lesson from that different lady

Widdlest had her very first clinic this past weekend, with Heather Mason.

My trainer suggested I do the clinic because we're really pushing to get that 70% in recognized competition, perhaps even bring it when we're at regionals!

Lots of homework for the widdlest girl & myself.

She needs more suppleness through her body, so spiral ins & spiral outs at the trot, with true bend and counter bend.

Need to influence more with the seat to get a much larger walk out of her (i knew she had more in there!).

She needs to have her nose further out in front of her in free walk & stretchie trot. She likes to duck btv.

Canter transitions: no more rushing into canter. trot must ALWAYS STAY THE SAME SPEED. No cantering if trot increases in speed AT ALL. If trot to canter cannot be maintained in a calm & organized fashion, must proceed to walk-canter transitions until the liddle horsie is reasonable, and canters off in a correct and non-resistant fashion.

If canter quickens or becomes unruly, bring to a halt and try again. If this happens a second time, halt & reinback only a few steps (depending on the level of belligerence) until desired results are achieved.

Also, true bend & counter bend in canter to create suppleness through the body.

Trot leg yields from centerline to the wall: if fussing, increase difficulty by inserting walk/trot transitions mid-leg yield; until appreciation for easier work occurs.

SO MUCH HOMEWORK. HOLY CRAP.

Heather thinks Dezi is adorable & immediately remarked that she can easily go up the levels. Also asked if I was planning on keeping her. :3 of course i am.

leaps of faith, are not always through the air

Since the beginning of the year (especially), my lessons with my older mare, have been geared towards my faith in her. Like all married couples, we have entirely too much history and not so much of it is amazingly good, happy, fluffy memories; lots of bad habits. Bad habits including but not limited to, my explosive temper, lack of self-confidence (which is slowly, but surely improving) and my sub-conscious level of expectation for Tori, which is surprisingly set very low. 

I have a terrible habit of hand riding also, partly because I have a terrible time figuring out how to engage her hind-end (mostly due to her amazing evasive abilities). You tap her on the rear with the whip = she throws her head up, moves her neck around, changes the rhythm of the trot - aka. every evasion she knows to avoid using her hind-end.

I have to give the reins, ask and actually expect her to do.

(sorry if some of these things make very little sense, i probably shouldn't be trying to write this after an exhausting, but productive horse day)

A lot of my issues also stem from my lack of core strength, directly related to my lack of enthusiasm for working out (don't have the money or time to dedicate the gym). So instead, I did a revisit to my past. I'M GALLOPING RACE BABIES AGAIN!!! Didn't realize how much I actually missed educating & exercising baby racehorses.

Feb. 24, 2009 - (L) Snoopy, best pony horse in all the land. (R) Judge Sonya & I, one of my first racebabies to have the pleasure of starting. She broke her maiden first time out, and she placed in her 2nd race, which was a stakes.

My favorite thing about riding, and dressaging, is putting a correct foundation on a horse. Once the correct foundation is laid, the horse can then progress in whatever direction it needs to, in order to succeed in life. I love riding young horses. I love the genuine enthusiasm they have for work they enjoy or figuring out how to make the work fun for them so they learn to enjoy it. 

Best thing you can do for a baby racehorse is to teach them a.) forward at all costs (otherwise life on the track will go badly in a serious downward spiral; a backwards thoroughbred is a lethal thoroughbred) and b.) to move off of the seat and legs.

(L) Dezdemona [dezi] - (R) Amber Flame [tori]

And let me tell you how awesome it is to ride 6 days a week (i live an hour & 1/2 from the barn and an hour away from the racebaby farm).

The benefits of racebaby riding:
a.) core strength building! you need to sit up, and sit back and be able to have an independent EVERYTHING in order to "sit your ass back & get tied on".
b.) realization of crookedness. nothing like a squirrely 2 year old tb to immediately inform you of how CROOKED your ass truly sits on a nearly non-existent saddle.
c.) adrenaline rush. i've been feeling kinda crappy on a whole lately, and I feel great the one day a week that I wake up at 4am, to ride both of my mares; but I can't afford to do that every day, not to mention just can't pull that off multiple days in a row.
d.) riding race horses reminds me what it feels like when your horse sucks back and behind your leg. you have to send that horse forward at any cost because it could literally be the difference between life & death for horse or rider if they're allowed to think ONE backwards thought.

Speaking of racebabies... I hopped on my friend's 2010 ottb just for fun (on derby day of all days! lol). I was hoping to light a fire under her, and try to convince her that it's not all that bad riding a baby that isn't always disobedient! (as much as I love and appreciate difficult horses, it's relaxing to ride a horse that does what you ask, correctly, on the first try).

Little baby Jack! (17.2 hh baby...)

Inching along...

Ridiculous weather, trainer's family emergencies & mysterious equine  illnesses seem to be plaguing me during the last week or so...

I figure I shouldn't really work tori until Tilen comes back... Further discussion of this will happen tomorrow morning with the trainer...

Dezi has a mysterious lameness aka thar's prolly an abscess abrewin'! And poor City has hives on his head, chiggers all up & down his neck & mane & legs, and his sun blisters are still healing... Nnngh. I wanna get going dammit!!!

Tentatively planning on taking City to the OTTB show @ the new jersey horse park in October... Gotta at least have a respectable Training Level 3 & First 1 by then and gotta build a costume for him... HALLOWEEN COSTUME CLASS!!!!

Outside of that only other show I've got to look forward to is the SGSDS Championship show with Dezi. Hopefully we'll get to Training 2/3 by November. :3

ride 28...

I've always thought that riding should be an art that is more about the quality of the time spent in the saddle... not the quantity. Due to my work schedule, I really can only ride about 3 days a week, 4 if all the planets are in alignment. 3 days a week really worked out perfectly for Tori and her lameness issues and as it turns out 3 days works out perfectly for my 3 year old, whom has only been officially started under saddle sometime mid-April this year.

We're at our 28th ride, and in our lesson, we successfully completed Training Level - Test 1. So our 2 tests for show at present are Intro C & Training 1. Which is incredible, considering she's still not been ridden a whole 30 days yet. While, the tests aren't AMAZING, she does offer to do all the movements, she does them in a timely fashion and for the most part, she's not an asshole about it either. Plus, she's proud of herself and she's excited to do more work. which is awesome. :D

STEP BY STEP and day by day

Tori was fabulous for her day at Appel Farm Camp Performance Day for the 3 young ladies that vaulted on her in front of at least 100 people. Tori's never been exposed to that many people at once. She's never had a crowd cheering & clapping for her or at her for that matter. SHE LOVED IT! She listened better to me lunging her around with children standing up on her than she does when I ride her at a show! (friggen brat, lol.) ;3

Dezi has been learning in leaps & bounds. Our lesson before last, we took a stab at Intro Test C, and she was awesome (even when the horse riding in the ring with us FELL DOWN in front of us bc his rider is incompetent & instead of down shifting to trot, decided she could cut the corner in an extremely unbalanced, motorcycle-leaning canter and caused her horse to fall [dezi, trainer & myself were utterly horrified]).

And now for the cherry on this lovely dessert: Trainer has asked me to start working with her own home-bred 3 year old filly because I've done such a great job with Dezi!!! :D

Super excited.

also, the owner of the thoroughbred stallion I was catch riding from like August until January, has decided that he's going to move City closer to me so I can start riding him again! lol. pretty freaking awesome if you ask me!

22 rides and counting!

Dezi has been absolutely wonderful. We've now worked on turning on the forehand (to establish that no matter what, she needs to move off my leg; so we don't have another tori).

All transitions are to be WITHOUT touching her mouth. (which honestly, for her, it's cake)

her canter transitions are a little rocky, but she does pick them up. and her right lead is SUPER comfy. left one is kinda "eh" but it's to be expected. its soo cool though, i had one of those epiphany things when riding the canter, realizing my reins were fairly slack, except for the play every couple strides so she understands that she can't poke her nose out ALL the time... and i was sitting up, and straight, and i was able to keep myself even on both seat bones. and i was actually able to feel how the canter goes from back to front. SO COOL.

and seriously, how many 3 yr olds can you canter around on a loose rein? xD

Moving right along!

So, last Thursday, during our lesson, Dezi and I had a few conflicts...

Conflict A.) Dezi has an overwhelming gravitational pull towards the wall of the indoor. Which eventually resulted in her trotting up the wall and falling on my leg. Which whalloped the area just above my knee cap (thankfully!) and now I have this GIGANTIC knee.
    - Side Note: I was frantically trying to get her to not glue herself up against the wall, but Dezi clearly knows best. >.>;

Conflict B.) Dezi decided that her proverbial "quarter" was up and did a "exit stage-left" out of the indoor.

So, I'm extremely glad to report that suddenly (after I purchased two ebooks last night & mused through them a bit) Dezi no longer has a dependency to being on the wall! We now make our "stop-sign" octagon shaped 20m circle at the trot. Molding her & guiding her around with my leg aids.

Not only that, but I started working some of the training level patterns with her, just because I could. The trot loops FXM & HXK = piece of cake. Even tested out the stretchie circle. and for a horse that doesn't quite understand the concept of the downward stretch for the free walk, she sure as hell caught on quick for the trot stretchie circle! (soon after we worked around the free walk and she started understanding what i was asking!)

Best & hardest experience of my life = breaking & training my own child.. er. i mean filly. :3 It is so much fun to help her learn and watching her browse through her little baby roll-a-dex to figure out the answer to the question I present to her.