of couplets with two tempis in between.

It worked really well! We were able to get to three sets of couplets (so six total changes) in a row. I'm being slightly limited by the size of my arena, but I think I'm primarily being limited by my inability to ride corners.

The piaffe and passage is improving still too. I've fixed the slow tempo problem in the piaffe but he still feels earthbound so I'm doing a lot of really quick half steps. The passage is getting more and more reliable. I can keep him into the bridle with a long-ish neck and I can even steer pretty well now! It's like learning to trot again.

The best part was the exceptional transitions we got. Those are normally SO hard for horses, yet Rico is really figuring them out quickly. I never worry about getting in or out of the piaffe anymore, and the walk to passage is only occasionally bad.

These pictures were so pretty from last month :)

Tuesday I have my next Tracey lesson and I'm going to bring her a show schedule and get her opinion on when I should move up and where. I'm exactly three weeks away from my first possible GP and I'm not feeling quite ready. Rico is getting better and better, but I can't take so few ones into the ring. I wish he was able to tell me what was going on with those. I feel like we have a block. Maybe this is just how long it takes!

Sitting

I consider myself an expert sitter. I can sit at a desk. I can sit at a table. I can sit while eating. I can even sit while I watch House of Cards (highly recommended), blog, and edit pictures from my vacation all at the same time. In fact, I'm doing that right now!

However, it seems like when a certain horse is trying to get on my level of sitting, I have a major problem with patience. 

I'm very comfortable in the pushing gaits. Give me an extended canter, I'll extend the shit out of that canter. Give me an extended trot, or a passage! I love a good passage. But please please don't make me do a piaffe or a pirouette or even just trotting without going 50 mph. Too difficult.

Love me some pushing

Tonight Tracey had some really great things to say about the Alfredo clinic. Apparently Alfredo came up to her later and told her how great I was doing, and that he was really happy with how fast Rico learned his piaffe and passage.

I wanted to work the ones and the piaffe and passage. I'll work the pirouettes later this week and some more lateral work later, but I wanted help with the ones since I seem to be stuck at 4 and to see what Tracey thought of how Alfredo had us working the piaffe and passage.


First we worked some of the basics. Rico needs to stay rounder in general, he gets a little hollow and drops his shoulders which Tracey says will lead to him being heavy again. Don't want that! It gets especially bad when I ask for collected canter so we played with that a bit too.

Then we did the ones. Tracey agreed that my rhythm is off in that movement and told me to stick to couplets for a bit until I got really good at them. She said that I should be able to do a couplet, then a two, then a couplet, then a two, etc. So we worked on that a bit.

After the ones we did some basics in the trot and this is where we found my main problem of sitting. I tend to equate energy with thrust. I want Rico covering ground and pushing. However, there is very little pushing in collection, there is sitting. So what happens is I cue for collected trot, get a collected trot, think that it's too lazy and slow, and push him over the ground.

This was a major breakthrough for myself in the way I think about it. She's totally right, I panic in the collected movements (pirouettes, piaffe, general collected gaits) and feel confident/comfortable in the ones where I can move Rico over the ground.

We played with the piaffe and passage and Tracey was happy. She said that she doesn't want his piaffe that much on the spot (as Alfredo did) because Rico was losing rhythm. We have homework to do half steps. He's also losing rhythm a bit in the passage, so we worked a little more roundness on the right rein and that improved a lot. She agreed that both were solid 6s and that Rico needs to be able to do them for longer (but not too long since we don't want him getting hurt).

Passage :)

Overall I was pretty pleased with how Rico is going! He likes his new bit (as does Tracey) and is staying better up in front of me. He's still not 100% yet but we're on the right track!

Lethargy Update: Scope Results (and Alfredo Pictures!)

I've been on vacation for the last week (which was AMAZING!) so I haven't been able to post. I did TRY to, but we had no internet so I was making attempts with my phone and it failed.

Today I managed to edit pictures from the Alfredo Hernandez clinic so enjoy those!

So dappled!

My favorite from those days!

Passage

More passage

So while I was gone, my mom was nice enough to both ride (!!) Rico for me and take him up to my vet to get his stomach scoped for ulcers.

The good news: Rico doesn't have massive scary bleeding ulcers that would cause him to be retired! Also, my mom rode him for 40 minutes two of the three days I was gone and both her and my dad (who rode Stretch, who my mom normally rides) said that he was perfect for them, even better than Stretch.

The iffy news: my vet had a lot to say that my mom tried to relay to me through texts which I was only able to get sometimes. Here was what I got out of it-

- Rico is getting older and thus losing muscle as I'm trying to put it on. Rico is now on a supplement called Core Builder which is a muscle building supplement.

- Rico had an old ulcer that was healing, so he's going on 2 weeks of ulcerguard and is now getting a pre- and probiotic.

- We're going to work on Rico's diet over the next couple weeks to get him enough fat, protein, and energy so that he can perform at this level for at least another few months.

Piaffe

Passage

I'm happy to report that Rico has been very good since I got back from vacation. He has been more energetic and much easier to ride. I have bruises all over my legs from wakeboarding (which I'm bad at), tubing (which I'm bad at), and generally being on a boat (which I'm obviously not used to) for the last week. Some of these bruises happen to be right where I hit the stirrup leather so I've been rather useless.

Passage with Alfredo's help!

More help to get Rico more on the spot

I did work on one-tempis a few days ago, which are the last of the *really* bad movements at Grand Prix. I can now get 3 of them in a row pretty regularly, and 4 on occasion (usually 1-2x per ride). The problem is that his ones are so different from Leo's. Leo was trained, obviously, so it was easier to do them and he had a much less boingy canter. Rico leaps up into the air during changes, while Leo is a tad flat (especially with me on him!). Rico's leaping means that it takes him longer to change than Leo. So what that means for me is that on Leo, I learned to move my legs quicker while on Rico, I need to slow them down. That's REALLY hard!

Because of this (and his learning curve), I feel like we're moving a little slow on this movement in my opinion, so I may see if Tracey can ride him at some point. If she can get more, it's probably my problem so I'll fix that ASAP, if she can't, it's his learning curve and we'll take our time.

Tonight I worked on the zig zag. I broke it down into elements and it seems like my left zig is going to be steeper than my right zag so I worked on evening them out a bit- making the right one a little steeper and the left one a little less steep. I need to get into a court to practice it soon so I may be visiting Heidi again soon!

Rico thinks that levade is fun too!

Passage

Piaffe

More piaffe

Lethargy Update: Changing the Way We Ride

On Thursday after the clinic, I took Rico up into the hills across the valley. I'm getting braver about allowing him to ride in the hills- I get really freaked out every time he walks up or down a hill because I think he's going to break. 45 minutes of passaging, piaffing, and canter pirouettes? Not a problem. Walking up a hill? Obviously going to break the horse.

More show pictures! Apologies for any repeats, I don't keep
track of what I post very well...

So I've decided that I'm going to be careful, but the poor horse needs a trail ride here and there!

He was a nutcase! He was so stoked to be out there and I regret riding him bareback in the hackamore because he was charging up the hills as fast as he could and spooking at everything. I was glad to see him excited about something for a change.


Friday night I rode him dressage and was going to address the issues we've been having lately.

If you've missed the last few posts about the issues I'm having, here's a brief synopsis. About three weeks ago Rico started to experience lethargy (very lazy undersaddle including randomly stopping during work). I have since changed a LOT of things, including his diet and workout schedule. We got blood drawn last week and found that he was slightly anemic. My two vets (local vet who I use for minor issues and performance vet who is further away and more expensive, who I use for performance issues) disagreed on what the cause was.

We think ulcers (getting him scoped on Wednesday and he's on ranitidine right now), general pain (getting chiro out in a week), a metabolic disease (running tests after ruling out ulcers), and general burnout from the work.

The horse loves to show though!

With the last possibility in mind, I've made a series of changes to the way I ride him:

I now have him on a conditioning schedule (change #1) which is set up so that we both don't have to do as much work in our sets, we just do more of the sets. So we did 20 sets of 2 minutes of work. This helped a lot because he usually starts to stop after 2-3 minutes of work, so I would just let him take a short (25 second) break before starting again. Twice we took longer breaks. He was pretty tired by the end (the last 4 sets we did stretchy trot) which was nice because lately I've been only able to get through 20-30 minutes of work without being frustrated.

I also have decided to make several changes to the way I ride him. Alfredo pointed out that I sometimes drop my leg off of him. I'll be riding along and just expect him to keep going even though I suddenly have no leg on. YES this is something I'd like him to do (two of the young horses I ride are like this and it's soooo nice), but I need to accept that this isn't Rico. If you're riding a horse that needs steady hands to go on the bit, and you drop the horse all the time, the horse probably isn't going to be on the bit. Not the horse's fault! Yours! So my first big riding change is to keep my leg more steady (change #2) with my calf on and then use the spurs to back it up.

Such a good horse

Then, Alfredo (and Heidi, and Tracey) pointed out that I use the whip too much. I never realize this until it's taken away and I'm forced to use my leg. This means that Rico is being over-exposed to the whip and it's meaning less and less, which means that I have to use it stronger to get a response (which I really hate doing). So I decided to flip it upside down and carry it like a sword (change #3). It's much harder for me to use this way (I can't just tap him), so when I did use it, it was when I REALLY needed to rather than just using it casually. Rico doesn't care about a whip being held like that since he was a driving horse, so it worked really well!

Finally, for the last few weeks I've been letting Rico get away with being slightly hollow during our rides in hopes of convincing him to go more forward (note: compromise doesn't work with lazy animals who can't have a full conversation with you). That's not working, so we're going to ride a little lower (change #4) and see if I can get him a little more INTO the bridle. This is a tough change for me because I hate heavy horses with a passion, but 3 months of crossfit has left me quite strong, so I'm no longer worried about being pulled on. If he's a little heavy in the bridle due to being pushed to the contact more, he's going to be more reliably forward because the moment he gets a little light, I can shove him back up there.

Slightly hollow/off the bit... 

These changes majorly paid off. Friday's ride we worked on my sitting trot (Alfredo and Tracey say that my legs move too much at the trot, so Rico is becoming dull to those aids, time to fix it- change #5) and his canter pirouettes. He tried to stop occasionally, but not quite as much as he has been, and we actually got through an hour long ride without me getting frustrated/sad/etc.

The pirouettes are coming along, especially now that I'm riding better. I'm no longer worried about the pirouette apocalypse (although perhaps now only worried about the pirouette crash of 1929) so I'm a lot more patient in the work. We worked primarily on biomechanics (meaning making them very large, I know I can always put them smaller but the mechanic starts to disintegrate so I wanted to work only on that).

To the left we worked on control and roundness. His left pirouette is good. He gets decent scores, but the judge at the last test said that he "labored" one step. He does this because he gets too short in the neck and a little hollow. I worked on keeping him round and being able to influence the inside hind leg to keep him more active.

To the right, we're always having issues. Most of them are mechanic issues, he wants to swap out his lead or get way too bent, and then he can't perform the pirouette properly. I started very large on the circle just moving him up and back, then we did some haunches-in. Twice during the workout he tried to stop, so I told him not to with the whip (which meant more since I hadn't used it the whole time). He was much better after that! It's just hard for him to stay sitting and active, I get one or the other. Eventually I felt like we had a lot more control, reliability, and the mechanic was better. I'm putting the full pirouettes on hold in this direction for a few weeks to allow him to gain strength within the mechanic so that way we can spiral them down into real, correct, pirouettes later.

Heading into our right pirouette which was utter crap

After the ride I was not as frustrated as I have been for the past three weeks! Rico seemed happy too. It's hard when I have to end on a bad note (which I still feel is better than ending on a VERY bad note when I've tried to fix the problem and then have it blow up in my face) so it was nice to finish up the pirouette work, do some stretchy trot, and then walk back to the barn.

Obviously I'm not ruling out anything physically wrong with him, but these changes will at least help me get through this weekend before I leave on vacation on Monday and he gets scoped while I'm gone on Wednesday.