Back in the Tack

Cadence had two weeks off in December while I wrote exams and visited family. Then, starting Christmas Eve, I began to recondition her. I can be a little obsessive about reconditioning, but I'd rather go slow than risk an injury. Unfortunately the down shot of this plan is that Cadence puts fitness on really quickly, and within a few lunge sessions she's ready to rock, even if the musculature isn't there. So I've had a wired, under muscled nut job to deal with these past few weeks!

Oh how I long for the days when she would canter calmly!

She's starting to improve though, to the point where I popped her over a little x on Thursday, and it was all quite civilized! We did have a minor sore back to contend with this past week, so she's getting a massage tomorrow and a long lining session to get her working over her back a bit better.

Lateral Lessons

We've now left the 'show' portion of our year, and are heading back in to the 'training' portion. Dressage clinics are being scheduled, gymnastic grids assembled, and tack is being fiddled with. While I love showing, I find re-entering the training phase of our year (for lack of a better term...) always re-enthuses me. Trying out new exercises, focusing on new issues or new ways of dealing with old ones, and pushing our training ahead just seems to fill fall with so many new opportunities!
Anyway, I'm currently knee-deep in midterms, so I've got to keep this short. I just wanted to write a quick recap of our dressage lesson today, and try to get back into the habit of chronicling our training- I've been slacking on that front of late.

For today's lesson, I borrowed a friend's eggbutt snaffle. Its a relatively thick one, which Cadence seemed to approve of, but the strength provided by the nutcracker action of the single-jointed snaffle & the pressure of the eggbutt gave me a little bit of extra strength to stop her when she decides to plow through me. After a w/t stretch warm up, we moved into the lateral work starting with riding turn on the haunches to nose-to-wall leg yield. The first turn on the haunches (left) was lovely, the leg-yield was decent if a bit rushed, but to the right Cadence objected to my aid to move her haunches over, and kicked the arena wall instead... charming, mare. We worked through this exercise several more times until we had more consistent & relaxed movements. The pirouettes right were still a fair bit more difficult than to the left, but they improved bit by bit. We proceeded to shoulder & haunches in in the trot, which rode quite nicely save for one or two rude mare moments, and then we moved on to the half pass. I was actually quite impressed with Cadence here. We've worked on half pass maybe a half-dozen times at most, and for the most part its been a little like attempting to make a slinky half pass. You'd get some shoulder, and then the haunches would go zooming off, so you'd correct that, but then she'd grab the bit & barge her shoulders out.. or something along those lines. Though the half pass work today wasn't exactly show ring ready, I could aim her shoulders, ask for her haunches, and then stay fairly quiet as we bounced our way over towards the wall.  No bolting, no fighting, no rushing madly off in all directions. What a novel concept! (Actually, in fairness to the mare she's not that bad. I probably make her sound like some atrociously mannered evil mastermind. In reality, she's just a wee bit too dominant for her (or my) own good!) Due to the small size of our indoor, one of the best tips my coach gave me re the half pass, was to ride shoulder fore through the turn. That way we're already partially set up by the time we're on the centre line.
Our canter work wasn't at its best today, but again it wasn't bad. My legs are pretty sore ATM, so I probably wasn't giving her all the support I could have, but our first few canter-trots left were a little sketchy. My coach suggested we do some canter walks to get Cadence to actually come under herself, and stop barging through up front. And so we canter-walked, corrected her haunches, and walk-cantered until we had a more respectful mare. At this point, we cantered right (and executed some absolutely lovely transitions up and down) before re-trying the canter-trots to the left. Much to my pleasure, we had a respectful transition! YAY! So we quit on that note. Overall, I ended the lesson pleased with the mare-face, and quite excited for what the winter has in store for us!

Silent Saturday- Champs in Photos

 Fit two strides in the two stride this year!

(barely...)

MIA- Me

Wow, I just booted up my laptop for the first time in almost 3 weeks! Between funerals, graduation ceremonies, weddings, and the trips & travel time required to make it to all of those, I've had a busy few weeks.  On top of that there was the stress of moving Cadence, and then on Saturday she went and cut open her hoof, creating a nice deep gash on her coronet.  Oh mare.

Second fence on our Novice xc course

Since I've taken zero time to keep up my 'Cadence diary' of late, let me do a quick fill-in.  Cadence ran around a few Entry (BN) level events this spring to get her xc confidence through the roof, and then two or three weeks ago we (re)upgraded her to Pre-Training (N) and she stormed around that xc course! Hopped up the bank, plowed through the half-coffin, conquered the bending brush line, and didn't hesitate at the awkwardly placed jump that was invisible until you were 2 strides away. What's even better? We ran around xc with more control than I think we've ever had! I could balance her by sitting up, turn by shifting my weight, and slow down with a little (okay, maybe not always quite so little...) half-halt.  Go mare! Our dressage is still a bit rough... scoring high 50's when the winners tend to be mid-high 40's.... but the potential's there, she's just getting excited/frazzled/bossy before we even enter the ring. So we're playing around with warm-ups to try and find something that works.

Classy pony scoffing at 3'11 during our last ride at the old barn.

(I swear, my elbows don't normally look like that!)

In other news, Cadence is settling in well at the new barn.  We've had 2 lessons, and things seem to be going well. I still miss our old farm like crazy, but we'll adjust! We're also heading out for a xc school tomorrow, which should boost our spirits a bit ;)

Catching Up on Lessons and Shows

Lets go in chronological order. First up I have the video from last weeks show:

I have footage of the dressage warm up, but the video was long enough as it is & the footage was basically just me riding poorly as I attempted to navigate puddles and the hill we were warming up on (we warmed up on a hill because it was the only dry-ish place to ride) her spooking at stuff as we attempted to warm up on a hill. Overall, a pretty unsuccessful warm up so the awful quality of the test doesn't really surprise me.

XC is also a bit of an awkward moment, as we'd basically caught up to the horse in front of us and I wasn't sure what the etiquette was in that situation, since the jump judges hadn't held them to let us pass.... so we just trotted since we were a bit up on the clock anyway, and you get faults for being too fast.

Next- we had a lesson with my coach at a farm I used to ride at when I was a kid! It was fun being back there and seeing some of the old lesson ponies, but it was REALLY fun to get to take advantage of the awesome facility they've got.  We warmed up in their massive jumper ring, before heading over and schooling some tests in their full 20x60 dressage ring.... which is next to their grass ring, which is next to their XC field, which is near their massively long indoor, which looks out onto their front (outdoor) lesson ring.  Also, the part I really love about this facility is that for a facility with 5 fully functional arenas and a XC field, they're quite a small operation. Off topic though. So I digress- the lesson was really helpful, and we spent most of our time focusing on isolating the ideal warm-up.  What we've discovered is that as Cadence gets more training and matures into a fit, somewhat hot-headed, highly opinionated event horse, we need a MUCH different warm up than our minimalist warm ups of yesteryear.  Basically, we need a 'chill out and let off some steam' period in which we basically just trot around focusing on relaxing into the contact.  Then we need a 'stretch and relax' period, and then a 'okay, pick back up and supple' phase completes our pre-dressage test warm up.  However, those three phases each take 10-15 minutes minimum, so you've got a solid 45 minutes of work before every dressage test were before we had maybe 10-15.

Finally, on Saturday I got up at 3:30am to go haul my horse to our show. This meant that on Saturday morning, I woke up at the same time I went to bed the previous night! Which is not a fun experience.  And over those two nights, only managed a total of 6 hours of sleep. So I was really freaking exhausted, not to mention somewhat unenthused about driving 2.5 hours to a horse show for my crack of dawn start time. Next time I have early ride times (and parties in the days before my shows) I need to make sure I have someone who can drive the trailer up for me so I'm not so worried about falling asleep at the wheel! I made my poor mum (who'd come along to help me at the show) play 'guess that tune' with me on my phone for most of the 2.5 hour drive up and the 2.5 hour drive home, since that was just about the only thing that would keep me awake.  It was fun times.  I was even nodding off as we stood by the start box waiting to go out XC!

Spring XC Schools

A video of our XC school last Sunday. We had a brilliant time, and it was fun to see how bold & confident Cadence was.  The big lesson of the day for me was to 'release' Cadence completely before the fences, and trust her to 1. not rush the fence in the last 2 strides, and 2. actually jump the fence!  It was a challenge for me because I've spent our whole partnership with me constantly focusing on slowing her down so  relinquishing that control and just letting her go was like breaking every habit I've formed.

Adventure Time: Spring Hacks

Note: this is an old post (from last Wed) that didn't want to upload the first time I tried.

Yesterday I trailered Cadence out to a place just 15-20 minutes down the road from us that I used to ride in all the time as a kid. As its spring, the ground was a bit wet and we spent a fair bit of our time walking along the main gravel path versus off in the forest, but we still had a blast. Over all we walked around the park for nearly an hour before turning around just in time to arrive home as the sun was setting :)

Life Stuff

Midterm exams, music projects, 'social initiative' type projects, school, social stuff, personal/family stuff, and sometimes even horses... all manage to 'get in the way' of horses/my riding.  And I find myself not necessarily wanting to go to the barn. I'm always happy when I get there, but in terms of leaving the house (or wherever I'm stationed before heading to the barn) I just lack motivation to move. To put it simply, my brain would rather spend the time sleeping.  And all of that fades away the second I step out of the car and walk into the barn, I hate feeling anything less than positively thrilled about heading out to see my mare.
By the end of April, life should start to right itself again for me... I hope... and maybe if I'm lucky, I can even get into a regular weekly schedule. Gasp! How normal and relaxed that tall seems.  That's probably a tad optimistic though, so lets not get too excited.
In horse-related news, I still haven't decided if I'm moving barns. I've looked around a bit, but most of the good options are either full, too expensive, or don't allow outside coaches... so the search continues. (for current barn options, and for my move in Sept.) Cadence continues to do well though, and is on track to head to our first show of the season on the 21 of April! Its just a CT, but (footing/weather permitting) they generally offer a XC school after, so it should be good fun!
Also, my blogging through April may be a bit spotty.  Not for a lack of content, but simply a lack of time. Then again, when is content ever the issue?  And since I can't think of a summary/conclusion for this, I'll just end here. Cheers!

XC & SJ with D.E. (Now With Pictures)

08.03.2013
D.E. is probably one of the greats of US eventing, and in addition to being an amazing rider ,has written a lot of articles on breeding and bloodlines that I personally, as someone fascinated with both sport horses and genetics, find fascinating. So when my coach suggested we call up her old 'friend and coach' D and see if we could get in for a xc school, I was both excited and terrified.  On the list of people I DON'T want to mess up infront of, he's pretty high up on the list... but I was also going into the lesson (in my mind anyway) representing my coach's training program.  Just to add a bit of extra pressonre! Anyway, long story short I didn't need to worry.  Cadence was brilliant and D was impressed with both her jump and attitude.  It was an educationan school, and a ton of fun to boot!
As an added bonus, I also got to see an awesome picture of my coach going advanced at the old Southern Pines HT that was on D's tack room wall.  The oxer in the photo was big enough to live under, and they were clearing it by about 1.5 feet!  Anywho, here are some video stills from the day.

Dressage Lesson- Photo Time

07.03.13
Had a good dressage lesson- focused on calm with all the set up going on at the park right now, prepping for the show.  Had a show warm up type school, focusing on getting Cadence through and relaxed, and getting her off the right rein. Some of the pictures are of her 'bad moments', as well as the good. I think its important to post both- it provides a more accurate 'memory' of things.

Hack & XC- Photo Edition

No time to write, so pictures will have to suffice!

03.05.2013
Went for a hack, & let Cadence 'stretch her legs' with a little canter/hand gallop:

Update Time

Okay, so basically from the start of January on, Cadence had been having some issues in her flat work.  I've blogged about them before, but not in a while so here's an update from the weekend of the 9-10 of February.

Cadence and I were originally supposed to head out to a jumper show on the 9th (of Feb), but thanks to the snow storm the show was postponed. So instead I had a dressage lesson, which ended up being exceedingly productive. My coach wanted to try to sort out Cadence's new found canter/post-canter behavioural issues in the trot work so they were improved before we got to the canter work. Fair enough, but her trot work had been lovely and very sensible, and she hadn't given me even the tiniest drop of grief in the trot... so I hadn't really been able to 'sort' anything out.  Her idea as to how to lure Mr. Hyde out of Dr. Jekyll was actually pretty simple:
Cadence's biggest 'issue' is that she has a tendency to barge through my right rein when she gets a bit tired/crooked, rather than carry herself. So to coax out Mr. Hyde, we'd work some lateral work that would force her to come off that right rein.
We started by flexing her left and right while leg-yielding in the walk and trot to ensure she was supple, then moved on to haunches-in. It took a while to settle her in the haunches-in (she always overreacts when you first go to move your leg back & tries to shoot off) but once she was more relaxed we did a little shoulder in, and then moved on to a new exercise: shoulder in to renvers.  In the simplest terms possible, the first attempt at this exercise was a disaster.  Cadence basically bolted straight across the ring and almost ran over a (rather nervous) lady who was trying out a horse.  After that, the coach gave me a right draw rein so that I could attempt to hang onto that right side, and we decided to work in walk for a minute before attempting it in trot again.
Amazingly though, after working through it in the walk ad trot there was quite an improvement in Cadence and we got some of the best canter work we'd had in a while.  It wasn't 100%, but it was improved & I gained a new favourite exercise! So in short, we were not quite there yet, but we're improving.

Incidentally, I need to remember to sink my weight into my inside stirrup during haunches in (outside for renvers) because I have a tendency to basically move my inside leg away from the horse which 1. allows her to run through that side, and 2. shifts my weight into my outside seat bone which prevents her from stepping under herself with that hind leg.... which is kind of key to the exercise.

How our lateral work looks in my mind:

How our lateral work looks in real life:

WW: Walks & Teeth

Well, this was SUPPOSED to be published on Wed, but apparently it takes my phone 2 days to publish a post.... So that's why the wordless wednesday is on a friday, and not so wordless either.

2 Years Through Jumping Pictures

Its hard to believe, but I've now had my mare for 2 years!  I thought I'd do a short series of photos to depict some of the changes we've made together over the past two years, and lets face it... jumping photos are a heck of a lot more exciting than flat school pics!

 January 2011, on my 2nd or 3rd ride on Cadence.  This is what our canter used to look like...

About the Lssons

Friday:
Cadence had Thursday off (well, I free lunged her... but really she had the day off) so I decided to jump her Friday, and flat Sat.  After a good quick warm up in which Cadence was really nice and calm we started off cantering into a 2'9 ish bounce.  The first 1 or 2 run throughs were a little awkward with her being a wee tiny bit backed off the first time, and getting in on a long-ish spot on the second. However, after the first two we (literally) hit our stride and so my coach added a 3'6 vertical 21 feet away from the bounce.  For the non-jumpers, 21 feet is a tighter 1 stride, or an "indoor" 1.  After popping neatly through that in the bounce to the 1-stride direction and in the 1-stride to the bounce direction.... if that makes sense... we made the 1 stride 24  feet.  Cadence also calmly jumped through this, and surprised me by letting me rate her to the fences which resulted in perfect distances every single time.  Go mare!  We ended the lesson by working on flying changes.  This was only the second time we've worked on flying changes, and we jumped right into them from the canter but she nailed every. single. one. Woot!!  Her jumping is better than its ever been, and we're in a really fun stage right now.  If only I could sort out that flat...

Saturday:
The lesson started out really well. After a quick w/t, we moved right into canter-trot transitions.  My coach had me focus on using my left rein to close her shoulder and get her off the right rein when she started to lay on it when cantering right.  This did wonders for us, and her transitions began to improve. Still not where they were before, but better.  Then after a few decent ones to the left she asked us to go canter-walk.  Cadence was not happy with this plan, and started barging through the trot taking us about 1/2 a circle to finally walk... even with the aid of the wall.  We spent the remainder of the lesson settling her back down.  Aside from the little attitude & muscle display, the lesson was on a whole good, and Cadence finally seems to be working out of her "dressage issues" she developed.  Hopefully getting her teeth done (vet comes Thurs) will help with the last bit of resistance she seems to be harboring.

What's With the Mare?

So since right around New Years, Cadence has been acting a bit strange.  It started off with her being a little tense during downward transitions, then she started to stiffen during downwards transitions, and before I had time to really register what was happening she had morphed into a full blown temper tantrum throwing nutbar.  This (naturally) surfaced when we went up to my coach's friend's farm (who also happens to be a two time Olympian, among other accomplishments) for a dressage lesson.  I still haven't posted the video from that day because my computer has run out of disk space, so it's stuck on the camera. Anywho, that was mid-January and we're still working through this bout of hyperactivity and attitude.

Originally, I blamed things on Cadence being in heat, and us upping the pressure on her dressage work by increasing the amount of lateral work and collection that was expected of her.  Then, I blamed it on an increase of energy due to the cold weather (which prevents them from being basketcases out of doors) and copious amounts of second cut hay- a reasonable conclusion to draw as she never protested to upwards transitions... only down!  I'd ruled out saddle fit issues, back soreness, and as she wasn't acting like it was a pain issue, teeth didn't seem likely either.  However, I'm beginning to doubt my original conclusion that teeth aren't the issue.  This original epiphany came when Cadence was flat out refusing to halt... until out of desperation I jerked back on the neck strap of her running martingale.  Then, miracle of all miracles she stood! Also, unlike your standard attitude issue, she's perfectly polite on the ground. I free lunged her today, and she would halt and back up off voice commands with me half way across the ring.... so maybe its not as attitude related as I'd originally thought.  It has only been 9 months since her teeth were last done, but she has an exceptionally small mouth (and is still relatively young) so the vet did warn me that her teeth may need more frequent attention, and alhough I'm generally pretty good at guessing what's going on with miss Mare, I'm as prone to errors as the next person.  So I set up a vet appointment for next week to get Cadence's teeth done, AND her vet check for travel papers!  Yay!!! Hard to believe it's just over a month until we leave....

Exciting News!

First off, although looking back it seems silly to doubt this would happen, the fact that I got an email today stating that my entry to Southern Pines HT had been accepted was still thrilling news.  I think I've been in denial, not daring to let myself believe this was really happening until everything was in, confirmed, booked, etc. but now things are starting to seem real.  We just have to confirm stabling, and sort out how much hay we're bringing down and how much we'll buy down there! Wow, I'm still in shock.

Can't wait to be out XC again!

Also, exams are finally over!  And while the respite between semesters lasts a scant 2 days thanks to weather pushing class and exam schedules forward, my next semester should (theoretically) prove a little easier.  I'll write a proper post tomorrow.....

Mystery Soreness Solved

Recently I'd been somewhat flummoxed by the fact that Cadence's back seemed to be getting worse again, in spite of the fact that there was nothing work wise that should be making her back sore (in fact her work load was a little lighter than usual), the soreness wasn't indicative of a pull/injury from slipping or something, and she had two saddles that had recently been fitted. So why then was her back sore?  Well, tonight I think I found my answer.
I was doing a light jump/stretch school with the mare tonight, and after our canter work I noticed that my saddle had slipped pretty significantly to the right... impressive considering I'd tightened my girth before cantering to help prevent this. Since I injured (broke and sprained) my foot, my left ankle has been slowly regaining its flexibility as I'm able to do more and more with it. My riding's been evening out again too, but I still am a bit uneven in the jumping saddle as I can't sink my weight down into my left heel as much.  I'd thought it had improved quite a bit, but the slipping saddle suggested otherwise.  And that's when it hit me.  Saddle slipping to the right, more weight in right stirrup, soreness on the right side of Cadence's back.... it's ME that's making her sore!
What a pleasant thing to realize- you're causing your horse pain, and to a certain extent, there's nothing you can do about it.  Even though I do stretches and such for my left foot, I won't be able to ride evenly again unless I keep working on straightening myself out in the saddle.  So to fix the problem I have to keep riding, which in turn will keep adding extra pressure to the right side of Cadence's back.  And while I know that the extra pressure is relatively negligible, and that the situation is largely due to the fact that she's sensitive and expressive, I can't ignore the fact that she's uncomfortable.  She's still in pain, regardless of why or how much.

When Things Don't Go As Planned

Horses have a way of keeping you humble, and always keeping you on your toes.  As I mentioned before, we didn't have the clinic prep I'd hoped for, but alas Saturday morning we loaded Cadence up and, after a few hours of driving  including my first freeway horse trailering experience, (btw, being sandwitched by two transport trucks as you head down the freeway on a wet road is terrifying) we arrived at the most gorgeous facility I have ever laid eyes on.  They have heat lamps above the grooming stalls....
Myself and the other riders settled our mares (4 mares, 0 geldings) into the adorable little quarantine barn,  with stalls already filled with fresh water, hay, and shavings.  Then, we humans headed off to the (fully heated) viewing room to enjoy lunch! Now when I say viewing room, really its a beautiful kitchen + dining area + living room that just so happens to look out onto the arena; viewing room just doesn't do it justice. The farm owner/olympic rider/friend of my coach's, whom we shall refer to as B, arrived and displayed her incredibly gracious disposition by ensuring we were comfortable, had plenty of tea and coffee, and that our horses had all settled in nicely.  Honestly, I think she's the nicest lady I know! Anywho, after stuffing ourselves full of food, we settled in to start watching some lessons.
My coach had also come up with one of the horses she trains, a RCMP bred gelding who's training at PSG and possibly aiming for the Pan Am's in 2015.  She and B worked on getting more expression through his changes, and sharpening up his canter pirouettes, as well as some test work.  It was fantastic to watch, even if 98% of it isn't directly applicable to us.  The next rider focused on getting her event mare who liked to pull and fall through her rider's aids a little more up in front and responsive.  They also worked on fixing some rider position issues, which was educational to watch.  As the 3rd lesson started, I headed over to start prepping myself and The Mare.
I'd decided to braid Cadence, since her mane was mid-pull and looked awful.  And while the braids were far from stellar (just simple elastic band button braids) they took less than 25 minutes.  I brought her from the quarantine barn into the fancy schmancy main barn, and left her under the heat lamp with the heat pack on her back to get her muscles nice and warm.  A little while later, it was our turn.  We headed in as the other lesson was finishing, and I quickly hopped on without taking her for a walk first, as I didn't want to interfere with the other woman's riding.  Perhaps this was part of the issue, but when I got on Cadence was immediately focused on only one thing: GO.  She was tense, but not nervous perse... just energetic.  She kept trying to barge her way into the trot, and was rather resistant to my attempts to stretch her and loosen her up.  After attempting (and quickly giving up on) a trot stretch, our lesson began.
It quickly became apparent that Cadence wasn't going to settle.  After trying to work out some of her energy by letting her settle into the canter, B decided that our best bet would be to hop off and quickly lunge Cadence, a plan I wholeheartedly agreed with.  Cadence proceeded to spend about 20 minutes jumping around on the lunge line, and when she finally appeared to settle I hopped back on.
Though she was improved, she was still not her usual self.  She was inconsistent in the contact, constantly barging or laying on me, and generally uninterested in doing anything other than running.  B had me really focus on NOT holding her when she threw her head and tried to barge through me, and ensuring that whenever she did pull I didn't give her anything to pull off of.  We mostly focused on trying to soften her and get her to flex both directions (and through transitions) without flipping out.  To deal with Cadence's horrendous behaviour following our canter-trot transitions, she had us move immediately into a leg-yield, with her nose  to the wall.  This tactic worked surprisingly well. Cadence's initial post-canter spaz was quelled by the fact that she needed to focus on moving her feet laterally, or else smack her face against the wall.  This allowed me to regain her more rapidly, as we didn't have to work through a fight after every transition. However, at the end of the ride (another 30 minutes post-lunge) Cadence still wouldn't walk.  She'd walk for a few steps, then atempt to barge off into the trot; so at this point, B suggested we put Cadence back into her stall (or cross ties, or whatever) and let her settle for 20 minutes or so before bringing her back into the arena and attempting to get some sane w/t work out of her.
After untacking, briefly heat-lamping, and then hand walking for a few minutes I left Cadence in her stall.  However, she was too busy being a b*tch to the mare next to her to really settle, so after trying to wait her out I gave in and brought her back into the main barn and left her in the cross ties.  Well, actually I made her ground tie, but that's semantics.
Thankfully when I got back on, Cadence was far more settled.  She was still a lot ruder and harder to bend than she normally is, but she was far better than she was before.  So after some walk and trot stretch, we untacked her and put her away.

From the clinic I learned the following:
-When the horse throws her head and tries to grab the reins away, RESIST the natural reaction to hold onto your reins.  If you can, apply an on-off pressure, jiggle/pop the bit, or shake them off of it.  However, if not, let it go.
-Add a little lunge work with side reins in when Cadence is in the mood grab the bit and blow through my rein-aids during transitions.  Since she physically can't blow through the side reins, this avoids 'fights' under saddle. (please note, I'm not condoning "holding a horse's head" in a curled up position, or anything of that sort.  That isn't the point of the exercise- the point is merely to let the horse bump into a rein-aid that they physically can't push through)
-Leg-hand ratio: twice as much on your legs as you have in your hands.  This is aconcept I was already quite familiar with.  However, B reminded me of the importance of the concept when dealing with misbehaving ponies that like to precede silliness with a little grabbing of the bit.
-Lateral flexion is everything.  Ensure that the horse is truly and completely soft at all times, including/especially in stretch work.  This seems fairly basic, and is something that I thought I fully comprehended. And yet when horses get strong most riders still tense up and 'hold' thus eliminating true suppleness.  A horse can't be soft when any bracing is present.  This one really 'tied it all together' for be.  When Cadence is grabbing the bit and throwing her head, I wand to brace and "hold her in".  In reality, we should be softening, adding leg, and suppling.  Hard to fight those knee-jerk reactions though!

-My lower leg needs to come back.  This is partially a saddle-related issue, but its a rider-related issue too! And as I can't afford a new dressage saddle ATM, its time to start the lower-leg struggle.
-Upper body back.  The curse for all ex-hunter riders, and many lower level eventers: the dreaded forward tilt.  I'm not dreadful about it, but tend to revert when focus shifts 100% onto the horse.  That indicates that the issue is probably still present in my normal flat work, just not to the same degree.

Wow, that's a lot of writing. If anyone reads all the way through that I'll be stunned.  Especially since the quality of writing is probably atrocious as it was dashed off in 3 separate 5-minute bouts.  Anywho, videos and pictures will come shortly.

Cadence enjoying the gorgeousness that is their grooming stalls

Creating the Canter

Recently in my work with Cadence, we've been focusing a lot on her canter work.  As an event horse, this is arguably the most important gait, as its the one we spend the most time in.  It is also probably the gait that has the most versatility, as the speed, length, and impulsion of the canter are all so.... influencable? Versatile? Different?  I can't really think of the word, but lets put it this way: the canter you have entering a canter pirouette versus the canter you have landing off a galloping fence are almost like two different gaits.  They differ in impulsion, speed, and length in a way that is unattainable in the trot or walk.  Unless you have a STB, that is.

With the basics now in place and (relatively) consistent, we've been able to move on to some more challenging work, such as lengthens, shoulder and haunches in, and a little half-pass... though that's still pretty green.  In our jumping, angled fences, bending lines, skinnies, and corners have been introduced and with the level of the work increasing, the need for her canter to improve became apparent.  It wasn't like there were holes in the canter work perse, more like we just needed to bring the canter to the next level as well.

Now Cadence's dam is a TB out of steeple chase lines on her dam's side, and A Fine Romance as her sire.  So even though Cadence is half Holsteiner, she prefers the long, flat, and open stride of a TB gallop.  We spent basically the first year and a half working on setting her canter back into something a little more collected and relaxed.  When she's there, she's got a lovely canter... but her preference is definitely to flatten out and lengthen.  She's always been fussy about sitting her canter down, and we've spent a long time slowly building that canter.  We'd start by just bringing it back for one or two strides in our jump schools, letting her out as soon as she came back.  Then slowly, the length of time we'd bring her back for increased, and we started adding it into our dressage schools as well.  Eventually we'd progressed to collecting her up for transitions, which brought about a short period of breaking every time we collected, and set us back for a few weeks.  Howevr, bit by bit the canter improved.

In the past few weeks, I've noticed the biggest improvement in her canter.  About a month ago, we spent a few flat schools working on collecting her canter, spiralling in on a circle, transitioning to trot, and then spiralling out. This combination of collection, transitions, and getting her onto my aids, made quite the improvement to our canter work.  Around that same time, we started working on building different canters in our jump school- cantering down a line in 4 strides, then in 5, and so on.  Last weekend, we even managed to fit 6 strides in a 4 stride line!  Quite a feat for a horse that kept putting in 3 at the start of the lesson....

Another big improvement to the canter came when we did a simple exercise- simple changes on a serpentine.  The first time we tried this it was dreadful.  To do this exercise well, the horse really has to collect and stay soft through the transition, because you only have 2 or so strides in which to prepare for the next canter transition.  As we worked on this, we'd start off by getting maybe 1 or 2 good transitions per school.  Then after about a week and a half, we were able to do 2 serpentines with only 1 or 2 poor transitions! As this progressed, magically so did other aspects of the canter.  The next time we tried the relatively simple (yet challenging for us) exercise of collecting through the short end and lengthening down the long wall, we were magically able to not only lengthen, but come back again! Witchcraft, I tell you.

Anywho, the canter really seemed to come together for us this weekend.  On Friday we rode the same collection on short end lengthen on long sides that we'd done previously, but we added 10m canter circles in the corners to our canter warm up.  This really got her balanced and on my outside aids, and resulted in a beautiful lengthen and even better collection.  Then today in our jump school, we did some bending lines and 2 stride triple combinations that required me to set her canter properly.  I screwed it up a few times, but in general she was fabulous.  We ended by cantering an oxer out of 10', 12' and 13' canters and Cadence was brilliant.  So while we still have a long way to go, its fun to see something we've struggled with pull together.

Little baby canter lengthens from my ride on NYE.  
Wow, that's really dreadful image quality... they're video stills from a video my cousin shot for me on my phone.  Ah well... if I were technologically savy enough I'd just post the video, but since I'm not we're stuck with this.  Funny, it looked like more of a lengthen in film.  Here it just looks like a slightly rangy canter!  At least her butt's engaged...