Head up, Shoulders back, Elbows In

I am very happy with how today went.  Saga's mom came over this morning to see if she couldn't help me get to the bottom of my little braking problem.  We started off with walk circles and spiraling in and out.  As I usually do, I had trouble estimating the distance.  So, in a fit of obvious brilliance, Saga's mom put down markers on the 4 quarters of the circle. The concept that I could actually use fixed objects to denote reference points at precise distances was rather revolutionary. I plan to adapt this radical new technology and use it as my own. In addition to exposing me to the latest advancement in spatial relations, Saga's mom also told me something that completely changed the way I thought about circles. What I've been doing pretty much my entire riding career is visualizing that I'm putting my horse on a circular railroad track. What Saga's mom told me was, "I'm not really riding a circle, I'm riding a straight line with my horse bent to the inside." That, in and of itself was a huge eye-opener, but she then continued to tell me that I spend way too much time fixating on one of the quarter points of the circle. By the time I'm 2 or 3 strides out from the quarter point, that quarter's over, and I need to focus on the next one.

As soon as I processed and applied that, my circles improved 100%.So, yay! once I got that down, we moved to trot, and my problems became apparent. They are as follows:

1. I need to keep my shoulders back. They tend to come forward.


2. I need to keep my head up.


3. I'm not keeping my elbows at my sides

I think there's a few more that I'm forgetting, but those are the the main ones that are sticking with me. With my shoulders forward and my elbows not at my sides, it's very easy for Zigs to pull against me and unseat me, essentially making my downward transition useless. When I made a concerted effort to fix all of those things before asking for my downward transition, it was like flipping a switch. As I suspected, the problem was me. Now I just need to commit those things to muscle memory.

That sorted, or at the very least, with those problems identified, we moved on to the canter, where I discovered a new problem. I have the tendency to sit way to the inside, which causes Zigs to fall on the forehand. That one's going to take a while to fix, and I might need to ask Zhizhu to put me on the end of a longe line for a while to get that sorted out. This is true for canter both directions, although I'm guilty of it a bit more on the right lead. I also figured out another one of my problems with my canter transition (outside of the shoulders forward). Yet again, the problem was with imagery. What I had been visualizing is riding the horses hindquarters flat into the canter. I realized that was flawed when I asked for a canter, and I felt Zigs' front lift up to go into the canter and Saga's mom said, "YES!". The next few canter transitions I tried, I thought of getting him to lift his forehand up, and drive from behind, and that went considerably better.

at this point, it's pretty late, and Saga's mom will be coming over early tomorrow morning to do some jumping, so I'l elaborate more on today's rides tomorrow. Till then, I will go to sleep.

Interview with a Psycho Pony

The full moon is over, but I don't think Zigs got the memo.  My plan for tonight was to do  some work on spiraling in and out on a circle, do some turns on the forehand and do some trot and canter to round the ride out.  It all started so well...  I had a couple of very successful spiral ins/spiral outs, and then went to turn on the forehand.  This also went well.  However, Zigs was beginning to protest about being on the bit for too long.  I informed him that that was too bad, and he had to deal.  After a few more good turns on the forehand, and no protesting about being on the bit, I let him stretch down and free walk.  

"This is awesome!"  I thought.  "I should trot!"  Well, Zigs must have read my mind because he immediately started trotting.  He got a pass on that one because I probably did think too strongly, and on a horse like Zigs, sometimes that's all it takes.  I brought him back to walk with the intention of making him wait until he stopped anticipating before I started trotting him.  It worked fantastically well in theory, but my weak link is that this was practice.  Out of nowhere, he'd start trotting on me, and sometimes I would have to resort to yanking teeth to get him back down to walk. He was also rushing like all get out.  These discussions went on for about 20 minutes or so until I finally started getting a sane, consistent trot when I asked for it, and a down transition... sort of when I wanted it, kind of, goddammithorse HO!  Just to round out the ride, I asked for the canter once I had a good trot going.  The good news is that I got canter when I asked, and that my transition was sound.  The bad news is that I asked for canter, and got hand gallop, emphasis more on the gallop.  To make things even more exciting, someone had been kind enough to go in and disengage his brakes.  I tried sitting deep and making my core solid granite.  Nothing.  I tried yanking teeth, nothing.  So, I went to the old standby the one rein stop.  

Did you know that my TB can canter a 5 meter circle?   I didn't.  He can also do a flying change across the diagonal and do a 10 meter circle.  At long last, I put psycho pony back in his box and got a walk.  By this point, I was pretty annoyed, and was thinking I had to do something to salvage this ride.  So, I decided to work on halt from the walk.  It was a little rough at first, because Zigs was really pulling against the reins, and I was having to use far to much rein for my taste to get him to stop.  As an experiment, I let my reins out, picked up a walk, and selected an arbitrary point in the pasture to stop at.  I imagined that when I wanted to slow down, I was shooting grappling hooks into the ground from my heels that Zigs had to pull out before he could move.  They got heavier and heavier until nothing Zigs could do would pull them out.  Lo and behold, IT WORKED!  I didn't even have to pick up the reins.  Just to prove it wasn't a fluke, I tried it twice more, and it worked just as well each time.  After the third successful halt, I decided that was an excellent note to end on, and pulled his tack off and hosed him down, since he'd worked up quite a sweat, and there wasn't enough light left to completely walk him out.  

As soon as I let him off the halter, he immediately kicked up his heels, bucked, and went flying around the pasture, so I guess he just wanted to run. ;)  Hopefully my ride tomorrow will go better!

Must Be a Full Moon

Well, last night was quite the ride. I decided that last night, I would take a break from working on brakes, and instead focus on turns on the forehand, and canter transitions. The turns on the forehand didn't go so well. I did ok on turning to the left, but when I tried to do them to the right, Zigs kept doing laterals instead of spinning. I tried in vain to figure out what exactly it was I was doing to cause it, but came up empty. Maybe I wasn't giving a strong enough rein cue? Dunno. I kept at it until I got at least a quarter turn on the right rein, and I decided that that would be good enough for now, and put him on the buckle to let him stretch down, which he did quite nicely.

After a walk break, I warmed him up a bit with some sitting trot, and worked a little bit on getting walk exactly when I wanted it. It's not 100% yet, but it's getting better. Once I was satisfied with the results I was getting, I picked up a trot, and asked for a right lead canter. What I got was a rushing trot, so back to walk we went. I've been told that when that happens, it's because I didn't give the right cue, so I decided to try it again. I put my outside leg back scooped with my inside seat bone, and boom, instant canter. I don't think that walk/canter is easier than trot canter, so assuming that's true, I'm the problem. we cantered around for a bit, and I went back to a trot on the left rein and tried the canter transition again. He rushed into it, a bit, but I still got the canter. I did some circles with him, and went back to walk, which took me far too long to do. One of the next things on the list to work on is my down transitions from canter. After I've been cantering and I transition down, I tend to let my horse trot forever before I try to go back down to walk. I don't know why I do that, I'm certainly not feeling like I'm going to fall off, and it is well within my abilities to get a walk from the trot. So, it's going on The List™ of things to work on.

The last thing I decided to work on was a little canter in two-point. So, I picked up a nice, rolling canter and then I got up into two point. From out of nowhere, Ziggy started BOOKING it across the pasture. we went from Canter to a full on Gallop. I think Ziggy was trying to tell me that we could have run the Belmont. In his defense, I think I might have gone up into the ground-covering gallop position, because I remember my stomach being really close to the horse. I have to admit, it was a lot of fun, but my pasture really isn't big enough for galloping. After reminding Ziggy that we were not in fact at the Belmont stakes, I decided I had had enough excitement for one night, and walked Zigs out. While I was walking out, I was mentally re-playing my ride, and I have to admit, I wasn't very satisfied. I know the things that I need to fix with him, and I'm working on them, but I know I'd be able to make better progress with them if I was able to ride him with a trainer on a more regular basis. When the Oracle was here last, I got a lot out of my lessons with her on him. I'd like to figure out a way to ride him more consistently with my trainer, but right now, that would mean either buying a truck, (Which is the plan, just not until later in the year), or begging the Baron to swing by on his way to lessons with Duchess and Lucky, and get Zigs. I really don't want to do the latter, as it just feels like way too much of an imposition. They're already being nice enough to bring Sonata for me, and I do get a lot out of riding her, so I think the plan is to keep riding her and just quit my whining. ;)

From Little Acorns Do Mighty Oaks Grow

Two posts for the price of one! I love that Blogger allows you to post via email. Shortly after I posted the previous post, I headed home from work, and got home a little after 18:00. Since it was still bloody hot outside, I decided I'd decompress inside for a bit before going out to put my Alfalfa addict to work. After checking email and other various and sundry things on the tubes, I changed into my breeches, and went outside at about 19:30, and the weather was perfect. Ziggy must have been ready to work, because he walked right up to the trailer and waited for me to tack him up.

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!

Witty title to be added later

Ahh,... a three day weekend ahead of me, and you can bet that there will be much riding.  Hoping to get things off to a good start, I tacked up Zigs.  I started out trying a bit of spiral in and spiral out on the circle, and was reasonably successful, but I wasn't strong enough with my outside rein and leg, so there were a couple circles that were more egg shaped.  I also tried a couple of turns on the forehand.  Those went considerably better.  I still have trouble walking into and out of them, but if I start from the halt, they go considerably better.  Since Ziggy is an OTTB, left is always easier than right.  I think from now on, I'm going to start by doing turns on the forehand to make sure that both of my legs are working, and that he's listening to them.  And, I'll make sure to do lots of them on the right rein. ;)  I also did some leg yields, and those actually went pretty well.  I'm having more success at keeping him from just popping his shoulder out and walking, rather than crossing his back feet.  All in all, the walk work we did went pretty well.

Then it was time for trot.  The good news is that I'm getting pretty proficient at sitting Zig's trot, and I actually had to let my stirrups down a hole. (yes, my heels were down). The bad news is that yet again, I had trouble with my downward transitions.  Zigs was also speeding up when we turned towards the barn, and my attempts to rate him with my seat really weren't working that well.  Unfortunately, my patience was not with me tonight (Bad week at work.) and rather than actually trying to figure out what I was doing that wasn't working, I went back to walking.  Now that I've had a chance to decompress and reflect, I realize that I was either just relaxing, which allowed him to just keep going on his merry way, or in an attempt to make a "brick wall" to slow him down, I was really just turning into a total sack of potatoes and bouncing all over the place.  The visualization I use when my down transitions have been good is that I turn my core into a set of really stiff springs that are in their stretched state during the "up" beat, and in their neutral state on the down beat.  When I ride tomorrow, I'll make sure to reinforce that image before I start trotting, so that it's fresh in my mind when I go to transition downward.  But, back to tonight's ride.  

After I'd had my fill of trotting for the day, I decided I'd try to do some canter work.  As has been typical lately, my up transition to canter was only about 40% effective.  When I worked with The Oracle last weekend, I uncovered several problems with my canter transition: 1) I tend to set my inside rein so that he can't have his head to come up and through for the depart. 2) I don't get my outside leg back so that I can "scoop" him up with my inside seat bone, and 3) I'm curling up my upper body, which totally negates what my seat's saying.  I think it's time to go back to the trusty longe line for a while to sort that out. 

Tomorrow, I will most likely ride Sonata in the morning, and then ride Zigs in the evening.   Of course, there will be a full report tomorrow night.  I know this entry isn't exactly the most coherent, but it's been a long week, and I'm a little tired. ;)

Systems Online

Ever have one of those rides where everything's going right? Your horse is collected, responds to the lightest of aids, the sun's shining, bird are singing, and you'd swear, that if you listened just right a chorus of angels is singing your praises. Aren't they wonderful?? Well, today was not one of those rides. The intention today was to work on down transitions, and fortheloveofgod keep my elbows at my sides.

I was half successful. Every time I had the presence of mind to check, my elbows were where they are supposed to be. The down transitions were another story, however. I'm at the point now to where I know that I am the problem, but I can't figure out what I'm doing that's making things not work. To add to the frustration, this was one of the big things I was wanting to work with Tina on while she was here this past weekend. I'm sure she would have helped me a great deal, except my rides with her were the of the sun-shining, bird-singing, angel chorus variety. Not that I'm complaining, though. I still got a hell of a lot out of my lessons. I just wish I'd been having trouble slowing Zigs down, so she could tell me what exactly it is that I'm not doing right. To me, it really does feel that I'm saying "walk" or "ho" with my seat, but either I'm not saying it strongly enough, or I'm actually just relaxing and making it easier for him to keep doing what he's doing.

There is one thing that I think may be attributing to it, although, admittedly, it's probably not that big a factor and may be more my own psychology at work. In my lesson with Tina, I was riding in an arena. When I ride at home, I ride out in the pasture, so I'm wondering if he is more conditioned to just being able to do what he pleases in a field, and is more used to "working" in the arena. One of the things I've really been wanting to do is put one of my more experienced friends up on him, (hi, Jen), in an open field, have them canter him, and see what they think. I'm fully expecting to be told, "No, it's you." ;)

As I mentioned previously, I'm to the point in my riding where I know that Zigs (or Sonata, or Lucky) is capable of what I'm asking but I either A) can't make my body do what it needs to do to push the button, or B) am doing the right things, but I'm not doing them firmly enough. And when I get responses that I don't want, I don't yet have the knowledge base to figure out which cue caused which reaction. I'm sure I'll get there eventually, (or, at least, I HOPE I get there!) it's just that sometimes I have trouble being patient. One of the other things I'm often guilty of is feeling like I need to "keep up" with all of my other horsy friends (all of whom could ride circles around be blindfolded on a cloudy day), and I get frustrated when I feel like I'm falling short. Then I remind myself that I've only been riding for two years, and I should really cut myself some slack. (Why, yes, as a matter of fact I am a perfectionist. Which I suppose, explains why I enjoy Dressage.) It's either that or my German blood. "Nein! Nein! Vhat ees zees with ze outside rein!? Mein Pferd braucht mehr Schwing!"

But let's move forward, shall we? Tomorrow, I am most likely going to go over to ride Steve and Dawn's to ride Sonata. I'm hoping to do a little work on the heads pattern, and tilt at the quintain. This week at work has sucked, and since tilting at co-workers, while not expressly forbidden, is considered unprofessional, I believe that the quintain will serve as a sufficient surrogate. And then Monday, I have a jumping lesson. I'm hoping to bring Ziggy to it so I can see how he is over fences, I suspect that he will be forward, brave and willing, and that my biggest challenge will be keeping his brain in his skull. But, he is a Thoroughbred, and that really is par for the course. That's really all there is to report at the moment, and since I really should get some sleep at some point tonight, I believe I will end this entry here. You may now talk amongst yourselves. ;)