Vote 4 Ponies

Quick update today. I only rode Shadow yesterday for a short time. There's lots of things going on right now that are stressing me out, so I decided that I really wasn't in a good state to work on anything, so I decided to try to make sure he kept stretching into the bridle, and not really fuss about anything else. It went pretty well. He still picks his head up at the trot, but I think he's starting to do it less. I have a lesson with the Oracle this weekend, so I'll be sure to ask her about it. That's really all there is to report, hopefully I'll feel more chatty after riding Ziggy this evening.

On the Importance of Having a Plan

Well, I guess they can't always be good rides, can they? After work, I had to run to the feed store and get feed for all my critters, and by the time I got home, it was pretty clear that I only really had time to ride one horse. Since Ziggy's just now getting back in to regular work, I figured a day off wouldn't hurt.

I was pretty tired, so I never really developed a solid plan for my ride with Shadow. I got as far as, "keep him stretching", and that's really about it.. The good news is that I'm to the point where I can feel when my position is wrong, the bad news is that I wasn't really able to do much about it. That being said, I had a fair bit of success keeping him stretching in the walk, although when I moved to trot, he kept hollowing and pulling his head out of the stretch. I had a moderate amount of success in getting him to stretch back into it. It has to be a strength thing.

I also tried a bit of canter, but due to my position not being all that great, the up transitions were rough. I did get him to stretch in the canter, but I could tell that my left seat bone wasn't solid in the saddle, so that made it a bit difficult to keep him from cheating on the turns. After cantering for a while, I realized that I was tired, my mind wasn't focused, and I was nearly out of light. When I untacked, despite the short ride (a little over 20 minutes), I was glad to see that Shadow had sweated a pretty good amount in all the right places, so at the very least, he got a good workout. Tomorrow, I'll try again, and hopefully A) have a better plan, and B) have enough time to ride both horses.

In Which a Strategem is Discovered

The third blog post in a row! (Well, fourth, if you count the video I posted today). This whole blogging thing may well be verging on becoming a habit. In the spirit of learning from yesterday's lessons, I changed up my approach to my rides today. Since I had to run to the grocery store, and was rather tired today, I was sorely tempted just to ride one horse or the other.

At least, until I remembered something L taught me at the clinic this weekend: A riding session doesn't have to be an hour long. You can go as little as 20 minutes as long as you go in with a plan, and are focused. That's exactly what I did, and it worked really well.

As is my usual preference, I rode Shadow first. The plan was to work on my hands, and keep Shadow stretching in the walk and trot. That's it. forcing myself to only concentrate on two things seems to have been the magic bullet. While I was more conscious of Shadow stretching and me keeping my hands up, it seemed that the other elements of my positioning that I need to fix just sort of fell into place. Moreover, I noticed that when things would fall out of place I could feel when it became "wrong". I would then quickly divert my attention to fixing the issue, and then go back to stretching Shadow and watching my hands. I did spiral in/spiral out on the circle, leg yield, voltes with lengthening and shortening strides and a little bit of shoulder in. They weren't all perfect by any means, but Shadow was very willing, and did a good job of stretching when asked. There are two questions about stretching that I want to ask a trainer the next time I'm in front of one.

1. When Shadow will stretch, after a couple of steps, he'll pick up his head and take away contact. Is that a strength thing, or an evasion?
2. At what point do I start putting more emphasis on getting him to come round on contact?

For my ride with Ziggy, I decided I would devote my focus to my ever-present core problem, since Ziggy will stretch and come round without any problems, and I was kind of bored with concentrating on my hands. Happily, my hands mostly behaved themselves. Keeping my core engaged went pretty well at the walk, but at the trot it was pretty hit and miss, and more miss than hit. Ziggy has a much bouncier trot than Shadow, which is one of the reasons why I decided to work the core thing on Ziggy. I figure, if I'm doing it right, when Ziggy's trot gets particularly bouncy, I'll be able to actually *sit* it, and not flop all over the saddle. The good news is, I did have a few flashes of brilliance, and although I wasn't always able to do anything about it, it was readily apparent to me when I was doing things wrong.

Once, when I had a pretty good trot going, I tried a canter transition on the right lead, and just got a unbalanced, strung-out trot. I then remembered that:

• Ziggy is 24.
• Ziggy is a Thoroughbred
• Ziggy has arthritic changes in his right hock.

It was about then that 2 and 2 added up to 4 and I recognized that our best chance for success was to start the canter on the left lead. After putting the trot back together and changing rein, I gathered him up and asked for canter again. It sort of worked. I did get a pretty good uphill canter, but he snuck in a few steps of trot, which I think was me not being clear enough with the lift of my inside seat bone. The actual canter was really nice. My core stayed engaged, and I played a bit with extending and shortening strides, and even got a bit of leg yield in.

A few times when I shortened the strides, I forgot to use my legs to keep impulsion going, and predictably, Ziggy dropped into a trot. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I learned or, more accurately, internalized something that I've known has been a problem for pretty much as long as I've been riding. On my downward transitions, my shoulders hunch and I curl forward, which makes my lower back arch, and me a hot damn mess in the saddle. I've been hearing it in lessons and from Cash's mom for years, but tonight was the first time I was able to consciously feel, analyze and internalize the transition from everything going well, to falling apart. In an attempt to capitalize on the new information, I picked up the canter again, and re-attempted the downward transition. This time, I felt things falling apart, and was able to at least put my shoulders back into position before becoming a hot damn mess. I wanted to try it again, but by this point, I was pretty much out of light, and it'd been a quite successful ride, so I called it a night, and will focus more on my downward canter transition when I ride Zigs tomorrow.

Something to Aspire to

Remember that clinic I mentioned that I audited last week? And that new friend whose place we had lunch at? Well, this is him:

Pretty damn impressive, no?

My Own Personal East German Judge

If you don't know this about me already, here are two important facts:

1. I'm a perfectionist
2. I'm extremely hard on myself

But I'm sure if you've spent any meaningful amount of time around me when I'm riding, (or, hell, just even scroll back in the archives and read some of the old posts), you knew that already. The East German judges may no longer be in the Olympics, but they're alive and well inside my head when I'm riding, and today was no different.

In the spirit of interjecting some positivity into the proceedings, I'll say this: I managed to ride both horses today rather than just Shadow, so that's good. There are a few more positive points, but this paragraph isn't really working the way I want it to, and revising my posts is an anathema to my cutting edge bite-me-Strunk-and-White stream-of-consciousness style. So what's a grammar revisionist to do?

New paragraph!

Anyway, the plan for today was to work on:

• Keeping my hands up
• Keeping my core engaged
• Not hollowing my back
• Keeping the horses stretching into the bridle.

As usual, Shadow was first up. Things started out pretty well, he was moving pretty nicely off of my seat and stretched down into the bridle fairly easily. I practiced spiraling in and out on a circle in the walk, which went pretty well, although I quickly fell into my habit of putting my hands down, and looking at his head instead of where I was going. When I moved to trot, I still didn't have much success keeping my hands up, and looking where I was going, although I didn't feel like I was hollowing my back or disengaging my core. After working in the trot for a while, (which by the way had lots of nice impulsion, and was fairly relaxed) I went back down to walk and let him stretch, which he happily did. Once the walk break was over, I got a little greedy, and decided to try the walk/canter transitions that I worked with L on over the clinic. I did a decent job of generating impulsion to prepare for the transition, but when I asked for canter, I wasn't anywhere near as clear as I needed to be with my aid, and I collapsed my core, which caused Shadow to take off in a hollow, un-balanced trot.

It was about this time that the East German judge took over the running commentary. Unfortunately, East German Judge is far more interested in delivering criticisms rather than suggestions for improvement. To try to stave off frustration, I backed off of the walk canter departs, and started concentrating on my position again in the trot. But here's the other thing about East German Judge: Once she shows up, she won't shut up.

In other news, yes, my inner East German judge is female. No, I don't understand why. Don't ask questions, just go with it. Ok?

After a while of some unproductive riding around aimlessly trying to focus on actually fixing the problems rather than on the scores I was getting (I mean, really, 3.7!? That's just rubbing it in.) I finally came to my senses, and decided to cut my losses, and walk Shadow out. Position-wise, by ride started out pretty good, but at this point, it had all pretty much fallen apart. However, as I was walking him out, , Shadow was relaxed, working through his back, and stretching into the bridle, so I at least accomplished one of my goals.

If you're playing along at home, you've probably figured out that Ziggy was up next. I decided this time, since I know that Ziggy's good about relaxing into the bridle and stretching, I would stay at a walk and work on all the position stuff. I wasn't having much success keeping my core engaged, or in not looking at my horses head (for Gods' sakes, it's not like the directions are posted there or anything.) That being said, I UPPED MY HANDS! It's all about the small victories.

For tomorrow's ride(s), I'm going to pare down the amount of things I work on, and really focus on mastering what I'm working on, rather than pushing for more. I also realized that for the longest time, riding at my house has been fairly unfocused, and I've allowed both horses to get away with falling in at the shoulder on turns, and I haven't been as expecting of energy as I should be. So, add those to the list of things that need to be fixed.

I know if I keep at it, I'll get to where I want to be, I just need to keep chipping away at problems one at a time, and try not to listen to the East German judge too much.

Up your hands!

Wow, I've been neglecting this for a long time, haven't I?  Lots of things have happened since the last time I posted about the city kids chasing my horses through the fence on New Year's Eve.  I've hauled Zigs out to California to ride at the Tournament of the Phoenix, a major flood came through and demolished our fence, I switched to a much better job, my mom got breast cancer, fought it, and won, we weathered the worst drought in history, I helped my friend put on two jousting tournaments, the list could go on.  The point is, I've been busy, and while I have been riding, I haven't really felt motivated to blog about it; but today, I'm making a change. 

Why?  For several reasons.  First of all, until recently, it's been hard to get out and ride.  Not only schedule-wise (work, etc.), but also motivation-wise.  I'm not going to go in to any detail except to say I'm getting help with and addressing these issues.  Besides, you read this for the clever pony-related banter, not for insight into my mind. ;)  Second of all, I thought back to when I was blogging consistently and I realized that it was a great help in gauging my progress and helping to reflect on the problems I was having.  And lastly, I enjoy coming up with clever posts.  So now that we're on the same page, let's proceed, shall we?

Marvelous.

There is one notable change I need to mention moving forward, though.  Since I was last updating this blog regularly, I've been riding and training Shadow more often than Ziggy.  Not to worry, though, Zigs is by no means retired, It's just Ziggy's a made horse, while Shadow is still green in some ways, and needs constant attention to stay sharp.  I like to think that I've made some fairly good progress with Shadow over the two years I've been working with him, but there's still a fair ways to go.  So, in the spirit of picking a convenient reference point to begin working from for future reference, let's mark the beginning of the metaphorical tape at Tuesday of last week.  Why last week?  Simple, really; LB, an extremely skilled Jouster and Rider was in town giving a Jousting clinic.  Unfortunately, funds are a little tight due to a recent vacation and truck purchase, so I had to audit the clinic, but I did take a private lesson from him on Shadow, and he was kind enough to do some schooling work on Shadow for me.  Despite not being able to ride in the clinic, I got a lot out of watching L school Shadow, and my lesson. 

However, before I start enumerating lessons learned, I need to set the stage a bit.  After Lysts on the Lake, my riding dropped off sharply due to a combination of working 80 hour weeks on a huge work project, Texas summer and me being in a bad mental state.  All of this resulted in Shadow remaining rather under-muscled.  Since I respect L a great deal, and I know he likes Shadow rather a lot (in fact, at one point during Lysts this year, he threatened to take him back to Norway ;) ), I was rather apprehensive of showing up with my riding and Shadow being in such sorry shape.

Ok, let's not mince words: I was flat-out embarrassed.  I felt like I'd taken a few giant steps back rather than forward from Lysts, and Shadow's conditioning is not where it should be.  So, to stop belaboring the the point, I was wound pretty damn tight when I showed up for my lesson.  And oh Gods, did it show!  After a very tense warm up, and a mini-rodeo (brought on by my nerves, not disobedience on Shadow's part), we worked on getting shadow to relax and stretch into the bit.  While working on this, L identified several problems I'm having:

* I hollow my lower back.
* I'm not keeping my core engaged, which causes me to go all noodly (yes, that's a word now.  Deal with it.) and lose the ability to convert impulsion into collection
* I still hold my hands too low, which will now be easy for me to correct thanks to a saying that L relayed to me from a Portugeuese Bullfighting trainer, which serves as the title for this post: Up your hands!

After a while, Shadow started stretching out and blowing (read: relaxing) and we were able to get to work.  Since Shadow desperately needs strength in his hind quarters, we worked on spiraling in and out on the circle.  As is par for the course whenever you're re-training body position issues, progress came in fits and starts.  I'd have it, then I'd start thinking about what I was doing, and then revert to my old habits.  Happily, the lesson ended much better than it began, and I walked away with several things to concentrate on.

The next day the clinic started, and I helped people get tacked up before the sessions started, and just generally emulated a sponge, and soaked up every bit of information I could by comparing my assessments of the issues the riders were dealing with L's advice, and listening closely when L would give the other riders advice on how to work through the same issues I was having.  I like doing this because I feel like it helps me develop my eye, as well as helping to make another connection to the same piece of information in my brain.  In between sessions, L was nice enough to ride Shadow and work him for me. 

Er

Mah

Gerd.

Shadow can MOVE.

Yes, I am bragging.  Sorry about that.  But for Gods' sakes, he was doing canter pirouettes, flying lead changes, and teleporting to either side in a canter on command.  Impressive no matter which way you slice it.

For the rest of the clinic, I tacked up Shadow after the last session, and would work on the things L told me.  There's still a lot of work to do on my position, but I feel like by the end of the week, I was doing a much better job of not letting my core go soft, and I'm able to change the bend thorough my seat and spiral in and out on a circle much more successfully than I was at the beginning of the week. 

To put the icing on the cake, on Saturday, we loaded up and all went Foxhunting.  I rode Ziggy, and loaned Shadow to L.  As always, Zigs was a total rock star, and didn't understand why we couldn't A) Pass the leader of first flight, and B) Become flight 0.  The day that he doesn't want to do either of the aforementioned activities is the day I'll know it's time for him to retire.  Shadow did quite well for his first hunt, although he didn't particularly enjoy stopping for the checks, and tended to dance around.  But that's to be expected.  Horses ALWAYS get amped up when hunting.  That aside, he didn't have any problems with the hounds, and L rode him very well, as always.  Although I think next time I take Shadow hunting, I'll switch him to a Pelham instead of the mild curb we were using.  Not that the curb was a problem, it's just that it's my preference to start gentle and work my way up as necessary. 

We didn't get any talley hos, but the fixture was awesome, and a great time was had by all.  After the clinic, we loaded up and headed over to a new friend's place for a delicious lunch, and I got a firm reminder on the importance of checking your corners when going through a gate.  Fortunately, trailer, ponies and gate post all survived the encounter intact.

The clinic served as a much-needed kick in the ass to help pull me out of my funk and back into riding.  I don't ever again want to be that embarrassed over the conditioning of my horse, and as was rightly pointed out to me, as a horse lover, I have an obligation to train Shadow to his highest level of capabilities.  He's too nice of a horse to let go to waste.  So, to that end, starting tomorrow, I'll be adjusting my work schedule to 0700 - 1500 so that I can get home with enough daylight to ride in, and will be getting back into lessons as soon as finances allow (hopefully after the holidays).  To further encourage my progress, I'll try to post monthly videos and pictures.  Tonight, however, both Shadow and Zigs will be getting a well-deserved rest. 

I Hate City Folk and New Year's Eve

Fair warning. This post contains lots of rage, venom and other similar adjectives. That being said, I'll now elaborate on my new-found hatred of City Folk and New Year's Eve. Earlier tonight, we noticed lots of cars showing up at my next door neighbor's house. Looked like they were having a party. Random neighbors had been firing off fireworks around the neighborhood, so we would occasionally go our and check on the horses. To their credit, the horses were very relaxed about the fireworks.

Fast forward about an hour or so, and all of the sudden, we heard a crash. I jumped up, and ran outside to investigate, and discovered the horses running hell for leather around the pasture, and some kids jumping over the back fence toward the creek. I yelled at the kids to get the hell off of my property, and went over to check everybody. There didn't seem to be any injuries and nobody came up lame, so I proceeded to walk the fence line. I'm glad I did, because I discovered that the gate between the front yard and the pasture was open, and had a horse-shaped dent in it. Zhi and I managed to get it to close, and used some of the spare chain we had to tie it closed for the night. Tomorrow, I'll go see how bad the damage is, and whether or not I need to replace the gate. At this point, the assholes who'd whipped my horses into a frenzy attempted to sneak back towards the pasture. Since they were all wasted, they were about as stealthy as a brick lobbed through a glass window. This time, I watched the horses while Zhi ran over and yelled at them again.

That seemed to work, because they all made their way back over to the neighbor's house, but at this point, there was no way in hell I was going to go back inside. I spent about an hour trying to get the horses calm, and kept watch for more drunk stupid people. While I was debating on calling the police, almost on cue, 6 Williamson County Deputies showed up and began dispersing the party. I don't think I've ever been so glad to see a police car. Zhi and I took turns keeping an eye on things while the crowd dispersed and the vast majority of them seem to have gone home now. I'm freaking exhausted at this point, but I don't know if I can sleep. Thanks a lot, City Slicker Assholes.