Damn. It.

I'm too tired to write a post about my lesson tonight.  When I got home tonight, Zigs was down in his stall.  He'd finished all of his grain, but he was definitely in distress.  It was pretty easy to get him up, so I got him out of the stall, and let him off the lead.  He pretty much immediately went down again.  He wasn't rolling, so I let him be, and called the Vet's answering service to leave a message for the vet to call me.  Shortly before she called, Ziggy pooped and seem to perk up a bit.  After he pooped, he went over and took a drink of water.  He had gut sounds on both sides, was hydrated, and didn't seem to have an elevated pulse.  So naturally, at this point, I started thinking, "ulcer".  Around this time, the vet called and I talked to her about the symptoms we were seeing and at the end of it, the Vet said that we should just keep an eye on him over night, and if he started to go down and thrash, to call her.

Right Round

So, let's start off with the bad news, and the I can get on to the good stuff.  Today is Monday, and normally I have a riding lesson on Monday nights. Well, as has been the case for the past several Mondays, my corporate overlords mandated that I attend a conference call with my Korean counterparts right smack in the middle of my lesson time. To say that I am furious about this, is something approaching understatement. Yes, I am looking for another job.

Anyhow, that said, after I fulfilled my grim obligation, I got home at about 19:30, and was in serious need of some Hippotherapy. So, I tacked up Zigs, and mounted up. Before I get any further, I'm going to detail the exercise program I'll be using to get Zigs in shape for the horse trial:

• Day 1: Hack around the neighborhood


• Day 2: Dressage, focus on one or two specific items


• Day 3: Trot poles and Two-point


• Day 4: Interval training


• Day 5 Dressage, focus on different item from Day 2

Since I hacked around the neighborhood yesterday, that means today was Dressage. I decided that today, we were going to work on trot circles, as they have always been a big challenge to me, and I've noticed that Ziggy has started majorly cheating on them, and since I would really prefer not to see, "For the love of God, the Dressage test said CIRCLE at A. Not a SQUARE!" written on my Dressage test comments, I think it would probably be a good idea to start working on those again. They went decently well, but I was having a really hard time getting Zigs to bend for the entire circle. I'd get about a quarter to a half of it, and then he'd try to totally straighten out and do this weird counter-flexing thing. I did a bit of spiraling in and out on both reins, but I will freely admit that they were not the roundest circles Dressage has ever seen. I really need to get some cones, and set them up in a 20 meter circle so that I can learn to visualize how big one actually is. Ordinarily, I'm pretty good at judging distances, but for some reason, I suck at eyeballing a 10 meter radius. Part of the problem is that right now, I don't have an arena to ride in, so I don't have the convenient sides to help me see the width. But, I need to be able to see that without an arena for when Psycho Pony shows up in the Cross Country phase, and I need to circle to defuse him.

I've put those on the shopping list, along with a wristwatch with a stopwatch. Right now, I have to take one hand off of the reins and take out my pager to get a look at the time. That works OK when I'm trotting, but once I start doing serious interval training, I really don't like the idea of taking one of my hands off of the reins to check the watch while I'm galloping. What can I say? I'm a bit of a control freak.

Speaking of galloping, once the trot circles were going reasonably well, I did a little bit of canter circles. Those went considerably better. It seems like cantering is easier for him than trotting is, because I had very little trouble getting him to bend on both reins, and my circle was a lot rounder. Of course, that could just be from the practice I did at the trot. ;) Zigs had worked pretty hard by this point, so we took a long walk break. While we were doing that, I practiced shortening and lengthening his stride. It wasn't 100%, but I could definitely feel the difference when I asked him to shorten, and when I asked him to move out. When I could, I closed my eyes as I was giving my cues to help me evaluate my position, and focus on feeling the difference in stride. It worked pretty well, but I think that's something best done on the end of a longe line, where you don't have to worry about your horse suddenly deciding that the right rein is boring, and that it really needs to go to the left. To cap things off, I worked on the cruising canter versus the collecting canter positions. It wasn't 100% successful, but there were very brief moments of brilliance as far as the collecting part goes. The cruising part, he's all about. ;) Which reminds me, a friend of mine linked me to an awesome T-Shirt that I must have.

Tomorrow is trot pole work, and it's really late, so I need to wrap this up and get to bed.

Moments of Brilliance

Today, I decided to try something different and ride in the morning, rather than the evening, and by morning, I mean around 11AM.  It wasn't oppressively hot yet, but it was getting there, so it was going to be a short ride.  I wasn't in the mood to do anything particularly "structured", so I decided to go for a ride around the neighborhood.  I did a little bit of spiraling in and out the circle, but I had some trouble getting Zigs to not fall to the outside.  I got a few good circles in, and continued to ride around the neighborhood.  This time, on the recommendation of Saga's mom, I threw in some trotting,  He seemed to like that, but I was having the damndest time keeping him from counter-flexing.  I think that was largely due to the fact that the area to our right was heavily wooded, so he was probably keeping an eye out for predators.  I spent about half the time bending him to the inside, and doing shoulder-ins to get his mind more focused on me rather than potential doom from the terrible death-woods.

He also kept randomly breaking into a trot, but I got him slowed down within 4 strides when he broke. When I did trot sets with him, he was rather forward, but when I sat down, he'd go back to walk eventually.  But, to put the title into context, I actually did have a few times where I sat down, and he immediately went back to walk.  Yay for progress!  Since it was pretty hot by this point, and I'd been in the saddle for 30 minutes, I decided it'd been enough for one day, so we went back home, un-tacked, and I hosed him down.  Of course, immediately after I turned him out into the pasture, he went down and rolled.  Nature abhors a clean horse, I guess. ;)  That's really all I have to report, tomorrow, for the first time in a while, I'll actually be riding in a lesson, so I'm sure I'll have more to talk about then.

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!

Roads & Tracks

Sometimes, you get the ride you want and the ride you need.  After an abysmal day at work, and an even more awesome conference call, I got home and decided that I really, really needed a nice, quiet, relaxing ride.  So, I decided that instead of "working", Zigs and I would go for a hack around the neighborhood.  No worrying about him being on the bit, getting canter exactly when I ask, or anything like that, just me and my pony exploring the neighborhood.  I took Ziggy out of the gate from the pasture and he gave me a look as if to say, "What's going on, Dad?  There's no trailer here.  You only bring me out when we're going somewh-Oh look, grass!"  After a quick reminder that he was on the clock now, I mounted up and headed out.  Ziggy was very bouncy, and looky, which I expected.  To make sure he kept his mind on the task at had, I made him do lots of leg yields and shoulder ins.   I veered right from my house, and came to a cul de sac, which looked to be about 20m in diameter, and decided that this was the perfect place to do circles.  I started off on the left rein, and got a few good 20m circles in, so then I practiced spiraling out on the circle, which also went really well.  Why I didn't do any spiral in, I don't know.  I blame my fried brain.  I did, however, remember to change rein and do the same thing on the right.

 

Man, I need to work my horse more on the right rein.  He wasn't nearly as good on the right rein as he was the left.  He kept trying to cut off the circles, and I had to give a pretty strong leg aid to get him to spiral out on the circle.  I know that when I ride him in the pasture, I tend to spend a lot of time on the left rein, so I need to make a concerted effort in the future to fix that, because I ride Dressage, not Nascar, and I'm pretty sure that XC requires right turns as well.  Call it a hunch.  At any rate, I kept after him until he was crossing over behind to sprial out, and not just popping his shoulder and walking to the outside, and then resumed exploring the neighborhood.  We did a little bit of trotting, but it was hard ground and he doesn't have back shoes, so I didn't ask for more than 5 or 6 strides before going down to walk.  There's not too much to report about the rest of the ride other than the fact that Zigs was a very good boy, with one caveat.  He has a bad habit of jigging when he knows we're headed back home.  My strategy for dealing with it was to immediately make him circle, do a serpentine, and then point him back home.  Unfortunately, I don't feel like it was spectacularly successful.  But by this time, it was starting to get dark, and I wanted to get him back in before I lost all the light, so I didn't deal with it as thoroughly as I think I should have.  If any of y'all have suggestions on other things to do when he jigs, I'm all ears.  To compensate for that, once we arrived home and I got him back into the pasture, I made him do three trot circles on both reins, so he didn't think that just because we were home, we were done.  I checked my pager after I'd untacked him, and realized I'd ridden him for almost two hours.  He wasn't hot, or blowing, and the only sweat on him was from the saddle blanket. (I use a puffy saddle pad, and a half pad on top of it, so that gets pretty hot.  Especially in the Texas summer.)  I really enjoyed that ride, and I think it's something I'll be doing on a more regular basis.  Zigs seemed to appreciate the change in scenery, too.  I think part of my frustration with riding him right now is due to the fact that he's a very smart horse, and he gets bored just riding around the pasture.  I'm going to see about building myself some caveletti, and getting some cones so that when I do ride him in the pasture, I can give him several different activities to keep his mind engaged.  

 

I'm not sure if I'll be riding tonight, I'd like to, but I need to do some urgent work on one of the websites I maintain, so it all depends on how long that stuff takes me.  If I don't ride tonight, I'll definitely ride tomorrow, and will probably focus on sprialing in and out of circles on the right rein, and turns on the forehand to see if I can't make strides towards loosening up that right side of his.

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!