Breaks are good things, apparently

So it's been over a week since I last rode Kieran and I had a lesson today (we didn't have one last weekend, long story).

I was going into it this morning thinking, "hmm...maybe we could just go on a trail ride? Maybe I should call Jessica and tell her I think I'm getting sick and not to bother coming over?

You get the idea.

But I didn't do any of that. And I'm glad I didn't! Even warming up, Kieran was really ready to go and listening and he gave me two gorgeous canter transitions and nice, collected, uphill canters.

Today's lesson involved a canter grid of poles set something like so:

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Sort of like a bounce, one stride, one stride, bounce. The idea being to get Kieran figuring out how to negotiation things that aren't set nice even distances apart.

We started with them just trotting through on the ground. Then cantering through on the ground. Then slowly raising a few up as if they were cavaletti.

Oh yeah, and we did some nice trotting spiraling circles during the warmup and also when Jessica was re-arranging poles as needed we'd do some trotting around encouraging him to stretch out and that was nice as well.

Anyway, by the end of the lesson, it looked more like this:

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Basically a cavaletti at the top with a "bounce" to a low (like...a foot) crossrail and then two strides to another cavaletti.

He'd had some trouble previously, either between me not getting my timing right, him being lazy, or some combination of the two.

The last time through it was just about perfect. Jessica said she could tell I saw my "spots" just right, that I pushed him forward or half-halted at just the right times, and Kieran cantered over everything without knocking anything. Seriously beautiful. (no pictures, hah!)

Anyway, I was grinning ear to ear and we ended the lesson on that note.

Obviously, a bit of a riding vacation agreed with him! :)

New Year's Day? Lesson! :)

Just a couple of short clips from today. The whole lesson was really a lot of hard work. We started by doing figure 8's in each half of the ring (so figure 8's on the top half, then figure 8's on the bottom half) at a trot. Which was harder than I thought, to really get the circles round and not make one small and the other big (i wanted to do a long diagonal between them instead of making them circles that happen to touch). After that, Jessica had use the whole ring to do canter figure 8s (with a few trot strides in the middle, we don't do flying changes yet!) and that was even harder because I really had to plan how I was going to make my canter turns and when to trot in the middle and ask for the other lead canter. That's our homework for the week.

Then she had us canter over some canter poles, down to the fence, come back to a (forward) trot and around over a crossrail with the idea that the canter poles would remind Kieran to pay attention to his feet (we don't keep cantering because she doesn't want us cantering into fences yet). That crossrail he doesn't really like though because it's pretty airy and bare (balanced on a couple of traffic cones, I can't wait until my jump blocks get here!) so he never puts in much effort over it. The other crossrail where we use barrels laying on the ground as "standards" he tends to actually jump (instead of trotting over and hanging his feet) because it looks more solid.

So then we had to canter around down to the barrel crossrail and all I was supposed to focus on was encouraging him forward (she stresses "allowing" and not pushing, because we can't make him think this is a fun thing to do) and just staying straight and getting out of his way when we go over.


That was one of the first times over the barrel jump. Then we had a couple of awkward tries and then we ended on this note:


Ignore Jessica's screaming, LOL.

Poooooooooles

Okay, so tonight, the ring looked something like this.

Low crossrail at B (ignore the dashed line, I made a mistake), cavaletti and exceedingly low vertical (cavaletti height) at X, trot poles at E with the two I-beam shaped ones up on little blocks. Later, the middle pole was removed to make them canter poles.

So first, we trotted over everything. Post around the outside, two point down the diagonals, that sort of thing. Then I have to trot over everything a couple times with no stirrups while posting (which was actually a little easier, my ankles sucked tonight).

Then the three trot poles became two canter poles and we did some cantering over everything. Got some nice transitions up out of Kieran though he kept wanting to break into a trot at the poles by E for some reason but managed to get a good canter over them at least once or twice. Then Christina put two of the poles up on the little blocks next to each other like || and the third pole on the ground in front of them so: |||. And we cantered over that (and the crossrail on the other side). Once, Christina wanted us to try cantering up to the left from A to E around to C then turn across the diagonal at F (would have begun trotting before he had to turn at H). The idea being that we had to really go deep into the corner at K to really make the turn. But...yeah...that didn't happen though technically Mr. Kieran is capable of it. He broke into a trot and I just kept him moving. Everything else he did well, though and we ended on a good note.

Kieran likes when we end because he usually gets ear scritches from Christina before we go untack. ;) He also got some mints and a bit more turnout before it was time for the horses to come in for the night.

All in all, not an exciting ride, but a good one. :)

Poles, poles, poles!

No jumping tonight, just lots of exercise with poles.

Not to scale, obviously, but the diagram gives the idea. The "o's" are barrels for us to weave through at the trot, set far enough away from the wall that we have a track to ride straight along it. The "/s" are ground poles set at a trotting distance and the one with "x's" on either side is a caveletti, set at half-height. The "____s" on the right side are poles spaced for cantering.

So basically, we warmed up walking over, around, and through everything (wove around the barrels, wove around the trot poles, etc) then moved to trotting, then did some cantering on the rail. Discovered that when going to the right, Kieran wanted to cut off that bottom barrel (it was a tight turn to go around the barrel properly, but not quite a tight as it looks in my diagram) and then go on the inside track and skip the canter poles. Going the other way was no problem for him. I did manage to get a couple of nice rides going right and called it quits on that particular exercise.

We also did a lot of transitions, walk to trot, walk to canter, trot to halt, canter to trot, canter to walk...

And the nice thing about the ring set up that way was that I had a lot of options for things to do and could keep Kieran guessing. ;)

He gets the day off tomorrow (four days in a row of doing stuff is a lot for him!) and then we're doing a lesson on Thursday.

Videos from today's lesson

Cantering in two point (sort of) in the first two, with wide space (around 12 feet) between the poles. Third video I'm sitting and I think it's still wide. Last two are sitting and with shorter space (like 9 and a half feet) and the last one was where we ended.

My pony proves me wrong at every turn

So, we haven't done much real work lately. We've been to the show, and we went in a parade, and we went on a camping trip this past weekend but no real schooling.

Tonight was our first lesson back with Christina (she's off maternity leave, yay!) and there were a couple of things I told her I'd like to work on, pending his cooperation (I was anticipating him having brain farts galore with all the time off): I wanted to begin work on rating his canter (in the post about the show, you'll see what I mean), and something else that came up that I said I wanted to work on was sidepassing (like, to open a gate) because we have a judged trail ride or two we want to go to later this summer and one of the things they have you do is...open a gate.

So anyway, I said when we start cantering, he'd probably canter fast and be a bit unbalanced because...he usually is, so Christina just said we'd see how things worked out.

We warmed up, walk, trot, a little bit of serpentines at the walk (asking him to do a faster walk on one half a serpentine, then free walk on the other half, then back again). She had us do slow trotting on the short sides of the ring and then work to get him to extend down the long sides. She had me do some two point and then try to get him to move out more while still in two point ("squeeze with your calves, but don't take them off and then squeeze" she said and I said, "but it already feels like my calves are squeezing!" so I figure I have to work on that as it's likely a muscle issue on my part). Anyway, he was generally very good for all this though he was tending to try to lower his head and lean on the bit. I just tried not to give him rein when he did it (as I was figuring that he was trying to get me to let the reins out) but Christina said when he tried it, I should think about raising my inside rein to make him less inclined to lean like that.

Then, before I got too tired, we did some cantering. First she just had us canter once around each direction and wouldn't you know it? Each time he gave me a very nice rhythmic, balanced canter that felt amazing. No rushing, no running into it. I was kind of disappointed to have to stop at the end of a lap, LOL. Then she set out a pole that she first had us trot over so he knew it was there, then canter over. The idea was that after he cantered over it, she'd ad another pole a canter stride away and then later, once he's figured that out, we could start changing the distance between the poles to get him to shorten and lengthen his canter strides and make him more adjustable.

So, we did that both directions, then added the second pole and did that both directions and he was really good about picking up his feet over the poles (you should've seen when we introduced him to trot poles) though it was a little awkward going the second direction over them as his canter had gotten a bit fast and it was like, he got his front feet over the first pole, then realized he was too stretched out to make it without stepping on them, so his hind end shortened up and it was this really weird stride over them, but he made it! Anyway, we ended that exercise on a good note and after, Christina wanted me to just canter around in two point but while Kieran was plenty willing to do it, I just did not get the hang of getting up into two point after he began cantering (or asking for it from two point). I've lost what little two-point muscle I had! Oh noes!

Anyway, after that we dialed it down and Christina set up three cones in a line that I wove through forward, then she had me do it in reverse which is difficult because ideally, I want him to just weave through in reverse but really how it happens is I turn his head the direction I want his butt to end up and get him to go that way, pause, reorient, turn him the other way, pause, reorient...until we get through.

And then was a bit of work on sidepassing. Mostly...she had us facing with our back to the wall (he has a tendancy to back up when I ask for this as he doesn't really get it yet). Then she had me take my left rein and sort of bring it out and down toward my knee, keeping even pressure on my right rein and start bumping with my right leg. He didn't really get it, going that way. He'd back up, he'd go forward, he'd bulge his shoulder out to the right and go that way. Wasn't pretty. So we got straightened up and tried going toward the right (bring right hand toward knee, keep left rein steady, bump with left leg) and this he'd step over (crossing over and everything) almost immediately. So once he got that, we tried goingn to the left again and ended up rewarding him for a couple of "tries" that way where he stopped fighting me (and I guess maybe I was asking "better") and then ended the lesson.

So he's got a lot to think about now!

All in all, he was VERY VERY GOOD and I'm so very happy with him.

Going to try and ride tomorrow, not sure what we'll do yet. Sunday, GG is hosting a benefit show so I'll be helping out there and not riding. Might go trail riding with Christina on Monday (and she said we could start doing some of this stuff out on the trails too so that should be fun!) afternoon.