Forward!

So, on Saturday I went up to the farm and said. "Today we're going to work on forward. Basically, if he doesn't respond to my leg immediately, I'm going to bring the wrath of God." Maybe that sounded a bit overdramatic but hey!

From the moment I get on, whip in hand (and I often ride with one so it's not just that I was carrying one when I usually don't), Kieran's ready to go. His walk is energetic. When I ask him to trot, it takes one squeeze of my legs and a quick swat of the whip before he goes. Still energetic! When I sit and ask for the canter, he goes straight into it (instead of continuing trotting for several strides and needing me to keep after him)!

I'm all like, "well crap, he's on his game today!"

We ended up not riding for too long in the arena, but went outside instead and practiced riding up and down the slope of the driveway (cantering up, trotting down, that sort of thing) because I know he enjoys doing stuff more outside than in the ring.

After that, we went back in the ring and got in a good twenty meter canter circle and showed the intro test A to Christine (who plans on doing it at a local show this weekend). By that point, he was pretty sweaty so (and it was cold!) so we spent a while just walking around before I got off and took off his tack and pulled out the big blue ball and got him to walk after me, pushing it with his feet. He's really figuring out that I want him to interact with it (he also rubbed his head on it and licked it, hah).

Kieran may have also taken the opportunity to roll in the arena when I left him for a minute to go get a camera (he was making funny yawny faces at the ball and I wanted to capture them! Alas, he wouldn't humor me when there was a camera).

Anyway, it made for a good horsey day. :) I figure him being so ready to work can be chalked up to either the weather (it only just got really cold) or him sensing that I wasn't going to play games. Or, you know, both.

On Sunday, we had a lesson and mostly we worked a lot on circles and bending. Though it's not as bad as it has been, I was still having issue circling him (mostly to the right) and getting him to both point his nose a little inward, but also listen to my leg pushing him over toward the wall so our circles would actually be the size they needed to be. It got better as the lesson went on and I got more relaxed and Kieran warmed up and Christina reminded me not to brace with my outside rein. Later, she commented that I seemed to be holding my outside hand a little further back than my inside hand (though not actually pulling with it) and that may also be exacerbating the problem so I have to remember to keep my hands even (which, after I started making myself conscious of really keeping my elbows at parallel points on my sides, it got better).

Another funny thing was near the end when she wanted me to just go in 20 meter circles around X and work on things like, "post eight strides, two point eight strides" then do 4 and 4, then 2 and 2, then do 4 posting without stirrups, 4 sitting without stirrups....I stopped focusing so much on "fixing" Kieran and focusing on myself and doing the exercise and...lo and behold? Our circles were a lot rounder! And it wasn't that he was pretending to lunge around Christina (Kieran will, if she's standing in the middle of the ring) as she made a point of going to stand by the wall. So again, we come back to our problems being mostly manufactured by me. ;)

We also did an interesting exercise that I think helped Kieran warm up. Christina says it doesn't really teach the horse or the rider to do anything, but it does work well for helping the horse to warm up/stretch. Anyway, she put a barrel out and had us first just walk in a small circle around it then I was to slowly work toward getting his nose pointed more toward the barrel and his butt out away from it. Sort of like sidepassing in a circle, but not really. Basically the object was to get him to really stretch his hind legs underneath of himself. Later, I got her to show it to me from the ground and it's neat to see. :)

Hope to ride at least once or twice this week before the next dressage schooling show on Saturday.

Riding, the weekend, and dressage!

Ended up not riding last Thursday. I did go up to the farm but got all distracted talking to Christine about an upcoming wine tasting the rescue is hosting and other news related to the farm. And then I got invited to stay for dinner. And then I stuck around to keep Christine company while she fed medication to a couple of horses. And by that point it was late (after 9) and cold and I just wasn't motivated enough to trudge out into the big pasture to fetch Kieran in.

Didn't ride Friday either, didn't even go to the farm.

I did, however, ride on Saturday!

Kieran's brains were, indeed, back, and he was a good boy. He'd motored around the ring that morning for a student in a lesson (they just did a lot of walking with some trotting thrown in) and I rode him in the afternoon. We did a lot of transitions. Halt, walk, halt, trot, walk, halt, back up, walk. That sort of stuff. I was pretty pleased with how it went.

Sunday, I didn't ride, but he ended up going in two lessons and even though neither was much work for him, I still let him have the break. I did mount him bareback in one of the lessons because halfway through they took off his saddle and Christina wanted the rider (an older lady) to ride without it and get a feel for what that was like but even with the mounting block, she wasn't really getting how to mount so Christina had me demonstrate getting on and off.

He also went for a ten year old girl and was very good for her too. :)

Last night, Hilary came up to the farm to teach me on Kieran there. Everything below is copied and pasted from where I posted about it on a forum I frequent because I didn't see any point in redoing it but wanted to save it here for posterity. There is also video!

The post can be found here, lots of people gave me good suggestions so I want to save the link too!

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Okay, so tonight was my second lesson with Hilary, the dressage instructor. The first time I went to the farm she teaches out of and rode one of the school horses. This time, she came up to GG and taught me on Kieran. Before the lesson began, she asked me what I wanted to work on with him and I said we'd been working on, for instance, the intro USDF tests (which we spent the first lesson on so she really already knew that) as well as just generally getting Kieran more balanced and doing transitions and, lately, trying to get a decent canter transition. Usually that means we try and get one short transition both ways before we move on to other stuff.

I thought that meant we wouldn't work on the cantering thing much but we did quite a bit more than I expected, but I think it was beneficial. But I'll get to that.

The first thing we did was she asked me to think about what I'm actually doing with my body when I ask for a transition down and to tell her what that is. I told her, since I was walking at the time, that with Kieran I usually exhale and squeeze my buttcheeks and then tighten the reins to ask for a halt and she said that was right and then we talked about half-halting.

Normally, when I've heard it described, it's about kind of pushing with your seat, squeezing with your legs, and holding the energy with your hands. Or something like that. I've never felt like I really did a "real" half halt but I think I was making it more complicated than it was and trying too hard. Hilary described it as doing that same halt transition....almost. Basically, doing it but relaxing my body before he actually halts and then pushing him forward. So we tried that, and talked about how to use a half halt to rebalance (and later she talked about it sort of as something to do in those stretches of a dressage test where I might be tempted to let my mind wander because "oh, we have until whatever letter before we have to do something new so I'll just sort of mosey along till we get the-....dangit, we're there, turn!" If that makes sense). Then she had me do downward transitions from trot to walk, then half halting at the trot which I had to figure out how to do it all in that instant where I'm on the downbeat of a post but once I got it, I could really feel Kieran almost sort of hesitate for an instant before moving forward again. Not breaking gait or anything, I don't know how to describe it well.

The way I ended up describing what I was doing to Hilary (becuase she made me imagine I was also standing in the center of the ring as the instructor and telling myself what to do) was really sitting deep when I come down on that beat, tightening the reins, but squeezing with my legs to make sure he doesn't stop.

Once we'd done this, we talked about transitioning up into the canter. We also discussed how Kieran tends to anticipate, once we've started trying for the canter, he'll lunge into the really fast trot in certain corners he thinks I'm going to ask "go faster" again, and then I usually feel like I have to bring him back down, or circle him, getting him back in a nice trot before we can ask again. What she suggested was doing exactly opposite of what he expects. So if he's plugging along thinking I'm going to ask to slow down, really pushing him harder to go faster in the gait. If he anticipates me asking him to go faster, ask for a walk instead.

So she had me start trotting him and really pushing him for a faster trot before sitting and going for a canter. Usually, once we get it, he does a stride or three and then it's really hard to keep him going and he drops back down into the fast trot and I usually let him (even bringing him back into a more even trot) and wait until we're in a "good" corner (heading into a long side) before I ask him to canter again. Hilary had me instead, if he went down back into a trot, keep after him until he cantered again (basically pretend like he never cantered) and said if he was going along nicely, he got to get the easy transition out of a corner, but if he dropped back down before I was ready, he'd have to do it wherever it was, and didn't get a free pass to just decide when to slow down. Make it harder for him to go back to a trot than if he'd just cantered a few more strides till I asked him to come down on my own.

Anyway, she had me start out by just getting a few strides out of him, then a few more, then half the ring at a time until we did that both ways. I mentioned it felt easier to get him to do the transition this way (still isn't pretty or "easy" but easier than in the past) and she mentioned it's kind of like if you woke up in the morning and someone told you you'd have to walk 50 miles that day. You wouldn't feel like you could do it or be motivated to get it done. But if they told you instead you only had to go down to the mailbox, that would be much easier and you'd get right on it. Also something about just like a long distance runner has to build up to that distance, you can start with just doing a little and then increasing it. I think previously, even though I know my regular instructor and I are "only working on the transition" and she stressed I only had to get a few strides out of him, I still had it in my head that I'd have to get him to canter all the way around the ring, for instance.

That was the bulk of it, I think, as I remember it.

Oh, she also talked about making a checklist of the things we've talked about so I can keep it in mind for when I'm riding on my own. So like. Do up and down transitions each way. Remind myself of "how" I'm doing the transition. Do half halts (or do like walk -> halt -> walk-halfhalt-walk -> halt). Remember to mix things up so Mr. Horsey doesn't anticipate what I'm asking. (Like, something I pointed out was that I tend to grab a bit of mane when asking him to canter so I wouldn't accidentally jab him in the mouth while we're still working this out. She suggested -- and had me do -- things where I'd trot, grab mane, then ask him to walk so he'd stop associating that with me asking him to canter.).

Okay, now I think I've covered the bulk of it.

We didn't really spend a lot of time talking about me and my position and I'm kind of cringing while I'm watching these videos (I also felt all over the place while I was doing the canter bits in the lesson but my videographer says I wasn't as all over the place as I felt).

Anyway, suggestions welcome. Flames, not so much, but I'll put on the flamesuit if I have to.

And yes, there's lots of little videos. My camera was apparently acting up and she couldn't get more than one semi-long stretch at a time (and the stretch she did isn't terribly exciting) but several of the others show us going into a canter.

Heeeere we go!











Let me know if the videos showed up right, they're acting up for me, but there should be six.