Back to Basics, & The Importance of Hunters

Two wholly unrelated topics, eh? I swear, there is a connection.
After our set of lessons two weeks ago, Cadence had to have a wee bit of time off. She had three days off within a 5 day period, which does NOT go over well with her. If she's going to get more than just a day off, she needs a solid 2 weeks off; otherwise I'm left with a stressed, over-energized, bored horse. But thanks to an unfortunately crammed week of midterms, papers, quizzes, and presentations I was left with little choice.

Our first ride back was atrocious. Cadence was flipping out about everything from a pair of reins on the fence, to the other horse in the ring trotting over a pole. The ride turned in to a power-struggle with me fighting to keep control, and Cadence fighting because that's what I was doing so why shouldn't she? In order to make the most  of it, I set my goals, accomplished those, and quit while we were ahead. The next ride had the potential to start off the same way- Cadence was wired, and was channeling her excess energy into misbehaviour. She doesn't do it to be bad, its just that with the footing the way it is the horses don't get to run around during turnout like they do in the summer. And I don't want to free lunge her as the footing in the indoor is still a bit deep in places, & I just can't take that risk. So Cadence seeks an outlet for her pent up energy... and that outlet tends to be spooking, tensing, and trying to go as fast as possible.

When she gets all tense and wired, we lose a few basic building blocks of our training. the most basic of which is probably inside leg to outside rein, and vice versa. Being, by this point, a somewhat trained horse this is a concept which (when we actually have focus) she understands and is quite comfortable with. So while riding a horse who feels somewhat akin to an angry caged lion on steroids... or what I'd imagine an angry caged lion on steroids to feel like... may not always be fun, it's provided me with an excellent opportunity to take a step back and focus on some of the basics we normally take for granted.

For the past week or so, we've had three main goals:
-Respond promptly to my half-halts (without tensing up)
-Move off of my leg into the opposite rein
-Do this while maintaining self-carriage in a relaxed frame

So basically, we've spent the past week in hunter-land. As the week progressed, so did we, with the result being that even though Mare-Face had a day off yesterday I hopped on today and was able to w/t/c a lovely, soft horse in 15 minutes. Yay!

This got me thinking about the importance of hunters. In this area, hunters often get a bit of a bad rap. And to be completely honest, most of the time it's well deserved. However, I've always had a lot of respect for  the good hunter riders. To put it simply, good riding is good riding. And at the root of the hunter discipline lie some very important training goals: softness, rhythm, relaxation, and rideability.  A good hunter must be forward, straight, carrying him/herself, and capable of doing so while maintaining a steady rhythm regardless of what is thrown at them. Relaxation, and therefore softness, are the key to a truly quality hunter ride, just as they should be the key to a good dressage test; its just pushed to the forefront a bit more with the hunters.
Unfortunately though, especially at the lower levels people seem forego these key concepts in favour of focusing on the short-term "quick-fix" issues. People focus more on wether their hair is covering their ears (lest the judge be distracted by flapping ears...) than wether their horse is actually straight or soft, and a 'hunter-frame' is achieved through draw reins and martingales rather than straightness, suppleness, and self-carriage. But that's a story for another day. The point I wanted to draw from this is that a properly ridden hunter round takes a lot of skill, and to execute it properly a horse must have all the basics of good dressage training firmly in place. So Cadence will be entering in a few hunter classes this summer to see just how firm our training is ;)

If a picture is worth 1000 words...

... how many is a video worth? Here's a little video I compiled form last weekend's jump school. I tried to chose clips that rather than just showing the end result actually showed a progression. So you get the good, the bad, and the uncoordinated ;)

I've had some major issues with YouTube & Blogger not working, so to see the video click here.

Here's a picture to make up for it though!

Fitting 3 Months into One Post...

... is not going to happen. So for now, lets just forget I ever neglected my blog and move on shall we?

Last weekend I popped Cadence in the trailer and we headed off for a day of lessons. Our morning consisted of an hour long dressage lesson, and the afternoon was a fun-filled jump school. Cadence had a few weeks off for a winter holiday in late Dec, and I've been careful to bring her back slowly so that we don't end up with any injuries. As a result, we'd only had two real jump schools preceeding our lesson, and I was a little concerned about her overall fitness. The mare was phenomenal though, and even after a rather gruelling dressage session in the morning, came out swinging for the afternoon session.

Cadence came out pretty tense and jumpy when I first hopped on her. We didn't even bother attempting stretch trot, and instead stuck to focusing on stretching in the walk and acclimatizing ourselves with the scary new indoor. And while the first part of the ride was far from our best work, she settled into it relatively well resulting in a half-decent ride overall.
In the dressage lesson, Ian emphasized a few key concepts:
1. I carry my right hand slightly higher, and hold tension in that elbow in response to Cadence's tendency to lay on the right. This is especially challenging when going to the left, so he made me carry my right hand down on her crest to help break the habit, and suggested I think of it more like a side rein.
2. She may be sensitive, but she has to accept my leg when I put it on, and not go careening madly off in all directions
3. Don't get into fights with her forcing her to slow down and collect. Push her on to get the necessary impulsion and balance, and then use half-halts to alter the stride length (and rhythm, when applicable)
4. Don't let her call the shots. Keep her focus on me, and keep her guessing. Similar to our last lesson, we had directions being shouted at us every five seconds. Neither of us knew where we'd be turning next, how fast we'd be going, where we'd end up, or how long this would go on for ;) The 'I'm just going to barge off now. Ciao!' behaviour that Cadence likes to pull when she gets frustrated.

By the time I'd pulled her away from her hay for our jump lesson, Cadence had settled a bit and was much saner when I hopped on for the second time. We started off the ride reviewing what we'd worked on in the morning from a jumping perspective, and then after warming up over a cavaletti moved on to some basic grids. Cadence attempted to bolt through the grids at warp speed, but rather than correct her Ian had me ensure she was balanced and then 'let her fall on her face'. As long as she wasn't going to jump the bounce as an oxer, let her crash her way through till she backed herself off. After a few run-throughs she did start to back herself off,so we moved on to some other exercises, all with small (2'-2'6) fences, that kept the focus on relaxation. Once we were calmly cantering through whatever he set up, we moved on to some course work over slightly bigger fences. By this point, Cadence had remembered what jumping was, and settled into the work like a pro.
Overall, in spite of the slightly less than impressive start to the ride, we had a fabulous jump school & Cadence even gathered a little crowd who were impressed with her "jumping skillz" and disappointed she wouldn't be heading south at all.

Blessed

I need to keep this short, as I've got a paper due in a few hours, a physio appointment, and a physics test all before 4:30 this afternoon. Time's a ticking! Anywho, I've been stalling on posting recently in part because my time is at a premium right now, but largely because I've had SO much to write about its hard to know where to start.
My life at present is a chaotic mix of life as a science student, rider/trainer for one 8 y/o Holsteiner x TB mare  and two 3 y/o Hanoverian x TB geldings, stable hand on the weekends, and a person who tries to be a good friend. I ride around 7-8 times a week, work at the barn from 8am-4pm on Sundays, attend clinics/shows roughly every other weekend, take a lesson once a week, spend approx 45 mins a week in physio (now reduced to 20 mins. Yeah!) spend at least 50% of my time getting distracted & doing things I shouldn't... (oops!) and fill every spare moment with sleep. I REALLY love my sleep :)

While I know I need to introduce the two babies I mentioned up above, what I really wanted to talk about today was something I started thinking about after reading OnTheBit's post, If I had a million dollars. One of the seemingly unavoidable parts of student life is being a little strapped for cash. I only work one day a week, and don't even make minimum wage (probably not the best use of my time, but it beats McDonalds any day) so my money is split between gas, groceries, and savings. The savings part is admittedly occasionally blown on a chocolate bar though.... ;) Especially with Christmas coming, there are occasionally times when I get a bit worried thinking about how I'll be able to afford Christmas presents for people, or panicking about whether or not I'll be able to participate in the barn's Secret Santa, but to be perfectly honest I've never felt sorry for myself because I couldn't afford something. For example, Cadence has a teeny tiny head, which fits neatly on the second last hole of a cob bridle. Because she also has two bits (technically three, we have a XC and a SJ bit, but the one's not exactly in use at the moment!) I re-purposed my old pony's bridle so that we have a jumping bridle as well. The issue is that the flash attachment on that bridle is so tiny, no normal flash fits through it & I lost the original, so I stole the flash & removable flash attachment off of my horse bridle and duct-taped them on to the pony bridle. Pretty? No. Functional? Yes. Can I afford to buy the figure-8 bridle I desperately want so that I don't have to ride in a duct-taped bridle? No, I literally don't have enough money in my bank account to buy it. But for some strange reason, this really doesn't concern me.
Another example- up until 2 weeks ago, I had one pair of non-show breeches that weren't riddled with holes so badly that  you could either see my underwear, or I got a blood blister from where my thigh came in direct contact with the saddle via the fist-sized hole in my breeches. But this never really bothered me. I just bided my time until I could find a sale on a nice pair of good quality breeches that actually fit me. It took over a year, but I was rewarded with beautiful $130 full seats on sale for $55! Maybe the reason my lack of cash never really bothered me is because I know that if I were desperate, my family would swoop in and save me without a second thought... but I think it has more to do with the fact that in spite of having slightly less cash than would be ideal, I feel so incredibly lucky for what I do have that frequently feel as though I don't deserve it. I have an incredible horse whose talent I am only beginning to appreciate now, I have the privilege of riding two wonderful baby ponies basically whenever I feel like it, I have a supportive family, wonderful friends, an incredible coach, and parents who bend over backwards on a regular basis to try and help me achieve my goals. How is it possible I could deserve all of this? Yes I work hard for what I have, but really, who could blame me for feeling pretty damn lucky?

 WonderMare

 

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!