Is there something you don't like about your riding? I wish I could solve my too-light rein issue overnight. I know it's holding me back in terms of connection with my horse. I need to stop 'hanging up' on my horse, so to speak. I harrass students about this CONSTANTLY, and they're pretty good about it. Me, however? Ugh.
Does your horse buck? I mean... does "porpoise through the air" equate to bucking?
Is your horse head shy? When it comes to washing his face, he's instantly a girraffe. An unhappy one, at that.
Favorite barn chore to do? I love feeding! At my current barn I never get to feed the beasts but I used to love it so much.
How many times do you ride a week? Uh... 7 on average? I dunno, let's think about it. I ride Tango 5 days a week, I ride Camou 3 days a week, I generally ride Danny 2-3 days a week, Jimmy at least once a week, Bert twice a week (I've been getting better about it!) and if we put all the random "here let me show you what I means" together and call it one additional ride... I put in 13 rides a week. Not shabby! I might have a few horses entering training this fall so it'll bump that number back up.
Who is your favorite pro rider? Heather Blitz or Ingrid Klimke.
If one pro rider could train you for one day who would it be? Oh jeez. I read a lot of stuff from the old classical masters, but I don't think Baucher's gonna be giving me any lessons anytime soon. Honestly if I could spend an entire day with Anne and have her just teach me ALL DAY that'd be amazing. I'm lucky she's my trainer.
Favorite Facial Marking? I'm in love with that little nose-strip that some horses have.
Leg Markings or No Leg Markings? I currently have no leg markings to care for, though I definitely used to... I kind of miss the OCD pain-in-the-buttness of getting them ready for shows.
Ever broken anything falling off? Uhm. Yes. Let's recall that time I broke my jaw, hip, and cracked a few ribs coming off a horse.
Okay. So I think about this a lot. Like... a LOT. You'd think I've been preparing for this my whole life. However, when confronted with an excuse to share my thoughts, I find that I can't really come up with anything off the top of my head. Alas.
Tango's theme song:
Or alternatively...
Camou's theme song:
Jimmy's theme song:
Danny's theme song:
"There are so many dumb ways to die!" Danny's subtext being that all of them will kill him.
Bert's theme song:
"I'm doing the crab walk, doing the crab walk! We're doing the crab walk for all to see!"
That's a thinly veiled comment on how crooked he is these days.
I have another like 15 horses at my farm, but these are the only ones I'm inspired to find songs for at the moment.
I hauled Tango out to Anne’s yesterday, and I had so much fun! It was really nice to see that Tango doesn’t totally lose his brain in a new location, and I learned a lot of exercises to help gain better control over those silly footsies of his. He was also easy to trailer (what a nice change from some horses I’ve owned... I’m looking at you, Stork.)
The first thing that Anne really emphasized for me was that I have got to stop throwing him away from me with my hands. I’m riding well through my seat, but then I have this tendency to say ‘reins? what reins?’ and then let six inches slip through my fingers and all of a sudden Tango’s leaning on absolutely nothing and trailing his butt around like a goober. So HOLD THOSE REINS! She also encouraged me to become more comfortable with him when he leans on me because if I hold on, he’ll start to lift his back and then soften the contact. If I drop the contact (my go-to) he’ll just stick his nose out and camel around.
Oh hai guys.
Yes. To camel is totally a verb. Especially in dressage.
She was encouraging about training level, skeptical about first, and chortled when I said I wanted to ride 2.1. Ahh well, I knew she wouldn’t necessarily approve but I’m going to forge ahead with my silly plan anyhow.
She introduced something that she refers to as “the twister” to help him stretch into my outside rein, particularly traveling to the left. Open your inside rein, apply leg, and ask him to kick his hindquarters out for a stride or so, then straighten him back out and allow him to stretch through the outside rein WITHOUT LETTING GO. Good god that was hard for me. Then I started pulling on the outside rein (what? I’m left-handed, that right-hand does what it wants?)
Then we worked on what she calls “the creep”, but resonated pretty strongly with the idea of a counted walk, as per Jean-Claude Racinet. Basically she wanted me to walk as slowly as I possibly could without letting him stop. To quote her, “he either has to use his abdomen or fall over.” She wants me to get to the point where I have more gears in the walk, particularly the ability to ride walk-creep-halt-creep-halt-rein back-walk. Tango pretty much said no to the whole ‘halt-creep’ thing. His stride kept getting longer and longer at the walk, but he’d come back to the creep pretty quickly... Argh! Why is riding so hard?
I have to keep checking our bend on circles, and make sure his outside ear is further forward than his outside ear. She also had me go straight from cantering to the twister. Lo and behold, the horse DOES go straight from cantering to trotting like a gentleman... except that when we execute that movement smoothly I feel like he’s going to wrench my arms out of my shoulders. She reminded me to just hang on and ask for more compression and he’d lighten up.
I'll break up the text with my dog.
Anne wants me to improve our 3/4ths halt, as she called it. I’m pretty crummy about my half-halt usage to begin with. We’ll trot aimlessly about and then I’ll decide we’re going too fast and we’ll slow down.... and I’ll go right back to ignoring him. I need to have an ongoing conversation with him through the reins, and eventually that conversation will stop resulting in this cattywompus wiggling nonsense that felt impossible to control.
I was also reminded that if I cannot shape him at the walk (creep, walk, sideways, please do not camel) there’s no point in moving to the trot or the canter. Bah. Trotting is so much easier to manage for me, but she’s absolutely right. I commit to spending more time at the walk. I can’t remember who instilled such a fear of messing with the walk in me, but Tango’s walk is very pure, strongly 4-beats, and messy as all get out because his neck is as long as a giraffe’s. Yes. Yes. I know.
Today I rode Tango for like... 20 minutes. I was short on time (oops.) I got pretty much everything except for our cool-out on video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WJVjtg2qiQ
But there’s no need to watch all 16 minutes of work. I’ve cut out my favorite moments to highlight them here:
I’d like to note the “I refuse to trot, but I will give you a very little canter” the “I’m a real horse!” trot, and the “look at my creep!” moments.
I also rode Camou! I hoped for better video of this as well, but... well... you’ll see:
I had two barrels laid down with poles on either side to try to work on his fear of abnormal looking jumps, and as suspected the first time I brought him around to it he slammed on the brakes with a good old fashioned “hell no.” I socked him in the ribs and he popped over it. I kept better leg on the next time around and he took it.
This horse represents a huge challenge to me because of how weird he is to ride. He has this itty bitty neck and weirdly giant gaits, which only encourages my biggest issue of “contact? What contact?” He goes around on a loose rein way too much with both me and his owner. So with the reins newly adjusted, the contact thing went better.
He’ll start getting some trail time soon so that I can work on fitness in a different environment than the arena.
He still doesn’t leg yield.
What if I give up and never teach him how to leg yield?
I’m not sure that’s allowed. Oh well.
Watching the video now, we have some serious lead+straightness issues. At least he has two leads now instead of our previous one lead.
Well... not exactly a 'jumping horse', but he did jump some baby cross rails for me, so that's super fun.
Please forgive my weird giggles. It's just I never really expected Tango to jump and there he was, taking itty bitty cross rails like it's his job or something.
And then yesterday... ugh. Yesterday didn't go so well.
First, I had a lesson scheduled at 10am. By 10:30, I had the horse tacked up. By 10:45 I was wondering... if I warm him up, does that still count as a lesson? By 11am:
Trying to get him to smell my foot.
Hi Farm Dog!
Success!
And then my 12:30 was late, so we rushed through all that, and then she had to leave at 1:30, which left me with a sweaty (albeit ADORABLE):
pony.
And then I put her saddle away, oiled it, cleaned the bit, swept the aisle, put the dog in the car, and spotted pony in my rear view mirror. "Huh," I thought, "I wonder who's going to ride Skipper now."
I got onto 17 and then it dawned on me... I was supposed to put her away.
Sh**.
So I got back to the farm, put the pony away, and called it a day.
I left my tall boots at my other job last night, so I just rode in paddock boots today, sans half-chaps. I don't even think I own half-chaps anymore... I'm remembering why they're helpful. There is definitely some helpful friction against the saddle. I also put a new saddle on Tango because he's lost some weight and my favorite saddle doesn't fit him anymore, but I hated it. It fit him well, but I felt gigantic in it.
I loathe saddle hunts.
Despite my riding like a sloppy bag of potatoes, he was pretty good today. Actually quite excellent. I'm tempted to enter him in 2-1 at the show just for giggles. Heh. Heh. The judge won't appreciate it at all, but I think I might do it anyway. Tango's shoulder-in is just gorgeous and amazing to the right, and when he comes out of it his trot is always extra floaty and dreamy. To the left? I mean... he does it. It's not good, but he does it.
I thought, "Introduce: Collected trot." So I sat him back and we trotted slowly. That's collection at it's finest, you know.
"Introduce: Collected Canter." So I asked for a canter out of our slow trot and I got... a canter. Welllll if you make working canter just look INSANE, then normal canter is totally a collected canter. CHECK.
"10 meter circle at canter." Dude we've totally got this. What are the directive ideas? Shape and size of the circle? NAILED IT. Bend? Uhm. Maybe the judge won't notice.
"Medium gaits." I'll refer to my thought process for collected canter.
"Shoulder-in." Boom. We'll just work on the left one a little more.
"Simple change." .... Okay, so he pretty much hates simple changes. He thinks it'd be WAAYYY easier just to do a flying change. A crazy one where he throws his body around like a jackass. But I bet we could fake it.
"Rein-back." We've been schooling this since day one because it helps the whole non-existent brake thing!
Boom. An easy 45% right there.
That's what schooling shows are for, right?
"I got my face washed, and I soaked my person in the process! I'm totally a second level horse ;) " -Tango
Alright, I hear you. We'll stick to training and first.
Thanks to my lovely working student for acquiring these photos for me. I have meant to... I just don't ever seem to get to it when I've got tack flying everywhere and students to shout at and whatnot.
Jimmy:
Reinstall longing
Help his regular rider get him to stretch at the trot a bit more
Bert:
Lots of transitions between gaits and some trail walks to assist in building muscle
Extra food. He looks skinny to me.
Camou:
Camou is visiting his first ever show in about three weeks. Ohmygod all the things need improvement....
Courses. Above the height we'll be jumping at the show. With weird fillers, and stuff.
Can someone PLEASE help me figure out why it's taking me weeks to install leg yields? I sense a master-post on leg yielding coming up....
Danny:
More oxers.
More dieting.
He's going on his cross country adventure in a few weeks, so hopefully he'll be ready!
Tango:
Tango is also visiting a show this month, so let's just keep refining those brakes and never take him off his SmartCalm supplements ever again (that's a story for another post)
Continue to introduce trail walks for the hilly aspect
Hopefully trailer him to someone else's barn so I can get a sense of what I should expect at the show?
As for August's goals? I was over-ambitious. That's all I have to say at this point. Tonight I had a splendid ride with Tango where we really sat at the canter and I just felt so on top of the world. It's amazing when a horse comes underneath you and even though you're moving much more slowly it's so much power and movement that it feels just as thrilling as a great course or crazy trail ride.
Why is it dark out here?
I fell off Camou last week because the bugger decided that he was going to feel 100% straight and then suddenly change directions. I guess that's good that he threw me because I'd literally just been thinking "man, I could really fall in love with riding this horse." Introducing the indirect rein with Camou turned into an argument. I'll approach it from a different method later. Right now I need to focus on rideability and straightness.
The harvest moon was beautiful tonight
I'm pretty blessed. I've got great students who work hard, some pretty silly ponies to ride, and an accommodating facility to play around at.
