Equestrian Team Summer Day 2

*I can still say my legs are sore and bruised today, Sunday.

Friday

So I haven't had a lesson in about a month. This was basically like a first lesson all over again.

I got on this massive horse (but they really all look massive compared to the Pasos) named Alex and went in the super huge arena. Stacy once again reminded me to think of my legs since my hands and core seem to be down pat and it's my legs that are all floppy once I start trotting.

At least I got my diagonals right! I like horses with long strides at a trot, it's easier to see diagonals at.

And again, to all of you people who ride regular gaited horses, you deserve so much credit. It hurts to lift my leg to move it forward to walk after all that posting.

I'm also not used to having to have to much contact on the reins and keeping them short with a horse with such a long neck is a little unbalancing, so I kept falling forward trying to reach for the reins, then losing balance, then losing reins, then repeat the cycle again. I felt beautiful taking a canter and Stacy said I looked awesome until I started forgetting about keeping contact and Alex started to go faster. My downward transition to a trot was atrocious and it took an entire lap around the arena before I composed myself.

In short, I felt horrible.

But then she explained it like this: I need to be like a boxer and keep my weight down to be able to take anything up top, which I then converted to a dancer's analogy: you can't do a triple pirouette if you have a high center of gravity, it's just not possible. You need to stay low to maintain that balance. And then it clicked! But then the lesson was over. So I have that for next time.

She also told me that what I'm doing with the Pasos, with the whole collection and the double reins, they don't do with an English horse until they're like a level 5 dressage horse (is that really true???), so it's kind of like I'm going backwards with focusing this much on my legs.

That, and I never trot. I won't let the trot be my downfall! I already know that I'm most likely going to miss the team's first competition because it's the same weekend I'll be at Nationals (if we go), so I have a little more time. Hopefully my balance will improve in the next couple of weeks and I can start the little jumps again and Stacy might override the paperwork to put me into a jumping class instead of just staying on the flat, because when I'm walking or at a canter, I can pretty much handle it, it's just this darn trot that's throwing me off.

Day 140

I didn't go out yesterday because we went to the Midwest Horse Fair in Madison! Talk about a change of weather -- while it was 80 last week, it was snowing yesterday! It was really fun, I'd never been there before and there were DOZENS of vendors! But the time we got through with most of them, all the horses were done with and you had to pay extra to stay and watch the night shows. So we left. But not without getting free tickets to the Dancing Horse Stable! Looking forward to that!

As usual, started Harry off getting him into the trailer. He was a punk today and did a pretty large, unacceptable rear while my mom was trying to get him into the trailer. I tried with him first and he was just not having it, so after his stunt with my mom, she put on her "If you don't get in this trailer right now, we're selling you" face and he went in like a lamb. I figure that by our first show next month he'll have no problem...hopefully.

I got to ride all three of them today! I started off with Brie. She was kind of skipping with her back legs which had me worried so I didn't do much except walk her and get a little bit of corto, definitely no canter, especially since we weren't out yesterday. She was limping more when I switched with my brother to ride Nina, so we ended up putting her away with some lineament. Now we know why she was limping though -- she was kicking her stall all night! Naughty girl.

Nina just trotted along and I got yelled at by my brother for posting instead of sitting the trot. "Don't post! She might get the idea that she's not supposed to gait!" So I enjoyed quite the bumpy ride.

Then I got to work with Harry. I was a bit disappointed with him today, as my mom had been having awesome rides with him the past two weeks (and I didn't take the opportunity...grrr), and he was just so-so today. Also, probably because we weren't out yesterday. But overall he's a huge improvement. He doesn't really tap dance anymore or any of the bad things he used to do. He's calming down quite nicely and only got antsy when Ray passed him on the horse he was working. I hope that within a month we can get his gait to tighten and for him to calm down even more, then we'll definitely do well at shows with him!

Day 128

I didn't go out yesterday because I went to the dog show! Yayyyy doggies!!

Today. Was. FABULOUS.
Mainly because Colin came out today and Ray wasn't there. We chatted and he showed us three new stallions that he brought up from Florida. The poor things are so skinny! We're determined to get some weight and muscles on them. He promised to let me ride one, Cache, once he's settled in and has a bit more weight on. I'm super excited, Cache looks like a train coming down a track. So much power! I know I can be bad about getting pictures and videos up, but I promise I'll get a video of me riding Cache up as soon as I do!

So we rode all together and when he was done riding Cache, Colin came back in the arena to watch my brother and I ride. He immediately took to my brother and pretty much gave him an hour long lesson on Nina, giving him tips and tricks on how to ride her better so that she's more relaxed, more balanced, and gaits tighter. Unfortunately I didn't hear any of those comments because I was working on warming up Brie. I got around the arena a couple of times before my mom demanded a switch with me so that I would ride Harry.

What a handful. I know that I should be light on his mouth, but it's just so hard when he pulls and tries to take off! So, like a bad owner, Colin saw me struggling with Harry today. As soon as he was done working with my brother, he asked if he could ride Harry, and I obliged. First thing he pointed out was that Harry has a really unnecessary fear of the wall and we're going at it the wrong way. We use our inside leg to apply pressure and the outside rein to try to get him over to the wall, while Colin said that we should just not fight with him like that, just make him go straight, and instead of reversing into the arena, we should reverse onto the wall. Another pointer that he had regarding my fighting with Harry was instead of pulling on his bit constantly trying to get him to slow down is to just turn him into a wall or a corner and he'll have no choice but to stop.

Colin set a few goals for us with Harry:
1. Extinguish the fear of the wall.
2. Get him to relax while not wanting to take off.
3. Make him STOP when we want him to stop.

I think I've mentioned before that Harry has a tendency to tap-dance when he gets nervous. We've been told lots of different things to stop this and none of them have really worked. Colin suggested just keeping pressure on him at all sides when he starts tapping until he stops and then immediately release pressure and he'll start to get the message. It's worth a try.

He also mentioned that trotting is a good thing for the horses. We're all so concerned with gaiting all the time that they never get the chance to relax, and he said that giving them an opportunity to lapse into a natural trot is relaxing for them, and that when we ask them to gait from a trot, they'll have relaxed and then be ready to work really well in a gait. We can give that a try too, though I'm a bit skeptical about that. All we can do is wait and see.

But now Colin will be around more often, or so he says. I really am looking forward to having him around. It's nice to get some new pointers and tricks every once in a while, because thinking of ways to deal with issues gets a little exhausting on your own!

Day 48

Late post. Sorry guys. This one's for Saturday. I didn't make it out yesterday because I got a new puppy, Bella! You can read more about that here.

Got to the stable and, as usual, Brie doesn't want to come out of her stall right away. This really bugs me, you know? She comes out very easily for everyone else, just not me. She's playing mind games and it's not fair! I will win though, however long it takes. Then sometimes I feel bad because I feel like she doesn't like me, but that's not true, she loves hanging around me. It's definitely just because I've always been the one she messes with, even when we first got her. I was the most challenged because apparently we're on the same wavelength for these mind tricks. Oh Brie. So she was a good ride, didn't really do much with her because I started riding Harry and Nina today! Yay! Especially for Nina!I rode Harry right after Brie though, so I'll start with him.
We only took forever to get Harry's jaquima put together and figure out how do you cinch a non-button-holey girth. For those of you who don't know what a jaquima is, it looks like this:It's kind of like a hackamore, and is actually very practical. It amazes me why more people don't use this, but that's beside the point. My mom's friend bought one from Colombia and it's very nice, except we wanted to change it up and it just wasn't working. So about a half hour later, we end up with the same set-up we started with. Harry's snout and mouth are very small, so we weren't sure how tight to make the bit hanger. We set it to what we thought would be the correct setting and off I went. I lunged him and he was pretty good, then I got on him. He was very excited so I just walked and walked and walked to calm him down. All was going well until suddenly, near the end of my ride, he rears up. Now I'm not talking little hop, I'm talking full on rear. Now I could've panicked like my dad, but even though I felt him toppling backwards losing balance, I pulled him to the side and he went back down, shaking, and I pet him to calm him down. Turns out the bit went under his tongue and he freaked because of it. I called my mom over to adjust it for me and once it was tightened, he was perfectly fine and we ended our ride on a good note.

Onto Nina. I can't see what we paid for in training, honestly. She still won't gait and her head is all over the place up in the air. It looks like she's swimming! I'm just worried that we may have lost our shot at her being a Fino horse due to this lack of proper training. It just frustrates me so much! She was trotting the entire time! I'm aware this sounds silly, since most horses trot, but Paso Fino's are not supposed to trot. They're supposed to look a little something like this:


So you can see why trotting is bad!
I'm just so frustrated. It looks like we won't even be showing. Even Brie, because my parents would rather bring Harry and get him into the showing setting to desensitize him, which makes sense, but I'd really rather bring Brie and show her. We may just end up going to Memphis to see Carmello and spend the weekend with him and he can give us some pointers on how to get Nina to gait better and what is opinion is of Harry.