I decided that tonight, I was going to focus on my transitions. Specifically, Canter and stopping, with a heavy focus on stopping. I'm serious about going to the horse trial in October, and right now the thing I view as my number 1 must fix is being able to slow down my horse. If September rolls around and I can't bring Zigs from a canter to a walk in 4 strides, I'm not going to the trial. I do not want the technical delegate walking over to my trainer and asking her, "Why can't your student stop his horse?". I might be being a little too hard on myself as far as this goes, but I have good reason. When I first started riding, I was riding a friend's horse around the arena at the barn, and was having trouble getting him to trot. As we came around the long side of the arena, he decided to teleport sideways over the railroad tie outside of the arena, almost running over one of my other friends, and a girl who was grooming her horse. That's when it really hit home that horses can be dangerous not just to me, but to other people on the ground, and that if I ever lost control, people could get seriously hurt or worse, and it would be my fault. As I'm fond of saying, every horse will teach you something, and that particular horse taught me the importance of remaining in control of your horse at all times. This would be why I'm working so hard on it now so that September comes around, my biggest worry is where I'm going to buy my tall boots, and what color eventing vest I'm going to buy. And as for the canter, there's no deeper reason behind it beyond not wanting to get eliminated in Dressage because I couldn't make my Thoroughbred canter on command. It's a point of pride, or something.
I started out with walk/halt and I'd basically just pick a point and say "hell or high water, his feet will not move past that point." That went pretty well, although I think I'm having to use too much rein for walk/halt. Be that as it may, 95% of the time, Zigs was at a standstill when I reached the point that I'd picked for the halt. The other 5% of the time, he was maybe 2 or 3 strides past it. For now, that's within acceptable tolerances, but by September, I want to have all 4 feet stopped precisely at the point I pick 99.999% of the time. The don't have to be square, just not moving. I'll get stop first, and work on square later. I spent probably 20 minutes working on just walk/halt and after I got three good ones in a row, I put Zigs on the buckle and let him stretch and move out. When I picked him back up again, I did a little bit of on turn on the forehand to give him something for him to think about. I was trying to do the exercise where you walk the short side, turn on the forehand, walk down the short side the opposite direction and turn on the forehand again to go back the way you came, but I can't walk into the turn on the forehand yet. I have to stop, then turn and walk again. If I try to walk into it, Zigs tends to pop his shoulder to the outside and start doing laterals.
Once I was reasonably satisfied with the walking work, I picked up a trot. This time the agenda was trot/walk. I started out by saying, "Ok, I'm going to trot 4 strides, and then walk.". That didn't work so well, as I spent so much time counting my trot strides, I kind of forgot to do things like ride, which made a down transition nigh impossible. So, I went back to picking an arbitrary point in the pasture, and hell or high water, walking once I reached that point. That went considerably better. After several good trot/walk transitions, I upped the ante, and used the same strategy of picking a random point in the pasture, and coming to a complete halt exactly at that point. I'm not gonna lie, the first several were kind of embarrassing. I'd get a halt.... 20' away from where I wanted it, and I had problems with him sneaking forward. Since thinking "halt here" wasn't working so well, I started visualizing imaginary grounding spikes shooting down from my stirrups at the point where I needed to stop, and slowly, things began to improve. After a while, I was trotting him at a pretty good clip the entire length of the pasture, and fairly reliably getting a halt where I wanted it, or at the very least, close. Of the times when my halt did not go as well, I wound up 4-6 strides off of where I wanted. Again, not optimal, but definitely a marked improvement. By this point, I really wanted to work on canter, but I didn't want to move on until I nailed at least one trot/ halt from all the way across the pasture, heading towards the barn. The third attempt was the charm, and I again gave Zigs his head back, and let him walk and stretch.
After a stretch break, I did a bit of shoulder in to get him back into a working frame of mind, and once I felt that he was being responsive enough to leg, I put him back on the bit, and started thinking of my plan of attack for the canter. The most important thing for me as far as today's canter went. was that I got the canter immediately. I started the way we usually do, pick up a trot, and ask for the canter on the circle. I got it, for sufficient values of "immediate". And by "sufficient values", I mean half the circle. I'd ask for canter and get a crazy fast trot. After the third attempt, I got pretty frustrated. I went back to a walk to think for a bit and figure how how to make this exercise easier for Zigs and I both to succeed at. I remembered that while the Oracle was here, she suggested that I do walk/canter transitions, as that would make it easier to make sure my body was in the right position. As I remembered, Ziggy did that transition pretty well when I rode with her, so it was well worth a shot. I'm really glad I decided to do that because on the first time I asked for a canter, I immediately felt what the problem was/is. When I shift my outside leg back for the canter transition, I try to put it way too far back, which throws me out of sync with Zigs, leaving him to say, "Ok, seriously, dude. What the hell?" I then halted for a minute, and practiced feeling the moment when my outside seat bone leaves the saddle, it turns out that it's way earlier than I was thinking. Armed with this new-found knowledge, I immediately tried a canter transition, and got it a couple of strides after I asked. Then it was back down to walk, and another few tries. When the fifth canter transition rolled around, something justt "clicked", and I got it right after I asked for it. Wanting to prove to myself this wasn't just a fluke as well, I switched rein and got the same result on the right side! Of course, tomorrow, I expect to have the same troubles at canter again, because that's just the way these things work.
I was running out of daylight, but things had been going so well as far as the downward transitions, I wanted to at least try canter to halt. This was a big challenge, as once Zigs starts cantering, he really doesn't see a reason to stop unless forced to. He also tends to have a nice rhythm for the first few strides, and then he tries to rush. I had to resort to yanking teeth amore than a few times, and I was starting to worry that I'd just ruined my ride. With daylight fading, I set a very simple goal. I was going to get a canter, canter a quarter of a circle, and halt before I made half the circle. On the second try, I got exactly that, and immediately decided to quit there. I still have quite a ways to go as far as improving my brakes, but I feel like I made several good strides in that direction, and I hope to continue my work this weekend. I probably won't ride tomorrow, but I'll definitely ride Saturday and Sunday. More then!
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