Ponies 4 eva!

Today, good readers, you will receive not one, but two posts! Yes, I am in a very generous mood today. Well, that and I utterly failed to post yesterday's events immediately after they occurred. Therefore, today you will profit from my laziness! Or my generosity. Either way, you get two posts, and who could complain about that.

Oh yeah, the people who hate me or this blog. Although, if either of the previous statements appropriately describe your feelings, my question to you is, why are you still reading this?! That being said, I'll leave you to ponder your existential crisis, and return my attention to the people who actually like reading this. Or they tolerate it. Or they do it just because they're bored. Either way, they don't throw things at me and hurt my feelings, which I appreciate."That's all well and good," you say, "but GET ON WITH IT!"

Your wish is my command. Yesterday morning, Saga's mom came out to help me out with Zigs. The original intentions were for her to hop up on Zigs and see if she could figure out why he's been blowing off my half-halts at the trot, and to work on jumping. As I expected, he behaved just fine for her, and very obediently half-halted when asked. I was very happy to see that because it let me know, yes, he does know how, and will do it when asked appropriately. After trying both reins, Saga's mom commented that Zigs felt a bit un-even to her. And asked me to get back on him to see if I felt it. I think she said a few more things as well, but as soon as I heard uneven, I sort of tuned out, and immediately started paying very close attention to how Zigs was going. I couldn't really feel anything out of place, but just to be on the safe side, we decided to just work on walk/trot, and trot/walk transitions and leave jumping for another day. One of the first things that was made apparent was that I wasn't waiting until I had a good walk to cue for trot. Hence, crappy walk led to crappy trot. So, we worked for while on when to judge a good walk when I had it. I discovered that I've actually been going past "forward" and into "rushing", because when Zigs is through and round, the pace of the walk is slower, but he feels light in my hands.

The other thing that was made apparent is that I have a nasty tendency to let Ziggy "dribble" on both up and down transitions. On my up transitions, I'm not giving a clear enough cue, and on my down transitions, I'm not riding him "up" into the transitions. I'll be honest in that when Saga's mom first told me that, I totally didn't get it. The whole idea of a down transition is to go slower and-- actually, strike previous. A downward transition isn't necessarily a change of speed, although it often is. It's always a change of rhythm. I think that internally, I realized that when I was riding yesterday, but it just became obvious to my conscious mind. Anyways, now that I've noted that epiphany before it escaped me, allow me to go back to my original train of thought. (Coherent narrative, just another service I provide!). After thinking about what it meant to ride "up" into the downward transition, I realized that it meant I needed impulsion from behind so that when he settled into the walking, he was already stepping under himself from the trot that he'd have a much firmer stance in order to keep driving his hind end up to his front.

Now, as far as the trot goes, the lion's share of the trot is coming up to it from a good walk, and within the first 3 strides, riding the rhythm that I want. One of the things that I'm still bad about is forgetting to ride as soon as I get the transition. For some reason, the whole of my thought process is, "Yay! I got a trot!" and shortly after that gripping insight, my brain vaults out of my left ear, and happily sponges its way off to its vacation home in Tahiti. It never lets me come along, either.

Jerk.

I showed him, though. After a few decent transitions leading to some sub-optimal trots, I finally locked the wayward grey matter into my skull and actually began riding the trot I wanted after I got the transition. Once that was sorted, I had a lot of good moments. Zhi was kind enough to take pictures, and had I actually charged my camera battery last night, I'd include them here. But, alas, they are importing into iPhoto as we speak. In short, I felt like the ride went fantastically well, and I learned a lot. I didn't even care that I didn't jump.

Now, before I leave you to write the next post, there is one last thing I need to share: I am terrible about KEEPING MY FINGERS CLOSED around my reins. I shall endeavor to fix this going forward.

**Addendum**
I also accompanied Duchess' Mom, Saga's mom and Fuzzy Pony down to Dripping Springs to watch Saga and Duchess go in a jumping lesson. My initial intent was to take pictures for the two of them, I was cleverly thwarted by my camera, whose battery I heroically neglected to charge yesterday because I took a nap. You can read all about the lesson over at Saga's blog, but I will say that I was very impressed with Paige, and I would definitely be interested in taking a lesson from her. My number one take-home watching the lesson was Paige's comments about "waiting" for the fence. Saga, Duchess and Zigs are very willing and game jumpers, and they'll jump anything we point them at. So, our challenge is not to push them forward to the fence, but to keep them up and forward and ensure a good approach. That being said, now I'm going to bed for real.

Ja! Mein leapen!

No, that's not actually real German. I chose that title because it is silly. I will pause for a moment to allow the shock to wear off.

Are we good?

Groovy. As alluded to on Saga's mom's blog, Saga's mom came over Sunday afternoon to help me with jumping. It was pretty hot, so we didn't work for a terribly long time. We started with trot poles up to a small X as a warmup. I need to work on closing my hip angles more, but I was doing a much better job of keeping my shoulders back and my legs where they need to be. Matter of fact, Saga's mom commented to me that my leg position looked really good, and that whatever I did to fix it, I should continue doing. I think the big thing that fixed everything was keeping my shoulders back. Anyhow, after a while going over the X, Saga's mom set up another fence on the edge of what would be a tank, but due to the fact that it won't hold water to save its life, it is merely a dip in the ground with delusions.

At any rate, I now had a bank up. and a bank down. with a hill coming into it. The fence wasn't big at all, but it was very challenging, because I had to balance Ziggy back, and make sure that he came into the fence properly. I can't say that every fence was roses, I had several bad ones, but when they happened, I was pretty good about riding what I had over the fence.

All in all, it was a wonderful day jumping, even if it was scorching out. I'm starting to feel more and more confident about Pine Hill! More to come tomorrow, when I can write a better post, because this one is not up to my standards.

Boing!

I'm probably going to fall asleep writing this post, but we'll see how far I get. Before I go into today's horsy activities, there's two quick additions /corrections to yesterday's entry. They are enumerated below, for simplicity:

1. I tend to drop my right hand so that it is not level with my left. This must end.


2. I am not so much leaning to the inside as I am collapsing my right side. I only do this on the right rein. This must also end.

Now that that's taken care of, on to today. As promised yesterday, Saga's Mom came over to help me out with jumping. I will, of course, go into more detail, but I would like to start things off by saying it was a significant improvement over Pine Hill. Not that Pine Hill was bad, oh no, Pine Hill went quite well! Perhaps that what I should say is that today, Saga's mom was able to help me fix the problems I was having at Pine Hill. To review, they are also presented in a numbered list, for simplicity and consistency.

1. Not being able to rate Ziggy to the jump.


2. Not being able to bring him back down to a trot after the jump


3. My Two-point was weak

Defying conventional chronology, I'm going to cover the problems in reverse order. As it turns out, my two point was weak because while my back was straight, I was rolling my shoulders forward. As soon as I straightened those out, my back instantly felt better, stronger, and straighter. The next revelation was with my legs. I don't want to say I was gripping with my knees, but I was doing something with them that was causing them to become pivot points to throw me forward. Saga's Mom told me that my base of support should be my calf, and that, combined with fixing my shoulders completely changed things. I felt significantly more secure, and the next couple of fences I took him over, it was a lot easier. I wasn't having to work nearly as hard to stay with him. I'd have to check my jumping pictures to be sure, but I think I had been having a pretty bad problem about getting left behind on the jumps.

Fortunately, I never was bad about catching Zigs in the mouth, which reminds me of the of the other problem with my two-point. Because I am so concerned about catching him in the mouth, I tended to throw my upper body forward over the jump, which to a TB (well, any horse, but TBs in particular) means "Run! For the love of God, RUN!". It turns out that all I needed to do was to move my hands forward, and leave my upper body where it is.

The last problem with my two-point form is my heels. As with most new jumpers, I have a habit of letting my heels come up when I'm coming in to the jump. This largely seemed to fix itself after I fixed my knees, but I still had to think about it a little bit, since it had sort of become a habit. Once I had all these things right, going over the jumps felt so much easier. I don't quite know how explain how it felt previously other than that going over the fence was hard. I felt out of balance, and was really having to work to keep everything where I thought it should be. Once I fixed all my positional problems, going over the fences felt like I was just sort of floating. I think that's because I wasn't putting my hands down on Zig's withers to try and balance, and because since my knee was relaxed, I could let my angles close and open back up the way they're supposed to. I wish i had some pictures so that I could go back and review them, but maybe next time. Now that I have jump standards and some landscape timbers I'll be able to get a lot more jumping practice in. (Only once a week, though!)

Now that we have covered the jumps, let's move on to the exits of the jump. I didn't have any trouble whatsoever bringing him back down to the trot. I think this is due to several things:

1. I was no longer leaning forward after the jump, so I wasn't encouraging him to run.


2. My reins were an appropriate length, so when i made it over the jump, I hadn't pitched him away.


3. After fixing my position in two-point, I was in a balanced position, so I was able to give more effective cues

I'm sort of running short on time now, as the vet's due to arrive any time now for Kanemura's brain surgery and Ziggy's annuals, so I'm going to have to shorten up the rest of the post. Regarding being able to rate Zigs to the jumps, I think that I was successful at it for the same reasons above. Another thing I'm getting better at is judging when I've done all I can, and I just have to ride what I've got over the fence and fix it on the other side. The thing is, during my un-lesson, I really didn't think "Oop. This is as good as it's gonna be, just ride.". It just happened instinctually. It may be that I've just gotten better at knowing how many strides out from a jump I am. At any rate, Sunday went a long way towards convincing me that going GAG at Pine Hill is indeed possible, if I can keep riding like that.

Later in the evening, Zhizhu and I drove down to Canyon Lake to check out a horse for her. He was a really pretty, big TB, but he was hotter than the sun, and not for a beginning rider. That's really all I have time to write now, I need to go corral the critters before the vet gets here.

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.