Good Boi

Opie got the Ryder checked in between getting his feet done yesterday morning. The fitter agreed she didn't hate me in it and adjusted the flocking some for him (not that either of those mean much at this point) so we could keep it to take to DL on Friday.

I've been putting off the temptation of the freshly painted and decorated jumps too long though, so this morning we changed course.

I set everything to 2'6" (although I think the panels were only 2'3") and did a short w/t warm up on the open end of the ring. Then I brought him up the rail at the trot to the panels because I needed to activate my very tiny lady balls. 

He hopped right over and carried on like it was nothing so I picked up the canter and off we went.

Green jungle, rollback to the panels, over the blue, down the two stride line which he jumped in big to so getting out was a little tight, and then over the astroturf.

He didn't peek at anything, jumped it all out of stride, was eager to go forward to every jump without once getting rude, yada yada. From there we went out back. I was going to jump some things out in the fields, but there was a random roaming Pyrenees by the pond so we aborted that plan and just hopped over the tires and the log pile and went back.

Overall it was such a short, boring ride that made me feel so good about him. Point and shoot jumper? Yes, please. Exactly what my confidence needs, especially with a hunter show in a couple weeks and provisionally signing up for an intro HT in June.

That's a no

Unsurprisingly the twice custom built saddle was returned. The more I rode in it the more I hated it. Then I did my lesson on Friday and DL was like, "Nah. Not one single yah."

bye.

The lesson itself was spent either in the canter because every time we got him pushing in the trot his head popped up and he shut down (we dug around the saddle and found that the shims the fitter had me add to the front of my Mattes were pinching his shoulders), or without stirrups because it felt terrible to use them.

So I called the fitter on the way back to the barn. Unfortunately my County value was trade-in only so I'm stuck with her until she gets me a rideable saddle. No more custom builds, used is fine. She said she'd bring me Ryder and Albion to try on Tuesday. In the meantime she had a Fairfax World Class she wanted me to pick up and try over the weekend.

Immediately my thought was: take the $$$$$$ Fairfax which is worth way more than the Hastilow (she said she would eat the cost difference because of the PITA this has been--ya think?!), act like it fit well enough, and then find another fitter that could get me a correct saddle with this fancy one I now have as equity. Shady, maybe, but the shit this has spiraled into is absurd.

However.

nope.

It didn't fit me or Opie at all. I rode it in for maybe five minutes before having to get out of it. I ended up grabbing a Ryder Legacy at the same time as the Fairfax so that was up next.

I ended up dropping my stirrups another hole on this one--like, voluntarily! And I didn't remotely feel like I was reaching for them or going to lose them. I also really didn't mind riding in it. It has a narrow twist which was a different feel, but otherwise rode a lot like my County which I'm finding is my preferred style. 

I rode in it again this morning to make sure I didn't fucking hate it after all. Again, the narrow twist is different but not horrible. 

I think I could live with it if I had to. I still want to get DL's eyes on it so unless the fitter brings something much better tomorrow I'll keep this one on trial until then.

The saddle has landed

...and might be going back from whence it came.

Again.

I ordered this fucking thing on April 17th of last year which made it one year and twelve days for it to be delivered to my ass. With the weight of that sitting on it, I was expecting to swing my leg over and have angels sing. Or at the very least be instantly turned into a Grand Prix rider.

Instead I was decidedly underwhelmed.

It's a pretty saddle. For $4k it better be. Right off the bat though, you can see that the "forward flap" is essentially straight and the front end sits low. She ended up shimming the front of my Mattes to lift the front....while saying that, "Sometimes we shim for the rider and not the horse!" Yeah, okay. 

I had to drop my stirrups a hole to not have my knee shooting over the flap. This left me reaching for the stirrups and in subsequent rides feeling like I was losing especially the right one outright. Needless to say I was in full meltdown mode trying to figure out WTF I was going to do when I returned this saddle as wildly unsatisfactory. I absolutely cannot dick around for another year finding something. 

So do I go to another fitter? Because the trust level is lowwww with this one now. But she took my County in on $2k trade. Does that only count as store credit? Or is she going to completely refund me the $4k this saddle cost? WHY DO THESE EVEN NEED TO BE QUESTIONS?!

I had Opie's PEMF lady take some pics for me in the saddle so I could see if I was being completely overdramatic and just needed to adjust to a longer dressage leg etc etc. 

As soon as I got on she was like, "Your stirrups don't look too long at all. If anything they still look to short."

OMG STFU THEY ARE NEVER GETTING LONGER.

It actually ended up being a more informative, helpful five minutes with her than it was in alllll the time I spent with the fitter. She took some video, made a bunch of observations, and then brought me over and yanked the tiny jumper blocks the fitter had put in out and repositioned them a couple inches lower. That instantly made my leg feel more stable and pushed it back out of a chair seat. We then repositioned them from their lower point further back. That helped even more. This took all of two seconds and made me go from "This saddle is gone" to "Maybe we can work with this". 

I'm still going to get DL's opinion on it on Friday for my lesson. That will be my seven days to return it no strings attached and I already told the fitter it was contingent upon my trainer's approval. 

Still. That is A LOT of money to feel meh about something that's theoretically going to last me for my young horse's entire career. 

1.5 Weeks

Well, we went from one of our best lessons yet to a complete write off, washout of a lesson the very next week. 

I never was able to replicate the good things--aka the canter--that we got from previous lesson on my own. During his PEMF session he was uncharacteristically pretty back sore. DL did warn me that he was going to be sore working so hard in such a new way, but I guess in my head it was going to be more of a cumulative thing and not an immediate result. 

For our lesson, I thought he felt alright warming up, but my hands started bouncing and I felt like a jumbled mess which turns out ties into how Opie is feeling. The better he goes, the easier he is for me to ride. Things kind of spiraled into general grossness as the lesson went on. Any time we put on the pressure to do more than flop around, Opie adamantly said no. 

I gave him a canter each way in half seat which loosened his back up, but he wasn't interested in doing anything that resembled real work. DL had us back on the circle at the walk and we moved in and out of haunches in and haunches out as an exercise to loosen him up--while telling me no half pass because she caught on immediately that he loves that as an evasion. 

We quit there. DL suggested adding in Buteless to his daily life as we start ramping up the big kid work and his body transitions, which I did.

Saturday he got a quick bareback spin because I could not resist getting to ride in our outdoor for the first time this year.

Sunday was 80* and sunny and glorious so K and I loaded up our ponies and went to the park for the first time this year. We got plenty of canters in, splash parties galore, and walking on the buckle in between. 

On Monday, when I usually would give him a day off after the park, it was super warm again outside with snow in the forecast for later in the week so back to the outdoor we went.

He's been really rude and dishonest about my outside aids the past few weeks. I put my outside leg on and just falls inside--or like dives into the inside. Zero outside rein connection. So right off the bat we addressed that. On a circle, hold the inside bend, and turn off my outside aids. 

He. Was. PISSED.

There was much flailing and leaping and trying to run through my outside aids, but I held firm and did not give in an inch from what I was asking. Eventually he caved and did what the aids were telling him to do. We did our haunches in to out on the circle at the walk, and from there I had a rideable horse. I was able to do t/c that focused on me and my position while he went around like a trained horse. Love it.

Tuesday he had off, this morning half the freshly painted jumps were up in the indoor so obvi we had a quick spin over them. I continued working on making my arms side reins, pulling my right shoulder back, and making the outside aids a thing we live with. 

He was literally perfect for all of it. All 2'6". Single vertical around to a 3 stride vertical to oxer, to a rail topped gait. Then we did the gate to vertical bending line. 

The first time he landed and I went to turn him and he was like, "wtf why are you running me into a jump where are we going abort you idiot!" and came back to a walk before I booted him into the trot and made it over the vertical out. The second time he knew we were turning but I didn't half halt on landing and he ran past the distance. Third time was the charm: he knew the game, I put in a half halt, fucking crushed it. Put it all together for a mini course and nailed every distance and every lead and ended there. Riding forward and straight, man. Makes it all come together lol.

We were supposed to get our saddle today, but it was rescheduled yet again. Hopefully Friday now which means our lesson will get reschuled, but at this point the saddle situation needs to be sorted for good.

Oops, there one is

Friday's lesson was life affirming. Or, if not that dramatic, then at the very least Third Level affirming. 

Finally.

I feel like it was only yesterday we weren't allowed off a circle.

LOL jk we still sometimes get put on circle timeout.

love when it's warm enough for outdoor lessons

I told DL that we've been breezing through our warm up trot (which has felt super for a warm up trot--like, super) and then putting in the hard work at getting the canter in order which in turn makes the sitting trot feel amazing. So once we were done warming up at the trot on our own, she sent us into the canter.

She wanted us to do shoulder-fore or shoulder-in down the rail which turned out to be next to impossible. It's been no secret Opie's shoulders are what's holding us back in pretty much every movement, but hot damn getting those things unlocked never fails to impress.

After we started a fight over hanging on the left rein (DL: "You two are caught up in this rein battle and it's totally irrelevant to what we're trying to do here."), we got assigned exercises instead. Left lead canter, SI (as much as possible) down the long side, turn down center line, go back to the rail holding the counter canter, and SI in counter canter.

also my face when she told us to do SI in counter canter

I literally did not think this was going to be possible. 

Instead not only did we manage to do it, it got him super straight, we both let go of the left rein, and as we came near the end of one long side I got him too bent so that when I put my leg on he quietly and cleanly popped a change. I was cackling in delight and let him come back to the walk to pat him while DL was like ::facepalm:: "Alright, we can take a quick break." Listen, DL, this is a HUGE DEAL. Okay, so it wasn't intentional, but it was easy and sane and those two things do not get associated with Opie and changes.

We changed directions and the exercise this way was picking up the counter canter from the walk already in SI. That surprisingly wasn't too hard, probably because we'd already done so much hard work the other direction. From there we turned down the quarter line and leg yielded to the center line. When we got to A, turn onto the true canter lead, 10m circle, walk on center line, turn back the other direction, back into SI to pick up counter canter. Getting him straight was hard, but as DL said, he needs to learn to canter between the aids and be super straight underneath me. All of this is what is going to lead right into (intentional) changes. 

That took up our entire lesson, but it felt so good to get the affirmation that DL thinks we're capable of Third. Like, despite all our bad habits and things that need to be fixed, it's still solidly in her plan for us. 

The next day I tried to replicate some of the work. It didn't go well in the canter at all. DL warned me he would probably get sore as we went through this work, and my thighs were burning so he was probably sore as well. He was LAYINGGGG on the reins. I finally got him softer with a hundred rein backs and then floating the reins at him in the canter.

The trot to finish was alright. Not the best quality, but eh. I gave him Sunday off, and then this morning we did a stretchy only ride. He was super crooked starting off in the trot to the right, but once I got him straight and into the outside rein we started cooking. The left canter was not much of anything, but the right lead I got him connected to the outside rein and felt him step underneath himself and square up which made the quality so much better. More stretchy trot, and then a banging rollong stretchy walk to finish.

Fast and Furious

I ended up doing some trial and error with riding Opie and his stitched up face. The area around the stitches was juuustt swollen enough that the cheek piece/bit hanger rubbed against the bottom stitch no matter what bridle I tried. So the first day I threw the neck rope on him, did a little w/t, and then reminded him of his useless trick of standing front feet on the mounting block.

After that I clipped reins onto his flat halter and did a couple rides that way.

He honestly was much better for that than I thought he was going to be as he can plod along on a trail ride in a halter all day, but he's been pretty resistant to any sort of nose pressure in the past. Maybe that whole learning how to ride better thing helped out some.

Finally over the weekend I decided to retry the bridle. I snugged the "throat latch" up one more hole and it was just enough to keep the cheek off the stitches. He was good on the Friday, and then Sunday the temperature dropped twenty degrees with 30mph wind. It took me ten minutes to wrangle his wild bronco ass out of the field, and I made the choice to put on his thunder shirt and stick him on the longe before even getting him tacked up because his brain was visibly melting out of his head on the crossties.

After a good ten minutes of running and snorting and leaping, he felt sane enough to get on. He started off well enough, but at the canter left he kept blowing through my outside aids and trying to be act like, "You're going to make me change and that makes me SO ANXIOUS I can't possibly keep cantering anymore!!!1!"

Yeah, nah. Get over yourself, changes were never on the menu, get the fuck off my leg and straighten up. We had a little CTJ and suddenly could circle like a normal horse.

He felt crooked, but I imagine even skipping one week of lessons has made me crooked AF again so here we are. Counter canter helped straigten the canter and a straighter trot followed.

When I got home around 12:30 I still hadn't heard an update on the puppy that was supposed to be here Saturday afternoon before things went off the fucking rails. In the end, at 1pm Hubby and I jumped in the car and drove 5 hours to MA, grabbed the puppy ourselves, and turned around to get home at 10:15pm.

introducing ferdinand magellan
aka ferdi!

With the addition of a puppy, it's meant zooming through barn chores in the morning, coming home to let him out of his crate so he can party until he can't keep his eyes open, and then run back to the barn for a ride within a two hour window so he doesn't have to be in the crate too long.

Yesterday Opie was perfect for this set up. W/t/c, sitting trot, stretchy trot. His medium trot is feeling  AMAZING after making sure the canter is straight and collected and forward, and then he's more than happy to bounce around in a stretchy trot to finish. A++ lots of GHM awarded before I hurried back home.

Today he was pretty resistant to bending right so I ended up picking up a dressage whip and giving him two taps with it. That, of course, sent him spiraling, but I ignored him and just kep insisting on the right bend until he got a grip on his life and did what I was asking. We skipped the left canter because that took some time to sort out, but the sitting trot was super followed by the best medium trot he's ever given me. We were both soaked at that point. Fortunately it was warm enough for a quick shower afterwards.

The short, focused rides seem to do well for us. It gives me less time to get distracted and inevitably fuck things up. I know we're going to have some serious corrections for DL to sort out on Friday though!

Unrelated, on Saturday morning I volunteered/audited my GMO's Vincent Flores symposium again. Unlike last year which was amazing, this year almost no one braved the shitty weather and it turned into more lowkey lessons for each rider which was honestly kind of underwhelming from an auditing point of view. I did pick up these pieces:

• SI is the same movement at 2nd as it is at Int, the only difference is collection. 
• Work on the gaits instead of the movement. 
• It takes two sessions to teach SI but it takes two years to teach the collection.
• I only give them a long rein at the end or if they've done something significantly amazing. If they walk on the long rein all the time they think every time you pick up the contact they go to trot or canter and then they jig in the walk. They need to always be working even if they're taking a break.

Brake Checked

A light week of working on my positioning kept Opie from revisiting his Spring Stupids. Making sure I put his brain thunder shirt on might have helped, too. And then I gave both of us a fun day and set up four trot poles down one long side and three 2' bounces down the other.

He was good for the poles, but wanted to run into the bounces--which of course they do not allow you to do which is what makes them so wonderful lol. He finally got things sorted out to the left, really lifting his shoulders and bouncing instead of boinging through. To the right he was convinced he couldn't get in there without going full steam ahead, so I made him trot in and that worked out well. We wrapped up by trotting into the bounces, cantering out, staying straight all the way to the end of the ring, back down into the trot, and through the trot poles. Rinse and repeat a few times each direction. Definitely an exercise I'll use again, it was hard work for him while staying fun. 

For our lesson the next day we got tons of compliments at the trot. She was like, praise Jesus you're finally figuring this shit out! So we moved on to the canter which was a mess, and decided to push that off for another day to get it sorted. 

I'm focusing so much of sitting in the middle of the saddle and pulling my right shoulder back and sinking into the seat (and on and on) that I keep blocking him with different parts of my body and fuck knows if I can pinpoint where that is. However I know I'm now also really bad about following evenly with both reins/arms/elbows. My left elbow needs to come back about ten feet which it doesn't want to do because when I pull my right shoulder back my left elbow goes forward. 

BEING CROOKED IS APPARENTLY MY SPECIALITY.

The shits is that one the way home--having already had a bit of a hairy trailer ride between the rain/snow/hail and absurd wind--a woman blew through a stop sign on a cross road and I had to brake check Opie to avoid hitting her. I felt him scramble around, but I was in sight of the barn so kept going to get him unloaded. 

Fortunately he already had a PEMF appointment scheduled so he got worked on while I waited for the vet to come stitch his face up.

Also fortunately he just kicked off his month of ulcergard so that went nicely with a week of SMZs and a couple days of Bute. He looked stiff/sore behind when I longed him quick on Sunday, but he looked perfectly fine this morning.

I'll get on him tomorrow for a light ride to see where he's at. He felt okay enough to try to double barrel the shit out of his friend in turnout this morning at the very least.