Maintaining the High Performance Athlete

We're going to use the term "high performance" real loosely here. More like high maintenance. High neurotic-ness? High amount of monies coming out of the bank account.

I was going to do a lesson recap for my regular bi-weekly lesson today, but instead Opie bitch slapped the kickboard in the arena yesterday and gave himself enough of a slice on his foot I canceled it.

how precious

That was brought upon by asking him to walk in hand, by the way. Because I'd already given up on doing anything productive under saddle - he was having A Day - and had already let him rip around on the longe line until he stopped himself, and I really just wanted him to show that he could be a civilized member of society. But he could not. I was all, "Don't mow me down, Opie. That's rude." And he was like, "Fuck you and everything around you."

He's fine. He'll live. It barely looks like anything this morning, but I didn't want to get arena dirt jammed in there while it finished closing.

In lieu of no riding post, I thought I'd do a recap of some of his notable injuries and maintenance needs since the blog went private so that if I refer back to any of them you'll know what I'm talking about.

He had the usual run of his annual emergency vet appointments. A puncture wound to the ankle that barely missed the joint that took forever to heal. I had to brake check him in the trailer to avoid t-boning a woman running a stop sign that required getting his face stitched.

At the end of 2020, he ended up super sore to the point where he was borderline lame after a routine chiro adjustment. I had the vet out to x-ray and ultrasound his left stifle because that really seemed like the area it was in, but after finding no results the vet advised me to have someone else come out and look because "she wasn't really a lameness vet." Girl. What. You couldn't have told me that $1,000 ago?? I put in a call to my friend who had been doing PEMF for awhile and she immediately said it was not his stifle, he'd pulled his groin. She did three treatments in a week and he was completely sound. He got put on the bi-weekly full body PEMF schedule after that.

In spring of 2023, Opie got his first hock injections. He was beyond feral at the canter and was taking his rearing as an evasion to a whole new level. A little go-go juice in the joints later, he was 110% more comfortable so we do those annually now.

The vet recommended hind shoes to support the injections, and Farrier agreed, so he's been in a full set since then. However, it wasn't until this past spring that Farrier figured out which hind shoes he went best in. Once she got that sorted though, all his remaining unnevenness disappeared, and his uneven pelvis (His right hip was a good 3" lower than the left, I think I've mentioned this before as it's been that way since I got him. Multiple chiros, vets, saddle fitters, pole work, stability mat work, etc did nothing.) ended up lifting so it's maybe only an inch crooked.

now he wears hind boots in turnout because he's so
narrow behind he whacks himself with his shoes

Last winter, he turned super spooky which he is not. He's a total fucking weirdo and things trigger him that make zero sense, but he is not a spooky horse. We pulled a Lyme titer and it was light positive. Opie FEELS everything though, so we did a month of Doxy and within a week he was back to his normal self. He lives in his Back on Track mesh sheet once it starts getting cold since that diagnosis as it does make a huge difference in his comfort levels.

And finally, how do you keep weight on a nutty OTTB that used to weave and stall walk, and then got his whole life uprooted and moved to a new farm for the first time since he came off the track?

At the last barn, I had him on Buckeye stabilized rice bran, dry alfalfa pellets, TriAmino, Relaxmor, and Ulc-R-Aid. On top of his grain and the candy hay the barn fed. But the hay wasn't fed unlimited, and he was just so neurotic all the time, keeping weight on him and his brain in his head was an uphill battle.

When we moved to this barn, it's unlimited hay, but the quality is for the rest of the fatties in the barn not a lit OTTB. So I dropped the Relaxmor but kept the rest. However, Opie learned what minis are when we moved here, switched to night turnout for the first time in his life, and spent sixteen hours a day parked in the corner of his field trying to catch a glimpse of the midget demons around the side of the barn where they live. He lost a lot of weight. Obviously.

A whole bunch of things changed for him that have him looking the best he's ever looked now. 

• His pasture friend re-injured his leg and got moved to solo turnout, so Opie got new friends - who live right next to the minis. Being able to see them took away the mystique and he's fine with them now, although he is very watchful whenever anyone is in the paddock with them. 
• We switched back to day turnout for the winter which I think also helps his little brain. 
• I looked for a forage additive that I could feed more of as I was only comfortable giving him 1lb of the alfalfa pellets dry, and of course he won't eat anything soaked. I ended up with Triple Crown Stress Free which is essentially chopped alfalfa with stomach buffering additives. I think it smells horrible, but he fucking loves it so he gets 2lbs of that every day.
• With the grain and hay switches between barns, his Vitamin E was also low so we took the recommendation of a former barnmate whose horse has PSSM and gave him Santa Cruz's weight gain which is an oil with added vit E. He gets that 2x a day and he started noticeably packing on the weight in two weeks. 
• And that's all he gets for "supplements"!

agreed, this post has been super boring

Sorry that wasn't a fun ride recap. We couldn't turn left yesterday so I was looking forward to taking notes on how to fix that, but horses gonna horse. Hopefully he's good to go for his saddle fitting appointment Saturday!

Bonus Learning

On Saturday, one of the upper level trainers MB rides with came out to the barn to teach a few lessons. MB has ridden Opie with her twice off property, but this was my first time riding him in front of her. The two GP trainers that she trains with are polar opposites in the very best of ways. They're the perfect balance to each other. 

The one - who winters south - is super optimistic, she is here to pump you up, she tells you that you can go FEI and that's why you're gasping for air as she puts you through your paces and rocks your world with exercises you didn't even know you or your horse were capable of, and hot damn by the time she's done teaching you're like, "FEI?! I'm going to the Olympics!"

The other one - who we rode with over the weekend - is pragmatic to a fault. She is a perfectionist, and she will not settle for anything less from you. You're sitting an inch crooked? She sees it. Fix it. You've tightened your forearm without even noticing? Don't worry, she has! When you get done, you're like, "Can I even ride a horse?" But you also know that every single thing she's pointed out has made you that much better, and most importantly the horse is going to go that much better for you because of what she's said.

I'm not gonna lie, I was kind of scared to ride in front of her lol. But it ended up being a great lesson and I couldn't wait to get back on the next day.

butt cape weather needs to go so we can embrace our outfits

So here's how it went:

• Because I'm so tall (5'10) and Opie is short (16hh, although he was only 15.2hh when I bought him and he's always been built like a brick shit house), I need to be extra aware of what all my height I have sitting above him is doing. A millimeter is going to throw him off balance - especially him because he is the most sensitive creature alive. This immediately showed up when I tried to steer him left by falling off his left side. And by "falling" I mean leaning in perhaps one degree. It was enough to dump him on his shoulder.
• My left seat bone sits too heavy, think about lifting it up and forward to give him somewhere to go. Put my left seat bone over my left foot. 
• He throws me off his right side because he doesn't want me to sit there, and he is incredibly successful at tricking me into getting me off it. This has been a first ride off the track issue, it's gotten better, MB has given me a fighting chance x1000 since I started working with her, but it was a solid year before I could reliably activate my right leg/seat on my own.
• Sit like a capital H not a K. 
• Make my right ribs smaller (aka stretch the left ribs up). 
• My right shoulder pulls forward, and I'm too heavy with my right bicep. That weakens my back which is part of my trunk/core/stability. 
• I've been working with a chiro/PT for almost exactly a year now. I went in because I couldn't turn my neck right (like, at all), and turns out it was actually tied in to my left shoulder blade area. We've done sooo much work getting my shoulders and upper back strong and loose and even, but they are what they are. I do my exercises and stretches, Dr Z cracks me back into alignment when needed and loads me up with homework, and we just constantly try to improve that. It is what it is. 
• I can actually post upright now tho. That sounds stupid, but I legit thought it was something I was simply not physically capable of doing.
• MB tells me to "drop the neck" when Opie starts getting tight in his underneck because I am an adult ammy to the core and I'd prefer to just pull on him as my first line of defense. Instead, of course, I need to soften the neck and push it down and forward thus lifting his back. This trainer told me to imagine dropping the bit for a couple strides and think of it clinking him in the teeth.
• She asked how he had been doing before I got on, and I told her that just like she and MB had worked on last month with him, I was having trouble lifting the right side in the canter, but that I thought that was always going to be a thing for him. Yeah, nah. Turns out if you're hyper critical of what every inch of your body is doing every single second your horse also goes like a capital H not a K. 
• I'd like to show 4-1 this year (it's a big ole test, but really the only thing giving me the stink eye right now is the line of changes with consist of two of his bad direction), and she kept reminding me to "ride him up."

• The changes:
• I asked if she would put eyes on the R-L change to see if she could give us some insight/exercises on how to fix it. We showed her a couple, and she was like, "Hmm. That's it?" Because he is very quiet about the whole ordeal now. They're just whacky AF. So I was like, "Yes, wtf is he doing??" "He looks like he's tripping," she deadpanned. Poor Opie. 
• Then she asked to see the L-R which I do consider confirmed now. They get better the further you go into the ride as he gets more rocked back and collected. He waits for the ask, back to front, easy peasy. I hadn't really packaged him up yet because we were very bam bam bam from one thing to the next, so he did change cleanly, but he did his little jump before to psych himself up. If you're not paying attention it gives the impression he's changing up front first, but he's not actually changing. He's just jumping. And then changing. You can hear in the video she thought it was late, but I fortunately haven't run into a judge yet that thought so and it usually scores a 6 to 6.5

• Her exercise she wanted us to try for the R-L was:
• From the right lead, leg yield off the third track to the wall and ask for the change into the counter canter.
• Turns out he has zero response to my left aids when presented like that. Whoops. 
• But that ties in to, am I blocking with the left seat bone? Which ties in to my last lesson with MB when she had to keep telling me to think of standing in my right stirrup - which goes hand in hand with getting off his left side, and keeping my right side aids on. 
• Opie....am I the problem, it's me? But she did say he was not getting the LH out of the way quickly enough, and he flings that RF out in a patented karate chop so I think we're both crooked. 

• This ALL ties in to the theme she kept repeating: I'm very tall and he is short. I have a beautiful, draping leg (thankyouuu it took me literal years to drop my stirrups three holes to where I'm at now) - however, it doesn't do anything.
• This is straight facts.
• She kept telling me to "feel your boots." My boots/feet are the foundation that the rest of my body is working off. Use them.
• This ties in to what BM constantly has to tell me - stretch my inside thigh. That activates my leg. It makes me do things with it. It's so hard.

just me and my long legs, along for
the ride, no active participation to be found.
horse slightly behind the vertical and barely
engaged because we were trotting at 0.02mph
while i tried to figure out what a calf muscle is

• She did have some good things to say that didn't involve fixing!
• I sit up tall with my chest (just not my shoulders lol).
• I sit with a broad, even pelvis (when not getting knocked askew by my crooked horse).
• After the lesson, she said the work we're doing on our own and with MB is 100% on the right track. She's seen huge leaps in improvement from MB's two lessons riding him to where he was at under me.
• She also said he's not remotely built for this job or anything I've asked him to do, but I've done such a good job getting him strong and correct that he can do it. And that's the very best compliment of them all!

Welcome Back

What a doozy the past however many years it's been since this blog has last been live. Writing for Emma kicked things back into gear (I went ahead and made that post live on this blog as well, you can read it somewhere on here idk how technology works), although it has been lurking in my mind lately. I actually started off continuing to blog a ton once I made it private, but even that eventually stopped one day.

I know it took everyone by surprise that I closed it to public viewing as I made zero announcement or any allusion that I was about to do so, but honestly it had been in the back of my mind for quite awhile. The vibe got weird. The vibe of the entire blogosphere. Too much of comparing ourselves to each other, too much holier than thou vibes, and quite frankly mentally I was no longer up to editing myself in fear that some random half formed thought or sentence was going to trigger someone into writing their own post that not at all subtly tied back into whatever had offended them. 

It felt like if you tried to be authentic, you were a pessimist.

If you shared your struggles, you're only struggling because you're doing it wrong.

If your goals were different from other bloggers goals, they're not the right ones.

There's a quote from Ben Atkinson I really like when asked what's a common habit he hates to see in riders. His answer was "The 'don't do that'/'they're wrong' as opposed to 'I like doing it this way' culture." #relatable

I'm still a little wary of opening this back up to the public. I know there are going to be plenty of people that return to reading it - which is great, thankssomuch - but I know the majority of those same people are never going to comment, never going to engage with me directly, and are most definitely going to be screenshotting and gossiping because that do be the world we live in now.

I also have to take into account now that there are two toxic, whacky AF people that know this blog exist that were in my inner circle of onsite horse people. They took a wee journey that made my life, and many others, absolutely miserable and now not only are they still toxic, but also probably bored which is never a great combo. Possibly one day I will do a whole post explaining that past situation, but most assuredly it will be password protected.

I will put out this disclaimer for anyone returning or reading for the first time:

• This is not a family friendly, cheery, happy, no problems ever happen here blog. 
• There's going to be lots of swearing; I fucking love swearing! 
• I don't sugar coat training issues. I'm not going to pretend like my horse is perfect every ride, or that I never make mistakes, or that things I've tried or believed in the past are cemented in my horsey philosophy. 
• I call my horse bad names sometimes because I am a FIRM believer that he does not in fact take personal offense when I refer to him as a nappy donkey. He still gets candy. He doesn't care, guys. 
• I love bullet points. Even if they're not needed.

this is my horse. he looks very big and strong and powerful.
he is only 16hh.
he's shaped like a crooked dairy cow if you look at him from behind.

Now that all that is taken care of, you're probably wondering what we've been up to! I honestly can't remember when I took this private so I don't know where you left off. Whoopsies. If you're super nosy and/or super bored which I'm sure some of you will be, feel free to go back and read up to when I quit writing all together. Probably 90% of it will be about trying to teach Opie the changes. Spoiler alert, we still only have one. But that L-R is solid now!

Feels like a good time for more bullet points to hit some of the bigger milestones so at least we're all kind of on the same page.

• I finally reached out and acquired an outside trainer. We were trailering out for weekly lessons, and things started off great before she decided that my horse who I was successfully showing Second and trying to move up to Third wasn't fit to compete at Training level. According to her, he was too difficult to ride, and I wasn't a good enough rider to get him where I wanted to go. So that ended that relationship.
• I went back to training myself because I was shooketh in the confidence department - not because I was afraid of my horse, but because that trainer had systematically dismantled all my belief in myself.
• But then we found a new trainer! (We will refer to her as MB.) Someone I'd already known from riding and showing, but I'd never reached out to for lessons because get this, guys - she didn't have her Bronze, and I was trying to get mine so she must not have anything to offer. The Bronze curse hits us all at some point, none of us are immune lol. 
• Turns out you can be a really, really good trainer even without one tho. Shocking, I know. 
• This trainer got us our Bronze in 2023! She pounded basics into us with the perfect blend of enthusiasm and pragmatism, filling in holes in both our educations while still pushing us out of our comfort zones. She works so well for Opie and me because she gets the Thoroughbred brain and the adult ammy brain which usually are on a similar rollercoaster of craziness. Not a lesson goes by where she doesn't calmly call out, "It's fine!" as Opie is flinging himself through the air or I'm sobbing in frustration for reasons varying between he feels stuck and doesn't think he can, or I don't get something perfectly correct on the very first try. Both valid reactions, right? We're fine!
• Our barn closed its doors. It was a HOT MESS in the way only horse people can do things. 
• My trainer took us in, fortunately having a stall open the day before we moved in, and Opie did a complete 180. No more weaving. No more being herd bound. His strength and his focus are through the roof under saddle. 
• Being surrounded by a community that's entirely dressage focused, but most importantly learning focused, has blown my mind and my own riding skills out of the water. I've improved more in the past four months than I did in the past four years. 

one of our first rides at the new barn.
sir was like, whatevs, even after having essentially a month off

Even though it's winter in New York, and we keep missing blocks of riding because it's winter in NY, we're doing so much riding and lessoning. We currently lesson every other week with my trainer, a few times she has ridden Opie with a couple GP trainers she lessons with, and this past weekend one of those trainers came and I got to take a lesson on him with her myself. So expect a blog post about that. How fun!

So welcome back to the blog, y'all. Try to keep the assholeness wrapped up. I promise it's more fun to be supportive and positive than it is to be a gossipy, grumpy bitch. And remember, when comparing yourself to others, you're running a race that doesn't exist. There is no finish line/end goal to riding. Do the thing, enjoy the journey, enjoy your fucking horse!

Do the Thing

It’s January, and it’s single digits in most places, and really what better time to have an existential crisis than right now because there is literally nothing better to do. But I have seen a continuing trend the past few years of people reevaluating their riding goals and going different directions than when I first started blogging.

Back then, the goal was get your Bronze medal and go Training level in eventing. It didn't seem to matter where you were starting, what horse you had, what location you were in, what your training program was. It was just this kind of weird ambiguous Must Have. Was there a plan in place to achieve either of these things? What was going to happen after - like, was that the end goal of all riding goals? And most importantly, why? Why did everyone want these things?

I still haven’t figured any of that out lol. Maybe we were all just young and dumb and naively ambitious.

After leaving eventing to switch entirely to dressage, the Bronze goal seems to the universal standard of "I did something!" I’m fucking stoked I got mine. It was hard as hell, and I’m proud as hell to have it. But I've seen a lot of stupid ways to get there just because people think it’s mandatory to have it or you can’t be considered a dressage rider.

Two scores at 2-1 barely over 60%? It counts; we can cross that level off because we're totally ready for Third now! No, my horse doesn't counter canter or know what a turn on the haunches is. I'm not particularly good at the sitting trot and I have absolutely no idea what real collection is, but collection doesn't matter because now I can put my horse in a double bridle and fake it!

I get the frustration on scoring and judging because these tricks do slide by. People can get their Bronzes with no concept of how or why they're doing any of the movements they're doing because they’re on a nice horse. You are scored better for a bigger moving horse that’s round. But just because those horses are scoring well doesn’t mean it’s the only way you’re going to get good scores.

I talk about this all the time with my trainer. I have a small, mediocre moving OTTB. I am far from a beautiful rider to watch. Opie currently finds it easier to do all his lateral work with his nose poked out further than what we know they'll be looking to score well in the ring. We're constantly working on getting him to "drop his neck" and get deep, because deep for him lifts his back and makes it more correct. But when I've got him moving correctly, and he's relaxed, he's adjustable and he's correct and we've scored 8s on our medium canters - better than a tense, giant, but fancy AF warmblood. 

I think people underestimate how much of training is NOT a good time. It's hard work. It never stops being hard work. It's tedious, it's frustrating, more often than not you're going backwards instead of forwards. You hit health problems in both horses and humans, the weather sucks, money is a novelty – the list goes on - but there's no magic wand to fix any of that. Get on the horse. Do the thing. One day you're going to look behind you and be like, "Oh, damn. Look at everything we actually did accomplish even though it certainly didn't feel like it at the time."

And if you're not committed to being in the dredges and putting in the hard work, maybe commit to being a trail rider instead. Which is fine! Who cares! Horses are awesome no matter what you do with them! You don't have to show to own a horse. Despite what I've seen and heard from professionals (including an Olympic judge I audited this fall), horses are not going to go extinct if we stop showing them.

But if you want to accomplish these big lofty goals, it takes SO MUCH TIME and SO MUCH WORK and more than anything it requires you to go out there and DO THE THING. Suck at it. Learn from sucking at it. Go out and suck some more. Surround yourself with a support system that is always trying to make you better of course, but you can't assume that every single time you take your horse off property it's going to be a slam dunk

It's frustrating to see people quit early, throw up their hands, and just say, "Well it can't be done because I didn't get it done right off the bat." Especially people that want to ride at the higher levels but have never done so, and never had to produce their own horse to that level. Do you think the schoolmasters you've ridden were born schoolmasters? Ask your trainer how much Not Fun work it took to get them to that level where they can now teach you all these fancy moves you aspire your own horse to do. 

You don't know what you don't know. And the more you learn, the more you start to figure out how much you still need to learn. And if that doesn't excite you, inspire you, make you want to dig in and do the hard shit to get better, if you can still come up with a hundred excuses on why you can't start at all, maybe it is time to reevaluate what horses mean to you.

2025 Goals

 1. Show 4-1, hopefully at a recognized show but Twilight will count.

2. Get the R-L change correct. Doesn't need to be confirmed, but get him to at least understand the mechanics of it.

3. Get the show ring trot we get at home in the actual show ring.

4. Get a 7 on the shoulder-in. Stretch goal, no 4s or 5s.

5. Maintain current positive, hopeful attitude and continue commitment to learning in a more sympathetic manner. 

6. More cross training - jumping and trail riding. 

Dopie Does Jumping

Opie has been feeling really great in our work ever since we quit lessoning with DL. So. That is what it is, whatever it is. 

The flat work has been super productive and has made me super happy, but it's nothing too exciting to write about. The jumping has all the sudden been a blast. In total dressage nerd fashion, the best part about it for me is that forever and ever 2'3" was our happy place. Now that the dressage has gone to a new level, 3' is our happy place. There was no need for the in-between heights because he's so strong and sure of his body with the flat work, it carries over to fence height.

3' oxer easy peasy

His dressage sessions haven't been particularly long, but they've been intense so I only try to do a couple a week. A good warm up ride before jumping is another sneaky, easy flat work ride before he gets to do the fun of jumping. We've also been doing tons of hacking out after rides, so I feel like the mental aspect for both of us has become so much better.

3'3 also fun and easy

love a giant X

Yesterday--after breaking my tripod so being unable to set up my Pivo on Wednesday--I had Hubby come out to get some media. Because I'm me, the first few jumping attempts were a hot mess. Hubby was smart enough to be like, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're pulling on him so bad before the fence." Which was a good reminder that his canter has been amazing lately, so get that canter and then just let it ride. Unsurprisingly, once I stopped pulling and just let him roll, everything was perfect from there on out.

An end to that chapter

Two weeks ago I parted ways with DL. There were many varied reasons.

Emotionally: Driving home from the last lesson I ended up taking with her, I was in tears because I felt like Opie is too complicated of a horse and I'm never going to be able to be a good enough rider to correctly figure him out. I was struggling with, "Do I sell him to find something easier? Do I change disciplines? Do I settle with the fact that we're never going to be successful at Third level? Because clearly I'm not fixable enough to get on a difficult horse's level."

I asked Opie's bodyworker AV (who is obviously also a friend) to come out and just get on him for me to give me her opinion. Does he really suck that much? Do I suck that much? Is it my fault, his, what's your read on the situation basically. She agreed, but had me come over and watch her lesson with another local trainer beforehand. 

A lot of what SG (her trainer) said during her lesson was similiar to what DL taught in mine. Leg yielding on a circle, palms up to bring the elbows in, sit in the saddle, etc. But the delivery was so much more positive and upbeat, like SG was riding along with you every stride. 

AV's take on Opie was that he's more trained than her own horse who she's had for 10+ years, has worked with a trainer with the majority of that time, and just finished out her Bronze on. Which, like, he really is. But her horse goes around on the contact as steady as they as they come and AV is a beautiful rider which is a big part of the picture, especially for showing. When she was done, she told me I needed to give myself a lot more credit because Opie is trained. He's super sensitive to the seat, and he does literally all the things he needs up to this level (minus sane changes...more on that later). She did think I should try out different bits because she felt like his mouth/jaw was the only area where she was feeling tension.

After watching her lesson, talking through her ride on Opie with her, and a lot of thinking for a few days, the big emotional conclusion I came to was: If my trainer makes me feel like I have to sell my horse to be able to ride--and even then....ehhh, you're a mess--that's probably not the right trainer for me. Especially when I have already taken him successfully through Second all by myself.

Professionally: Practically speaking, too, there was the issue of the earliest any lesson of mine ever started was twenty minutes late. DL would change my start time to accommodate things she needed to get done, which in theory was fine. I'm lucky enough to have a very flexible schedule so I could arrive whenever she told me, but we'd never actually start at that time. She taught a lesson before me that would drag into mine for sometimes 30+ minutes. Most of the time she'd give me the full 45 minutes to an hour once we did start, but the last lesson she left me hanging having accomplished absolutely nothing because she had a doctor's appointment to get to. 

Show Goals: Watching SG teach, everything was tying into what AV's goals were. You need these scores for this program? You want to try this test by the end of the year, and this one next season? Bam bam bam here's how we're going to accomplish that--with really good training and exercises, but they're aimed at test riding. That was never the case with DL, and it's something I went in really, really wanting. Of course I want to be a better rider, but I crave a tangible goal and I like showing. I also don't really care about scores aside from getting the coveted 60%. My idea of a successful show is a couple of those and rides I'm happy with. It felt like DL only wanted you in the ring if you were riding around like an Olympian. (Which, as an aside, is funny because I finally dug up her USDF lifetime score record. Dismal. Certainly shouldn't be discouraging people to get in the ring and try the thing.) Now I feel like I've blown an entire show season getting mind fucked by my trainer.

In the end, I do feel like I'm taking a lot away from my time with her. She did give me plenty of exercises to work through problems, and I feel like I needed that refresher kick in the ass of weekly eyes on me, but the past two weeks of not lessoning have been amazing. Both Opie and I are so much more relaxed in the work at our own pace. 

I've been riding in the double a little bit while waiting for some new snaffle bits to try, and I remembered how good he is in it. We've been working on the changes by asking for them down the long side out of the counter canter. Having the wall there kind of holding his proverbial hand has been super helpful and he's been so quiet with them. I'd call the R-L confirmed and the L-R a bit late behind, but unflustered while we work through it. I'm even able to canter him across the diagonal, give a half halt when he tenses anticipating a change, and have him actually half halt and carry on waiting for me to ask something. 

Mentally we're where we need to be right now. I don't think he's a lock for that 60% at 3-1 yet which pretty much erases what's left of the season unfortunately, but oh well. Live and learn. I'd like to lesson with SG myself but she's very expensive and not in the budget right now. So we'll go back to carrying on by ourselves for the foreseeable future, and hopefully by next year I'll have a better plan in place for our Bronze.