G r a t i t u d e

Another good ride today. So far, I've ridden every day this week, and Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll ride tomorrow and Friday. Getting out to the barn this week has been super simple, since I decided to take a week's vacation off of work, with the express intent of spending every day at the barn. I'm tired, and maybe ever-so-slightly sore today, but I've been getting a ton out of my lessons. To recap the past two days, we worked on:

• Collected canter
• Shoulder in (at trot)
• Haunches in (at trot)
• Renvers (at trot)
• 10m Canter circles with haunches in
• Trot down quarterline, renvers, take that shape to the rail
• Canter down quarterline, shoulder in, take that shape to the rail

In an excellent example of why I need to recap my lessons on the day I have them, that's mostly what I remember from them. Well, that and a couple of general themes. First off, I'm starting to get the hang of how a proper, uphill collected canter is supposed to feel, and relaxing as I'm riding it. Earlier, I had the tendency to tense my adductors, and curl my shoulders (for reasons that are still lost to me), making things so much more difficult than they need to be. I also had the bad habit of trying to make the collected canter happen by tryng to use my hands to rate the gait rather than using my core and seat to set the length of the stride, and only using a half halt in the outside rein when needed, and staying he hell out of his mouth otherwise. By no means is it yet perfect, but it is starting to get more consistent. Plus, I've had several good circles of the collected canter, so I've memorized what it should feel like. And I know they were good because my trainer was yelling, "YES! EXACTLY LIKE THAT!". So what, exactly was that feeling? My legs were relaxed, but my inside leg was on when needed to keep the forward, my seat and core were keeping the horse compact, and my hands were quiet, inside rein open to invite the shoulder to come in towards centerline. The overall feeling was that he was sitting on his haunches, and if I had the desire, I could have put his shoulders anywhere I wanted them by just using my upper thigh. Since the collected canter was going so well, towards the end, my trainer had me canter 10 meter circles with haunches in. Which, I think is a preface to canter pirouettes.

Generally speaking, I'm also starting to get much better about using my core, and getting out of the nasty habit of trying to fix so much stuff with my hands, which Selten made readily apparent. That trait is one of the things I like the most about him--he is an excellent tattle-tale for my bad habits. And speaking of bad habits, when my reins are too long, or when I'm tired or tense, rather than having the rein aids come from my elbow, I will tense my forearms and curl my wrists, which, you guessed it--translates to tension in the horse. I wish I could tell you that's getting more consistent, but that is very much still a work in progress. Some days it's better, (like today), other days, decidedly not. It'll get there, just need more time and reps (and probably my trainer screaming at me about it a bit more won't hurt.)

The final thing worth noting from the last few days' rides was a realization I came to yesterday, towards the end of my ride: I have the tendency to over ride. And I know exactly how I got that. It's a coping mechanism I developed riding Shadow. Towards the end of my riding him, he had taken to breaking in half, so to try to avoid that, I would try to ride very precisely, and micromanage every single body part to try to A) prevent the Rodeo and B) get some sort of advance warning one was about to take place. I came to this realization as I was cooling out, and replaying the lesson in my head, and noticed the parts of it that were the best were the parts when I stopped micromanaging every. single. little. thing. and... just rode and did what Christine was asking me to do. I even told her as much, and she agreed that that assessment was right on. So, something to keep firmly in mind, moving forward.

And forward we go! Onto today's lesson. Today, we worked a little bit of collected canter, and then Christine asked me if there was anything in particular that I'd like to work on. I had to think for a second, but came up with two things:

1. Trot extensions
2. Rein back

On the trot extensions, Christine had me do a 20m circle, extend on the open side, and collect on the rail to start with, just to get him using his hind end, and then I went large around the school, going up the quarterline instead of the rail on the long side, collecting on the short side, and extending as soon as I got straight on the quarterline. As always, the corner is where you sit your horse down and tell them something's coming, and you ride inside leg to outside rein as you're extending the gait. To help with this, one of the exercises I moved to next was leg yielding out to the rail in the extension to both develop the feel of the inside leg riding to the outside rein, and to get Selten keeping his hind feet together and pushing up and forward, rather than letting them go wider than his front feet, allowing him to fall downhill. I did get one really nice quarterline of the extension, but I unfortunately couldn't memorize the feel, I was so busy trying to force myself to not tuck my knees up, keep my stirrups, and sit the trot, rather than flopping around like a narcoleptic fish. Oh, yeah, and keep breathing as well. That's important. The upshot is--I know I've got it in the tank, now to just chip away at each of those pieces, and in time, it will come.

Now, before I move on to the rein back, a brief aside. About a week ago, my beloved Mountain Horse field boots that I've had since 2012 blew a zipper. Which, according to Austin Shoe Hospital would cost $150 to fix, and take 4-6 weeks to get done. So rather than wait that long, I decided to go ahead and buy a new pair of boots. As I write this, I have a pair of Airat field boots on order, and I've been riding in my winter riding boots, and let me just say... there is a reason I stick to my regular riding boots, even when it's freezing out. What I really want is a pair of these:

Don't tell my sweetie, but a pair of those may wind up being my Christmas gift to myself. :D

Anyway, onward to the rein back. The main takeaways on that for me today are:

• It is an excellent way to develop your horse's hindquarters in a low-impcat way,
• A square halt is paramount to the quality of your reinback.
• You can, in fact supple a horse while they are backing.
• Add. Leg. to. rein. back. The backwards movement does NOT come from your hands!!!
• Rather, the reinback comes from your seat rocking forward ever-so-slightly, adding leg, and when it's time to step off foward again, tuck your seat back under, and, you guessed it--add leg.
• The reinback to the forward walk should be a fluid movement. 4-5 steps backward, to an immediate forward step. No pause in between.

To finish the lesson off, we ended with working a little on turn on the haunches at the walk. The sticky wicket for me in this movement currently is keeping the haunches in and walk active, as well as ensuring I'm putting my outside shoulder back. When I was working on the left rein, I for some reason decided that my left shoulder needed to be back, and was very confused as to why it wasn't working. I also need to do a better job of staying on my inside seat bone to pin him down to the spot and not let his haunches out of the movement. If I'm given my druthers tomorrow, I think I'll ask to work turn on the haunches and turn on the forehand again, and see what that brings. Looking forward to it.

In closing, I'd like to take the opportunity to 1) make the title of this entry make sense(unlike me, I know...) 2) give a brief snapshot of what's going on in non-riding life. As much as this blog is intended to be a chronicle of my riding efforts, I can't pretend that my riding occurs in a complete vaccum.

So, why gratitude? Put mildly, world and domestic events have been kind of a shitshow in 2020. We are still in the midst of a serious world-wide pandemic of COVID-19, which to date has killed 200,000 Americans. I forget how many globally, but America far and away has the most people who have died from the illness currently. Protests against police brutality and racism have been met with asymmetric uses of force by city, state, and federal government, and we are in the final 40 days of a seriously contentious and divided Presidential election. Not only that, but the economy is seriously hurting right now. There's a lot more, but I think that's enough to set the tone. Also, it's currently 23:40, and I want to wrap this up and go to bed so I can ride tomorrow.

So--again, why gratitude? Every day I go to the barn, having made sure I have a face mask to wear, I remind myself how INCREDIBLY AND UTTERLY fortunate that I am that I am in a position to own and ride such a wonderful horse, that I am currently still employed, and finally, that thus far Zhi and I remain relatively healthy. The rest of 2020, (and, if we're being 100% honest here, probably all of 2021 as well...) is going to be a crazy ride, so I'm going to do my best to be grateful for the things I have, and not devote much energy to worrying about things beyond my control. And that, I think, is kind of at the heart of why riding horses is so important to me. I can't be worrying about the results of a presidential election when I'm trying to collect a canter. I can't scroll through social media, or the news when I'm mucking out stalls, filling water buckets, sweeping, feeding, tacking, untacking, or cleaning tack. There's only the moment, and task at hand. Even the bad days, when I can't do a goddamn thing right in the saddle. From here on out, I intend to be grateful for every stride, be it a 10, or a 4.