Eliminating Static

One of the metaphors that I always used to use while teaching was the idea of static in the communication between horse and rider. As time went on and my students were born later and later, it became harder to use that reference because kids these days literally don't know what static sounds like. Phones seem to just cut out, I haven't heard that noise in a while.

Anyway, one of the things I've been doing with my own riding recently, and in the last three or so years, is working to eliminate the static in my communication with horses. I'm reading (slowly now that I'm not on vacation anymore) Academic Horsemanship, and this book is brilliant. 

One of the major things I'm taking away is that horses learn in a much simpler way than we think they do. Like most animals, they simply exhibit behaviors, for better or for worse, that have at one point been reinforced in some way. Whether that reinforcement is a pet near the withers or food (primary reinforcers- positive reinforcement) or escape from pain (primary reinforcer- negative reinforcement). Most of the time when a horse is acting up, they are confused or in pain.

One obvious example is TC's bolting. I have for the most part eliminated that response in him. I mean he still scoots off, but that downshift galloping across the arena is gone. Why? Well, lots of factors including his living situation, his level of training, and the weather. But also ME. Since he doesn't go bolting around his paddock. 

Horses don't act up because they are inherently mean. They act up because at one point they were rewarded for doing so. And TC has been rewarded for bolting in the past. One way I think this happened is this: I would be nervous, thinking he might bolt so would essentially aid him to bolt by being a bit tense in the tack. He would do so and it wouldn't be as bad as my brain thought it was, so I'd actually be more relaxed after the bolt. What a really good way to teach a horse that if they feel tension on their back (an aid that I didn't know I was giving = static), they can just gallop wildly away and get their rider to relax. 

Oops.

So now when I add tension to my seat, he does get a little zippy, which has been nice, except when he was already amped the other day and I went to add a bit of tension to add energy to his canter and... well, enlightenment at speed. 

That's an obvious example though, of an accidental stimulus-response chain being created when I really didn't mean to do it. It'd be easy to bit him up, throw him in draw reins, call him a dangerous horse (all of those things were suggested to me) rather than looking at it as a behavioral analyst and not treating the symptom, but treating the cause.

Needs a better rider, not draw reins

But this happens all the fucking time. Horses pick up on the littlest things. It's how they learn, they really struggle with generalization. Case in point when I went to work on TC's flying changes the other day. 

I'm doing them at the same point in the same arena every single time, which is a good way to get consistency (and prevent random changes over time since I do still need to show at Training, First, and Second before I want him doing them in the show ring). But I also didn't realize that I was setting them up the same exact way. 

Soon TC had a little routine that had a bunch of stuff in it that I didn't necessarily want. Pick up the canter in the corner, spook at a tree, get behind my leg slightly in a half halt to turn across the diagonal, change, counter flex slightly to stare at another tree, walk transition in the corner. Because at one point all that happened and he got praised. He doesn't understand that he ONLY got praised for the change. He thought that the whole routine lead to praise.

So how do horses differentiate between a rider's half halt and an accidental jerk on the rein? How do horses differentiate between a canter transition and nagging? How do horses differentiate between shifting weight because you have an itch and shifting weight because you are asking them to respond? They don't. 

Static on my right rein and tipped shoulders

Sitting still and ONLY aiding when I mean to is REALLY hard for me. Especially now that I've lost muscle from not going to the gym anymore, it's really easy to glance down and be like wtf that hand is not supposed to do that. TC has no idea that my wandering left hand isn't an aid, and he's really good at going the way that I'm asking him to. Take our problems to the left for example. My unintended, static aid is my left hand coming back. 

That aid shifts his weight to the outside front leg, which my right side is not good at sending forward (and it really can't when I'm sending his right front so far out). So he pops his shoulder and we don't turn. It gets to the point where in order to turn to avoid me tapping him with the whip on the shoulder, he's learned to get up and down in the gait and come off the bit.  He isn't "trying to get away with" anything when he does these things, he's performing a behavior that I am a) aiding for and b) has brought him a reinforcement in the past.


Nagging is my go to example of static in communication with the horses. TC hasn't had a rider who nags at him for more than a ride or two, so hasn't become habituated to the leg aid in the same way Rico did. With Rico, I would nag at him whether he delivered the response I was looking for (go forward) or not. To him, the aid became something that he could both respond to with no reward (ceasing of the nagging and praise) or ignore with no penalty (since I'd just keep nagging).

It's like if someone asked you a question "what is my favorite color?" and you guess "blue?" and they just ask again, "what is my favorite color?" "uh well since you're asking again it's probably not blue, how about green?" and again and again until you're just like FUCK YOU JUST TELL ME ALREADY WHAT YOUR FAVORITE COLOR IS. Or maybe you're just like "man that person likes saying those words in that order, nothing I do will make them stop, so I'll just ignore them." The latter is more like what horses do. You become habituated to the question so you stop responding.

The king of habituation. More like, poor innocent
horse owned by rider who nags.

So to work on eliminating static, I'm putting pressure on myself to both a) require ONE aid for ONE response and b) keep my aids neutral when not in use. Let me break that down because I find it really interesting.

Horses are kind of superstitious. They paw when they know the feed truck is coming not because they're being impatient or any human emotions, but because at one point they tried pawing and it magically made the feed truck come to them and give them food. Rewarding the pawing behavior. If Rico knows that I'm going to ask him to go forward seven times (nagging) before I finally get frustrated and hit him, I have taught him that the aid to go is for me to nag at him seven times. He will let me get through my aid and then he will go forward.

With TC, since I didn't want to create a horse that I had to nag at, he's really good about the one aid one response thing. If I ask him to go forward from the leg, it takes one response, if I ask him to slow down, one response. So that first point isn't as relevant on him. I've been very careful to not accidentally add static that way, but keeping all other aids neutral has been harder than it sounds.

Neutral position

I've always maintained that doing NOTHING on the back of a horse is a thousand times harder than doing SOMETHING. Sitting still and being patient is tough. But the nice thing about TC is that the more neutral my entire body becomes, and I'm talking about light forward thinking hands that do not shift laterally or backward EVER, a neutral seat that stays with him no matter what he does, and a light leg on him for support but not at all driving or wiggling (hardest in sitting trot, damn), the better he goes. The more out of his way I get, leaving the pathway that I want him to go on completely free and open, the more expressive and happily he works. 

But it's SO HARD. I get left behind the motion in exuberant transitions sometimes, my left hand likes to come back as I sit while posting, my legs want to get too far back or too far forward or sometimes one goes forward and the other sticks out, my seat wants to get uneven and tip off my right seat bone. To TC, those bad habits aren't things he should realize are unintentional and that he should ignore, they're no different than aids. And if I keep doing them without reinforcing behavior that follows, he will become habituated to them and it will cause static when I actually do want to use them as aids. OR he will develop superstitious behaviors as I accidentally reinforce things that he's offering because of those aids (such as popping his shoulder). 

The more I learn about how much influence I have over my horse, for better or for worse (mostly for worse), the more I really reject the notion of the "effective but not pretty" rider. A rider needs to be in a neutral position EXCEPT for the aids that are going through to the horse in order to be completely effective and provide the clearest communication to the horse. It doesn't mean that pretty riders are all effective, it just means that you can't be a truly, fully effective rider without sitting properly in the tack, and more importantly, keeping the utmost control of all aids so they don't go aiding for shit you don't realize like mine do. 

Tipping forward and bringing my leg up = static

Even the most sensitive snowflakes of horses will habituate to static in the aids (I mean if your horse wears any clothes, they are capable of habituating to things). Even a position that feels like it gets out of the way of the horse could still be throwing things way off. The more still I become with my aids the further I feel like I have to go to truly get into a neutral position. And it's ALL ON ME. My horse only does what I tell him to do and what has been reinforced in the past.

My slight backward motion with my left hand in the down swing of my post throws my horse off enough where he is crooked on that side. Or I could blame it on him not "wanting" to use himself properly or that he needs to be "more respectful" of me. I let go of my abs the other day at the canter because I totally mistook what I was doing half-halt wise and TC dropped immediately into trot. Or he got "lazy" and thought he could "get away with" breaking from the canter.

Not to say that horses don't take the path of least resistance. I mean that is exactly what I am saying. TC won't connect on that side when I'm in his way because I'm blocking that path. He wouldn't hold his canter when I didn't keep my abs engaged because I'm blocking that path.

And this also doesn't mean that these responses don't deserve to be corrected. TC should keep cantering even if I fuck up. He should go on the bit even if I'm struggling with my posting. But these aren't high level responses here, they aren't him sneakily thinking that he can get away with not working because I'm dropping my core. 

He is a lot of things but lazy isn't one of them, unless I teach
him to be "lazy"

My goal now is to eliminate the static that could be blocking other paths that I don't even realize. Get myself into a neutral position and give him the freedom he needs to perform. And he is so enjoying his work now that I'm focusing on this. It doesn't mean that I'm not riding him, I'm just riding him more deliberately. Every aid is given for a reason. Every tiny movement of my body is calculated. 

My brain hurts, and I don't really feel like a particularly good rider, but the other day I got a collected canter like Rico had at Third or Fourth level, and he was light and he was maneuverable with the smallest aid. I softened my hand and he came rounder, I carefully pulled my seat back and he nearly went on the spot. Because there's less static now and he can hear my aids whisper now. And the reinforcers are easier to deliver for me and easier for him to hear. And that's SUPER cool. Kind of completely terrifying when a small movement can elicit a huge response, but mostly cool.

Controlling that huge response is another thing...

Before finishing this post I do have to shout out to Kate who both introduced me to this book that is completely changing the way that I train horses AND for endlessly talking to me about it. Plus, hopefully she'll find the time between summer camps and teaching to write about the clicker training clinic she held at her barn. I couldn't be there because I was in Michigan, but she asked the woman about TC's bolting for me, and she told Kate who told me that at ONE POINT, my horse was rewarded for bolting. Simple as that. And now after he did it directly following my seat getting tense a few days ago, I FINALLY understand why he's doing it and so many other things.

Too Many Museums and the Right Amount of Ponies

At the end of our Michigan trip, bf and I weren't quite done with vacation just yet. We had been planning a long camping trip this summer, but instead, decided to go explore a new city since we were already going to be traveling. We had done this in Portland over New Years and it was a blast- stayed at an AirBnb near public transportation, go to some museums... but this time I had other things in mind: blogger meetup.

When I was in DC, one of the people I missed seeing was Jan! We literally missed each other by a day or two. I've been talking to Jan for a while now, maybe over a year? Two years? I dunno. But it was ridiculous that she was in Maryland like JUST before I was there.

So off to Pennsylvania we went! We stayed just east of Pittsburgh and it was an absolute blast.

Pittsburgh!

View from the Cathedral of Learning

So many bridges

Wednesday we landed around 3 and took a cab downtown. We mostly spent the afternoon/evening wandering around the immediate area surrounding our AirBnb. I had snagged us a really awesome little basement apartment just east of the city that was walking distance to a lot of stuff and super close to the bus line for all the other stuff. 

The immediate area was great- it was just a strip mall, but it was so close and really great to wander down. We landed at a great little Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. There were a ton of restaurants to choose from, but bf's coworker who lived there for a while warned us against trying to find Asian or Mexican food that rivaled those in the bay area. We pretty much exist on sushi, Korean, and tacos at this point, so we struggled a bit. But the restaurant was SUPER good and actually everything we ate was delicious. 

Following dinner, we wandered down to the Rite Aid to get a few things we had forgotten. I saw umbrellas and thought about getting one. But like, come on, it's July. They were fifteen dollars. That's too much to pay for an umbrella in July. 

Obviously hanging out with this guy was on
my list of things to do

Thursday we had in our schedule our first museum. I had also talked to Jan about riding with her that night, so on the way to the museum, we stopped to hand off my boots to her. Talk about how awesome the blogosphere is, Jan and I have never met and I just handed her my beloved tall boots and the rest of my riding stuff (minus my helmet, couldn't fit that in my luggage!) and took off. But I feel like I've met enough people in the blogosphere who all know each other where I trusted that she wasn't some weird person who faked an entire blog about horses just to get at some moderately priced tall boots. 

And like meeting all of the other bloggers I've met so far (I think I'm over ten now), it was like meeting up with an old friend. 

The museum we went to was the Andy Warhol museum just north of the city. It was AWESOME. I highly recommend it. Some of it was... interesting... like the 90 minute black and white silent film of one naked butt wiggling, twerking, and dancing around. Butt quality wasn't the best, and I really don't understand this kind of art, but you know, butts. I had the most fun snap chatting videos of it to my SIL and just being like BUTTS. But really, a lot of the museum was really fascinating and you should go even if you question whether you'd like the butt video.

Silver clouds at Andy Warhol

Barn kitties!

From there, we went to eat lunch at a local pub. While we were eating, it casually poured a huge amount of rain down outside. It didn't stop. No one else seemed to care. I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open as people just got out their umbrellas, or didn't. There was one guy in shorts and a tank top jogging by completely soaked head to toe. Uhhhhh. So now I felt like an idiot sitting in the restaurant in shorts and a tank top having scoffed at a fifteen dollar umbrella the day before. I'd have paid fifty dollars for that same umbrella in that moment. 

We uber-ed to another Rite Aid and bought two umbrellas. The Rite Aid put us slightly closer to Jan's office, but we had some extra time so we took our time wandering back. I left bf enjoying a drink at a bar nearby while Jan and I hopped on the bus to head out to the barn!

Rain, what the fuck

PENN

We talked young dressage horse woes and general pony talk all the way out to Jan's beautiful barn. This is now the third east coast barn I've been in and it's adorable. I love how horses are kept on the east coast, it makes me feel a bit bad for TC in his little paddock back at home (but he is better off than a lot of west coast horses so too bad, pony). 

Her barn is small and everyone I met is SO NICE and it's just beautiful out there, I had serious barn envy. Not that my barn isn't wonderful, but the east coast barns are so centralized and I love the idea of only dealing with weather when you walk into the barn and out of the barn. Even though our weather is nothing in comparison to Pennsylvania's. Evidence: it rained on me in July. Several times. No thank you. 

I found out that Jan had arranged for me to ride the most adorable little Morgan. He was basically an east coast Sunny. We got tacked up and decided to ride in the indoor (our plan had been to do a trail ride but no dice as it was raining). I had so much fun riding the pony! We worked transitions and straightness for him, and I got to work on my sitting trot and my tracking-left issues. I realized how much easier it was to work on these things on a smaller mover! Even just having more steps per circle to adjust made it easier to get him aligned. 

Trail ride!

View from the top of the trail

The BEST pony

After our ride in the ring, we saw that it wasn't raining anymore, so we rode up to the ridge with a couple of Jan's awesome barn mates! It was beautiful up there. You could see the rolling hills and all the fog between them. The clouds are so much cooler out on the east coast. My trusty Morgan was foot perfect out there. I seriously loved riding him. I don't do basically any catch riding these days, so I can feel really weird on horses that aren't TC. But this guy was just FUN. Reminded me a lot of my favorite Ginger pony. 

After the barn, Jan and I, being the classy individuals that we are, stopped at a gas station for food. No but seriously I've never been to a Sheetz and it was delicious. I'm actually really glad that there aren't any out here because I think it'd start to make up more than half of my diet. 

Frozen hot chocolate + caffeine on Saturday,
yeah we went back

On Friday, bf and I decided to go to another TWO museums: the Carnegie Natural History Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Had they not been in the same building, we'd probably have just gone to the first one. I'm not the most excited about your typical art museums. I have to be in the right mood I guess because modern art can REALLY annoy the hell out of me. And sure enough by the time we made it to the art museum, I was hangry, which inspired me to primarily sit and read blogs while bf wandered around. 

The Natural History Museum was beyond amazing though (we did that one first, so maybe that's where I used up all my excited-about-museums feelings). There was a HUGE room dedicated to dinosaurs, which was definitely my favorite part. But the rest of it was amazing too. I realized I had never really seen a weasel before... and I took a long time to tell bf all about zorses because he had heard that zebras were hard to train.
 

After the museums, we headed out to eat at a little shack kind of thing... it was right near a gigantic building that turned out to be the Cathedral of Learning, a building part of the University of Pittsburgh. It literally looked like Hogwarts. We snuck in and zipped up to a viewing deck on the 36th floor. The viewing deck wasn't all that fancy, but it did get us some cool views of the city. 

Dinosaur!

I started just wandering around the art museum
finding and taking pictures of all the horse things

HOGWARTS

Saturday was our last day and I abandoned bf once again to go ride. I'm glad he's an introvert too, because I never feel bad ignoring him to go ride, he finds things to do on his own. 

The first thing we did at the barn was go see the baby goats that were just born over the 4th of July! Oh man, these things are ADORABLE and if I could have, I would have put one in my pocket and brought it home with me. We also saw the pigs and chickens on the farm in the back of the property. I love farm animals, and they were all so sweet. 

After heading back to the barn, we tacked up to ride. I got to ride my little Morgan again, who was super good and clearly retained some of the stuff we had done. I practiced more sitting trot and more tracking left for a bit, then Jan and I switched horses and I got to ride Penn! 

Baby goat!!

Seriously taking this one home

Also wanted to take this dog home to share with L

Penn is (exactly, now that he's measured) a couple of inches smaller than TC, but he felt a little giant after I had been riding the little guy. He was basically the complete opposite ride of TC, so I struggled to find my bearings at first. But then we were off. His lateral work is really easy, too easy! I definitely have been doing more lateral work the last few days with TC to try to get a little more of that feeling in him. Penn is definitely more of a physical ride than TC, so I was embarrassingly sore the next day. Serves me right, I need to hit the gym!

We swapped back after I played with Penn and then went on a short trail ride again. I was so excited to trail ride- I'm really bummed that I have to wait so long to get on the trails again on TC, so this was a nice break. 

Jan was SUPER nice, like beyond nice, to drive us to the airport. We flew to Phoenix, then flew back to the bay where we apparently had to go around a storm system (where the fuck is it raining between Phoenix and the bay area?) that delayed us. I managed to sleep in a position that bf described as how the hell did you sleep like that you looked supremely uncomfortable. But hey, sleep. 

Penn! I meant to crop this... 

You already heard how my first ride back on TC went. Overall it was a ridiculously good trip! I'm glad to be back home, though not for long. Bf and I are going to visit his parents this coming weekend. 

Sparklers and S'mores and Breweries for Breakfast

Ten days ago, my mom, my SIL, my bf, and I jumped on a plane way too early in the morning and landed late in the evening in Marquette, Michigan.

The reason for this trip was devastating to me. My grandfather passed away in March and we had his funeral in Marquette. We all stayed in his sister's cabin on Lake Superior and had a really amazing time. But his death hit me extremely hard and I'm still not over it. The funeral was very hard on me. 

But this post isn't about death or sadness, it's about an epic vacation with my family. My family does funerals right- we wait a long time so most people (read: not me) are feeling okay about it and then we party for a week. And even though I struggled, it really was fun. 

Grabbed some tipsy weirdos to make me a 2017 out of sparklers
on the 4th. They were chanting their numbers and giggling so I'm
surprised this came out so well. 

Lagoon! We had to walk over a bridge to get over this to the lake

Saturday we landed around 8:30pm. We had traveled all day, but the time difference is three hours, so it really didn't feel very late. I hadn't been to the cabin since I was a little kid, so only had vague memories of the place- the fact that you entered the cabin into the kitchen and that you had to walk along a little bridge over a lagoon to get over to the beach. 

Saturday night I mostly spent hiding from everyone after doing a little bit of exploring. After a long week of work and errands, all I wanted to do was sit by myself and read. So I did, because vacation.

Sunday was our first full day in Marquette. We started off the morning at a brewery for breakfast (er a theme, my family loves beer). I had blueberry pancakes and some eggs/bacon/hashbrowns. It was delicious. Following that, we all ran out to this amazing place where the owner had made all this junkyard art. I had a BLAST with that place. It was a half mile walk or so along a wide path (you could also drive or snowmobile) and every ten or twenty feet was a giant sculpture. They were incredible.

There was also what was called a Bog Walk, where we walked along planks in a mosquito infected swamp, FUN! But it was, I had bug spray on so no problems there.

Bog walk!

Downtown Marquette on the lake

After that, bf and I needed to go into town because there were a couple things we forgot. My aunt and cousin also wanted to go, so we jumped in the car and wandered around downtown Marquette. The first place we went was an old ice cream shop. Bf, who had slept in for the first time in eons and missed breakfast, got a sandwich, and the rest of us got root beer floats.

From there we split and bf and I predictably found ourselves in a bookshop. We managed to leave with only one book, though if I had remembered that my parents were driving back, I would have probably bought at least two or three. From there, we walked down to the lake to have a look around, then joined my aunt and cousin to go to the market to pick up food for dinner.

After dinner we spent the evening shooting off fireworks on the beach (which would become a theme). 

Walk out to Lake Superior from the cabin

Sunset (at like 10pm) on Lake Superior

Monday morning was the funeral and it was predictably a horrible experience for me (I mean it was lovely but like I said earlier...). I got through it (tyenol ftw- did you guys know that tylenol works on emotional pain too? It didn't keep me from being an absolute mess of a person, but it did stop my hyperventilating so that was good), and then we had a great lunch. 

After lunch it was lake time. Bf, an aunt, and I headed over to our local relatives' house and grabbed kayaks, then kayaked down to the lake from the river! It was AMAZING. Kind of scary because it kept feeling like it was going to tip over, but amazing. There were a ton of houses that backed right up to the river, which were fun to look at and imagine living in. And then just getting to the lake, wow. It really is amazing.

Once we made it to the beach to meet the rest of the family, brother, SIL, and I went out on floating things and laid around in the water. Then I came back up to join bf for a few hours of laying on the beach. Cue a mild sunburn for me and major sunburn for him, since we were pretty well clothed in the kayak and didn't put sunscreen on. Damn.

Kayaking

Tuesday was the last full day there and we had a day full of fun planned. First, a hike up Sugarloaf Mountain, where we were able to see a 360 view. I hadn't hiked in about a month, a hobby that seems to be taking a back seat these days, so it was great to get a good hike in. The view was also just beautiful. I'm always amazed by greenness in the summer! Everything is dead in California in the summer.

After the hike, we went out to a place called the black rocks. You could jump off of them into the lake, leading to some epic pictures! I wanted to do it, but we forgot towels and the lake was REALLY cold. Bf is stupider braver than I am, so he jumped in.

Back to the lake we went, and after relaxing a bit on the beach reading books and chatting, my dad and I decided to take my aunt's paddle boards down to the river where bf and I had kayaked the day before and try them out. They were SUPER fun and I actually REALLY want to do it again. My dad and I stayed kneeling just because the river water is... kinda brown. But I did stand up a few times, and when we got down to the mouth of the river (shallow area), my dad stood up too!

The view from the mountain (errr... "mountain")

Sparkler photographs were SUPER fun, this one is of me

That night was fireworks and s'mores. My uncle and cousin had maybe too much fun lighting them off, but no one was seriously maimed. I spent much of the night with sparklers playing with my camera, which was a blast. This last photograph is the best one, a self portrait (though big shout out to my cousin who watched the screen and told me if I was in focus- getting it in focus was SO HARD). And that first one of the 2017 was a little like herding cats but I still think it turned out cool despite it being a bit out of focus. 

Wednesday morning, my brother and SIL, and my bf and I zipped to the airport to catch the same flight to Chicago, and then different flights as we parted ways. My brother and SIL off to New Jersey to visit friends, and bf and I heading a little south west of there for a blogger meetup and vacation of our own...

Relax and Reset

I just got back from eight days of vacation and am still catching up on everything that needs to be done and then I need to get ready for another three days of vacation next weekend (uhh life is hard right now lol).

The first thing I did when I got back was... well sleep and then eat breakfast since we flew in late, but then I made a bee line to the barn to see TC.

While I was off enjoying my week off, TC got a vacation of his own. He got hand walked each day and fed his grain by the guys at the barn. And while I was gone, he got hind shoes put on for the first time! Chiro-vet said that he could probably use some extra support back there now that I'm asking for more collection. So we'll see if that seems to make a difference.

View from the cabin

When I got to the barn, TC just stared at me. No whinnies. Boo! He was a bit scuffed up- he has a new couple of scrapes on his left front leg and then his hock boots didn't stay on the whole time so he reopened one of his hock sores. But he was no worse for wear and he patiently stood while I brushed the week's worth of dirt off of him, combed out his tail, and tacked him up.

I just hopped on him. After my trip to DC when he got four or five days off, he was totally fine with being ridden, and while this time was nearly twice as long, it was also 95 degrees with no wind. I figured we'd be okay.

And we were!

I kept the ride short. After walking around the ranch, where he showed me all the stuff that was different since I left, we headed into the covered arena. He felt SO GOOD.

Kayaking!

At first, I worked on the basics. Horses don't forget things/get rusty as much as people do, but it was interesting to see what responses were the most solid so they could survive a bit of time off. I was also curious to see how he felt with his hind shoes. He was quite forward and soft all over. It took me a second to get my bearings on him actually. He was really light in the bridle, though still connected, and really soft off my leg, I kept having to hold him straight. He wasn't crooked, just bending really well.

The canter felt wonderful. Really uphill and just solid in the collection and the connection. I want to continue to improve the canter, especially because I still feel like there's a hint of backwards riding, where I have to really half halt to keep him round (vs in the trot having to push his nose forward and out to keep him on the vertical). But after a week off, damn.

The left was questionable at first. I worked REALLY hard while riding my catch ride pony this week to get my left direction in gear and man is it easier to ride to the left on a smaller mover. My timing was way off and it showed when we nearly ran into the mounting block like... seven times. Once as I really buckled down and channeled what Tracey had told me in my last lesson, we figured it out. I am not an ambi-turner.

Wandering through the woods

After going over the basics, I mostly focused on transitions since they were on my mind from last week's post. The walk to trot and trot to walk were foot perfect, like ridiculously perfect. The trot to canter was shockingly bad, and not in a balky off the bit way like they normally are- he kept shooting off into an ugly medium.

The canter to trot was much better than it normally is, with him offering canter to walks about half the time. I don't care about that- I'd rather him get comfortable doing the canter to walk and risk having that happen in a show vs kicking him out of it. If I really push him over the ground in the transition, we don't walk, so no problem.


At the end of the ride, I played with the walk to canters and a couple of flying changes. The walk to canter transition is getting better, but we still have the throughness factor to tackle. He stays on the bit, but he loses throughness, if that makes sense. Like he's on the vertical but he lurches off his hind legs into it rather than stepping through. When Rico was at Second, that's how I rode them, but I know better now (after countless lessons with Tracey on simple changes) so I want to develop them better. With better collected canter will come better walk to canter transitions, so for now the fact that he a) does them under control, b) is on the vertical, c) has no trot steps, and d) does them quietly is VERY good.

Got to visit Hogwarts last week!

The flying changes are coming along okay. I'm being very careful to only do them very sparingly (meaning one to two schools on them per quarter) and only when his canter work is feeling great and both he and I are in the right mental place. It worked out well to do them on Sunday even though he had a week off. We did two from left to right and then four from right to left. The left lead isn't quite strong enough yet to change out of, but the moment of suspension is there and the change does happen. The right to left is better, with the first one involving a bit of a buck, but every subsequent one getting better. I don't mind any of it at this point, I just like that he's understanding the concept. Go across diagonal, half halt, improve jump in canter, stay straight, swap leads, canter off in a straight line, downward transition, pets.


It makes me happy that they continue to improve despite not actually working on them. I feel like one day I'm going to go out to the barn and find a Third level horse standing in TC's paddock. Maybe next year or the year after...

Just Breathe

My life is a bit busy right now mostly because of my commute. During the week, I go to the barn each day and then of course to work and back, which all adds up to about a thirteen hour day if I'm quick and don't get caught up at work. Then eight of the remaining hours (theoretically) are sleeping, leaving me with three hours per day to eat two meals, get ready for work/riding, shower, and write blog posts.

Then on weekends I'm either working (teaching!), doing some sort of adventure (usually horse related, like taking a lesson or going to a show), or catching up on chores. I love my life and I'm really decent at planning things, so I don't usually feel overwhelmed. But sometimes I need a break. 

Being on vacation feels ridiculous. For the first half of the week was spent with my family and then now we're on the second half of the week and it's just bf (who is way more overworked than I am, but who doesn't have a horse so it evens out a bit) and I on our own adventure. 

Lake Superior

I'll be posting about the actual places we did go and the bigger things we did, but so far on my vacation, I've been doing a lot of little things I've wanted to do for a while:

Video games. 

I don't play video games anymore really. It was the first hobby to go when I got busier. I really do enjoy them, but they're clearly at the bottom of the totem pole. I've been playing my 3DS a bit and have been having a blast doing that, and I also have emulators on my computer (as well as Civ V and Portal 2, which I haven't played in years). 

Books.
I don't nearly read as much as I want to read. On this trip, I brought Academic Horsemanship to finally finally read from cover to cover. I'm LOVING it so far. 

Blogging.

GAH I finally get to fill up my drafts folder again. One reason why my blogging has dropped off in the last few months has been because I ran out of drafts. My work tracks what we do online, which is really irritating, so I pretty much read blogs on my phone while waiting for queries to run, taking fifteen minute breaks, and riding my horse. Kinda miss my last job (not really) where my boss point blank said "as long as you get your work done, we don't care what you do." Nice, blogs it is. So hopefully my blog won't be so sporadic for a few months. 

Playing with Cooper

My parents brought Cooper, the BEST DOG EVER up here because he's too neurotic to stay home. I've been having so much fun hanging out with him. 

Family time.

My dad's entire family was with us in Michigan. My aunts, my aunt and uncle with their four kids, and my local aunt with her husband. And of course my parents, my brother and SIL, and bf and I. It was SUPER fun to hang out with everyone.

RELAXING
Most of all, I'm relaxing and preventing myself from being bound by a schedule. It's been wonderful to not feel like I have to go go go all the time. 

View from the living room

Lots more stuff has been going on, including kayaking, laying around on the lake, laying around in the lake, laying around in the house, eating a lot of food (including s'mores), hiking, wandering around on the beach, and exploring the town. Super stoked to write more about it when we actually get home, but for now I'm just REALLY appreciating being able to relax and not overscheduling myself. Despite the reason for this trip (funeral), it's been really amazing so far. And we're only half way there. 

Collected Trot Through Transitions

Last week I talked a bit about TC's collected canter and how excited I am that we have one! I've also been playing with his collected trot too, though not as much, but I figured I'd talk about that as well.

As I mentioned when I wrote about the canter, the trot is for sure his easier gait. But it's actually the harder gait for me, so I guess that's a good thing for both of us.

Not collected yet

For the collected trot, the number one thing is obviously to get the connection in line and improve the straightness. If the connection isn't good and the horse is crooked, asking for collection is just going to teach TC how to get out of doing it properly (because asking for collection when he is retracted in the neck or curled is just asking him to dump his wither down). But it doesn't mean that I can't lay the foundation and introduce the concepts of it without really pushing him to carry more weight behind than he can correctly carry.

The way I've been doing this is trying to meet a transition quota each day. Kate gave me the idea because she's doing the exact same thing with Mox! I tend to get stuck just trotting around rather than remembering that transitions are key to a) riding better tests, b) improving the connection, and c) building the muscles that are necessary to support the collection I want in the future anyway. A downward transition, properly executed, uses the exact same muscles that collection does. So if I want to build the framework for collection without requiring that he hold it for so long that he tries to escape it, I'm signing myself up for a lot of transitions.

The quality of the transitions matters, and this is what I've been really addressing. The upward transitions are easier for TC, especially the walk to trot transition. We get a real obnoxious one at least once in a ride where he tries to pull himself up with his under neck, but after that we usually have good ones. My main goal with the walk to trot transition is now doing them on straight lines and maintaining throughness. Curved lines allow me to really keep him into the outside rein with my inside leg, and I can use that diagonal aid to keep him out to the bridle and on the bit. On a straight line where both of my reins become outside reins, it's hard to get him to keep his nose out in the upward. This is going to be SO KEY to so many things, from transitions from halt to trot on centerline, to riding tempi changes, and eventually putting the passage on. It's hard.

From last year before we started focusing on the collection

The downwards from trot to walk are getting better, but still for sure the harder of the two. TC wants to shut down the walk and get behind my leg, so the first thing I did was toss the connection and everything else out the window and focus on teaching him that once in walk, we miiiight immediately go back to trot. This kept him on his toes (though I did have to be careful to not get him nutty about it, we had a lot of jigging during this) and kept his walk marching. I then rebuilt the connection and straightness in the downwards and they got pretty good.

The next issue with that transition is that he wants to stick his nose out and almost brace against the bit when doing it. I really need to bring this up with my trainer. There's no way that I want to discourage him if he wants to get his neck longer. However, I don't want the connection to get sour like that. I've been working them on a circle and that has been helping, but again we're struggling with the trot to halt transition on centerline being a little tricky.

So that is for sure an issue that needs to be resolved as we work on the collection.

The trot has to be small to be engaged right now

The canter transitions are not yet in a state where they improve the trot. The downwards are still tricky, and that's less about the collection in the trot than in the canter, so as the canter collection improves, those transitions will improve (and as those transitions improve, the collection in the canter will improve).

The other type of transitions I'm using to work on the collection in the trot is the transitions within the gaits. Once again, the downwards are going to be key to getting him to build the muscle to sit down. The hard part for us is maintaining the connection and straightness as we swing the pendulum. We have one stride length we can do where he can keep his chest back and his hind end engaged, but as I push the pendulum forward and ask him to take steps that are a bit too large, he starts to fall forward into his chest and get his hind leg out behind him. In the too small steps, his hind legs go more up and down and he drops his withers. So right now, we have a small swing of the pendulum while still maintaining the quality of the connection and straightness.

The answer is just to do it a lot! Push him forward until we're on the edge of losing the connection, then bring it back to safety. Then ride a half halt until we're on the edge of losing the connection, then bring it back to safety again. Swing the pendulum.

Expression without tension is hard

So I did this before I left on vacation and it went SUPER well. The horse's trot just feels like it has no limit in lift sometimes. I obviously want to be careful to not push it so much for this that I a) reinjure his leg, b) fry his brain, c) destroy the connection, or d) create a trot that I can't ride, but it's super fun to play with and develop.

Anyway, a good update on how his baseline gaits are coming along. Hopefully he retains all this when I come back home! Well, he will, it's more that I hope I retain all this when I get home.

I Miss Him

When I first started riding TC, I was really excited about it. I used to lament only riding him three days a week (because he was three years old, I stuck with the days per years old thing until he was five and then I just kept it at five). I rode him every other day and I remember at the end of a ride feeling like it was really too bad that I couldn't ride him again the next day or ride him for longer. I really loved working with him.

Baby horse!

Then I bought him and felt the same way for less than a month before I moved him to the paddock. He was then way too much horse for me and we started to struggle, and I really dreaded going to the barn to see him. I even had to give myself a talk about how I don't HAVE to go to the barn every day and he's fine to have a day off. 

Through rehab I saw him once a week and that seemed okay. I felt both terrible and great when I saw him- he's a very personable horse and I didn't have to ride him or handle him, just hang out in his stall. But hearing from the rehab people (he was too much horse for them too) and just seeing him live in this tiny stall for so long really hurt and there was still this feeling of dread. 

Upon bringing him home and getting to ride him again, it really fluctuated. I was mostly eager to get through the rehab, so that made me feel ambitious to go ride, but not for the sake of riding him then. I was definitely living in the future. 

Then of course this winter when I got scared, I went back to that feeling of dread. 

No more dread, just happiness

I've been gone for a few days now, and TC is getting hand walked. I'm having a blast and everything, but... I really miss him. Some of it is just barn time. I miss barn time. But I honestly miss this horse. It was kind of a shock to realize. As I was getting ready to go I wasn't feeling that feeling of relief that I felt leaving him to go to Portland for New Years. I remember thinking oh thank god I don't have to be around horses for a few days. This time I was like boo I have to put a stop to working on the collected work and no trail rides for a while.

It was just a really cool realization. I'm REALLY enjoying this horse right now. I know that won't always be the case, but it's so fun.