Spring stupids

Opie let his spring freak flag fly the day before our lesson last week. 

Things started off well, but then I got it in my head I could ask for more...as in, more than simple w/t/c. Could we add some collection? Some deeper bend? Some anything above First? 

The answer was no, not really. He finally said thanks but no thanks to leg yielding from the quarter line to the rail tracking right while maintaining straightness. He Noped himself up, down, and sideways until I finally got off to stick him on the longe where he ran himself into a sweaty mess. When I got back on,--with draw reins/safety reins--we were finally able to get our straight leg yield at the walk within a couple minutes.

It gave me a reason to give him a rinse, a fresh tail wash, and much needed mane wash so we'll call it a win. Fortunately this time around I've kept it in the back of my head that he's always satan in spring and it usually coincides with lack of hay consumption because he thinks the two shoots of spring grass count as a balanced diet. Which they do not. He's been on hay pellets for awhile now, but I ordered a box of ulcergard as well.

In our lesson, we went into the same leg yield that had sent Opie over the edge the day before. Right away he tried to use his neck as a weapon so we aborted mission to get that under control. You must be a straight horse. That means I must be a straight rider. Thus the basis for the rest of the ride.

Same old, same old--I lean too far right and can't pull my right shoulder back to save my life.

It was extremely frustrating as went around and around and around in both canter and trot trying to get my body sorted. What are my hands doing? Am I sitting up straight? Is my leg draped? Is my seat following? Are my elbows bent? Am I being even with my contact and not pulling on one rein or the other?

We finally took a little break where I expressed my frustration that I wasn't getting it. ALL of it. Right now. All at once. DL reminded me that this is years of bad habits we have to get sorted.

"You're very effective. You can do all the movements, but--"

"They're not being ridden correctly."

"Well....it's just that it's going to handicap you going up the levels if we don't get it right."

So trainer speak for yes, you're not riding them correctly. 

We really didn't end on a "good" note to say, but it is what it is. DL said if she could have me do one thing before the next lesson, it would be to stop falling off the right side of my horse.

The weekend got wasted by other things, but despite fresh snow and a high of 16* I got on to ride after doing the barn with that as my challenge.

I think it went well. I tried really fucking hard to focus on it. If it felt like I was falling off the left side I was probably barely right in the middle. My right shoulder felt like it was behaving, mostly because I was working my ass off to make it do so.

Basic w/t/c because I wanted to work on me. I had to make sure I was moving both arms and hands together or Opie got pissed and tight.

We finished by breaking down the TOH, which every time I do I unlock another tiny puzzle to making it correct. He steps wide behind, loses his balance, starts walking forward crooked AF, and then has to cross behind to not fall down. I made sure to get him to rein back slow, straight, not behind the vertical, and NOT wide behind. Then walk off slow and straight and not wide behind. If all that stayed on task the TOH was easy peasy. If any of that didn't go to plan, the hind legs crossed behind.

The canter

We finally got to touch on the canter in our lesson Friday. I think DL eventually just gave up on trying to get me to ride correct geometry in the trot for our first outdoor/standard dressage court ride of the season--one of which I have not been in since last September.

hello, i do not remember what all these letters mean

I was glad we were finally able to show this off a bit. We're there to fill holes and learn, but we do know some things and I haven't really felt like we've gotten to show any of it. The canter got much praise, and all she really wanted me to change was sitting deeper in my seat and pushing my hands forward. Of course as soon as I did that I felt my abs engage and his shoulders come up and tah dah we were really cooking. 

His walk to canters and canter to walks were both perfect, and we wrapped that up by her saying the canter was going to fix everything about the trot.

Saturday morning I rode again, and again I felt like I was really nailing the canter. So much so that I asked him for a change his easy way. He promptly bolted through it and to get a pulley rein and run into the wall before I got him back under control.

So. Good to see those aren't actually any better.

::facepalm::

Maybe it was just because he was in the double?

We were able to finish with more good canter, and then his sitting trot was ahhh-mazing. I pushed my hands out where they belong, got my wrists under control, and yet still had soft contact and a soft horse. It was two laps of perfection so I quit there and offered him up to M after promising her I would let her ride him like six months ago.

Opie easily impresses people coming off the lesson horses. He does amazing things like stands quietly at the mounting block and moves forward when you put your leg on. Everything else is just a fancy bonus. 

He worked his nuts off tho for the both of us and got some quality time with the massage gun when he was done followed by the next day off.

Monday he got his feet done first thing--snow pads off, new steel on. He's never had a problem after the farrier so I tacked him planning on a quick stretchy ride. Instead, as soon as we picked up the trot, he felt...not quite right. Definitely in no way lame, but kind of mincy and footy. I called Farrier in and had her take a look. She agreed if she had to pinpoint it LF. I got off and stuck him on the longe where BM watched too and said she thought maybe RH. But all parties were in agreeance--not lame, just not right.

Fortunately for him he had a PEMF appointment that afternoon, and he got a gram of bute with his dinner.

The next day's ride was inconclusive.

He felt great starting out w/t. Best of all, I felt great! I was like, "Look at these hands! They're together! The wrists are straight! The contact is following! I know what sitting up is!" 

Then we cantered and it. felt. disgusting. I tried leg yielding, circling, transitions--none of it worked so back to trot and some haunches out on a circle to getting him stepping under himself. Canter was marginally better after that. I got him softer so each footfall wasn't rattling my teeth, but that was pretty much the highlight.

When we came back to the walk he felt stabby on the LF again.

Stretchy trot cool out he felt amazing. And I figured out how to control my right shoulder which was the best feeling ever!

I packed his feet because it made me feel better and gave him today off so we'll see what tomorrow brings.

To the Left

Our lesson last week was SO. HARD.

We started off attacking my position again, and everything was just feeling super stilted and braced--hands bouncing, horse brace, me braced. Finally DL was like, "Just do whatever you do when you're by yourself" and immediately my whole body melted and both Opie and I felt a hundred times more relaxed.

She was like, "What did you change?" I of course tried to find all the bad things I was doing, but really...I just let go of the tension and stopped trying to hold myself in this rigid, proper pose. She paused for a moment and then said, "You're doing literally everything I've been asking you to do, you look great."

So. Noted for both of us. Relax lol. She adapted to occasionally telling me "position check" and I made sure all my body parts were doing what they were supposed to.

Then we started in on the leg yields again. DL wanted them straight--straight neck, haunches hitting the rail first, when tracking left have left positioning of the crest/head.

WOW. WE COULD NOT DO THIS.

He is such a gumby with his body that was soon as you got one part of his body under control the next part went shooting out. Getting him to have that slight left flexion while keeping his neck straight AND making him step over in the leg yield was fucking torture. 

We finally started to get it with the help of a 15m circle to start, and then he decided he didn't want to get off my leg anymore and step over. DL had us come onto a 15m circle again and do haunches out/leg yield/get off my leg. That got him moving over again, so we had to go back to holding that left flexion, while moving over in the leg yield and focusing on the haunches hitting the wall first and then as soon as they did transition into shoulder-in.

SO MANY THINGS SO HARD OMG.

It was nearly an hour and a half lesson and we finally quit because Opie and I were ready to drop dead from exhaustion. Fortunately for both of us, the weekend was freezing and gross so he got both days off.

Today we went back to work.

I thought we had gotten the left flexion thing sorted because he was great on a circle, but then we went down the quarter line and had to keep the neck straight while holding that flexion and nope. We would get three or four strides and have to go to a 10m circle to bring the left flexion back, rinse and repeat a hundred times.

We finally, finally got it, but holy shit it was hard.

From there we moved on to maintaining the connection during transitions between h/w/t. His back was completely locked and the trot was fucking disgusting. We hadn't cantered yet so I figured we'd try that to get things loosened up.

The canter, too, felt like shit, but I was determined to perservere. Down each long side I leg yielded him over to the rail. That took a bunch of reps, but finally the back came up. The shoulders were still pounding into the ground though so I put him back on the circle to get them up. Finally I put the two together and had a super canter.

He was better when we switched directions, but I repeated the process anyway. Then I couldn't help myself. Did we have changes? R-L first since that was the direction we were going. He was late behind for a few strides and when he changed up front he got fast out of it (but didn't bolt!!!). I put a big half halt through, he changed behind, and we carried on easy peasy, no tension!!! 

Then L-R. He was too chill about the process and kept trying to get out of the attempt by breaking to the trot. I finally made him leg yield to the rail on the circle as we came out of the corner, turned him across the diagonal, got him straight in one stride, and asked before he had the chance to shit out on me. Bam, insta-clean change! It was a jump, but it was a massive flying leap into the air!!!!

He got mega, mega praise for that before finishing with some stretchy trot, lots of cookies, and time with the massage gun.

Lesson Notes: 3/5/22

This lesson was on Saturday, and I'm too fried to make a coherent post about it so here are the bullet points:

• Bend my elbows, softer in the wrist and arm.
• My elbows belong to me, they are my anchor point.
• However, I can't just hold and lock my entire arm.
• Elbows point down.
• My hands kept bouncing which is a thing for me, and as always they wanted to creep back and sit in my lap.
• She gave me the equicube and told me to play around with it until I found where I needed to hold it to get my abs to engage.
• They never did, I lied to her. I played with it more this week on my own when I wasn't being yelled at to also do ten thousand other things to fix my position and I did eventually find what she was talking about.
• Find "the corridor" with my hands/contact.
• Draw my shoulders down. Don't let them get so tight and tense. 
• Right shoulder back, always.
• Turn my head left when dropping my right shoulder to disconnect the two as I get so tense I basically lock my entire topline.
• The second she had me do this, Opie instantly softened his topline and dropped his head. 
• Post(ing trot) my ribs through my arms.
• Leg yield right quarter line to center line, 10m circle right and vice versa to unlock the tension/pulling on one side or the other. 
• Turn with the outside aids.
• "Stop riding so much, you're doing all the work." Hear that, Opie? Help a bitch out!

At the end of the lesson we finally got all the ten trillion fucking pieces put together and his back came up and he went medium trotting around like a stud which earned us a, "Look at the power from this little superstar!"

Today we worked on cantering a right lead circle without falling over. If I got my body sorted out, he got his sorted out.

Riding is hard.

Jumper Night

We trailed out for our lesson Saturday morning, and while Opie had to do some work, as usual it was me that took the brunt of the lesson. As such I had no problem pulling him back out that evening for our barn's jumper night.

He was genuinely stoked and had his game face on right from the get-go. 

Our first round and first jump off were the best:

But after I sent him down the long side during the jump off, he was like, "Oh fuck yes, we doing the zoomies!" and then promptly left out a stride down the line in the next round:

We knocked two rails in the jump off which knocked us out of the ribbons (out of 10), but we won the first round! Last up was gambler's choice which I am notoriously horrible at:

But somehow we managed to get second in that round.

Lots of candies when he was done, and then he got the next day off to spend naked outside in the wild 75* weather.

Posing

We didn't get a lot of riding in our lesson last week, but we came away with a ton more homework.

DL walked in while I was letting Opie trot around in a half-assed stretch because he was super tightly wound and I was just starting to get him to relax. He'd been a little...emotionally unstable all last week for whatever reason. DL was happy enough with what she saw, said she could tell I was improving with my feel for the contact, and got us going on an exercise.

We were supposed to do a 15m circle at C, turn down the quarter line and leg yield to the center line, and then do a 10m circle. Changes of bend, moving sideways, moving forward--everything to get him to loosen up. It took several hit or miss tries to figure out the geometry, and then we ended up going down the rabbit hole of "Am I leaning or are my stirrups crooked or do I just not know how to ride or all of the above?"

After we got that sorted out (I dropped my left stirrup yet another hole), we went to pick the walk again and I couldn't get Opie on the bit. And then I kind of could, but he was pulling so I started pulling, and DL was like, "Wtf is going on right now?" and "Can you stop pulling?" and "Why is he a rage monster?"

And finally she asked if she could get on him.

I mean, yeah, duh. 

Her observations were:

• He doesn't want to move off the leg.
• He doesn't want to relax and let it happen.
• She was trying to get him to halt and he just went into haunches in and kept plowing through her hands and walking.
• He knows the tricks, but he's literally never on the bit/honest in the connection. "He's just posing."
• He's completely locked in his poll and TMJ.

She gave him back to me and we spent the last fifteen minutes of the lesson asking him to stretch out and down into my hand with the softest of contact--but he had to take it and hold it. DL said she wanted us to end every ride on this even if we did other things for the rest of the time, and that it was going to take a long time to get him to soften his poll and get that floppy and loose, but eventually one day I was going to put my leg on and he was going to soften and round up into my hand.

So that's been the homework: put leg on, pick up reins, horse goes on bit. He doesn't get to do the transition unless he holds the contact.

We've been making a lot of progress in the trot. The canter feels broken and like complete shit, minus the left lead today. He's really gotten thick in the under-neck which is gross and everything I try to work against, so I have to figure out how we can get the back and withers and shoulders lifting while upping the collection instead of only while stretching. 

DL commented that he's a "fragile soul" who's easily offended which is so true. Any correction and it's like a personal insult to him. I'm eating the humble pie and accepting we need an overhaul, sir, you could try it yourself.

We're also supposed to be hitting the cavaletti so that's tomorrow or Thursday's activity before our lesson Friday. 

He got a full body PEMF session after last week's lesson with a heavy focus on the poll and TMJ area. He was resistant at first, but by the end he was melting into it. He gets a targeted session on that area on Thursday again.

Trust the Process

I ended up cancelling last week's lesson because of disgusting icy snow rain that started the night before and finished late morning with a base of ice under three inches of heavy, wet snow. Not my type of hauling weather, thanks. I'm waiting to hear back from DL now to see if we can change this week's as well because they're now projecting a "snow maker" on Friday. Thanks, weather. Save the best for the one day a week I want to trailer somewhere. 

So instead of lessoning, last Friday I did some jumping in the afternoon in preparation for the barn's jumper night. I thought Opie was going to be a monster for it because he was twitchy AF and spooking at the jumps as we walked by them, but I trotted him to a few 2'6" verticals in hopes it would keep getting rabid out of his mind. He was indeed super for those. I then sent him through a bounce that he wanted to go charging through as it was the first jumps I let him canter. Fortunately that worked out exactly the way I planned--the bounce itself slowed him down and made him look a fool for trying to blast through it, and we had zero rushing issues after that. 

Mentally, however, even though he was on point, I wasn't into it and decided to bow out of jumper night. That ended up working out because 50mph winds and random white out snow squalls moved in by the afternoon and it was postponed. Gotta love winter in New York. Today is 50* with bright sunshine and no wind to be found. 

Back to dressage world though!

I managed to snag Hubby for once yesterday afternoon and had him come take video of what our typical rides look like lately.

Warm up trot:

First sitting trot: 

Canter left:

Canter right:

More sitting trot:

Really right now my only focus is on myself/my position as this has been all my two lessons have been about. Doing my homework and all that. Are my wrists straight? Am I carrying my hands? Are my elbows my anchor points so my hands and wrists can be soft? Are my shoulders back? Am I sitting in the middle of the saddle instead of leaning right?

The answer to pretty much all of those is "no" LOL, but I am fucking trying!

I can tell the difference when I get it right. My seat is plugged in? The horse responds. My contact is even and not pulling? The horse responds. It's for a giant work in progress, but I know we're going down the right road in the long run.

This morning I had an awesome ride in the double where everything just felt very easy. I mean, I was working my lady balls off the whole time and my legs felt like rubber when I got off, but I felt like I was making good choices and Opie was there to play. 

The canter especially felt locked in, and we had the most awesome moment when I cut my turn wonky, but I plugged in my left seat bone (oh, hey, friend, there you are!), gave a half halt, and his shoulders came up about fifteen feet, and it was the most magical three strides on canter I have ever ridden. 

We finished up the real work with TOH where I thought half steps coming into it--aka get short, but keep the hind end marching, and dammit Opie, I want to feel a fucking difference!--which resulted in no crossing with the hind legs. He still wants to step wide behind, but getting rid of that crossover is such a big thing for us. 

He got tons of snackies when we were done and I could tell he was quite pleased with himself.