Fixing Myself

On Wednesday of last week, I had a lesson! It was my first (dressage) one in a long time and it was amazing. 

No pictures due to using the pivo for the lesson, but
I have some from a recent trail ride

The focus on the lesson was biomechanics, which I desperately need. I haven't really had anyone pick at my position since last August when I rode with an in person trainer who had a background with the Mary stuff. And my position falls apart easily without anyone's help, especially now that I've been at a barn without mirrors for a year. 

This trainer was a little different from Mary, but everything she found really aligned with everything my Mary trainers have found and that Kate has found. Essentially, while I sit in correct alignment with correct posture, I find my balance through rigidity. That's my interpretation at least. And this tracks through my riding career, when in doubt, add tone. Sometimes in places that it shouldn't be. 

This guy has been developing so well

My biggest takeaways were...

Breathing

It turns out, as Kate has pointed out on numerous occasions, that I only breathe enough to keep me from passing out while I'm riding. And I can confirm that I keep this breathing pattern up throughout my life except in weight lifting (since bracing was drilled so hard into me by my late coach, RIP).

We did some breathing exercises and TC REALLY enjoyed them, he was licking and chewing the entire time I was breathing like a normal human. I feel bad for him, he's probably had to get used to feeling like my body is in flight/fight mode all the time. Oh, that's just my human, she's bad at breathing and it makes me feel like she thinks we're both going to die. 

I'm going to really work on this, I'm not sure exactly how though since it's so engrained to not breathe while I'm riding. Should I listen to a breathing app while I'm riding?? Perhaps. 

He's the best trail horse

Left Hand

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a big fan of using my left hand to solve all of my problems. Horse acting up? Pull on the left rein. Canter got too big? Pull on the left rein. Horse trips? Left rein. Owe money on taxes? Cut off my left hand and mail it to the government. 

She had me do some arm circles and noted that my left elbow liked to bend slightly when I had my left hand at the very back of the circle. I forced it straight and got some interesting shooting pains and numbness in my fingers. Turns out I've got a little nerve impingement there! It's a chicken and egg situation, did my nerve impingement mean that my left arm likes to hold itself bent and therefore it's easier to pull on that rein? Or do I carry my left arm more bent in my daily life (driving, working, I carry things on the left side and use my right hand to open doors, pulling on the left rein), which caused the nerve impingement? 

Who knows, but the answer is to switch it around. I am currently going through my life, noticing times where my left arm is bent and my right arm is not and trying to swap what the arms are doing to balance them out. I'm also doing a lot of arm circles on both sides. 

Thoracic Spine

My thoracic spine is a bit rigid, causing me to carry my head a bit forward. I know this from Tracey yelling at me not to be a vulture. Luckily because of work, I'm getting to go to the chiropractor as much as I want and only paying a $4 copay for it, so I'm definitely working on fixing my t-spine. But I also got some great exercises from the biomechanics trainer to help with this. It really comes down to me holding tension in my thoracic area and some computer stuff shortening my pectorals. I'm not the only one who needs to widen their chest and open up their shoulders! 

Such a beautiful place, it should stay green for a
bit longer, it's going to rain today

Right Hip

So as a background, almost three weeks ago I was squatting and suddenly had a massive amount of pain in my right hip to the point where I could barely walk on it for a couple of days. I saw the chiropractor who basically said that my psoas and hip flexor were tight. It's been fine since then, but just fine. I took my deadlift day off, just did upper body on my bench day, and then by the next squat day, was able to squat some light weight. I haven't gotten anywhere near the weight I was squatting that day. 

Anyway, this was incredibly obvious to my biomechanics trainer. I think it was the first thing she said actually. 

She agrees that my psoas is the issue, that my body was coping with it until I put it under weight. She wants me to get that worked on, so I think I'll be keeping it light with the squatting until I can get someone to fix it. My job has a lot of healthcare perks (such as acupuncture/chiro with a very small copay) so I'll see if they offer anything that can deal with my psoas too! We used to have massages on campus actually, but the pandemic shut that down, maybe they will happen again soon though!

TC says: would you like me to just
bite this leg right off? Would that help?

Okay, so we've established that my right hip sucks, what effect is it causing in TC? 

As we were tracking left, I was told to try to breathe out while my left seat bone came back and to really let it follow the saddle. This was fairly easy and actually focusing on that moment made it way easier to turn TC to the left, which has long been his tricky side. 

To the right, I was basically unable to let my right seat bone follow the saddle. Rude. We found that my right hip wanted to be the stable one doing all the work, so it got rigid and my left hip was free to do whatever it wanted, which it does in a chaotic way. 

I was taught to engage my inner thigh on my left side to help bring my right hip forward and immediately my body was not having it. 

We cut new trails into the hills! I love
this one, it's so beautiful!

TC's Response

I'm so excited for how TC responded. He's very in tune with me (I'll write about it more later, but I just read Susan Fay's book and it's amazing how WITH me TC is at all times, I almost find it a bit unnerving, but luckily he's the sweetest) and when I can get my body in the right position, he feels downright giddy. 

I think with Celeste's work, TC has been helped SO much, but I'm still locked in these previous patterns and I think that's holding him back a bit at this point. 

Hopefully my new saddle will be here soon and it'll be easier to find a better balance without having to be more rigid. And with a deeper seat and bigger blocks, it will allow me to be more permissive with TC's movement. Right now I'm sure my rigidity to keep my balance slows his roll a bit. 

I will never get tired of riding this horse in these
hills!

I wish I had the money to take weekly lessons with her (boo adulting, most of my raise in salary between jobs is maxing my 401k and FSA and a few other adult things like that), but I think I'll stick with once a month or every other week if I can swing it! Kate can work with me on the same things when I see her for my jumping lessons, so I'll definitely have eyes on these issues between lessons. 

Finding Celeste and her work has been so life changing, not only because of the work she's done with TC and I, but through finding other professionals in her network. So many trainers put "classical" or "biomechanics" on their websites and then I find out that those words have different meanings to different people and I end up a bit disappointed. Or at worse, stuck using some of my lesson budget to pay for a lesson I didn't get much out of. I know that anyone I ride with who is part of this network of trainers is going to, at the very least, do no harm to TC's mechanics, and that's huge for us!

One Year at the Ranch

A year ago today, I moved TC to the ranch! And while it was a move of desperation, it's turned into one of the best things that has happened to TC and I in our time together. 

He took a little bit to settle in, but now he is all about living the ranch. Mostly because of his pasture I think. He loves his pasture enough where I can't actually get enough hay into him because he wants to be out in it for so much of the day, so he's also earned himself some more grain. Lucky horse! 

Looking down on the ranch

Love these trails

And the feeling is mutual. I think Sunny is the only one who wouldn't be a little bit bummed if TC left the ranch and never came back. 

But TC has weaseled his way into everyone else's good books. He handled the construction on the house perfectly last summer, he handled the helicopters this winter really well, and he's totally chill about any activities happening at the ranch. He's easy to handle, he knows to stand outside the stall when he gets his grain, and he's only done some minor redecorating in the form of moving his mats around when he gallops out to his pasture. He's definitely got some quirks, like not liking his stall (so he eats his hay on the porch), only drinking out of one water bucket (he'll drink out of his second one if he HAS to but won't if there's water in his favorite bucket... they are the same color/shape/size by the way), and pouncing on butterflies in the arena, but he's mostly just a solid citizen. 

Rico loves TC, they spend all day together. TC walks back and forth from his pasture, Rico right behind him, all day long, so Rico is fit and strong from all the moving around. He looks great, thanks TC! 

TC is also amazing with my parents' dog and any other dogs who come around. We had ranch day last weekend and my aunts' dog, who wasn't sure what a horse even was, barked at us while we were riding and then accidentally got loose in the pastures. Undersaddle, TC didn't care about the dog and when the dog ran around him barking at him in the pasture, TC just stood quietly, watching sweetly. 

He's really good with my niece too. Sunny is the best kid's horse in the world, but TC is learning! He lets her brush him and even gave her pony rides (now she wants to trot all the time and I don't want to scare her, so she won't be riding him any time soon). I can't wait until she's riding on her own, I think he'll be a great horse to teach her dressage when he's like... 20 and she's 11. 

Another pro of being at the ranch:
popsicles in the freezer

Having him at the ranch has also been amazing for my mental health. With the new job, I can work easily from down there and ride TC at lunch time, which helps break up my days really well. I also don't have to deal with any boarding facility issues, from not having to share the arena for Pivo lessons to being able to lock down the barn while EHV-1 is raging all over the bay area. 

The arena is small, there are no mirrors, and I do miss riding with my friends, but the benefits far outweigh the costs of being there. Plus, I take a weekly jumping lesson with Kate, which has allowed me to feel like I have a barn family! 

Having trails right out the back of the barn has been so good for my and TC's mental health, as well as his stifle. Between living in pasture and climbing hills every week, TC's stifle has never felt better. And I'm loving being able to ride him bareback on the trails too, it's so relaxing and fun. 

Most amazing trails

We wander down the road every day

The best part of having him there is probably that I get to spend Fridays with my niece, who comes down once a week for babysitting (along with either my brother or SIL, so I get to have a coworker for the day). Before TC was there, I'd stop in sometimes and we'd hang out for a little bit. Now, I get to see her on all of my breaks, get to ride with her over lunch, and have started to go to the brewery with my family on Friday evenings where I play with her (she's been exercising me by running around the brewery lol thanks kiddo). This has made us so much closer! 

She now wakes up at 6am on Friday mornings screaming "AUNT MIMI DAY" and she's way more into horses now that it's a consistent thing. She drags her crafty pony around the house clucking at him, cleans his tack with a sponge, wants to watch videos of me riding every day, and knows more about ponies than my brother or SIL do at this point (she knows a bunch of bridle parts, saddle parts, pony parts, knows what all the brushes do, and so on). 

I love spending Fridays with her and was so excited when my company announced that we'd get some wellness days this year, all of which are on Fridays! 

Her current obsession: playing in the
horse trailer with me and telling me
that my shoes are yucky after she
piles shavings on them.

I'm not sure if we'll stay there somewhat permanently or if we may find ourselves into another boarding barn eventually, but for now (especially with EHV-1 all over), I have no intention on leaving. Plus, I think TC might try to disown me if I moved him out of his pasture. 

The Slow Slog of Collection

I mentioned in a recent post that I didn't think TC had ever *truly* been collected and I wanted to expand on that. 

TC says "well that's rude"

If we take the definition of collection as the one out of the judge's glossary of terms, this is what we get: 

The horse shows collection when he lowers and engages his hindquarters, shortening and narrowing his base of support, resulting in lightness and mobility of the forehand. He shows shorter, but powerful, cadenced steps and strides. The increased elevation must be the result of and relative to the lowering of the hindquarters.

With that, we get another few terms to define, but the most important one is engagement: 

Increased flexion in joints of the hind legs during the weight-bearing (stance) phase of the stride, lowering the croup relative to the forehand, enabling the back to assist in elevating the forehand, and providing a springboard for upward thrust/impulsion. Engagement is carrying power, rather than pushing power.

At canter and piaffe, there is additional flexion at the hip joints and also greater flexion at the lumbosacral joint, which contribute to the horse’s ability to lower the haunches.

So, in my mind, collection is going to be the lowering of the hindquarters due to the flexion of the hind legs during the weight-bearing phase of the stride. Aaaaand with that in mind, I want to look back at some photos of TC when he was scoring in the 70s at Third level. 

Not collected

Definitely not collected

I don't think I need to burn my eyes with any others. But, you get the point, he was not collected. He was COMPRESSED, sure. But not collected. 

And that's a trend that I think we are seeing all over the place. The horses being compressed rather than collected. And it's damaging to them. Their necks, their backs, their hocks, everything. But it's like we can't even see the difference. 

Much better in the contact and definitely much
more collected! 

The first step was to get TC to open his body up and unfurl himself. He'd been so retracted for so long, and it wasn't like my trainers weren't saying that, but it was the order in which things were being done that caused us to crash and burn. There is no compression first, then collection, he can't physically sit down if his body is smashed together like that. So it wasn't like I didn't know his retraction was a problem, but it was seen as almost a necessary evil to get him to be more rideable. But he never became more rideable, interesting. 

Once that was done, TC was chronically on the forehand. I mean, he was chronically on the forehand even when he was compressed, but I guess it was easier to hide. Now it was obvious! 

Now that he's unfurled and we've addressed the issues with his brachioplexus being crushed by his shoulders, it's time to sit him down. For real this time! And it's going super well. 

It's going to take such a long time, but I like the
outlines he's offering now much better!

The first thing I do every day with both horses is the pillar work on the ground. TC is offering half steps in this work, so I'm going with it. The focus is to make sure that he starts the day turning off his brachiocephalicus muscle and turning on his pectorals. It also allows me to see if he's struggling with either of these before we do any real work. 

Then I get on and we start warming up in trot. For a long time, I did very short bursts of work, no more than a lap and a half around our small arena (about the size of a short court). I'm still doing short bursts of the collected work, but for his warm up, I am asking him to trot for longer to work on duration. During this time, we do a lot of work on abduction, reaching for contact, and opening up his shoulders to make sure that he's prepped for the collection. 

After that, we work a little on reining back, where I mark the moments where he shifts his weight back while lifting through his chest and keeping his neck long. It's easy to just jam him back with a short neck and not have him actually shift back (which does give off the "feeling" of him being collected in that he's then afraid to go forward, but in terms of actually lowering the hindquarters while the base of the neck is lifted? Nope). So we are taking it slowly and making sure that he's taking good steps back, not just being obedient to my aids without engaging the proper musculature. 

From those rein back steps, I ask him to head into walk, trot, or canter, on a relatively light contact. I ideally want him to maintain self carriage and by not giving him anything to push into, it's very obvious to me when he pushes forward in self carriage or pulls himself forward with his front legs. With more rein contact, that pull forward can feel like a push with connection. 

Accidentally picked up the counter canter so I just
went with it and it was tough for him but it's in a
much better place than it used to be (we will be
schooling counter canter this summer, not now!)

It's been really interesting to see how he has taken to it all. He usually feels really happy and forward when he's engaging the correct muscles, but he can only hold them for so long, especially in canter. I've been teaching him that it's better to settle into a halt when he can't stay engaged anymore rather than flinging himself onto the forehand. This goes against a lot of training that he's had in the past (prior to 2021, I had a trainer over the summer tell me to just walk him when he balks and that was super helpful) where I was encouraged to just chase him forward out of collection when he went to break. That "leg is always the answer" and "forward is always the answer" stuff that goes around on social media should not be a blanket guideline. 

Letting him decide when we stop has been super helpful in my feel for it all. When I do accidentally push him through it, he falls onto the forehand out of canter into a big, unbalanced trot (which previously I would have just half halted and ridden on, not noticing that my half halt just shortened his neck, hmmm). When I don't, he quietly settles from canter into a halt, which kills two birds with one stone because he 1) doesn't practice cantering in a canter that is not collected and 2) doesn't practice halting by slamming himself into his front legs. 

I figure that he'll eventually be strong enough to canter in that level of collection for a long time, so that will eliminate the random breaks. But for now, I'll welcome them to make sure that he's only going in a way that engages the correct musculature. 

The trot is going to take longer, at this angle you
can see that he's on the forehand due to how far
back his right front leg is, oh well

Interestingly enough, the other day I was riding him and he was super distracted by butterflies, so I decided to turn him out so he could chase them and pounce on them on his own time without me having to come along for the ride. He galloped around and bucked, but when he hit the end of the arena, he settled into a halt in a WAY more balanced way than he usually does (he usually takes a year off my life every time he slams himself onto the forehand in the corners of the arena). It was so cool to see him utilizing the muscles we've been using even in his free play with the butterflies. 

I'm anticipating us having months, if not years, of this kind of work on collection. If we try to take a short cut, or ask for too much too soon, he'll revert back to shortening his neck, which will just set us way back. So it is in our best interests to go slowly and not push things too fast. 

That's going to be really hard though, since this canter is feeling like something I could easily turn into a canter pirouette, or ride a line of tempis out of. Patience is a drag. 

Improving My Mental Game

These last few years, my mental game has definitely been a bit off. I mean, I think most people have experienced some kind of dip in their mental health due to this damn pandemic. But specifically with riding, my mental game hasn't been at it's best in a long time, probably since 2018 (which, coincidentally, was my worst year of non-horse mental health ever). Back then, I felt like TC and I were really in sync and showing was fun, even when he bolted up centerline or I had to withdraw him from playing too much in the 1-3 that one test. 

Also good for my mental game: bareback trail riding

Since 2020, it really took a nose dive because I was so distraught over TC's condition. Also, you know, a global pandemic where my entire family got COVID right at the beginning of it. 

This fall, I finally figured it all out and so my feelings of distress about TC went away! But then those feelings were replaced by fear, which was weird given that I hadn't had much fear on TC in a long time. But he was feeling great and I had changed saddles from my very secure Custom to the less secure saddles I've been riding in since (this will be remedied soon I hope). 

I think on the blog I've been pretty open that I've struggled on and off with fear during my riding. It's just a fact of life, right? Sometimes you get afraid of things. Sometimes those things are things you REALLY love. I dunno, I wrote about it a long time ago and I still stand by my original sentiment: I have so much respect for people who are afraid to do the thing but do the thing anyway. 

It's so beautiful

Much of my fear was surrounding TC's new gaits, which were difficult to sit without shutting down, and his excitement over his new gaits, which he expressed by leaping. Without spurs to skewer him and hold myself on him, without big blocks to hook my knee behind... wow that horse can get REALLY high up into the air. 

I'd also come off the pony a couple of times and so falling off was a thing that felt possible. I don't think that TC would ever mean to toss me off of him, in fact, he's demonstrated time and time again that he will go out of his way to catch me when he throws me into the air. But there are always accidents that happen, and hitting the ground recently reminded me of what an asshole gravity was. And that was off of a smaller horse! 

I love how green it still is (we could
use some more rain so it stays this way!)

The best thing I do for my fear is to be physically strong, so I've been working hard at that. I also have a saddle on order (I'm not counting it as a done deal until I've been riding in it for at least several months lol). But I also realized that TC's gaits only really made me nervous because I had told myself that we were kind of starting over in his training. I forgot about the super trained horse I had a couple of years ago as we stumbled through rebuilding his strength. But the training isn't gone, it's just on hold. 

So I started to imagine him not as a bit of a gangly guy, which he feels right now due to learning to use himself differently, but as my future upper level horse, or even my current mid level horse. This way, when he surged, I felt giddy with excitement about what he'll be capable of when he's stronger, not nervous about what he might do with that power. He isn't a baby, he turns 11 this year! And while he is hilarious and absurd and goofy, he is not dangerous or malicious. 

Pretending that we were actually back in the show ring and I was showing off my fancy mid level dressage horse, or even pretending that we were in the FEI ring, that eliminated my fear and allowed me to channel these amazing gaits into something even more spectacular. 

Love this valley!

His response to my different mindset was interesting, he really buckled down and has been working really hard at his work rather than even thinking about goofing off. Maybe my anticipation that he was going to go back to his silly baby ways made him think that's what I wanted him to do. He still does leap a bit, but he gives me ample warning and is much more of an adult about coming back to work. And it's more of a weekly occurrence rather than a daily one. 

I'm so excited by how he's doing in this new work! Fingers crossed that the saddle fits because that will eliminate the need for me to have to psych myself up to ride these silly moments out. I can just hook my knee in the block and go with it! 

A Safe Horse is Quiet

...but quiet horses aren't safe.

The pony is being interesting right now. I decided to longe him for a bit after I rediscovered some good sized holes in his training. I've only really longed him with kids on him or to let him run around to buck.

He stared at my pivo and I thought it was so cute!

I haven't been cantering him lately because at his last acupuncture appointment, his neck was all screwed up. I think the trail ride + the clinic we went to the week after in January really screwed him up unfortunately. In both situations, his spinal integrity was compromised and I think that caused his neck to flare up. 

He got a light week and acupuncture and was feeling much better, but I decided to basically start over with the work we've been doing. Lots of abduction work at the walk and trot. I've also started all his rides with Celeste's three pillars on the ground and that's been HUGE to help him turn off his underneck. 

He's all about the clicker training

He's been WAY better since then, but I haven't been pushing it. 

On the longe, the issues he's long had undersaddle were present. Namely, he will give me the bare bare bare minimum response to my aids, so I make them a little louder, a little louder, a little louder... until he overreacts to them. 

Kate and I were talking about it and she said "a safe horse is quiet but quiet horses are never safe" and I think this is totally the pony. He's so safe and so quiet... until he's not. He's amazing for my niece because he ignores all her silly stuff, he stands stock still when she's near him, he quietly plods along as she puts her arms out and cheerfully screeches (her new thing is to say "aunt mimi trot" over and over again with each syllable being a beat of the trot). I mean, TC is not like that. TC would take in her joy and put it right back out toward her and probably accidentally step on her or launch her. 

But I feel 1000% safer on TC. It's not that TC is quieter, he is not. It's that he's right there with me every step of the way. He tells me when things are up that are suspicious, which almost always leads me to sing "don't be suspicious, don't be suspicious" at him as he snorts at stuff or spooks. He tells me when he needs to buck and run. He tells me when he's having a tough time with what I'm asking. He's very communicative and I respect his communication and do my best to give him what he's asking for. Unless what he's asking for is to pounce on squirrel balls (two squirrels, not sure if it's the same two or not, frequently roll into the arena on top of each other in front of us, this has caused hilarious pouncing akin to bird-shadow-pouncing as you can imagine), in which case, I am the fun police. 

Abduction work

The pony is quiet. Eerily quiet. He does not communicate with me. He yields to pressure, that's all I can really say about our communication. 

I really want him to be a bit more in tune with me, so starting on the ground with clicker training seemed like the best way to do that. He took to the clicker training very quickly (he loves food!), but was still very reluctant to trial behaviors. Over the next few weeks though, he got more and more comfortable, so I was able to get him to respond really well to voice commands for longeing. I figured either way, this will help when I'm longeing my niece on him. But it was also helpful in figuring out some of his issues. 

The main issues I've found with him that I wanted to address were this: 

- He is very reluctant to move forward for the first 10-15 minutes of work

- Once he's gotten through that though, then he's almost too sensitive/forward/reactive

- His trot to canter transitions are very difficult for him, he launches into the air to get them about 35% of the time

Such a good boy! There's definitely some good
training in there, I think the silicosis made him a bit
protective of his body

With the longeing, I was able to allow him to warm up slower without harassing him so much (we added pillar work for the first 5 minutes, which seemed to help him loosen up). This meant that he was less reactive when he did go forward, and I'm sure the clicker helped with that. 

Because I wasn't on him, when he'd launch into canter, he'd just canter on. I think undersaddle he thinks he might get told that he's a naughty pony, so a lot of the time a single launch will turn into panic. I was able to be completely unreactive, so he stopped panicking so much about the transitions. 

And in turn, the transitions got better! In our last longeing session, he didn't explode once into canter, just quietly picked it up. 

Slowly getting his shape back to normal

I'm still working through stuff with him, but he's starting to be more in tune with me and communicative. He has become more quietly observant about things happening around him. My cousin came by to pick something up and Sunny kept an eye on him while we were riding. Before, I feel like he would have ignored what was going on until it became too much for him to deal with, and then an explosion would have been imminent. He's also pointed out cars, squirrels, and a giant white egret that landed next to the arena. Just observing, no reactions. 

As of this post, I've started riding him again, mostly just at the walk and trot doing abduction work and transitions with the clicker. Last time, I hopped off of him and put him on the longe and he was SO good and so forward. I think we'll do that routine for a little bit until he's stronger/more comfortable, then we'll try cantering undersaddle again. 

I'm glad I've got a bit of a project, even though I'm bummed that we had such a big setback in January. I was looking through photos the other day and it made me sad that I was actually jumping him this last summer and now I'm not even cantering him undersaddle, but that sometimes happens. We have set backs and then we come back from them. TC and I were doing Third level two years ago and now I am stoked to get a canter to walk transition. In both horses' cases, these set backs will result in a much better future, even though it can feel annoying at times! 

One Handed

For most of my dressage career, I've always loved watching freestyles where the rider rides a movement, or more, one handed. Rico and I never did a freestyle, nor was he rideable with just one hand most of the time. I kind of regret not trying harder, but the lead up to our Gold medal was so intense, I barely did anything fun with him at all. Afterwards, I did ride him bridleless quite a bit, but not in the dressage, mostly jumping!

With TC though, we are basically sitting tight for an entire year as we rebuild the collection. Essentially, I'm not entirely convinced the horse has ever taken weight behind, so I am starting from the very beginning again helping him learn and build strength so he can do that. I'm anticipating this taking at least a year, if not two, to address. But I'm also excited to come out of the year or two of work with a horse who is ready for the upper levels of dressage. 

And one who I can ride with one hand maybe?! Well, that's the goal at least. I figure I have the time to play around with some stuff like this while he's on his strength programming. 

I have almost no pictures of us riding because I
haven't been obsessively taking pivo videos, another
great side effect of feeling like we're on the right track!

The first day we played with it, I was surprised both by how easy it was and how difficult. First, he's so damn soft and light now. I've completely thrown out the window the idea that he needs to put weight in the reins. That was a goal for so long and I thought it might feel weird to stop caring about it, but it hasn't. He can still seek connection without weight in the reins, so that's what I've been focusing on instead of getting him to take more. 

He's also just a really good boy. I'm feeling safer and safer on him as we leave winter (jk, it'll come back at some point but the weather has been really good!), so giving him more of the rein hasn't been as... dangerous... as it was earlier this winter when he was leaping a lot more. 

But it does feel odd because one handed, I can't make as many adjustments, and without making adjustments, I can feel things fall apart way earlier. And this has made it clear how much I've been just kind of hoisting the horse around the movements. 

We could use a little bit more rain to keep these
hills green for a bit longer!

The next couple of rides were very interesting because I took that "leave him alone and let him figure it out" idea and went with it even when riding with both hands on the reins. Get in with the aid, get out, leave him alone. I NEVER felt like I could do this type of riding, which is how I'd ride Rico most of the time, because my trainers would get on my case about throwing away the contact or what not. But again, who cares now. He can be connected with no contact, and eventually I can either swap his bit to a Nathe to show or just fake a bit more contact if we get dinged in the show ring. 

Even though in a way, I felt mildly useless just sitting there, he really coiled up under me and started taking more of the lead in the work we were doing. Instead of breaking from canter to trot after I'd hoisted him through his last few strides as he was losing balance, we worked on riding a canter to walk transition, then halting and reining back when he felt he was failing. Instead of trying to hoist him around a turn, if we got stuck in a corner, we'd just rein back and start over again. This lead to shorter bursts of WAY better quality work. And I'll take that any day over a canter that steadily gets worse and worse. 

I think it was also good for me because it's distracting. I love to get in there and micromanage a situation. I've learned this annoys humans: if you ever need like 40 ideas for solutions to your problems, let me know, but I am terrible at just listening to your problems and saying that I'm sorry you're going through that. With TC, I do the same thing. If he's struggling, there I am, telling him to go there or do this or try that. Instead, being distracted by riding with one hand (what do you do with your other hand?!) allowed me to just let him figure it out rather than going in there with all my ideas of what he should do. 

Neck is still misshapen but it's getting
there, slowly but surely

So basically, whilst working on self carriage and collection, we'll also be working on riding one handed! Maybe we could do some working equitation one day after all! 

One Month

As of today, I've been at my new job for a month! As you can tell, I'm insanely busy, given that I haven't had much time to blog. I mean, some of this is that most evenings have been occupied with playing Horizon Forbidden West, which is amazing, but I've also been busy with work. And to be honest, the horses have been a bit boring, boring in a good way, but still boring. 

I'll definitely do an update, but I wanted to share some pictures that I took from our San Francisco office. I've been up there twice so far to meet people in person. I'm still absolutely loving it. I am so glad I waited for the right job/team/company, so glad I applied to all of those positions, and so glad I stressed myself out through those interviews and waiting for an offer. It's been a really great experience and I'm excited to continue learning. 

I'll have updates on the ponies and some other stuff coming up. I'm trying to put together an easier blogging schedule for myself since clearly writing 5 posts a week is too many! We'll see what I can figure out.