Catch up

Since it’s been a hot minute since I last posted, and the last post was about how my horse cut his leg off, we’ve got some riding to catch up on. I needed a break from blogging because I was running into training issues and it was making mental. (Enjoy some random video throughout from forever ago that I can't even remember what the content is to break up text.)

Having a fancy horse--fancy being relative--is both a blessing and a curse.

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It’s fine, I can wait a minute for the melodramatics of that to fully sink in.

But real talk, it’s funny how expectations can change so quickly.

Looking back at Bobby’s dressage career, that “illustrious” one year showing recognized Second the highlight of a scattering of schooling shows throughout eventing seasons, it’s comical and ultimately unfair to demean anything Opie does wrong. For Bobby, if he remained in the arena and mostly kept from flailing sideways in dramatic fashion over nothing I was pumped.

Opie throws his head up in the canter transition. It is literally the end of the world. I feel like I have an obligation to present this horse really well. He ended up becoming recognized at shows by the end of the season for his consistency (And his cuteness. Duh.), and I kind of feel like people are going to be watching to see how he progresses and nobody is to blame if I make a fool out of him but me.

First world problems, I know.

But I get tightly wound over things like the fucking canter transitions because I'm not mentally in a position any more where I'll accept, “My horse only ran backwards one time during our test!” I want it all to go right. ALL OF IT TYPE A CONTROL FREAK ALERT IT’S MAKING ME TWITCH.

I'm not expecting the same success this year showing at First as we had at Training, but I do have certain bottom lines and expectations in my head. I want Opie to do really well--the best both he and I can put forth.

WHICH MEANS THE DAMN CANTER TRANSITIONS MUST BE CONQUERED.

Anyway tho. Let’s talk about other things because I currently have neither a solution nor any particular insight about what’s going on there.

I took a lesson last month because I was feeling super frustrated and lost about the whole transition thing, but we ended up focusing more on getting Opie moving off my leg. Always needed because he’s lazy, but he ended up feeling run off his feet and the next few rides it felt like he’d lost confidence in himself and trust in me. When I’d ask him to trot, he’d immediately jet off frantically. When I put him on the longe, he was a complete spaz like he was waiting for bad things to happen.

Hubby rode him one day and then he got a couple days off. I felt like I’d done a disservice to my horse and was wallowing in guilt. Fortunately all evils are cured by copious amounts of candy and when I got back on last week I was working with a much more relaxed Dopie.

BM had had me working on getting him to warm up on a super long rein to stretch out to the max, and he’s actually been good at going to that as a default now even through baby leg yields.

To try to keep the good vibes going, I started setting up a jump as a reward system. Lots of candy still on hand? Yes. But the jump has been a good, “You didn’t almost knock me out during that canter transition so here’s something you really like to get your mind off of how much angst getting to that point caused.”

And then he got a few more days off and when I rode him Monday with a course of jumps in the ring he was a fire breathing, cross rail grand prix champion of the world. And now he’s gotten two more days off so winter’s still going well.

I’ve also been working diligently on the sitting trot. Once upon a time it was really easy for me and now Fat. Opie’s been getting better with it which has made my job easier, not having to sit on a rock hard, tense back.

I think that's a good enough summation to get you caught up. Horse got lots of days off scattered between, when he has been in work the canter transition makes me postal, but the other work is fine beyond needing fine tuning. But also I want everything to be better than I fine. I want sunshine and rainbows and fucking confetti flying for each ride. Which is unrealistic and therefor why I've been mental.