Outside My Comfort Zone

I've posted more on Facebook in the last few weeks than I've ever posted I think. I hate it, it's good for me, but I HATE it.

If we went back fifteen years, I was a very anxious young person. I was the kid in high school that felt like everyone was looking at me and I was also the person at my high school reunion who no one but my close friends knew existed. I hated being the center of attention, hated raising my hand in class, hated group projects. I just wanted to be at the barn with my ponies and my close pony club friends. I had a close inner circle and everyone else needed to not look at me too much, please, avert your gaze.

AGREED, but I am also being productive in some ways (mostly
to make up for how unproductive I am in most ways)

Being a horse trainer with this personality type just doesn't work. Charisma matters, sometimes I think it's more important than the quality of training/instruction, certainly for some people. There are riders who will deal with all sorts of things to be in a barn that has a good feeling of community or to ride with a trainer who is a good cheerleader. Almost that the illusion of learning something feels better than actually learning (because learning is the worst, hearing someone rephrase something you already know feels way better)? I don't know.

I've always struggled to be able to provide those things. It's not that I'm a mean person or anything! I try very hard not to be mean because like Mary says, a rosebud is no worse than a rose and I truly enjoy teaching all levels of riders. But I'm the sort of trainer who just lets people be rather than trying to facilitate making friends in my barn (I also teach a lot of clinics/at private facilities and only teach private lessons) and I'm also the kind of person who will be like "you're great, well, except... can I just... fix... stop doing that and here's 17 reasons why you should."

It took me fifteen years of teaching to decide on a barn name, another year to have a web presence at all. My instagram was private until this year. This blog started back in 2012 but no one read it, I was mildly horrified when I started getting comments.

And I never EVER posted on Facebook, every Facebook post you saw of mine took me hours to write and I still hate getting Facebook notifications. For some reason that site annoys the hell out of me, and it's not just because they put our current president in office. As an aside, the boyfriend hates it just as much as I do and they keep trying to recruit him and he keeps turning them down. Facebook is the highest paying company in the bay, because they have to be.

The parks are still open so I did go out there once, let me just
say that I'm glad TC is bombproof on the trail because there
were a lot of people out there who I don't think had ever been
outside before, let alone had to pass a horse

But right now I'm working hard getting this webinar series off the ground, and let me tell you, I got a fair amount of people interested through Instagram and this blog, also just bothering my friends and even my mom is enjoying them ("Megan, this is SO COMPLICATED" - my mom after the first rider biomechanics talk), but Facebook is next level shit. I'm friends with all kinds of trainers and judges there and I finally held my breath and requested on Facebook to get some judge's perspectives for this series. And I heard back. From like four of them. Immediately. Within an hour I had a Q&A session set up with my previous trainer and fabulous judge friend (she's presenting this Saturday night! Please join us!) and I had three other judges offering to help put something on.

I can't help but to laugh about what a good reinforcer this has been for my lingering weirdness about putting myself in the spotlight and reaching out to people. Because I have gotten better at it, I no longer feel horrified when people comment on my blog at least, but there's more work to be done. I've spoken to more people during this quarantine than I think I've ever spoken to in my entire life (so sorry if anyone has been ignored, I have like, a quota for how many human interactions I can take in one day and then I shut down, also not a great personality trait for a trainer omg I am not built to do this) and now I've got my name out there as someone who... exists in this world and can also help you learn to ride good and learn how to do other stuff good too (jk it's just the riding).

So that's cool and also frightening. But it's good for me! And it's good for us! Hearing how much people value these webinars has kept me motivated, we're all in different situations riding-wise and for a lot of people, this is the only instruction they're receiving.

Best trail horse ever, not afraid of bikes that don't know they
have to stop or women with umbrellas despite it not raining

So this weekend we have a talk from the judge's booth, answering your questions! If you'd like to submit a question, please post it here, send it to me on IG, email it to me, or (boo) send it to me over messenger on Facebook. And next Thursday, we have a FABULOUS upper level rider who is also a (human) chiropractor coming on to talk rider biomechanics, she even has exercises for us to do as a group! Wear stretchy clothes for that one.

Here is the Facebook page for the series if you haven't joined in yet: https://www.facebook.com/Dressage-Webinar-Series-105673281098865

The Plan

My barn hasn't shut down... yet. The county sheriff stopped by on Saturday and chatted with my barn owners, he said that boarders were allowed to ride as long as the barn was following certain guidelines, we are and have been for a while. In this county, they're only requiring lesson programs to shut down, which makes sense given how most of the barns are laid out in this area.

So obviously, I am still riding. I know that's a bit controversial, but I think every situation is different, horse keeping out here is fairly unique.

I want to go to there

My barn is very open (there's not one singular main barn), TC lives out in a private paddock, and I have a private tack room. No one else has access to any of my things. The only thing I touch that other people touch is TC's paddock gate (he destroyed his blanket so I took that to mean that he didn't want to wear one anymore this year, he's shed out so he's fine) and everyone is wearing gloves and masks at the barn (boarders included) and I sanitize everything when I get there and when I leave.

The bay area is flattening the curve with the SIP we're doing now, including keeping barns open. My barn owners are doing a really good job with new regulations (they recently assigned one of their workers the task of sanitizing everything all day, there's bleach everywhere, hand sanitizer everywhere, and strict instructions about how to interact with the facility) and are encouraging owners to come out but to be safe. I put TC on a limited work schedule (2 days on, 1 day off) to keep him in enough work to keep him sane but limiting how much I have to go down there. We all wear gloves and masks, and we keep more than 6 feet distance when there are other people around. The facility is so big and open that I frequently don't seen another person outside the workers.

One thing my barn did ask though, is for owners to provide documentation for what should be done if the owner gets sick or can't come out to the barn. So I thought about it and responded to my barn, plus printed it out and put it in my trunk, tack room, and trailer.

As I said earlier, TC is in a precarious place in his training, so no one else will be riding him, even if I can't come out. It'll be really a bummer not to keep him in work, because he is sounder, happier, and saner when in work. But it's okay.

Hoping I have nothing standing in my way of
this view indefinitely

As much as I'd love them to groom him thoroughly, take him on walks every day, and turn him out every day, that isn't necessary for his health and would be a burden on the barn workers. I've asked them to please take him out of his paddock a couple of times a week (either on a walk or in a turnout) and pick his feet when they do it.

Grain isn't absolutely necessary, so I'm going to have them grain him until my grain runs out. I've set up 30 days worth of bags and after those are used, they're under instructions to reduce his grain load (because if we get to that point, he won't be in work). When the grain runs out, they are to monitor his weight and add an additional flake of alfalfa at night if he starts to lose too much weight.

I've asked them to please bill me for these services. I still have my job and am teaching some remote lessons. I also want to make sure that they stay afloat, of course.

I also gave them all the information about what I'm willing to do vet-wise to keep TC going (basically I'm willing to throw money at him all day long for colic surgery/etc) and left a set of my truck keys in my tack room for them to use.

Many county parks have closed their parking lots, this one
hasn't just yet... hoping to get out there at some point

For now, I feel lucky that it is still open, lucky that the bay area is flattening the curve without having to shut it down, lucky that the boyfriend understands why I still go out there, and lucky that my barn is so fabulous that my worry if it closes will not be about TC's care but more about my mental health.

An Interesting Coincidence (or Not)

I've put changes on a lot of horses, TC is definitely not my first, even Rico wasn't my first. But TC recently started to do a behavior in his left to right change that intrigues me.

Back in 2013 and 2014, this blog was all about bringing Rico through the Grand Prix level and one thing that plagued us was his kicking change. We tried really hard to fix it and came up with a lot of solutions, some of which worked sometimes and others didn't work at all (but the theory behind it made so much sense!). What helped honestly at the end was doing the twos and the ones, there's just no way for him to get so much airtime. So for the single changes, I'd come in preparing for twos and just stop him after the first change. Still didn't work all the time.

Throughout these years, every other horse I rode and trained all had normal changes. So I wrote it off as a Rico thing. By the end, we were battling hock issues in his hind legs and coffin issues in the front (tempi changes are notoriously hard on front feet), we also found out a few years later when he had pigeon fever that he also had neck arthritis. All of those things, plus none of my client horses having this issue, made me think that it wasn't me.

Hanging out after some piaffe work

Hah, turns out it might be me. At first, TC's left to right change was unclean. I worked diligently to improve his right lead because in my experience, it's easier to convince them to change from the hard lead (right) to the easy lead (left) and harder to convince the opposite. So the stronger I got the right lead, the better. One thing about TC's right lead that is true of Rico's as well, is that neither of them want to stay upright, they both lean right. Coincidence that my left SI is the injured one, my right SI is the out-of-control mobile one, and my right leg wants to come off and slip back? No. All horses see my right side with that nice open door there and head right on through.

TC's left to right change became his good one very quickly when I started to insist that he wait for the change, which was when both canters became more even strength-wise. Then I started having issues with his good right to left change. The change that he didn't really have to try very hard to get, so therefore I had to go back and harp on him about seriously doing the change. That one is still a struggle, the right to left, he doesn't do it on my aid and when he does do it, it's a bit lurchy and sometimes late in front. Weird, but not a mystery. This is just what happens when you're putting on the changes. He's trialing behavior and I'm shaping it.

His left right became very interesting. At first when I asked him to wait, it regressed to being unclean again, so I tapped him into it and at one point he kicked out but it was clean so I rewarded the clean change. And then he started kicking at EVERY change. It's the EXACT same kick that Rico gave. In the EXACT same change.

Sitting well this side, and overconnected on the left!

So I'm doing a bunch of things to dissect it and figure out what is going wrong with it. Here are my ideas so far:

- TC gets quite sticky and behind the leg when he knows the change is coming, which might be causing the kick because he loses momentum, I'm working hard to get the go button to work better on the left lead AND am kicking him forward on a circle when he gets behind me setting up for a change.

- TC leans his withers right, I'm doing a TON of counter canter to the left (on the right lead) to help him stay more upright.

- I'm going to play with some straightness stuff, TC generally wants to bring his haunches left and his shoulders right, so I'm going to play with straightening him, although every time I've asked him out of shoulder-fore to the right from counter canter, it's been worse.

- TC's right lead still needs to be stronger, so I'm working hard on that, which the counter canter will obviously help. But I have noticed that his right lead is less uphill than his left, so we'll keep working on the collection on that side.

- Biomechanically, I'm focusing on being more still, not letting my right seatbone leave the saddle (it loves doing that), and keeping my right leg forward all the time. My SI injury could easily be causing this, and obviously PT is on hold until quarantine is over, but I'm resisting as best I can what my body wants to do.

Piaffe :) 

I want to take more video of TC and I, but I'm also going to start looking at old videos of Rico to try to determine what I might have been doing then. The fact that Tracey could never figure it out makes me wonder. I'll obviously reach out to Tanya and ask what she thinks, probably send her some video of TC doing it and some old videos of Rico. But Tracey had me try everything: get him stronger, get him straighter, get him more forward, get him more collected, ask quieter, ask bigger, change spurs, kick my right leg forward and off, keep my right leg back under me, shift his weight wherever... the list goes on.

So we'll see what happens. Is it a coincidence? I don't know. On the one hand, I've ridden a LOT of changes and have never had this issue other than on Rico, who had a lot of unique issues that none of the other horses (including TC) had. On the other hand, this is the second horse I've owned in a row that has kicked at my right leg during his left to right change. We'll know eventually! I just wish we could have a lesson on it now!

Sitting

At home, mostly, but also in the car and on the horse. And encouraging the horse to do so as well.

But TC is not built to sit, he is built to pull a cart. I am the dumb one here deciding to try to make a horse built to pull a cart sit down and carry himself and also me around.

Currently, TC is deep in the collection part of the training scale. We still work on the other rungs through warm up: he needs more energy/tone a lot of days, wants to get quick in the tempo, wants to retract from the connection, and wants to tilt to the right with his withers. But that's all addressed in warm up and then most days, we jump into collection.

The most difficult part for TC is the engagement, defined as the lowering of the haunches via putting more bend in the hocks during the stance phase of the gait. Another difficulty for him, being a lower tone horse, is to keep tone in his thoracic sling, which allows him to pop his withers up. Pulling a cart would not be very efficient if he kept his chest up and back and his hind legs well under his body.

Um this creature is not meant to be able to do this. The magic
of clicker training!

Soloshot decided not to get very much video of my right lead

So the collected exercises are going to be tough for him, namely the pirouettes and the piaffe. And we've started on both of those now in their lower level forms: school canter and half steps.

The school canter has taken and will continue to take a LONG TIME. He is learning to sit down though, and it's made the canter so much more accessible. I can now ride a pretty controlled canter half pass in both directions, not particularly steep, but it's recognizable! Good enough for Third level. And I've been playing with shoulder-in and haunches-in on a circle in the school canter, which has been helping me teach him that he needs to keep his front end mobile and his outside hind leg engaged which is, of course, necessary for the pirouettes.

Sitting him down in his collected canter

Letting him out of it, love his reach here, and how much he is
lifting through his chest, that's not a natural thing for him

The in hand work is stellar. He is such a pro already! His transitions in and out of the half steps have gotten better, he's much straighter, much more relaxed over his topline, and at this point, I don't even use the whip unless it's to touch him lightly on the hip, which he then gets a little surprised by.

OMG I AM SO SORRY, WILL TUCK BUTT MORE - TC

I feel bad for him when I do touch him and he gets like the above picture, even though, with a little work, that's a fucking amazing piaffe right there. He got immediately praised, fed grain, and got a break. That tension doesn't last though, he relaxes right after all of this work every single time. I've learned from several pros that this is absolutely necessary. He needs to be relaxed in this work, despite it taking everything he's got. So we do a lot of praising for relaxation before and after as well.

Generally, I'm so pleased at where he's at right now. I'm excited to be able to develop him the way I want to right now, without the pressure of shows or qualifying for All Breeds. I was hoping to do Second and Third this year, then Fourth next year and PSG in 2022, but as long as I can keep training him and all goes well, we may be shifting his move up date to PSG much sooner. Amazing how much progress happens when you can ignore shows and stop thinking of your horse as "my Second level horse" because he's doing so much more than that right now, I don't really know what level I'd put him at, but not just Second. Definitely food for thought for my plans to develop my next horse...

2020 Q1 Goals Review and Q2 Goals

First quarter of the decade is over! It felt like the first two months were a week long and March has been several months long. But regardless, it's time for some goals.

One of my favorite days this quarter

Q1 Goals (January, February, March)
TC
- stay sane and sound
so far so good

- solidify the flying changes even more
They're definitely getting there

- work on the half pass in trot
Confirmed

- work on the foundation of the half pass in canter
Yep 

- continue to get him more upright on the right side
Not too much of a problem anymore

- work on the walk to canter transition (throughness, responsiveness)
Definitely been working on these and they are getting better

My Riding
- get plugged in on the right side
Getting better

- continue working on organizing hands
Much harder now that we're in higher level work

- internal rotation in canter and sitting trot
Getting there!

They love each other

Teaching
- don't freak out about winter lesson cancellations
hey now I'm just freaking out about the quarantine, yay

- utilize days off for flyer creation
I did this and posted them! 

- update website
Yep

- post on facebook
yep!

- post on IG at least twice
swapped my IGs around this quarter so yes!

- learn a lot at the Mary clinic!
YES!

- add one or two more weekly students
nope, quarantine

- add another clinic location if possible (might wait until summer for this)
nope, quarantine


Msc
- go snowboarding!
we were planning on that and then... quarantine

- solidify a workout routine
I did and then boom, quarantine

- take one weekend off per month (and/or go on a vacation)
Hahahaha now I have all weekends off

- BECOME AN AUNT
YES!!!

Best trail pony

Q2 Goals (April, May, June)
* assuming that I can keep riding

TC
- stay sane and sound
- make progress on the changes
- solidify the canter half pass
- make progress in the piaffe in hand
- if I can get a ground person to help, start the piaffe undersaddle
- help TC get more comfortable in the collected canter
- solidify the square halts
- install the trot half pass zig zag for real


My Riding
- keep working on being more DOWN in the up beat of the canter
- stay plugged in during the changes
- keep working to organize my hands, as usual


Teaching
- continue teaching as much as I can remotely
- continue setting up the online lectures
- stay afloat financially through the pandemic


Msc
- start lifting again when weights get here
- cardio 2x/week
- when I can, go back to the gym
- for the duration of SIP, make art every day (mostly drawing on my iPad right now)
- for the duration of SIP, stay connected with family and friends

Everything is Weird

Things have been weird over here, just like they have everywhere else. I've been a bit disconnected from the blogosphere just due to various reasons. I, like most people, don't do so great with routine disruption, so in my adjustment, I've been I guess not on here as much.

As much as I'd love to not talk about this stupid virus, it's impossible not to. It's really a fascinating time in history, though I think I'd rather be experiencing another fascinating time in history, like when space travel becomes a thing. In trying to keep this post positive but realistic, I wanted to post a few things I'm finding interesting:

Best color non-coordinating

No Traffic

I live in the heart of the bay area now and at almost all times of day, there is traffic. I'm lucky in that both my commute to work and to the barn are against rush hour, so I almost never hit traffic unless I'm going to the gym after work (and that's only for a couple of exits). But now the roads are sparse, which has been really nice because boyfriend is a cyclist and we went on a ride in the middle of the day on Tuesday. I don't normally like riding bikes on the roads because I'm just not an experienced cyclist and drivers are stupid. But we're using this time as a way to get me more comfortable on the roads with barely any cars around.


Teaching Remotely
I'm working hard to find things that make me feel normal and teaching makes me feel normal. I've taught three different riders remotely with a couple new riders signed up for lessons this coming week. It's been good! I obviously prefer teaching in person, especially the biomechanics are easier to teach, but it's a great option when I can't go anywhere. 

Family Time

My niece is two months old now and lucky for her and her parents, they are all together. My sister-in-law is still technically on maternity leave and now she has my brother there to help out! He's working from home so he obviously has to do work, but they are thriving. It's also been so sweet to see parents out with their children playing in the park that we live next to and hear stories from my friends/acquaintances about how much more time their kids are getting with their family members. That being said, I've also heard a lot of people complain about it. Child free and very happy about that decision right now. 

This month has been so insanely long

Positive Tests

The boyfriend and I have not been sick and therefore have not been tested. But I've had several members of my family get sick and get tested. They are all positive, which was devastating, but luckily all of them are recovering well with no doctor intervention. It was horrifying to have it immediately impact my family, but as long as things continue to go smoothly, this is honestly a best case scenario. Luckily my family has some good friends who are doctors and they have been checking in regularly. Doctor's orders are to stay isolated for 7 days after symptoms subside or 14 days after a positive test. Fortunately for us, the last time we were around these family members was more than two weeks ago, so we are likely not infected by them (or we are asymptomatic carriers). 

Online Lectures

Our first one happened on Friday night and it was a blast! This has been such a good thing for me. Having to email 80+ people at once is mildly terrifying, but I'm making myself do it. Having to put myself out there to advertise is also horrible but necessary for this project. I've had some really interesting people contact me to be instructors too! So that's good networking for sure and should lead to some really interesting talks. If you haven't emailed me to get in on this, definitely do so (alchemydressage at gmail).

I think this is my favorite one so far

TC Time

I'm still going to the barn, but I'm limiting it to two days on, one day off. TC's barn is full care in that they will feed him and clean his paddock and water trough regularly. But I am his trainer and there is no trainer there that I'm willing to let work with him. It's less about them and more about the fact that I am a trainer myself and don't want anyone putting their patterns on him. He's in a very precarious place and Tanya has even said that she wouldn't put anyone else on him, including herself, during this time. He can have time off if he needs it, but until the barn closes, I'll be going there. Luckily it's a very open area and I have my own private tack room which I also use to hold my grain. So the only thing I'm touching that other people touch are the outside of my tack room (which I spray down with disinfectant every day) and his gate. I wear gloves when there and am only there for the time it takes to ride and put him away. 

Time at Home

Welp, boyfriend and I moved in together RIGHT before all this shit went down so we are immediately stuck together. Honestly, other than traveling for the L program and clinics, I haven't spent a night away from him since Thanksgiving, so it was way more of a "hey don't look for another place to live, just stay here, I'll build you a dresser" than an official "will you move in with me" request and therefore, the quarantine hasn't been an adjustment at all. He's been amazing actually, he's supported me so well when I was freaking out last week about my family's positive tests, he ran into his work to grab an additional monitor so I am using his for my job, he set up my workstation for me (including my printer, which apparently is a scanner, who knew), and even though he's very worried for us, he has not said one thing about me going to the barn every day, he knows it's necessary for a number of reasons.

Lol my god

New Hobbies

I've been forcing myself to get into some new hobbies now that we are stuck at home. I ordered a pencil for my ipad so that I could make myself draw a bit. I've cooked a LOT more than I usually do, including several new recipes. I've been playing more video games and we've watched some really weird movies/tv shows (we are scraping the bottom of the barrel lol). I've been out cycling a bit because boyfriend is very happy to sit inside indefinitely and I want him to get fresh air (I guess I'm turning him out lol) and he's always excited when I want to ride bikes. He also wants to get a head start setting up our planned home gym, so we have weights coming. I'm excited to begin lifting again! I had just started back to it recently at my gym and now that's closed of course. I've also been looking at little arts and crafts things to order on Amazon.

Reconnecting

I can't believe how many people I've been in contact with who I haven't spoken to in years. We really are all in this together. My extended family is also doing some Zoom sessions so that we can chat, so I'm actually way more connected with them than I normally am. Boyfriend's family across the world have also been in more contact as well, so it's been fun to get to know them better. 

So grateful to still be able to see this view

So, generally, it's just been really weird over here. I'm going to try to shift back into normal blogging as long as I'm still riding TC and things are going smoothly on my end. I have some cool things to share with regard to his training, he's now working on pirouettes and piaffe, and is making good strides with his changes and canter half pass. It's all canter, all the time over here.

Teaching Video Lessons

I taught my first video lesson on Saturday! And then two more on Sunday, then one Monday. They went surprisingly well, so I figured I'd write about how we did it.

It requires a ground person and two cell phones on the rider's end, but I just sat in our office and taught as I'd normally taught.

For the first lesson, we used my client's phone, her parent's phone, and my phone and did a three-way video call using Google Duo (also can use Zoom!). Client had her phone in her pocket and used headphones with a mic. Client's parent videoed the lesson, keeping their mic off. Then I just watched on my phone and gave feedback.

My phone is just full of memes, this one is my current favorite

It's weird teaching remotely because it was a little hard to see all the intricate details (also time seemed to be a bit weird so I just told my riders to take breaks when they needed them), but I was surprised by how good I felt the lesson went. We've been working on some of the theory behind the connection, so we went back over that, then began talking about straightness.

Gave her a few small exercises with transitions, though I imagine it'd be tough to explain a real exercise and I have no setup ability. But I was already brainstorming getting my ipad out and drawing out an exercise to show her via the video because she can take her phone out of her pocket and look at me if she needs to.

Honestly, I was SO happy to teach again. Teaching is such a nice stress reliever and I haven't been able to teach much, obviously. Figured I'd share just in case anyone is trying to work out how to get this to work. It's inspiring me to get a Pixem because you can hook up your phone to it (vs a video camera) and then I'd just need to use a second phone to hear what the trainer is saying (or some kind of bluetooth headphones? not sure yet, will do some research).