Ick

 

This picture never fails to make me laugh.

Smooth Sailing.. Kinda

While we're doing pretty well right now, I'm kind of at a loss with how to proceed. As long as I don't ask her for something unexpected or change up the routine too much, everything is fine. The minute I ask her for something she doesn't want to do, we hit a snag. I haven't figured out how to approach cantering to the left, since whenever I attempt to work through it frustrations just escalate until we end up angry with each other. I know I need to tackle this issue and get it eradicated but I think I'm going to ask around for opinions before I try to tackle it again, since nothing I'm doing seems to be having a (positive) effect.

So while that's a bit annoying, she's a perfect angel when I don't canter left first. The needlepoint exercise I've been doing is really helping her with switching her bend, and her flying changes have been getting a lot better because of it. She still tend to get stuck in sharp corners, so I'm thinking of upping the circles and direction changes at the trot this next week, then introducing some serpentine patterns at the canter to get her more agile. She /can/ make sharp turns, but she really bulges out with her outside shoulder and I have to heavily correct her with outside aids to complete the turn.

This weekend we had two very nice rides. Saturday she was very relaxed and we had a low-key ride, where we basically warmed up with the needlepoint, chugged around the ring at the canter a couple times, then hopped over a cross pole and low vertical a couple times. We finished out over a hogsback made from three cavalettis, which there is a picture of but I haven't received it yet.

Sunday I demanded a little more of her. We did have a minor tantrum when I corrected her after she started charging at the warmup fences. She gets worked up and starts throwing herself at them sometimes, so we take it back to the basics and trot the fence several times, then canter it until we get a nice slow approach. It takes a couple tries at the canter, but I just hold her to the fence and let her bury herself at the base of it until she realizes she can either wait and get a decent spot or run at it and have to jump from a very short and uncomfortable spot. I also had to correct her when she starting running into the canter again after I would do a downward transition; it's nice that she knows that I usually want her to take a few trot steps and then pick up the correct lead if I bring her down to a trot after a jump, but sometimes she jumps the gun and runs back into the canter before I ask which is not okay.

After our jump warmup we tackled a triple, which was essentially up a diagonal line of a cross pole, two strides, 2'6 picket, four strides, out over another cross pole. She kept going sideways after the first fence which screwed up the striding (we ran out of it the first time because she literally went sideways and would've jumped the standard), so we trotted in a couple times until she was relatively straight after it before going for the two strides. We probably went through it a good 10-15 times, but the last time through was slow and straight with the correct striding, so I was really happy with that and proud of her for being so gung-ho about something she's never done before.

Time Waster

Let me just say, I am never riding in a lesson again. Or at least, never riding Rush in a lesson again. COMPLETE waste of time! I love my barn, and the people at it, but the BO is just.. useless. It started out promising- she noticed Rush's tendency to over bend to the inside and told me to emphasize outside rein and leg. Promising, right?

It all went downhill from there. We trotted maybe 2 minutes, then started cantering. We cantered right first, which was good, but then she had me switch direction after only one or two laps, which is definitely not enough time for Rush to acclimate. Then Rush spooked from a horse coming up behind her, and things kind of fell apart. I got her back, started walking around until she stopped jigging, and then did circles on the inside at the trot until I could feel her relaxing a little more. BO, meanwhile, was shouting at me to take her over the pole that was in the middle of the ring. In whose mind is that a good idea?!?!?! Then she made me go straight to jumping- after probably 5 minutes of flatting total, and kept telling me to SLOW DOWN.. so it got to the point where Rush could barely make it over the jumps without a huge effort. Rush was a champ, of course, because she knows how to jump, but I just wanted to strangle the BO. At the end she had be trot a figure eight, and kept telling me to half halt. COME ON! It's not like we're speeding around the ring. It's a nice, quiet, pleasant working trot. Just because you think my horse is out of control doesn't mean she is- and if I wanted her to slow down, all I would have to do is close my inner thighs because she's listening to me, not running around willy nilly.

Ugh. So that was.. not worth it. On the upside, I had some great rides over the weekend and her flying changes are really coming along!

Friday Frolicks

I dug up a book I got a while ago, 101 Dressage Exercises. I don't ride dressage, but I was looking for some way to shake up the same-old same-old hacking on the flat. I browsed through the first couple of pages a few nights ago, which happened to be on warming up your horse. After properly color-coding them so it didn't look like a swarm of black dots and dashes, I figured out the gist of them and decided to start implementing them during the next few weeks while I focus on flatwork.

Today we did some lengthening/shortening at the trot; it was interesting to say the least. She gets very tense when I ask for a slow sitting trot; her head comes up and she fights the contact until I push her forward enough that she submits to the contact. From there she is less abrasive, but starts to duck behind the vertical which is a big no-no. So the sitting trot is pretty rusty at the moment and needs a lot of fine-tuning. When I asked for a lengthening (really just a regular working trot, I wanted her to have an opportunity to decompress between the sitting trots) she would sit on my leg, then jump forward into a faster trot. So that needs a little more work as well; hopefully we'll be transitioning and adjusting like pros soon! I did some circles at the trot as well to work on bending. She's slowly becoming more supple, but she still has a hard time bending throughout her body. She likes to turn with her body straight, or thrust her haunches in while shoving her shoulders out. After a couple of minor spooks most likely caused by another horse coming straight at her (it's hypothesized that she was run in to on the track, since she freaks out whenever another horse comes at her) she was agitated and unresponsive, and had become stiff throughout her body. To remedy this I did the 'needlepoint' exercise from the book; we had some motorcycle turns at first but she settled down and started listening to my leg again. So yay exercises!

Her canter work was, in a word, beautiful. She's usually very upright at the canter- in a frame, but a very high frame. Today she really stretched down (which helped my hand position SO MUCH!) and was relaxed from the moment we began cantering. One thing I did notice is that she tended to begin leaning on her forehand in the lower frame, but I remedied that easily by picking her up and reminding her to use her hind end. We did lots of circles at the canter, since she's come to anticipate lead changes and get really frantic and scrambly whenever we take a turn through the center. After one or two she settled down; began listening to my leg when I asked her to bend correctly, and really settled beautifully. Then we executed a perfect lead change, cantered left, and basically repeated what had happened to the right. It's odd; she bends correctly going left but gets fast through circles, whereas to the right she maintains her pace but can't bend as well.

All in all, today was a very successful ride. I should really listen to myself more often; I'm quite smart ;)

Slowing it Down

Sometimes I get so caught up in how freaking amazing my mare is that I forget she's still green, still learning, still a 'baby'. I tend to rush my rides- I get on, ride, get off, because of time limitations and that overwhelming amount of horses I have the responsibility of getting out. This works for most of them- Willie's always raring to go, Status needs to work as much as he possibly can, and Webbie doesn't necessarily need to be ridden hard as long as he stretches his legs. But if I hop on Rush and ask her to trot, you can bet your breeches it's going to be a bad ride.

This frustrates me to no end. When I have two hours to get three horses out, I needneedneed them to be ready to work when I hop on. And she just isn't. She needs 5-10 minutes of meandering, stretchy, loose walking before I can get working, and I never get a satisfying ride in unless I trot her on the buckle for another five minutes. I know all this- I know that she needs this ridiculously long amount of time before I can reasonably ask her to start reaching into my contact, and I ignore it anyways. WHY do I ignore it anyways?

I need to slow down. I don't know how I'll make it work, but I have to slow down or I'll keep having bad rides like the ones I had last weekend. We've kind of hit a road block in that she gets riled up and obstinate when I work on flat, then calms down through the jumping. I'm thinking I need to ixnay the jumping for now, until she starts actively working with me on the flat instead of going through the set WTC routine and fighting with me if I try to switch it up. Which stinks for me, because I love jumping, but I need her to start participating willingly in learning new things or else we're not going to make it anywhere.

Video Stills

Monumental Progress

It's been.. a few months since I last updated. When I last posted, things were inching along with Rush. We mad progress, but it was slow and fitful, and often every step forward resulted in a huge leap backwards the next time I got on. Fast forward three months and it couldn't be going better. When my sister came home, things got a hell of a lot easier and more manageable, a) because she wasn't burned out from riding like I was and b) because she could get Rush out on days I had too much schoolwork (aka 3/4 days a week).

Until then I hadn't let anybody else on Rush, mostly because although I may not be the best rider in the world, she trusts me and nobody else at my barn is capable of handling a green horse. One time, through miscommunication and someone's complete disregard of any logical thought processes, someone else got on her- and proceeded to wreck weeks of work. That was fun. My sister, however, is a phenomenal rider and has worked with less than perfect horses before, so I fully trusted her with riding Rush.

For approximately a month Rush got out every day, which allowed us to get her to the point where she actually felt tired and became manageable enough to train and correct things without the situation blowing up. She trots beautifully now, canters superb to the right- a little less superb to the left, but still pretty damn fantastic- and has jumped 3 ft. Oh, and we can do a 2'6 course pretty damn well. There's still a lot of work to do: she's pretty crooked and gets uppity when I fix her, she has to canter to the right first or else she'll be strong and unruly to the left, leg yielding has produced some very interesting hissy-fits, and she has a lot of trouble bending correctly through circles.


Without any further ado, enjoy Rush jumping adorably!