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.

Lesson 7/25

July is steaming on and nearly over, and as usual, I have no time to write about anything. Bah! So many things have happened and I can't keep up with any of them. I'll just have to do my best, because as usual, I WANT to keep everything fully updated, but I just... don't... have.... time. Any time. My problem is that I get super behind on everything, start to write, realize how much I have to get down, and get discouraged and stop. That doesn't do anyone any good. I don't know what to do really. Maybe in August I should try to just write a blurb every single day even if it's nothing much? I'm not sure how to do this. Suggestions? I feel like I need to retrain myself to write again. I'm decidedly out of the habit.

I'll do my best though. Mostly, I want to make sure I get my lessons jotted down before I lose them in my mind. They're important, and I want to make sure they're down on paper before I forget them.

Also it's super hot

Tuesday was my latest lesson with Louisa, and as usual it was challenging and informative. I put Dylan back in the double recently, as I felt I was having some trouble in the canter with my changes. He is so powerful and anticipates his changes, so sometimes my halt halts take an exhausting amount of strength to get through. In the double, he is light and the aids can be crystal clear. As I learn more about riding in the double, I can become a lot more isolating in all four of my reins. 

We mostly did canterwork this lesson, which I needed. K and I recently realized that I just need one more score for All Breed Awards - which I stupidly did not sign up for yet - and that in order to not incur any more penalty money than I'm already going to have to pay, I need to get an August show in to try and secure my final Third level score. I mentioned this to Louisa and also that I might like to try 4-1 for the first time at the same show, just to see how it goes. It might be a terrible disaster but it might go ok. 4-1 has a line of three changes in a row, which are not technically tempis even though they kind of are. One on the quarterline, one on the centerline, one on the quarterline - with the same amount of strides between them if you can but not the end of life if you can't. It has no canter pirouettes, just a very collected canter on a 20m circle from quarterline to quarterline. Everything else is virtually the same at 3-3, just with a greater degree of everything required.

Louisa mentioned something to me that really stuck partway through the lesson. She told me "you have a horse that could knock everyone's socks off, so sit up there like a badass and own it." She's right... Dylan is an amazing horse. And pretending like I'm a badass even though I'm really not helps me to sit up there boldly and ride boldly. She explained to me that there are three phases of learning to ride. The first is learning to move with the horse - everyone starts out floppy and bouncing against the motion of the horse. The second is being able to ride without interfering with the horse - being able to go with the motion. The third is actively influencing the motion of the horse to improve it. I'm somewhere floating between these two states. Many years of riding green or sensitive horses has given me a really good ability to be sort of soft and supple, but it's very hard for me to be strong and hard while also staying soft and supple. When we were doing work with the changes, after several of them Dylan broke to the trot because I had dropped him right after the change. Louisa described it like being the mask on a sailing vessel. She said it's almost frustrating to him to feel like his mast - meaning me - is sort of swaying around up there, when what he really needs to be sharp and brilliant is for me to be strong and still. That made so much sense to me, as I know how much the balance of a sailing vessel is altered by something being top heavy or off kilter up high. Once I had these ideas in my head, everything got an awful lot better. I was able to really support him strongly and straight through every corner, and able to straighten him and execute clean and quiet changes. When he's not straight, or I'm not straight, the changes are garbage. He doesn't give any of them away freely - everything has to be perfect. When everything is not perfect, he crossfires at worst, and bounces really hard through them at best. When everything is perfect, you almost can't feel the changes. Louisa set out a cone, and made me work in counter canter through the short sides and then come across the diagonal and perform a change right at the cone. She also had me counter canter down the long side in shoulder fore (which meant to the rail), then straighten and perform the change. It's hard to get my head around the positioning sometimes, but once I get it - I get it, and it's great. 

By the end of the lesson we were both really tired, and the quality of the work goes rapidly downhill when he's tired. He wants so badly to do his work, so when he's worn out he starts to speed up and rush through everything since he can't quite hold himself in that amount of collection anymore. It was hot and humid out, and the humidity in particular seems to really affect him, so instead of pushing any more we decided to do some walk work to round out the lesson. Louisa handed me the Equicube again, which is exhausting but super effective for me. It really forces me to engage my abs and in particular the group of muscles below my shoulderblades. Louisa wants my lower back to stay as supple as it is, but I need my shoulders to be much stronger and straighter without being tense. The cube helps me because it's super clear immediately if I'm holding the cube with my core, or holding it with my arms. She even stuck a whip behind my elbows at some point, which also made a big difference for me. It's sorting out these small things that will help make big changes in Dylan - and old habits are HARD to break!

Also, not related, having a shiny white horse is so amazingly pretty...

But actually that's almost never the daily reality. Usually he looks like this:

Zorse?

Filth. He does have a collar on in this picture, he's not loose in my yard! I got him a broodmare collar to give him a break from the halter... we will see if we can catch him again....

Tiago Ernesto Clinic 7/8-7/9

Last weekend I headed back down to the Navasota/Brenham area to ride in an invitation-only clinic with Tiago Ernesto, the head trainer at Haras Dos Cavaleiros. If you're at all involved with Iberian horses or working equitation, you know Haras. The clinc itself was at Watts Way Arena, the last place I showed Dylan. The owners of Watts Way have fast become my friends and I was excited to have a chance to ride with someone as talented as Tiago. 

In July in Texas, it's HOT. This year has been especially weird because while temperatures have been slightly lower than usual - staying in the mid to upper 90s - the humidity has been outrageously high. I don't mind it being hot, but the humidity kills me. Remember this because it will come into play later.

Several of the people that were supposed to come to the clinic couldn't, as the original date has been scheduled for June and then later changed. (I originally couldn't go, but when they changed the dates I jumped on it!) There was also a lady who was supposed to bring a couple horses but then had the fuel pump in her truck go out, so all in all there were only about 5 or 6 riders a day. I was slated to ride late afternoon on Saturday, and then morning on Sunday, so that I could trailer in on Sat and then right back out again on Sunday without getting home to late. It's about a 4 hour trailer ride for me one way, if there is no traffic. 

It's hot. Yes that's sweat and dirt on Dylan's back!

I headed out by about 8:30am, only to run into I-35 being shut down not too far into my journey. Some other small bobbles and I arrived at about 1pm or so, with plenty of time to deposit Dylan in his stall, eat some pizza, and have a peach daiquiri. It was unbearably hot and humid in the arena - even though it's covered and the swamp coolers were running full steam, there was no wind at all that day, and therefore no breeze to stir the stifling hot air. The evening before, I had gotten a little heatsick while trying to clean out my trailer tackroom, and while I sat there in the arena sweating and watching the other riders, I started to feel like I was wilting. I drank and drank and drank all the water and Gatorade that I could force myself to down, knowing that my 4pm ride time was coming up. My friend J helped me tack up Dylan, and feeling like I had done all I could do to hydrate myself, I climbed on for my lesson.

What surprised me about Tiago is that he's a young guy. He can't be older than I am, if he's even that old at all. But he's an incredible rider and trainer. He watched Dylan and I warm up, whereupon I just trotted around posting for a bit and doing some stretchy canter to limber him up. For all that I'm excited that I can post again, I still don't seem to be able to do it all that well, and when Tiago came in the ring he told me right away that he thought I had an easier time in the canter than trot. He's not wrong, but I told him it's completely different when I sit versus when I trot, and I showed him that. He had that look on his face of "ah, yes, she's not lying." I told him one of the main problem I have is with changes - either they're fantastic or they're terrible, and there's not a lot of play inbetween. On the short diagonal, Dylan was starting to get flat and rushy into his changes, and I was too hot and tired to be able to keep that under control. So, we played with surprise changes in places he didn't expect them - down the quarterline, in the corners, random places around the arena, which really did help him. When he knows they're coming, he can get quite forward, and it's hard enough to keep him under control when I'm feeling great much less when I'm not.

We also played a bit with passage/piaffe, and whether Dylan knows how to do it. K said he has a bit of both started, and I've certainly sat on him when he was offering piaffe not on purpose, but this was the first time anyone has taken a stick and asked him from the ground to give it a try since I've had him. I'm not sure what Tiago was asking or how, but Dylan was not sure about it and didn't get a step of real piaffe. He did, however, offer something akin to passage and we went with that. I would trot along on the circle, then ask him to come up a bit more in front and almost feel like I'm sucking his back up higher through my thighs. It's a little bit hard to describe, but it came. As I understand it, having almost no experience whatever with it, every horse and rider has an individual way of doing piaffe or passage - installed a little differently, ridden a little differently. All lower level horses might be able to canter from the same cue, but not all upper level horses will learn passage from the same cue. Or something like that. Maybe? I don't know enough about it yet to say, but I hope to learn.

We also worked on bending him at the canter on a 20m circle - bending him to the left, bending him to the right, with no change of lead and no falling in or out. THAT was my undoing. I was already exhausted by this point but determined to carry on, and I don't really remember too much beyond this point because my head got all kinds of fuzzy. I just remember  when we finished, we had some good work, but Dylan was clear about the fact that he was stick-a-fork-in-it-done. He kept breaking to trot over and over, like he just couldn't hold it, and I probably looked like I was going to die myself. We both went to cool out, and both of us were panting exhausted. Dylan looked just as hot and miserable as I was - I stripped him of his tack straight away, and went right to the wash stall to start strip cooling him. Poor guy.... he skidded around in the wash stall three times like he was skating on ice, partly because the washstall was slippery and partly because I think he was just that tired. I felt like I was fully cooked to death, and I hosed myself off too. 

Back at the guest house, after thoroughly cooling Dylan down (although to be honest I don't remember much of what was going on, I think J moved my tack for me but I'm not sure), I flopped down onto the bed in the AC and closed my eyes for a few minutes. I slugged down as much Gatorade and water as I could handle, and eventually the room stopped spinning. A cool shower and some Ibuprofin (and more water) later, and I was feeling a bit more like myself. I checked on Dylan again, and he too was cool and eating and drinking. I felt good enough by that time to go out to Brenham with J and Tiago for some dinner and some ice cream. When we got back to the guest house, the other ladies staying there were all piling into their souped up ATV to go for a drunken midnight offroad adventure, which I of course decided to come along on. We were speeding through the night watching an approaching thunderstorm light the sky up with lightning, and I thought to myself, "I'm going to remember this night."

And apparently everyone in Brenham was also there that night

The next day I woke up fairly early, feeling much more like myself and glad to be riding early. My ride time was scheduled for 10am, which is much more reasonable. It seemed to be less humid too, which also helped. I asked J if we could set up some single slalom and double barrels in the ring, since I've had some trouble with both, and she agreed. Our warmup was a bit quieter than the day before, and Tiago again put us to work with some lead change work and some trot work, alternative between a fairly slow collected trot and some bouncier passage-ier trot.

I think instructors sometimes don't know what to do with us, because I generally come into a lesson going, "I'm having trouble with this thing." The instructor says okay, go do that thing and show me. So we go and do the thing, and it always goes fine, so the instructor then goes, "well... okay, but it's fine?" They also always tell me to go do a thing, and I go and do it, and it goes fine. Not to say that I'm any kind of great rider, but Dylan is a great horse who just does whatever you tell him to do. If I sit up and ride him well, it goes fine. If I ride like a sack of potatoes, it goes poorly of course, but if I can manage not to be too much of a weeble it's fine. Louisa always talks about how it's cool to teach us because she can tell us anything and we can just go out and do it for the most part, but that makes it hard for a new person to come in and teach. There just sort of aren't big huge problems. Or well, my big huge problems are hard to replicate because they usually only show up in competition. Tiago sent me off to work on the single slalom, only not the entire thing. We worked on doing the first pole, and then the last pole. And then adding in a pole, or just doing a single pole. He had me think about just pushing the horse over and changing leads versus doing big loops between the poles, as there isn't really enough room. He told me he thinks the single slalom is the toughest thing to do, and I agreed with him. But what he stressed to me made so much sense, and I just hadn't thought of it that way before - maybe you have to do it a certain way in competition, but in training there are no rules. If you want to do just one with a change, or two with a change, or a couple with changes here and there, you can! You don't have to do it one single way when you're training. You can do whatever you need to do in order to train the horse to change quietly and cleanly where he needs to. We applied the same thing to the double barrels - we made the circles as big as I needed to make them, and put the changes in where I needed to put them in to make them clean. Then we made the circles smaller, and the changes were still clean - so that fixed the issue and there wasn't anything to work on. He felt very strong to me and I didn't feel like I had good control and lightness with my canterwork, but Tiago said it looked just fine, so at least there was that. He's been a little strong in the canterwork in the snaffle, so I may put him back in the double on and off to help regain a little more lightness.


I also put J on him after our lesson was over - she trotted and cantered around on him and had a blast! He was a good boy for her, and she was all smiles. I sat on one of her Nokota horses the day before too, but just walked him, as he was just as sweaty and hot as Dylan was.

Yes, she wasn't minding her melon, but I was so that's what matters. 

It was a fun weekend, but slightly expensive. Worth it to get some good ideas through about training certain difficult obstacles. Changes are hard with Dylan as you need to sit perfectly in order to get them cleanly, and I only sit perfectly about 10% of the time. It's hard!

The heat was the biggest bummer of the weekend. I actually was so heatsick on Friday night that I locked my keys in my truck for the first time in my entire life, and didn't realize it until morning when I couldn't find them. I had to pay some guy a hundred smacks to come out on a Sunday morning and break into my truck for me. That sucked.

Dylan laughing at me

We were supposed to be at Haras this weekend for their Summer Festival show, which is a B-rated WE show. It was going to be really really hot, but J was going to be there, and she encouraged me to come. Unfortunately, due to the heat, the show was cancelled at the last minute. It was a real bummer, but I guess it's not too bad of a thing. It's SO hot, and it's only going to get hotter as we get into the thick of summer.

Lessons Reports, and Weather

I had two lessons this week or so - one with Louisa, one with Tarrin. I was also supposed to have a lesson two weekends ago with Tarrin but it got rained out, much to everyone's surprise. Rain in June? In Texas? What is happening? 

Both of these instructors are complementary to each other in that they both have similar things to say about the horse, and the same ideas about how to get there, but with different (but complementary) ways of executing things. Louisa uses a lot of visual imagery, which is a learning style I process very well. Tarrin is excellent at pinpointing an issue and prompt to get you right to fixing it. Both of them are focused on me as a rider, because both know how much changing something in my body alters this horse. All of his issues are not really *his* issues, they are *my* issues. And when they fix me, it fixes him, automatically. This is why he is so completely priceless - he doesn't tolerate fools, and he doesn't give you any freebies whatever, but he's also completely safe. He makes you work for it, and makes you be correct, but the second you get it, he gives all of it to you.  

Dylan is shocked that old man Gringo (who wanders loose on the property) would come and steal *his* cookies right out of the tack room

In the lesson with Louisa, I started out with a really, really, really relaxed stretchy warmup. Up until a few months ago I was not able to post at all due to the pain in my leg, but during and after the last show at Tyler, I started giving it a try. Much to my delight I've been getting better and better at it, and with less and less pain. It sounds so stupid to be struggling with something so simple - I'm showing 3rd level and I can't freaking post? - but it truly was causing me pain beyond what I can even describe. Now though, with all my physical therapy, I'm posting mostly pain free and can now utilize that whenever I need to. 

Where I've been using it is in my warmups. I've been making so much more use of stretchy work at the walk and trot instead of doing warmups at the walk and canter (because that's just how you have to do it when you can't post). As a result, I'm able to unlock his back that much faster, and relax him that much more. He really does like to stretch, but he's just as quick to get short and tense at the base of his withers, much like every other Spanish horse on planet Earth. But when I start my warmups with a long, loose, stretchy walk and trot, it loosens all of that up and it warms my muscles up too, so that I can find where I need to be better and faster.

I put him back in the snaffle for our lesson and have kept him back in the snaffle. The pelham is getting shelved for the time being, because Dylan is just *better* with it. As always, the more I just pretend like I don't have reins, the better he goes. When I get to micromanaging his face, everything goes down the toilet. We warmed up at the walk and posting trot, just doing some simple bending and stretching. Then we got to more of the meat - cantering squares with quarter pirouettes in each corner. It's exactly the same thing - just forget about your reins beyond simple positioning, and move him with your body. In pirouettes especially, which I am just learning about, my first instinct is to tilt which makes me lose my inside seatbone. The second that lifts off the saddle, he's quick to spin through his pirouettes almost like he wants to be a reiner, and he'll swap out behind. But if I really sit down and think about things in slow motion, he is a thousand times better. I just have to think my way through them. 

There wasn't too much else that we were deeply focused on, aside from a few flying changes. He was a little slow to switch from right to left, but we edged around that by cantering down the long side in a bit of shoulder fore to the rail, and then executing the change on the far side of the ring. He's been so good with his changes that I honestly think he was more tired than he wanted to admit after doing the quarter pirouettes (or, maybe I was). When we got back home, Dylan also had a chiropractic appointment that showed he was much looser in his withers but had both hips out - so that also probably wasn't helping much!

Even though it wasn't too complicated of a lesson, the work was just so quality. It felt so good. It felt SO good. All of that stretching in the beginning meant all of the execution of things was just so fluid and so connected and just so good. If I can get that kind of connection everywhere.... that will be magical indeed.

Yesterday I rode with Tarrin again in preparation for the scheduled show today (stay tuned for an update on that at the end of the post). There are rules in the Confederation for WE that state that private instruction from a judge ahead of a show is not legal, but a clinic held by that judge right before a show is, which I think is really great. We rode at 8am, which I was very thankful for given the fact that it's about 113 degrees outside right now with high levels of humidity. Tarrin asked me first thing what I was wanting to work on, and I talked to her more about the last show and what I think went wrong. She pointed out his one major flaw - he likes to lose his haunches out towards the right. He does this in both directions and it's something I don't always really realize is happening until it's too late. To combat this, she parked herself in the middle of the dressage course and held one end of the garrocha pole, while I held the other. I had to go around her in walk, trot, and canter while holding the pole in one hand in both directions. I was not supposed to move her, or move my hand - the pole was supposed to stay perfectly balanced in the same spot between us. Talk about HARD - it completely relies on use of your body while trying to keep the horse on a perfect 10m circle, including through transitions.

Dylan's first inclination in that exercise is to drift his haunches toward the right. And as usual, this is mostly something I allow him to do without realizing it - I'm stronger in one direction than the other, so if I am not definitive enough with my outside leg and seatbone, I lose the haunches. It's not something you would even really see if you were watching us go, because it's very minor - but this exercise highlighted it. And it's not something that makes too much of a difference when we're doing simple things, but it gets amplified during changes or pirouettes. By the end of the exercise, I was so much more aware of the problem than I had been before. And it makes total sense.


From there, Tarrin had me ride my entire dressage test one handed. Now remember, I have almost no experience with real one handed riding, much less one handed dressage. Dylan does not neck rein. Or well, he sort of does like the rest of my horses do when we toodle on a long rein on the trails - they just sort of pick it up but it's certainly not like actual western horse neck reining. I wasn't really sure how it would go.

To my surprise, it went much better than I expected. What a surprise... when you ride with your body the horse goes well, who knew right!? He had no problem whatever with walk half passes and walk pirouettes - they were just as good as with two hands, which surprised me. The trot work wasn't stellar, more like not-quite jogging, but he leg yielded well and was responsive. I had some trouble with my reins getting too long, and had to adjust them a few times. Tarrin said short reins are my friend - that way I am never tempted to pull back, only to lift upward slightly if I need it, and make small adjustments left or right. The canter work started out a little funky, as I was struggling to figure out how best to keep him straight, but once I got a little more organized the canter instantly got better. If I just stay out of his way with my reins, he's got it, but the second I get a little too one sided or a bit heavy in the contact, he's all kinds of crooked. I have a tendency to be a little heavier on my left rein when I ride one handed, and Dylan made that perfectly clear when I came in for my first flying change from left to right... and he kept counter cantering on the left. He was just doing exactly what I asked even though I did not mean to ask for it. We tried again, I got organized and sat in balance, and he had a perfect change. Our next two changes were also perfect and not only were clean, but were straight and with the same good cadence coming out of them as going into them.


I actually really enjoyed riding one handed. I felt like it forced me to be better because I didn't have a choice, I didn't have the crutch of reins. Not only that, but the horse became perfectly soft and round in front as soon as I had full control of his body.

I am an awfully long way from going Advanced even though it's just the next level up, but I'm starting to feel like... maybe I could do it. (Although, if you look at the dressage test and imagine riding that with one hand... might be awhile before we ever get there.)




It was a good lesson and it wasn't actually too heavy on the workload, which was good because at 8am it was already a billion degrees. We got our coursemaps for the show, looked them over, and then headed back home to finish prepping for today.


And then today actually happened.....

What the hell!?

I was awakened at about 1am by a house shaking roar of thunder. Not surprisingly, after wave after wave of deluge, the show was cancelled this morning and rescheduled to November. So that's the second time in a month that Tarrin drove up here to Decatur and then got rained out. Damnit all!


Out of two planned clinics and a show this month, I only got to ride in the one clinic. Boooo. Next month I also have a clinic (with Tiago) and a B-Rated show at Haras. Both of those places have indoors so they shouldn't be cancelled unless there is something dire happening! I need to go back over my show schedule beyond that and confirm what I really want to be shooting for in the fall too.

Lesson 5/18

As usual I have a little bit of catching up to do! It seems to be my norm these days... oh well. I do what I can with what time I have.

We have been to the third Heart of Texas series show, but before I write aboiut that I want to put up a quick blip about the lesson before the show, as it explains some of the tack changes I've done in the last few weeks.


It's been kind of bonkers around here as usual. While we haven't had the tornados and hail that others have, we've had two really bad wind storms here, one of which took out a large branch in the pasture. The other blew our roof to smithereens, and it was so bad that the insurance company actually totalled it. But, we have a nice new roof now, so... win win?

Aside from all that, things are going well. After the last show, I started thinking about bits and the number of pelhams I have been seeing in competition. The old rule on dress code was that you had to pick a discipline as your chosen attire and then stick with it, tack and all. With dressage, that obviously meant dressage tack and dress, and a dressage legal bit.
This year they changed that. You can now use whatever bit you need, barring of course a number of twisted wires, gags, and the like. But there is no longer any reason you can't show in a pelham if you're riding dressage.
Before, I would have only been able to choose between a simple snaffle and a double bridle. Dylan goes well in a snaffle, but for speed it gets kind of complicated as he turned into a firebreather. A double bridle isn't a convenient option - it's hard enough to do things like picking up a pole and a jug and opening a gate when you only have one set of reins. When you have to hold four reins in one hand at the same time.... it's too hard for me to do at my current skill level.

So, I decided to try the pelham too. With converters.
My childhood trainers would have beaten me with a second set of reins if they ever saw me doing that.
But... it's a different sport. It's worth a try.

The jury is still out on whether or not I actually like it. I may go back to the snaffle.

I rode him twice on my own with this pelham, and then took him to a lesson on the Thursday before my show. Whether or not the pelham had anything to do with it or not, we just didn't have that great of a lesson overall. The greatest thing about riding with Louisa for me is the way she has with words. She always has some fantastic analogy to help me visualize what she means, and once I can get it in my head, I just GET it.

But for some reason that day, I just could NOT get it. We were trying to do suppling and lateral work, and she was trying to explain to me how to move my inside rein in order to let go of it. For whatever reason it backfired in my head, and I ended up using the rein in excess instead of being able to let it go. When you pull on Dylan, he spirals his opposing hind leg outward, and you completely disengage him. We just could. Not. Get it together.

Finally she stopped me, and thought for a minute. She then explained to me the analogy of driving a pair of horses. Think about the inside horse, she said, and then imagine the outside horse helping to push the inside horse over instead of pulling the inside horse around. That clicked in my head and made sense, and then suddenly we were able to get it. We were even able to practice some quarter pirouettes at the end of things.


But what would an only so-so lesson mean for our show that weekend? Well you'll just have to wait and find out...



________________________________

The second part of this is that I also have a few other pictures from the last WE show to share! These extra ones got posted after the fact and they're just as awesome as the other ones. They can hold you off until the next group of pictures from the most recent show can be posted.

Double slalom

Spearing ring with garrocha

Really Dylan.....

Lessons, Lessons Everywhere

I've been having a ton of trouble with my internet lately... we have crappy satellite internet here and most of the time it won't connect at all. Kind of hard to post when I have no internet! So this post has been really delayed because it has been written but not able to be posted. It's driving me nuts and unless I go to a local spot with WiFi, I'm out of luck. Anyway...

I WAS lucky enough to have not one but two lessons last week with both of my favorite instructors! How awesome is that!

On Thursday I trailered out to lesson with L. It was 80 degrees on Wednesday, but 35 degrees with howling wind on Thursday morning. (Why? Because Texas.) I actually had to break out my quarter sheet for the first time all year - I used to use it for every ride when I lived up north, but in Texas it only makes an occasional appearance. It's a bit small for Dylan - looks kind of like a mini skirt really, although don't tell him I said that - but it does what it needs to do. 

Does this sheet make my gut look fat

Same quarter sheet, same height of horse, but decidedly daintier animal!

L and I discussed show season and where I want to start. We both think that going out at Third is a wise choice, since I've never done it and it's all easy stuff that isn't a problem for either of us. It should be confidence building before we step out at 4th. The main thing is keeping both of us relaxed - if we can do that, it's no problem. If we can't, everything falls to pieces. 

Most of our warmup work tends to be doing lateral stuff, unlocking Dylan back and front. It really gets him thinking outside of his body, and warms him up with stretching and strengthening work. We went both directions on a 15m circle at the trot, alternating between spiraling in and out, and doing travers and renvers on the circle. That's especially hard for me, as I can't always remember which is which, and doing them on a circle is doubley as hard. I can't physically do much if any posting at the trot, so we try to make sure his back is supple before we start up working. (Side note: kind of concerned about how little posting I am able to do without wanting to fall off and die with pain. My leg cramps up and I'm totally screwed if it does. I am not sure what to do about this.) Either way, my leg was really bothering me during this lesson. Lengthening my stirrups another hole really made a difference for me, but it still hurts sometimes. 

We went from there to doing some lengthenings and mediums down into almost half steps. Dylan knew exactly what the half steps were even though I haven't had much experiene with them - I asked K later and she says he has piaffe started, so he understands the concept well. (Another side note: play with that during lessons.) We were thoroughly warmed up at that point, so we moved into test work, practicing Third 1. Third 1 is simple - it has shoulder ins and fairly shallow half pass at the trot, half pirouettes at the walk, and flying changes, along with some other various things. We ran through the test without issue, with L calling out various things that needed improvement. One of the main things I need to focus on is making my half passes shallower. Dylan is completely capable - and willing - to throw in Grand Prix steepness into his half passes. He is like a freaking crab that can scuttle sideways. For Third level though, you only do very shallow half passes - and that's hard for me to judge. I need to get into a full size arena and just practice practice practice! I was really pleased with the lesson, even if it was freezing cold. 

Dylan after his lesson.... hanging out with his old man friend. This old guy wanders the property loose and likes to come share Dylan's hay. I think it's good for Dylan to have to deal with these kinds of distractions, as long as they're done safely. He knows this is an old gelding, so he's not really bothered by him. 

On Friday, I worked all day long, and came home just in time to hook up my trailer and run off to my lesson with Tarrin. She comes up to our area on a somewhat regular basis, and every time she does I try to get on the list with her. By the time I got there the sun was setting, so we had another lesson in the light of the arena, which I wrote about last time. We started by talking about the changes made to the new Confederation of Working Equitation.... or something like that. I am slightly less confused about all of these organizations after she explained it to me, but it's still crazy. Apparently, WE United is still doing its own separate thing, but WEIAUSA and whatever the other organization was came back together and created this conjoined Confederation. I got a membership card in the mail recently - I'm apparently already a member automatically, because I was a member of WEIAUSA. The Confederation is going to be running most of the shows around here, while WE United is doing most of the shows on the west coast... or something like that. It's weird and complicated. I admit I can't altogether make it out still. 

Anyway. The point of all of that is that the levels have changed now. All of the organizations have come together under one set of rules, and they also changed the levels when they did that. There is now Intermediate A and Intermediate B, instead of just one Intermediate. (There are still Amateur and Open sections of each one). Intermediate A has all simple changes in it, and Intermediate B has all flying. That's right.... no more simple changes through the walk at ALL. Before, Intermediate level riders had a choice - you could pick the simple or the flying, depending on your horse and their strengths. The more difficult flying change would score higher if executed well, but it had to be executed well. Now, the changes are separated out into the two sections. Dylan is clearly in the Intermediate B level, but the flying changes are sometimes really HARD for me! In the EOH phase, there can be up to like 30 odd flying changes, which is crazy. 

We started the lesson by going over the new dressage test, which is virtually the same save for the fact that the simple change in the middle is now a flying change. Tarrin and I talked about how I feel like I've really sort of figured out how to keep Dylan relaxed, and how to sit him better so as to keep him engaged. It has really been an amazing learning process, figuring out how to sit back just a little more, or lengthen my leg just a little more, or raise my hands just a little more, and he just comes right up in front and is ready to go. I think he was as relaxed as she had ever seen him be. After we schooled our test a bit, and repeated some of the flying changes, we went and schooled the cloverleaf barrels. Before, I chose to do simple changes through all of those. Now, I have to do flying changes, and according to Tarrin, the best execution is to do a 3m circle around each barrel. 3m. That's less than half the size of a regular volte. At the canter. With flying changes! It was REALLY hard. I was able to get the first circle and change without issue, and the second one too, but the third change and circle eluded me every time. He would swap behind when going around the barrel, then swap back as we exited. 

We talked about why that was as we moved onto the next obstacle, the double slalom. To me, this is absolutely the hardest thing in the EOH phase. Dylan is this huge moving and powerful horse, and it takes a lot of skill to keep his enthusiasm under control. Which is not to say that I am a skilled person - quite the opposite, really - but I have an idea of how much strength and power it takes to keep him under wraps. He's different than you would expect though. He rides like as a feather in front if you just sit back far enough and lock your seat in. It's like he is so powerful that his power just has to go somewhere, anywhere, when he's moving. When you drive him upwards in front, his engine powers up, and he keeps his hind end engaged, and his front end light. If you're not riding him up in front with every single stride, then the power shoots out the back, because it has to go somewhere. This is why he swaps behind. When you lose the hind end, it just spins out on those tight turns. It's like he fishtails almost. 

In the double slalom, you have to do what amounts to canter pirouettes around each pole, then do flying changes between each one. With Dylan especially, I really have to think pirouettes, because if I just turn him around the pole, he fishtails and swaps behind. There is no simple turning with this horse... it's all riding, all engagement, all the time, every stride, or else you can't keep his power under control. It's like I have to forget that I even have reins. If I just pretend like I don't have reins, I can't be tempted to use them. If you pull on them backwards, even just a tiny little bit, you'll lose the opposite hind leg and he'll swap behind. Instead, I have to think about moving my hands up instead of backwards. This is something I've felt intuitively for awhile, but it's really hard to let old habits go. 

We had several good passes through the beginning of the double slalom. As long as I ride him up, up, up, every single stride, we do really well. Riding every. Single. Stride. Is really difficult to do, and the second I stop doing it, he tells on me. In that way, he keeps me accountable. 

By the end of the exercise, we were both tired. I told Tarrin it was really hard work, but it's only because we haven't done it before, and this is just leveling up. I think she likes my positivity. The last time I rode with her, she told me we would do really well, because I wanted it badly enough. And she's right. 

There is a show on the 18th that kicks off the yearly Heart of Texas WE series. I intend to go, if I can get everything in order! 

Lessons and Ponying and Fit Throwing, Oh My!

My trailer finally came home this week and I've been back to work as usual. It has been raining for over a week, with not even time inbetween squalls to get dry, which is causing me some grief. It's very hard to put out hay when it's muddy, and it's equally as hard to get anything done with anyone. For the most part, rainy days are so infrequent in Texas (or well, they were, before the past two years) that I don't mind taking them off and just getting other indoor things done instead. I do always have the option of taking Dylan to ride, but I don't always want to go muck around loading in the pouring rain.

I will have to split this post into a few so as to not clog up a huge amount of space!

On Monday I trailered out to WD to ride. The place was packed full of people, which is rare - some of them my friends, some of them people I don't like crossing paths with. I much prefer when the place is dead quiet, which is why I usually don't go on weekends. Unfortunately I had forgotten that it was MLK day :/ Since a Dylan had been off for a few weeks, I didn't do a ton of work, just some supplying walk with and simple trot and canter work with shallow half passes to loosen him up a bit. He was tired at the end of the ride, which almost never happens, so I could tell that he had lost a little conditioning. Of all my horses, he is the hardest to keep fit for sure. O's super pregnant and has been off since June, and she's still ripped. Dylan gets off for two weeks, and he comes back a marshmallow. 

On Monday, I also got up on Big Frank, and decided to try ponying with him. We weren't sure if he had ever done it before, but he's so mellow I wasn't really worried. I also tried putting a short shank hackamore on him, to see if I would be able to steer and stop him in it. He is super mellow and slow when he has a friend with him; when he is alone, I need more turning power, and so I figured this was a better time to try a hackamore. I picked Pax to go with him, as I thought she was less likely to worry him. Pax is devoted to him, while Zoodle can be a bit domineering. Zu also likes to bite his pony horse, something which I wasn't sure if Frank would tolerate if he didn't already know how to pony. 

Turns out I had nothing to worry about. He plodded along steady as ever, even though Pax herself was hot and spooky. She looked around, jigged, tossed her head, and skittered at the end of her line for awhile. Frank just walked on. It didn't take long to realize that I had no steering or brakes whatsoever with the hackamore, but it didn't really matter. He goes in a straight line at the same speed for as long as you like. I'm going to put him back in the snaffle for sure, but I see no reason why he won't be able to pony with Zoodle. Actually it might go better than it did with Pax - Pax is much more forward than Frank, and Zoodle's short legs are about the right length to keep up with his plod. Zu has a hard time keeping up with Pmare - he's just too short and she's too forward. 

Pooped

Frank has really upped his big since he got here! He's put a good amount of weight on. He wasn't thin before, certainly, but he looks really good now that he can eat hay again.

On Tuesday, I had another lesson with L. I told her I hadn't worked him much in the past few weeks, so we didn't have to do a lot of hard work. Despite that, she put our butts to work working on some suppling exercises. Primarily, we did 10m circles in each corner, then alternated in the trot from shoulder in to a few steps of half pass and back to a shoulder in, and in the canter a few strides of shoulder in to half pass, and half pass off the rail and leg yielding back to the rail in canter. Suppling exercises like that are really hard, especially in the canter where movements like shoulder in and leg yield are really not easy to execute. They're very good for a horse like Dylan, who doesn't do well with traveling along doing the same thing for long periods of time. We also did some work going from mediums to half steps. I don't have a lot of practice with half steps, but Dylan clearly knew what I was asking for. When I asked K later, she says he has piaffe and has passage started, so now that I know this I intend to play around with it in lessons!

At some point Dylan completely ran out of fuel, and we decided to wrap it up. It was quite a lot of work for not having been ridden for a couple of weeks, and he was tired. We talked a little more about the show schedule - it starts in March, and goes full steam through early summer. 

Back at home, inbetween my lesson and my physio, I decided to hop on old Pmare and take Zoodle for a go. My original thought after seeing Frank do so well with Pax is that he would be better suited to take Zoodle himself, since he tends to walk super slow and Zoodle can't keep up with P very well, but since he had just gone and P hadn't, I chose her.

An older picture, but the same view. I had a trotting video to upload though!

Zoodle was excellent. On his best behavior, interested in everything around him but not spooky, and really being perfect. I was proud of him. We went about two miles and came back around the usual loop, and he didn't put a foot wrong. Much better than his sister the day before.

Pmare though... was a different story. P gets called a cow on a daily basis, with more colorful things interspersed in there as warrants, but she really out-heifered herself that day. She's not a beginner's horse and she never has been, because when she's mad about something she's going to let you know about it. It's why she came with a bucking clause written into her sale contract! That day, we were literally in the very last bit of the ride when I had to stop her to let some cars pass. She did not want to stand when we were so close to home, so she kept barging forward and running into her hackamore. This made her mad, so she started shaking her head and backing up, dragging poor Zoodle along with her. I still wanted her to be capabale of standing immobile for a minute before we walked off again - something she usually is really good about - but she was not having it. The headshaking and backing progressed into full out rearing and throwing herself sideways. She was MAD and she was going to let me know how she felt about it. 

I ended up actually dismounting and leading her back, since I didn't want poor Zoodle to be scared, not after he had been so good. I put him away, pulled out an actual bridle with bit, and rode her back out to the same spot where we had had the problem. 

It fixed nothing. If anything, she was angrier than ever, and she stood immobile while I pony kicked her, trying to get her to just WALK forward from a stand still. I could't get her to go forward at all after the first halt - every time she would respond to my urging it was just to rear and spin, running backwards and bouncing into the air. The second time she tumbled down into the ditch, with no regard to her own safety, I started to wonder if I was going to win this fight.

I never did. I ended up having to dismount again and lead her back because I could NOT. Make. Her. Go. She just wasn't going to do it, and she was getting increasingly dangerous about it. Even when I dismounted and went to back her up out of my space, she put her ears flat back and barged forward, mowing me down out of her way. I hope my neighbors don't call me in for animal cruelty, because I whopped her a good one for that. 

Ungrateful old cow. All I wanted was for you to stand still for 30 seconds so we didn't get run over by a bunch of trucks. 

I have more catching up to do.... in the next post!