Clinic Video
After some subtle (and not so subtle) threats to my computer, I finally got some video excerpts put together. Commentary below, if you’re interested.
This is day two of the clinic. I had no idea those breeches were that yellow. Yuck.
Note the leading shoulder on the first leg yield. It’s even worse on the second (anticipating getting back to the rail), but the second time around we were correcting by stepping the shoulders back to the right. These corrections are very obvious (both Ro and I trying to figure this out) and in one sense they make the leg yield look very jerky/drunker sailor-ish. However, we keep moving forward, and in that sense this is much smoother than other leg yields I’ve ridden, where the rhythm changes constantly because I slow down the shoulder and lose the forward momentum.
In the shoulder in, we’re applying the same idea by moving the shoulders back to the rail each time we lose it (whatever “it” is in that moment). We’re much smoother here, moving in and out of shoulder in fairly easily. We were getting the idea of moving shoulder and haunch independently while maintaining forward, even if we weren’t coordinated enough to maintain things for more than a few steps.
If you’ve watched any videos of us before, you’ll notice our trot work is much steadier and her stride is much, much looser, longer, and more relaxed. If you haven’t seen previous videos, you’ll have to take my word for it that this is an improvement. You can also see that when she starts relaxing into that trot, she also reaches down and into the contact on her own.
The canter departs are there mainly as a “yup, this is where we are” thing. They’re ok departs—definitely the best departs we got over the weekend—but you can see the canter quickly degrades (and why—I’m fully aware of what I’m doing).
I was really just grabbing clips here that show where we are honestly (bobbles and all) and that were positioned well with respect to the camera so things are really visible. For whatever reason, most (all? I can’t remember offhand) of this ended up being from our work to the right, but in reality we did a lot of changes of direction and work both ways.
(Incidentally, YouTube simply will not work for me. I think I may switch all my videos to Vimeo; it feels much cleaner and less intrusive than YouTube somehow. Plus, it works for me. I’d rather not have to maintain two video accounts.)
Barrels and Bareback and Emotional Abuse, Oh My
After riding last night, I let Ro loose on the grass to relax while I cleaned her stall and prepped her feed. About that time, the barn manager and one of the night feeders arrived, along with a couple of friends. Everyone once in a while, we have these impromptu adult nights, and this was obviously going to be one of them.
To Ro’s disgust, I hopped on bareback and went to join them. We weren’t going to do any work, but we could hang out for a bit. We did walk a barrel pattern, just for fun. It was a really bad barrel pattern, since Ro didn’t see the point of it and did see the point of the grass on the other side of the fence.
Later on, as we stood by the fence slapping mosquitoes and chatting, I was informed my horse is emotionally abusive.
Apparently, she does not think the barn workers are worthy of her presence, although she will deign to allow them to feed her. And she gets very disgusted if they show up late (“late” being “whatever time they show up, since it isn’t soon enough”). Or if they try to feed her outside instead of in her stall. Or if they bring her in her stall and the grain is not already there. Or if… anything, really.
She makes them feel inadequate. Like their existence is only tolerated because she hasn’t yet figured out how to call me and complain. Or install video cameras. Or otherwise alert me to the total insufficiency of her care.
I feel bad, because I know exactly what look she is giving them.
It’s the look that says she is disgusted by her current circumstances; she will put up with them for the moment, but she expects better next time. Or else.
I’m not sure Ro realizes she is not actually the 1% and that This Is Her Life.
As we were discussing her, Ro was standing by the fence, suffering in silence since she was, you know, having to stand there instead of being allowed to eat grass, when one of the guys roped one of the barrels and started dragging it along.
Ro’s eyes popped. The barrels move! Holy fuck! And they chase horses! And this is going on in MY arena! Someone stop all this madness!
She was not upset, but she was terribly interested in the barrel—didn’t want to take her eyes off it and didn’t want it behind her. I led her after the barrel to see what she would do, and she marched forward, ears pricked, breaking into a trot when she decided we weren’t going fast enough.
She was going to tell that thing what for.. Moving in her arena! Chasing other horses! Just you wait until she caught up with it!
Oh, Ro. Just wait.
The ropers are talking about getting in some steers.
If they do, we’re absolutely going to get in the arena and… herd cows around? I don’t know what you do with cows, but we’ll be there.
The only question will be whether her diva attitude comes out as absolute disgust that things that go “moo” are on her property, in her arena, and she is being forced to breathe the same air as them, or whether she will march in there, harangue them, and force them to line up in some aesthetically pleasing formation that makes them at least tolerable and almost worthy of the attention she has bestowed upon them.
You may feed me treats now, thank you.
Today I figured out something new about Ro.
Ro does not beg for treats. She walks through life with the absolute certainty that everyone wants to give her treats. If they haven’t done so yet, it’s because people are forgetful creatures and sometimes it takes them a moment to realize that they need to give her a treat. That’s ok; she can wait. Patiently. Endlessly. And every time she sees someone looking at her, she gives them a look back that says, “I forgive you for being remiss, and of course I will welcome the treat you are about to give me. Is it a carrot? I’d really like a carrot.”
She even convinced the clinician to feed her an apple core. Both days.
There’s just something about her: she’s not asking for treats, attention, adoration—she just expects it. The world exists to admire her. And feed her carrots. Or apples. Or whatever treats a person might have on them, except peppermints, which, yuck. (No, seriously. I was using peppermints to reward her for loading into the trailer. She chomped them up and spit them out. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get melted peppermint pieces off a trailer mat in the Texas heat?)
I digress.
We had another good session today. She was a little less relaxed than yesterday but she settled in eventually.
One interesting and yet simple thing for me to keep in mind:
When leg yielding (any horse), I often end up with the shoulders leading and the hind quarters trailing. Obviously this fix is to straighten the horse and start again, but I’ve always thought of straightening in terms of blocking the leading shoulder and letting the hind quarters take that last step to catch up.
Today we straightened by thinking about turning in the opposite direction. So if leg yielding left and the left shoulder starts leading, think turn to the right. Or actually take a step of a turn to the right, if the shoulder is leading that much. Yes, you go “backwards” in terms of the direction of the leg yield, but we maintained better forward momentum than if I blocked the shoulder and waited for the hindquarters to catch up.
That was for correction; for prevention, we rode the leg yield thinking about that turn in the opposite direction. Just thinking about it was enough to help maintain straightness. And since both the correction/prevention were achieved primarily through body position and not through rein aids, it rode much more smoothly than my usual “leg yield, block, catch up, forward, resume, block, catch up, forward, resume…”
We had some nice trot work again today. She started out with the pony trot again, and we unlocked that and got back to the bigger trot by (again) running through a series of exercises. It’s abundantly clear that I need to stop doing exercise/break/exercise—Ro responds very well to the challenge of having to adjust and readjust and figure out what is being asked.
Exercises that are particularly helpful for her: trotting, preparing for a walk transition, trotting off again. This sits both of us back and helps her start shifting weight on her hind end. The next step up: adjusting stride within the trot (longer, shorter). I would not say we are lengthening and collecting, just making some adjustments here. If she loses adjustability, we go back to the think-transition exercise.
Also very helpful: changing rein across the arena, really paying attention to stretching through the outside of the body and staying in the outside rein. We repeated this up and down the arena, turn after turn after turn. Because the turns come up quickly and repeatedly, we had to shift back and stay balanced. Since we’d turn right, turn left, turn left, turn right, it really encouraged her to swing through both sides of the body. And the straight lines between turns gave us time to rebalance if we needed it.
And then, of course, putting both sets of exercises together: asking for longer strides through the turns, asking for shorter strides on the straight lines. If we lost our balance too much, thinking about a downward transition on the centerline and then going back to longer/shorter strides once we sorted ourselves out.
The interesting thing is that the exercises worked for both of us—they encouraged Ro to shift back and swing through her body; they also encouraged me to shift back and rely more on my core. So as Ro began to reach into the contact and carry herself, I found there was less I needed to “do” with the reins, so the conversation between us became much lighter and more subtle.
With a better trot comes a better canter transition. Normally, if I’m using a circle to ask her to canter, I’m focused on trying to set her up—is she bent, is the circle helping put me in position so we’ll get the correct lead, etc. It sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t depending on how balanced we are. Um. Obviously.
Today, once we had the nice trot established, we took it on a circle and asked for just that little bit more that turns a balanced trot into a trot you can sit because the horse’s back is up and engaged. At the point where I could think about sitting the trot, I asked for canter. And, surprise, we had nice transitions and a better quality canter.
Less “setting up for the canter” and more “make sure you have a trot you can do anything with, and then do something with it.” Our first problem at the canter is that I have not been starting with the right trot.
So, for the next little while, we’re going to really focus on lateral work at the walk and really getting that trot established. We’ll play around with canter transitions here and there, but I think we’ll have much better luck fixing our canter issues if we are starting out from a really quality trot that comes from having both of us supple and connected.
Clinic: Day 1
I’m riding Ro in a clinic this weekend. We’re a little under prepared because she got ten days of vacation between the rain (flooded arena) and my trip, but we had to go with what we had.
Today’s session went really well.
She was pretty relaxed coming into the arena—active, interested in what was going on, but still pretty focused and responsive.
Pretty early on we started doing shoulder in, haunches in, baby half pass, that kind of thing.
No big deal, except Ro hadn’t done ANY of it before, but she was coping really well with it, so I didn’t think I needed to mention that to the clinician. We barely do leg yields and you want us to try a baby half pass? No big deal, once we get past my mental block about what “half pass left” means… it means left, no the other left, yes that left…
More than the exercises themselves, I think Ro was thrown by the fact that we just kept doing stuff. There were a couple times where she tried to halt and give herself a break, and there were a couple times where she was sure it was time for me to give her the reins and let her stretch out.
She did get breaks and stretchy walks, just not as many as we’d normally do. I am pretty bad at doing one exercises, breaking, and doing something new. Today was much more rapid fire than that, with the “breaks” showing up as changes of gait (canter to trot, trot to walk) or change of exercise (lateral work to working trot). Ro adjusted, but I think this was probably the most confusing part of the ride for her.
We had a couple nice canter transitions, although the canter was all a bit meh. I can’t ride the canter right now; I know what the problem is, and I’ve worked through the same thing at the trot already, but for now our canter is just… meh. Really, really meh.
However, I am pleased to say the transitions into the canter were good and, bonus points, we got the correct leads (hit or miss lately, because my position is just not there at all right now).
The best part of the lesson, though, was the trot work at the end. We were both a little rushy, which is what usually happens when we’ve had a break. I revert to hunter rider and lean forward too much, she goes on her forehand in response, and we end up quick and short.
We worked through that with some trot-walk transitions, then trot-think walk-trot (i.e. exaggerated half halt) and that helped both of us sit up and shift back. The result was a really lovely trot, like this:
This is where video would be helpful, because it’s not just that she was opening her stride, but she had a really, really nice tempo—slow, even, balanced, relaxed, swingy. She was not rushing to get this stride. She wasn’t even extending herself. She was just trotting along, like this is all she does every day. It was absolutely lovely to ride.
So, really, a great session all around. I was very pleased at how she took it all in stride—oh, there’s a loudspeaker? No problem. People sitting by the arena? No problem. A car going by on the road? That’s inter—oh, you want me to pay attention? Ok. You want me to turn my body into a pretzel? Really? If you say so…
We have one more session tomorrow, but I am quite happy with this one as it is.
Video may come later. Unfortunately I am having issues converting the DVD, editing it, and uploading it to YouTube. It’s failed for one reason or another at every step of the process, so I’ll revisit it later in the week.
I am feeling sappy. Forgive me. This won’t last long.
I love my horse.
This is hard to explain.
I started riding… well, I don’t remember. Someone mistakenly let me ride double behind a friend.
We moved to England. My brothers played football and I rode horses. When I couldn’t ride horses, I went to the local park, which had a hippo statue, and shoved a jump rope in its open mouth. The hippo statue, that jump rope—I don’t even remember what I dreamed, just that I dreamed.
We move to the Frozen North. By then, my father was resigned. No one understood why I wanted to ride, but my parents made it possible. I still don’t understand it. We weren’t rich. I am lucky beyond my understanding.
Later, we bought the Super Saint. I didn’t deserve this horse, and I’m still unraveling the lessons he taught me.
One of the lessons: a mini-medal Finals. I screwed up, and then I screwed up again. The Super Saint tossed me across a fence, and I got up on the other side, understanding that it was my fault. Somehow, out of disaster, I was given another chance.
My instructor let me ride The Horse of Many Names, another horse I didn’t deserve.
We competed in local Medal classes. My god, we did not win, but we competed.
I have the video. I’m not sure I could ever explain what it meant to me just to be IN the class. I never thought I’d win. I never thought I’d make the finals. Hell, I never did make the finals. But we were in the class.
I think, sometimes, we are so set on winning that we forget what it means just to be in the general vicinity of winners. I could be like you, one day… I could be like you one day. I cannot, I absolutely cannot, describe to you what it meant to me to be in that class.
I have a video of my first (I think) medal round. My god. We screwed up in every way possible. Do you know what I remember from that ride? We finished. We finished. By God, we finished. It was due more to the horse than to me, but I had a taste for it: if I worked hard enough, on the right horse…
It wasn’t on the Super Saint—he couldn’t jump so high by the time I bought him. It was on the Horse of Many Names. I am prouder of the screwed up, last-place finish the Horse of Many Names and I had in that medal round than I could be of any first place medal finish. I was scared to death, but we finished. Either you understand this, or you don’t.
After the Super Saint and the Horse Of Many Names, I drifted. I was saved by the Project Pony. She saved me; I’d like to think I helped save her.
And then, you know, I just rode. I rode some very nice horses. I rode many horses much more talented than me, thanks to some very generous owners. But none of them where the Project Pony. None of them were the Horse of Many Names. None of them, by God, were the Super Saint.
I miss him so much it hurts, even years and years later. That scar will never heal.
But then, Ro.
She was (and I think her then-owner would agree) a weedy little thing when I met her. She was five years old, and people would pass us in the cross ties, commenting on what a nice two-year-old she was.
By all rights, someone owes Ro an apology.
I agreed to help her then-owner start her, although I didn’t know what I was doing. Knowing what I know now, I would have done some things differently. So, I think, would have her then-owner. We muddled through, somehow. I decided I wanted to buy Ro on the strength of her full brother’s ability and her mind. I thought she could be as good as he was, and she had enough of a sense of humor to tolerate me, so…
She failed the PPE. Circumstances happened. I was involved in all of it, so I know what happened. And I was crying when I told her then-owner that I couldn’t buy Ro. I was so sure Ro was my next Project Pony, the horse I could trust through anything, and circumstances…
I was heartbroken. I had not been so heartbroken since I lost the Super Saint. I didn’t even own her, and the thought of giving her up tore me apart.
I don’t know what her then-owner thought. I don’t think I want to know.
I have never, and I do mean never, been so heartbroken.
There are, I will not lie to you, fancier horse than Ro in the world.
I could have bought one.
I could still, perhaps, buy one. The market is rather good right now.
But oh, a little over a year ago, Ro’s then-owner moved Ro to a new barn. I had just had my confidence shattered. I had had to admit that the horse I wanted so much could not be mine. And then I watched her walk off the trailer, at a new barn, and my heart broke all over again. I was sure, in better hands, Ro could be something. I just didn’t think she could get there in my hands.
Ro thrived at the new barn. I re-approached her owner. Her then-owner should have kicked me out of the room, but somehow I ended up signing the paperwork that said I owned Ro.
I am not sure I will ever be able to explain
Ro is NOT the fanciest horse i have ever ridden.
She has three good gaits. She has potential that makes me think she can probably go a lot further than I can go, with the right rider and trainer.
I don’t know that I am the right rider and trainer.
I have faults. I could list them in detail for you, if you’d like.
Here’s what I know about Ro:
She makes me smile.
She makes me laugh.
I have not, since the Project Pony, trusted a horse so much.
Ro has a spook. She has a crow-hop. She will take me with her if she spooks or crow-hops.
I am not worried that Ro will ever do something nasty and dump me.
Not ever.
Oh, I’m sure I’ll fall off her at some point. It happens. But I don’t think it will be because SHE wants me off her. You see the difference?
This week, I got on Ro, after she’d had ten days off and the temps had dropped considerably. It didn’t occur to me to lunge. Or, rather, I figured if she did anything under saddle, it would be rideable. It wouldn’t be malicious.
The last time I felt like this was the Project Pony. The time before that was the Horse of Many Names. And the time before that was the Super Saint.
I don’t know about “once in a lifetime horses.” It seems to me that I’ve met more than my fair share of them.
I’m just an average rider. I’ll be lucky to get to Second Level dressage.
That has nothing to do with the horse I’m riding and everything to do with me. I’m just not that talented. I try hard. It makes up for a lot. I’m not sure it will get me beyond Second Level.
And I have somehow, I don’t understand how, a horse I can hop on and know I will be as safe as anyone can be on a horse.
Ro is not perfect. And I am not perfect. But somehow, we are making it work.
She makes me smile. She makes me laugh. God love her, but she tolerates me.
I don’t know why, but she does.
It breaks my heart. I get on her, and I know she has more in her than I know how to ask of her. And this reminds me of the Project Pony. And the Horse of Many Names. And the Super Saint.
I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where I’m going.
Somehow, I’ve ended up with a horse I don’t deserve.
We’ve had awful luck this year. I have about given up on getting her into the show arena. But I watched a video of where we were a year ago, and I thought about a ride we had last weekend, and I’m not sure it matters.
Ro could have, should have, would have.
But she has me, and I have her. I don’t regret it. i hope she doesn’t, either.