>I can’t sleep, so…

>…. want to hear about my ride?

It was a pretty good one, although Tucker was a little distracted.  The wind was pretty strong this evening, and my one complaint about my awesome super-sized indoor is that when the wind blows, the sides turn into giant tuning forks and they make this rather loud vibration noise that sounds sort of like the gong show.  (Or maybe more cowbell?  Told you, I can’t sleep.  I’m punchy.)

So every time that noise sounded, Tucker lost focus for a minute. I’d get him nice and straight and then the noise would start and he’d just ever so slightly twist his head in that direction and shift just enough that I’d lose the straightness, or he’d bring his head up to look, and slow down a little, and I’d have to re-establish the forward momentum.  All in all, not huge issues, but kind of annoying.  My hope is that he’ll get so used to the noise that eventually he won’t react at all. 

I wanted to work tonight on keeping him straight, especially tracking to the right when he wants to overbend to the inside, and since I needed to keep him focused, I did this with lots and lots of figures, reverse turns, half circles, big circles, little circles, serpentines, figure eights, leg yields, all the time thinking about turning his shoulders off my outside aids.  I basically need to keep my left leg on, my left rein to left hip, and keep my right hand giving and flexible while I am tracking right.  Since he’s developed a comfort zone of being over-flexed right, I pretty much can’t stop thinking about these aids, or he falls back into the wrong place.  Sort of like when you are trying to fix something in your own position (like my right elbow, which appears to belong to a very perturbed chicken, or a little tea pot). 

I did a lot of work at the walk tonight so that I could concentrate on my position and my aids.  Once I felt my horse start traveling straight, balanced, and forward, I knew I was doing the right thing.  Then we’d move up to the trot, and when I’d lose it, I’d come back to the walk and get myself centered again. 

I’ve also started working a lot of walk-halt-walk transitions into my rides, working really hard on not letting him lean into the bridle at any point in those two transitions, and making him stay connected back to front and straight.  I swear, sometimes I feel like he’s bargaining with me.  “Okay, I’ll stay light up front, but how ’bout if I swing my hips right?  No?  Okay well I can stay straight, but I’m going to fling my head up in the air and get disconnected.  Still no good?  How about hips left?  Really, no?  Okay, fine, picky-picky.  Sheesh.” 

To test the straightness, I worked with a cavaletti that was set up on the center line in the middle of the ring, concentrating again on turning his shoulders and not letting him bulge to the outside to give himself more room (which he does a lot over fences).  I had a breakthrough moment at one point toward the end of the ride.  I was trying to keep him straight, tracking right, and he kept blowing me off, and then we’d get to the cavaletti on the half-stride because he was crooked and it was changing the track and the pace.  I actually said out loud to him, “You know why this is happening right?  Because you’re ignoring me?”  (Yeah, I really do expect him to be able to rationalize.  Yes, I do realize that’s insane.  What’s your point?) 

I came around the next time and decided not to protect him.  THWACK.  He smacked his right hind on the cavaletti, hard enough to make a horrible noise.  I cantered off and thought, well, I guess that’s what happens when you don’t listen.  Amazingly, the next three times he decided he could actually respond to my outside aids.  He stayed straight, and we had no trouble cantering over the cavaletti right out of stride.  Huh.  Lighbulb moment.  I protect this horse way too much. 

Once we successfully completed this exercise, it felt like a good place to quit for the night.  So we ended with our big stretchy trot and I told him he was a good boy.  All in all, it felt like I accomplished a lot, even if the ride wasn’t always that pretty or smooth.  We had some really lovely trotting and cantering moments where he was nicely balanced and straight, made some substantial progress with the walk-halt-walk transitions, and the cavaletti exercise toward the end definitely taught me something. 

Okay, I have a lesson tomorrow morning so I really need to get some sleep.  I’ll be counting minature ponies (more fun that counting sheep, right?).  Hope you are all sleeping soundly with visions of sugar plums dancing in your heads….

>Trying to Relax Perfectly

>Have you noticed that the more you concentrate on trying to relax, the less relaxed you become?  It makes “practicing” being relaxed and “working on” relaxation kind of difficult.  But, be that as it may, that’s what we worked on last night.

I had a really nice lesson on Sunday at Whitmere’s new facility and one of the things that stuck out to me in our flat work is that his downward transitions are getting better and better, but he still braces a bit through his head and neck even though he’s now stepping through with his hind end.  So last night, I wanted to work on the trot-walk and walk-trot transitions and see if I could get him to stay relaxed through them and not get stiff or brace anywhere as he does them. 

I put the hackamore on, which I’m still using about once or twice a week.  I like using the hackamore for our long and low rides because he’s less inclined to lean on it like he would with the bit, so that he’s stretching down but maintaining his own balance.  We started off getting a relaxed swinging walk, bending in both directions while continuing to stretch down, and kept working on this until I felt his back lift and his hind end start moving forward more freely.  I love that in the hackamore he will lick his lips or chew when he relaxes.  I can feel him loosening up as he does that.  Then I very patiently started asking him for a transition up to the trot, and each time he started feeling like he was going to stiffen or raise his head, I asked him to come back to a more relaxed walk and get him stretching down again.  I could feel the wheels turning in his head, trying to figure out what I was asking for.  Whenever he stretched down and relaxed or took a deep breath, I praised him verbally or patted his neck.  After a few attempts, he picked up his trot while maintaining his low head carriage and relaxed posture and I praised him for that too.

We went through the same process at the trot, asking him to stretch down while bending in each direction, then asking him to straighten down the long sides, even doing very shallow leg yields off the rail, all while reaching down and staying relaxed through his back.  At first the trot was kind of slow, but I wanted him to relax first, and then go forward.  Once he got warmed up, he naturally started carrying a better tempo, and then I just had to encourage him to keep going forward as we circled or changed direction or went through a serpentine.  When I was happy with the trot, I gradually started asking him for a transition down to the walk using only my seat and leg.  While he didn’t pick up on this right away, he eventually realized I was asking for something different and again I felt the wheels turning and he came back down to the walk. 

I put him on a big circle going right and we just worked on walk-trot and trot-walk transitions. All I really wanted in the first few transitions was for him to stay relaxed and keep stretching down.  This meant that I had to stay very soft with my hands (barely any contact with the hackamore) and use only my seat and leg for both upward and downward transitions.  He got the hang of this really quickly and started paying much sharper attention.  I had to really work on turning my shoulders to follow him (my left shoulder is always back) and keeping my right elbow at my side and my right arm relaxed. The hardest part for him was downward transitions facing the barn, because he would tend to lose focus and his head would come up slightly as he looked out the door, and then his balance would shift and he’d end up on his forehand.  To combat this I opened my inside rein, used a little more inside leg, and just asked him to bring his nose slightly to the inside as he reached down into the transition.  This seemed to be just enough of a reminder to stay focused.  Once I had him focused and relaxed, I added more pressure from both legs and a deeper seat to really ask him to come under with his hind end while maintaining that soft carriage through his neck and back.  This worked brilliantly, and we got two or three transitions at the end that felt really strong and relaxed and balanced — exactly what I was after.

Then we went into our right lead canter and I asked him to keep stretching down and worked on sitting down softly, following with my hips, closing my leg around him, and turning my shoulders to follow his ears as we turned or circled.  I found that I could steer him perfectly without involving my reins at all, now that he was fully listening to the cues from my seat and legs.  We had a really nice rolling canter where he was happy to go forward in a very relaxed way, reaching down but not getting strung out or unbalanced because I was maintaining the connection with my seat and leg.  Really good stuff. 

I let him walk for a bit to catch his breath and clear his head (I could tell he was concentrating pretty hard and I didn’t want to frustrate him), and then once he felt ready I put him on a circle on the left and resumed the walk-trot and trot-walk transitions in this direction.  Possibly because we had just cantered and he was anticipating a canter transition, I had to work on getting him to slowly step up into the trot and not lunge forward into too big of a trot.  Once we fixed this (by repetition) and he realized that wasn’t what I was asking for, I went back to asking him to reach down and step into a nice relaxed trot, and then keep reaching down and step under from behind in the downward transition without tensing anywhere.  In this direction, I had to work harder at staying relaxed through my left hip and shoulder.  He seemed to have figured out the game by now, and it took about five minutes less in this direction for him to give me the kind of transitions I was looking for.  Quick learner!

We went up to our left lead canter then, and I worked on getting the same quality of canter that I had going right. For some reason I have a harder time sitting in this direction, so I had to really concentrate on following with my hips and not resisting the motion.  He also doesn’t like to hold his left bend, so I had to open my left rein to ask him to bend left and stretch down, because I wanted to feel him soften as much as he did tracking right.  The key here though was opening my left rein without giving him something to lean on, so I had to make sure I wasn’t holding or pulling back.  I was happy to see though that once I did a big circle through the middle of the ring a few times with my left rein open and my left leg closed, the third time through I didn’t need much left rein at all, and he stayed bending left off just my left leg aids.  Once he did that, I was happy to quit for the night so we did just a few more minutes of stetching down at the trot and then we were done.

All in all, a really good ride.  I became more aware of the places where I tend to stiffen up, and felt him respond when I relaxed, and I think he got the hang of staying soft and coming forward through his upward and downward transitions.  I am starting to really love our long and low work.  It is helping build up his top line and it really is challenging for him, even if all I’m asking him to do is relax and stretch.  I love when I say “Yes, Tucker, good!” and I feel him give me a little more of what I’m asking.  Such a great dialogue.

>A little progress with straightness; The wound saga continues

>Between the heat wave and the self-mutilation, Tucker had a full week off last week.  He didn’t seem much worse off though, he felt happy to be back to work.  Unfortunately, all the progress we made toward getting him straighter in the week before seemed to have vanished.  I had a pretty solid flat session with him on Saturday, and we had a flat lesson on Sunday.  I still want to hold off on jumping him until the swelling is gone in his leg and I know it’s in the clear.

On Saturday all I really worked on was getting him to go forward, which was a challenge in and of itself.  It took the entire first half of the ride to get something above a Western jog.  The trot was fairly abismal, so I decided to canter first and then come back to my trot work.  After the canter something seemed to unkink itself, and then I got a nice freely-moving forward balanced trot.  He still resisted the contact on the right rein so I never really got him straight, because when he grabs the left rein, his hips swing to the right, and if I straighten his hips but don’t get him accepting the right rein, he’ll just pop his right shoulder out.  But, I figured forward and straight-er was better than how we started so I quit on a good note.

In my lesson on Sunday after struggling to get him to accept the right rein for a while Alicia had me flip both reins to the right side of his neck.  So, I still had one rein in each hand, but my left rein was basically useless, since it was on the right side of his neck.  The point was to give him no choice but to accept the right rein because that’s all I had, and prevent me from riding entirely off my left rein.  This meant I had to use a ton of left leg to keep him straight.  After doing this exercise, I realized that in general, I need to ride him with a lot more left leg.

Tucker, of course, didn’t understand the objective of the exercise and swung his head completely out to the right, so he was trotting around staring at the wall.  Hmmm.  Talented little horse I have there.  Just as I was starting to think to myself that this was completely pointless, though, he actually started accepting the right rein a little.  Apparently trotting around with your neck at a 90 degree angle from your body becomes uncomfortable after several minutes or so?  He still wasn’t completely straight, but at least he contemplated the idea that I could push him with my left leg into my right hand.  I have a feeling we’ll need to do that exercise a few times to actually accomplish its purpose, but it was helpful.

As for the wound care department, I was trying for the first two days to keep it open, on the theory that it would form a scab best that way, and the Alushield would serve as an antimicrobial layer.  Unfortunately I think it is a little too deep to start healing that quickly, so I’ve decided to keep it wrapped for a few days until it starts to form a scab.  I consulted with a few friends whose horses have had similar injuries and the consensus is that’s what the vets usually say.  So, for turnout I did a gauze pad with vet wrap (not too tight, because I was worried about putting pressure on his tendon, but snug enough that it wouldn’t slide down).  For tonight, since he’s staying in due to thunderstorms, I did the same thing under a standing wrap.

Yesterday and today, instead of just scrubbing with betadine/novalsan, I flushed it out really well with hydrogen peroxide in a syringe, which I think really helped to clean it out.  Under his wrap, I switched to a more heavy duty topical treatment, Equaide, which prevents proud flesh, is a heavy duty antibiotic, and generally helps with healing.  I don’t know if it’s actually developing proud flesh, but the fact that there’s no scab forming after four days and it’s a fairly deep cut makes me want to take all precautions.  He’s also been on SMZs and will continue that for another 4 days.

I stopped at CVS tonight and got non-stick gauze pads, because I noticed when I took his wrap off tonight that, although the wound was very clean, it was really stuck to the gauze.  That certainly won’t help with scab formation.  I also got some saline solution to keep flushing the wound.  I remember the vet telling me something when Lilly had her last absess about hydrogen peroxide, that it’s good in the beginning, but after that can dry out and kill healthy skin cells trying to heal. 

I took pictures, but they really aren’t coming out well enough to show you guys any meaningful detail.  What I can say though is that there was a white to yellowish discharge on Saturday after being left open, but only blood tonight after being kept under the wrap.  I think that’s good.  There was also white fleshy-type material forming in the center of the wound, which easily came off when I gently scrubbed on Sunday, no such stuff tonight.  Those two things are making me think that the wrapping and the Equaide are helping.  I don’t plan to wrap indefinitely because I think that would create its own set of issues, but at least until there is a scab forming and the swelling comes down.  The good news on the swelling front is that even without icing or work today, it was only swollen around the perimeter of the wound, rather than from knee to pastern, as it had been on Thursday through Sunday.

The saga continues, but all seems to be moving in the right direction….

>Slate Cleaned

>I considered just putting a big black square as my post today… to symbolize the clean slate that I clearly need.  Thank you for all your comments on yesterday’s post.  You’re all absolutely right, of course, I need to avoid over-analyzing and dwelling.  So, tonight I set out to put the bad rides of the past week behind us and have an enjoyable, light, productive flat session. 

First off, I set myself up to have a good ride.  I told Alicia that I would turn out Tucker’s turnout buddies, Rodie and Junior, when I was done riding, so that he wouldn’t spend the entire ride gawking at their field and wondering what fun he was missing.  I also rode inside, rather than out in the field.  We are getting new footing in the big outdoor ring this week (!), so as of today there are several large pieces of machinery and a huge pile of sand out there, and while Tucker isn’t usually a spooky horse, I didn’t want to set myself up for an issue this evening.

I tried to pick back up where I had left off in my lesson on Saturday afternoon with our flat work.  We worked on straightness, getting him to softly accept contact on both reins while traveling straight, and then accept the outside rein in the bend.  There were ground rails set up, a single one in the middle of one long side, and a line on the other long side.  I practiced traveling straight down the quarter line over the poles, accepting both reins, keeping his haunches tracking behind his shoulders (instead of swinging out) with a supporting outside leg, and then doing a shallow “s” over the poles, practicing changing the bend and getting him to bend through his middle and step under with the inside hind, so that he’s fully engaged and bending through his whole body instead of just in front of the saddle.

Tracking right, he likes to curl himself to the inside, over bend and pop his left shoulder (which all goes back to him constantly seeking the left rein), so I need to be careful to keep him a little straighter with my outside aids.  I worked on some counterbending circles and thinking about turning him with my left rein and leg.  Tracking left, I have to be careful to keep the bend with my left leg, rather than left hand, which is tough because he really wants to balance off the left rein and often tricks me into holding him up on the left side.  He’ll even twist his head a little, tipping his ears to the left and his nose to the right, in an effort to get more contact on the left.  This is all, of course, stemming from un-evenness in my riding, which I am working hard at correcting.  Mostly, carrying my right hand and keeping my right elbow at my side so that the contact on the right is soft and following (making it more pleasant for him to accept), and making sure, especially tracking right, that my shoulders follow his ears, instead of my left shoulder back and right shoulder forward, which makes me twist my hips and makes the weight in my seat uneven, further encouraging him to be uneven.

At the canter, I worked on straightness and collection and extension, using the ground rails.  I first worked on getting a medium canter, flowing but balanced, to the single rail.  I worked on turning out of the corner using my outside rein and leg, and then having him very straight, between both hands and both legs, all the way to and from the pole.  I noticed he wanted to drift back out to the rail upon landing, so I took that as an opportunity to get him accepting the outside rein and almost asked for a slight leg yield to the inside to keep him straight.  Once I had a good working canter and was happy with straightness in each direction, I worked on collection and extension by alternating between putting four strides between the two poles and then three strides, and then back to four.  Not surprisingly, the hardest part was getting him to collect and go back to four strides after doing three.  It was tough tracking left to get him to collect but stay soft and keep the impulsion.  The first two times he wanted to bounce off my hand and come above the bit, but the last time I really concentrated on closing my leg and pushing him into my hand as I asked for the collection, and that made it softer. 

I was overall very pleased to feel how adjustable he has become though.  A few months ago, we did a similar exercise with a line of cavaletti and I really struggled with it.  So, that’s a significant sign of progress despite how discouraged I felt on Sunday.  For more on progress, visit Kate’s blog, A Year with Horses.

>Flat lesson

>I had a great flat lesson tonight.  I’ve been having trouble keeping him straight so I wanted a flat lesson to work on that.  Man did I work my little tail off…

I got on a little before Alicia came into the ring and worked on walking in straight lines.  I’d ask him to stay between both hands and legs straight down the quarter line for half the long side, then ask him to leg yield just 3-4 steps, alternating left-to-right and right-to-left.  I tried to do the leg yields toward the mirrors so I could be sure that his haunches and shoulders stayed in line. 

Then we started off the lesson walking big circles.  To really get the correct bend and have him reach under himself with the inside hind, I had to ask him to bend through his middle with my inside leg at the girth, keep him straight on the outside rein so he didn’t just bulge through his shoulder, keep my outside leg back and on his side to keep his haunches from swinging out, and open my inside hand. 

We moved on to the trot, and worked a lot on the same bending and reaching under through the inside hind, as well as getting him to soften into a steady contact on my outside rein, bringing my outside rein open and back.  Lots of transitioning from sitting trot to rising trot, while maintaining the same forward rhythm and active engagement, which required tons of work with my seat and leg.  Alicia told me to think about using my whole leg, not just my calf or my spur, both for the bend and to keep him between both hands and legs down the long sides — which really helped — but man am I sore right now!  By the time we were done with the trot work though, I had a really great trot:  light and forward, soft and bending, elevated in front and engaged behind. 

The canter was tough but it did steadily improve.  We started off the left.  My trouble with his left lead canter all stems from my right hand.  It’s another chicken-or-the-egg scenario.  As to various bad habits that we’ve developed, I constantly find myself wondering whether Tucker started it or I did.  Probably me, maybe a little of both, but I always wonder. Tucker doesn’t really like to accept the contact on the right rein, so he resists it.  As I’m trying to hold the right rein, and not let him pull it out of my hand, I end up burying my right hand against his neck, with the old “piano hands” and my elbow ends up sticking out instead of resting at my side.  Of course, this creates a very resistant feel on the right side, which Tucker doesn’t want to give to, and then since he’s braced and stiff on the right I end up trying to soften left, which is exactly what he wants because he’d much rather take the left rein than the right. 

So we worked a lot on getting me to lift my right hand and bend my elbow, so my elbows are softly following but I have a consistent feel on his mouth and he has nothing to brace against (no buried right hand).  Interestingly, when we started cantering a cavaletti, which was set in the middle of the ring on the center line, the first three circles he’d dive to the inside (left) to try to avoid the contact on the right side.  So I had to really work at pushing him out with my left leg, carrying my right hand, and feeling the right rein — a little open and back toward my hip.  I have to remember when he falls in to the left to correct it with my left leg, not my left hand.  By the end of the left lead canter he was accepting my outside right rein, so then I just had to keep the canter forward and connected with my seat, keep him bending around my inside left leg, and keep my right leg back in the turns to keep his haunches from swinging out.  (Oh, is that all?)

Since it was such a good canter, I was able to keep the forward and the softness through the downward transition and he really reached through with his hind end into the walk.  We’ve been working on that downward transition for months, so I was really happy that he did it right.  I think he’s finally understanding what we want.  He couldn’t seem to figure it out at first.  He was walking when we asked, so what was the problem?  Now he understands that he has to walk and keep coming forward from behind, not balance against my hand or fall forward through the transition.

Then we moved on to the right lead canter.  Big thing here is that I actually have to push my left shoulder forward in order to follow him around the turns.  Since I always want to be taking the left rein, that necessarily brings my left shoulder back.  So even though my hips turn toward the inside to follow him, my upper body is actually twisting and I end up resisting him not just through my shoulder but also the small of my back.  But when I forced myself to push my left shoulder forward, all of a sudden he was softly accepting both reins, not hanging on the left rein or trying to bulge through his left shoulder, and holding the right bend without over-bending.  So… in other words… once I finally was sitting straight… he started going correctly.  Amazing:  (1) how simple this solution is; and (2) how incredibly awkward and unnatural the “correct” position feels. 

The right lead downward transition was tougher but after several attempts we finally got a good one.  It’s funny, tracking right we actually got two good downward transitions but he only trotted for a step and then stepped right back up to his canter.  Doesn’t seem to fully understand that when I’m sending him forward into the downward transition, I don’t mean “keep cantering.”  I think that might mean that my contact is less consistent to the right.  I might be letting go of the contact at the last minute instead of keeping a feel of his mouth.  I’ll have to pay close attention to this during my next ride.

So, overall, a very technical ride but an excellent lesson.  I love a good solid flatwork session.  Always makes me feel so productive. 

Update on the stitches:  I took them out yesterday and it looks great.  Should heal really nicely and hopefully won’t leave much of a scar.  Man was he glad to get those out — they were definitely starting to itch!

Coming soon:  Pictures of Tucker free jumping… I promise, you will be amazed.  I’m beyond impressed with him.  My horse is a rock star, plain and simple.

>The Wunderkind has returned

>Good news! Fire breathing dragon appears to have left the premises. I have had a week full of fantastic rides. The Wunderkind is back, and I couldn’t be happier. I missed him so while he was apparently on vacation to some sunny hideaway and left his rebellious twin brother in his place.

I still have some things to fill in from the past to weeks. I want to do a post about our Thanksgiving Day Ride From Hell, and what I learned from it. But for today, I’m going to post about my great rides this week.

I’ve been riding him with a flash attachment and it is making a world of difference. I have it on pretty loose, I can fit four fingers underneath it, with my hand flat against his muzzle. But even without being too snug, it is really helping us make the right connection.

Tucker seemed to have figured out that a good way to evade work is to root the reins out of my hands. He also has a tendency to grab the inside rein, especially tracking left, which makes it difficult for me to ride him inside leg to outside rein. But riding with the flash, this hasn’t happened at all. I’d imagine the flash just prevents him from repositioning his jaw so that he can’t grab the bit. Instead, he’s staying soft and light and bending from my leg instead of my hand, which means his whole body is bending instead of the portion in front of the saddle. Which, obviously, is the goal.

I think my favorite ride of the week was last night. At the trot I worked on doing lots of little reverse turns, changes of direction, circles around the jumps, and shallow serpentines to try to get him to smoothly change his bend. Since he was so soft, there was actually a loop in my inside rein as we reversed, and he was turning completely off my outside leg but never lost his inside bend. Since he wasn’t bracing against my hand at any point, he had to balance himself from behind. His gaits even felt more comfortable. He was so good and so consistent that I only rode for about 20 minutes. I love being able to reward him by ending the ride early when he doesn’t put a foot wrong.

I had a great lesson today too. His flat work was very good. On the lateral work, I still need to remember that during the right to left leg yield, I need to keep him straight off my left rein but not brace with my left hand and restrict his forward motion. Otherwise he gets sort of “stuck” and it feels like he’s not moving off my right leg, but I think it’s because I’m not giving him anywhere to go.

The jumps were great. I am finally starting to believe that he really could care less about my amateur mistakes. He is definitely the most honest horse I’ve ever ridden. He will leave the ground from anywhere and there is never a question in my mind about whether he’ll jump. We can leave from a mile away or practically under the base of the fence and he’ll just figure it out and leave the ground. I’m finally understanding that as long as I don’t worry about it, he won’t. I guess it’s a matter of realizing that he doesn’t know that a distance is “wrong.” Sure, a short distance might be a little harder for him but unless I give him some cue that I’m worried about it, he has no sense of what the “right” distance would be. More often than not, when we have a good canter rhythm, all the distances work out naturally. But when I miss a few times, like I did today, it’s so nice to know that he doesn’t hold a grudge.

Still working a little on my position over fences. I have gotten my lower leg underneath me and I’m getting much better about keeping my hip angle open so that my upper body doesn’t end up on his neck. But I need to get the feeling of staying closer to the saddle, with more bend in my knee. Right now I think I’m working so hard on keeping my lower leg from slipping back that I’m bracing with a straight knee, which is forcing my hips too far up out of the tack. It’ll get there. Like everything else, it’s a work in progress.

All in all, this week was a great week riding-wise. Made me feel so grateful to have such a wonderful horse. Especially given that the last couple of weeks with him were so difficult. The highs make the lows totally worth it, don’t they?

If the roads aren’t icy tomorrow morning, Alicia is going to show Tucker in the Level One jumpers. It snowed all day, so we’ll see. . . .

>Good solid flatwork

>So my goal for this winter is to really delve deep into my flatwork with Tucker and make it right. Like all horses he is a work in progress, and since we’ve been training with Alicia his balance and self-carriage has improved by leaps and bounds. He understands collection now, which for a big guy like him is a huge feat. It’s amazing the horse he has become since he first moved into Whitmere last winter.

What I’m working on now is acceptance of my right rein. We have left rein issues — probably something that I unwittingly started and he has now taken and run with. I think it went something like this: He was a little stiff to the left, so I worked my left rein more, he became dependent on me using my left rein, and he now seeks the left rein contact all the time in both directions, to the point where he’s very uncomfortable taking the right rein. Does that make sense to everyone? The progression has happened over a number of years, and now we’re working on creating a more balanced Tucker, which of course has to start with me changing my behavior.

We worked on this during a flat lesson this past weekend, and I picked it back up last night. Basically, tracking left, I am using a counterbend to establish connection between my right hand and right leg, so that he’s actually turning off my outside aids. It’s so amateurish, but I have realized that I have gotten into the habit of turning him left with my left rein. And then his hips go right and he gets stiff on the left side. Tracking right it’s much better. He wants to bulge through his left shoulder and lean on the left rein so I just have to create a wall and keep his hind end moving forward into my hand with both legs.

By the end of the ride he was much more accepting of my right rein and I tried to get a little bit of a left bend by opening my left hand without taking back on my left rein and asking him to move away from my left leg into my right hand. Moments of success but overall as soon as he thought there was something to lean on in my left hand he wanted to get a little flat and heavy.

Yet again… I seem to have stumbled upon a gap in my riding knowledge. Why is it so important for them to turn off our outside aids? I know that’s what you are supposed to do, but why? Just for the reason I stated above, that otherwise the hips move out and they lose their bend or get heavy on the inside rein, or is there something more that I’m missing? And, how does it help me to counterbend, when what I want is acceptance of the outside hand on an inside bend? Is the counterbend just a means to an end? It does seem to help, don’t get me wrong. By the end of the ride I could at least track straight down the longside (without a counter or inside bend) and see in the mirror that without any left rein contact his hips were square behind his shoulder and he was moving straight and forward and light. I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Ultimately I think I’ll need to hash this out in my next lesson and hopefully I’ll report back with a little more knowledge.

The other thing we are working on is downward transitions. He wants to get heavy/stiff and I lose the hind end in the very last step of the transition. It’s a very subtle thing but something that could really use improvement. Walk to halt start off badly (he just wants to lean through them) but then he gets it and I can get really nice halt transitions off just my seat and leg. Trot to walk are getting much better, but it seems that he really doesn’t understand what I want at first. (“What? I walked. That’s what you said. What’s the problem now?”) I have, in lessons, gotten a few really nice trot-to-walk transitions though. So I know that it’s possible.

Canter to trot, still haven’t been able to get a transition that I’m happy with (sort of an emergency brake, horse falls out from underneath you type of transition). It has improved to some degree though, because his trot is well-balanced and soft right away, instead of heavy, too big, and overreaching for five strides. I’ve had to learn to keep my leg on through them, that helps a lot. And stay relaxed and tall through my back, sink deeper with my seat. Those things help. I sort of query what I’m supposed to be doing with my hands though. Reader thoughts on downward transitions?

>Blind faith

>Last weekend due to rain we had to do our lesson in the indoor. Alicia and I had dinner on Saturday night and she said she felt like Tucker could use some gymnastic work, so it actually worked out just fine.

Tucker used to have such trouble with gymnastics. He would hurry through them, never really sit back and use his hind end, which meant he would have a lot of trouble collecting his stride and end up kind of nose-diving by the last fence. I am happy to say he was much improved this time. This was the gymnastic by the end of the lesson:

We started with just the first vertical, set around 2’3″, and the second fence was just a vertical, not an oxer yet, and no ground poles. First time through, he wasn’t making much effort and just crawled over it the first couple of times. So Alicia added the 9′ trot rail out in front of the first fence and that helped. Once he started paying attention a little, Alicia made the second fence an oxer, set at 2’9″ with a 2’6″ spread. He was doing pretty well; I was having a little trouble not jumping over my hand.

Then Alicia came up with one of her typical strokes of genius — these are the reason we’ll never train with anyone else — and she made me close my eyes. I don’t think I’ve done this in years, but I remember having to jump through gymnastics like this when I was younger. It was pretty amazing. With my eyes closed, I had no choice but to follow his movement and as a result I had to be soft and following with my hands. And like magic, Tucker slowed down, thought about the gymnastic, and as a result started jumping better. We added the ground line between the first and second fence and I could feel him negotiating it. But of course, I had my eyes closed, so I couldn’t interfere. Blind faith. (How lucky am I, seriously? I have a 1200 lb. seeing-eye-dog.)

Then we added the third fence, which was a 3′ oxer with a 3′ spread. He jumped it awesome. Just rocked back on his hind end and jumped up really round and soft and slow. The next time through we added a ground rail between fences two and three, and I could feel him jump the second fence a little slower, land, canter one slow stride and then he jumped the last oxer even better. So cool. Only thing I didn’t like was that he was drifting right! For years we’ve struggled with a left drift, and now he’s going the other way. My theory is that because my eyes were closed and I was following so well with my hands, he was missing the left rein that he usually leans on (due to my bad habit of holding too much on my left rein), and as a result he went right. We’ll sort that out though. The important thing is that he handled the gymnastic well this time. He thought about it, he took his time, and he jumped really well.

We’re doing the gymnastic again tomorrow, and this time going to focus on my position over top of the fence. I could feel my lower leg falling back, which meant my center of gravity got pitched forward, and when he made that big effort and used that powerful hind end of his over the last oxer, I ended up having to peel myself off his neck on landing. So that was a little frustrating. Tomorrow, we are going to tie my stirrups to my girth. Another old trick I haven’t tried in years, but it will really help I think. I also am going to punch a few extra holes in my stirrup leathers so I can get a little leverage. Definitely can’t move up to showing at 3′ until I learn to stay with him, so this is definitely something we need to nail down.

I feel like I owe it to him to figure out how to stay with him when he gives me that much of an effort. Basically, my goal is just to learn to ride well enough to keep up with all the natural talent he has. It’s a funny thing, I think I get so impressed with him in the moment that I stop riding. I’m in the air over top of the fence I’m thinking “Wow, he’s jumping great” instead of concentrating on what I’m supposed to be doing, and then nano-seconds later I realize I’ve totally lost my position and we’re landing in a heap. But there are certainly worse problems to have than being a little starstruck by your own horse.

When I turned around after taking a few pictures of the gymnastic, Tucker was standing right where I left him. I realize he looks like a total giraffe in this shot, but he looked so cute just watching me walk around taking pictures, I had to take one of him. Part athlete, part goof. And I love every hair on his big old head.

I’ll let you know how gymnastics part II goes tomorrow. . . hopefully more good things to post!