Tarrin Teaches, Louisa Lessons, and Hurricane Harvey

Tarrin came up for lessons the weekend of August 4th. I had an early morning lesson with her on the 4th, right before Frank tanked. I love my lessons with Tarrin - they are always SO helpful. She really has helped me with Dylan more than I can say. She is always able to isolate the exact body problems that Dylan needs to have finessed out.

The arena was too wet to use, and all the obstacles had been set up in the grass outside of the arena. Tarrin has set up some ground poles in an exercise that looked like this:

So, the exercise started out with cantering up to the L shaped pole (going either left, or right), transitioning to a walk, and sidepassing over the L. It was clear that Dylan preferred one side over the other - instead of crossing over going to the right, he quick steps and shuffles over. This translated over into his lead changes, which is interesting because it seems to switch sides for me. When I'm doing exercises like the double slalom, my changes from left to right are way easier. During everything else, my changes from right to left are easier. I'm not quite sure why that is, but I guarantee it's all me.

Once we started the L exercise, Tarrin had me straighten him more, which almost felt like haunches leading to me. She assured me they weren't, and that straightening him actually made him cross over better. We then moved to something much more complicated - I would walk up to the L shaped poles and enter between the two of them (see orange arrows), then halt. We would back up, then trot directly off, leg yield either to the left or right about three or four strides, then go through the other pole corridor and change bend. When we had that more organized, we would enter at the walk, halt, back up, then canter off in either the left or right lead, half pass about three steps left or right (depending on what lead we were on), straighten through the pole corridor, and do a lead change between them. That was CRAZY hard. It was almost no time at all to prepare, and I had to be super precise, but by the end we were getting it. The half passes really engaged him right before the changes, and the pole corridor insisted that we do it straight and accurately, both things that count enormously in WE. The pole corridor was maybe two and a half feet wide, so there was no ability for him to move sideways in any kind of evasion. It was super hard, but super helpful. Accuracy is everything in WE.

It was a great lesson. Of course, Frank's death completely ruined any kind of enjoyment I had gotten out of the morning. But, I won't forget the day, ever, that's for sure.

Whoa wild stallion!! I got him a broodmare collar recently, and he has been living in that instead of in a halter. I love that I can leave the halter off him, but can still catch him. He can be INCREDIBLY hard to catch!

I've been hacking him regularly, riding him at Willow Draw, and now have also started taking him to the local Aquatread to try and get some pounds off of him. There are several ATs in our area, and this one is closest - it's one I hadn't been to before. Dylan was absolutely stupid the first two times he went into the corridor - he got down into the water without issue, but then folded up his legs and sank. Once he realized he was sinking, he started thrashing around, and had to be taken out and put back in a few times before he started to understand that he could actually *touch* the bottom. The third time he finally started to get it, and walked on the treadmill for about 10 minutes. From here, the time will go up, and the speed will increase to high speed trotting. He has to work up to it though, of course! I hope it will help his fitness level, which has been really hard to maintain in this weather. It's been SO hot and humid, and he really struggles with that. Not to mention he's a fat lard.... but, details.

Yes, he looks like a beluga in the water

Staring at me. "This is definitely YOUR fault lady."

We've also only been able to fit in one lesson with Louisa this month so far, which is fine although I would prefer to do two a month. Normally her lessons are on Tues and Thurs, but I recently realized she also does Sundays. I usually work on Sundays, but I managed to fit in a morning lesson last Sunday, and then worked in the afternoon. I don't usually like to do that, but sometimes you do what you have to! We had signed up for the HDS Laborious Day I and II shows this coming weekend in Houston (or well, Katy, which is basically in Houston), as another All Breed Awards score at Third level. We also signed up for our first time at Fourth level, giving 4-1 a try on each day. I told Louisa I wanted to try running through the test to iron out any of our problems, and she agreed. First though, we warmed up with some trot and canter work, doing some 10m circles at the trot and canter before switching directions (and leads). The changes all came clean, so we moved onto test work before Dylan ran out of steam, and the test actually ran great. I need to make sure I pay particular attention to geometry, especially in the first few trot movements - aside from the mediums and extensions, there is half pass to a 10m circles and then a shoulder in down the centerline. That's all good and fine, but if you're not precise with it, you'll not only overshoot the 10m circle but you'll completely lose your track on the shoulder in. Which is the point of it really, to prove you can be precise in every way.... which is hard.
Everything else ran off very smoothly. The canter mediums are good, the canter extensions are not great yet. We just haven't worked on them that much. If they don't get rushy, they also don't show a whole lot of difference between the mediums. The line of three changes also went very well, although I can't always guarantee a perfectly counted amount of strides between them. We're not ready really for 4-3, but 4-1 shouldn't be a problem, and 4-2 probably wouldn't go off poorly.

Whoa wild stallion!

When he's clean... he GLOWS!

Like father... like child. 

Hacking with no hands.... because he's the coolest. 

Dylan telling Cregga that he's DONE with her nonsense. 

So this weekend was supposed to be the HDS show right? I was excited, because not only was I going to see my friend Sarah from college who has recently moved to Houston, but JenJ was going to be there and I haven't seen her in a good long while, and some other friends were going to be there too.

Ride times were posted early in the week. We were excited! We all were texting back and forth our plans for the weekend, and were busy prepping to leave on Friday.

Then we noticed something questionable on the radar. A small tropical depression was over Mexico, and there was some talk that it might become a tropical storm over the weekend.

Whatever, we though. We laughed, and bought a lot of beer. Beer makes everything fun right?

Yesterday, there was some talk that the storm, called Harvey, would probably make landfall as a tropical storm, and we would probably get pretty wet at the showgrounds. We talked about it some, as I had also agreed to move Sarah's horses to a new facility for her while I was there. I wasn't too worried about it. What's a little rain?

Then today happened. Harvey suddenly exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. This is common enough during this time of year - the Gulf is hot as bathwater. What isn't common is the fact that two low pressure systems are going to collide with and then squeeze Harvey once it hits land. It went from tropical storm with a possible landfall as a weak Category 1 hurricane to a strong Category 3 and maybe even Category 4 hurricane. This will be the first major hurricane to strike the US in almost 12 years, and the first hurricane at all to hit Texas in 9. For reference, the last hurricane to hit Texas was Ike - if you remember, I have a little story about Ike!!

Not surprisingly, the show cancelled. Harvey is going to bring potentially devastating and life threatening conditions to the state, and so we're all staying home. They are trying to reschedule for next weekend, which I could absolutely make happen - but we will have to see. In the meantime, keep everyone on the coast in your thoughts - there have been mandetory evacuations in several areas, but for those who are staying in the non-mandatory areas, it's going to be one rough weekend.