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!

Back to Blogging & Upgrades

With the  start of fall comes the start of a regular schedule... kind of... and hopefully a resurgence in my blogging. I've learned that a lot of the activities I do throughout the year (playing flute, guitar, juggling, blogging, baking, etc.) are done to mitigate stress, and to be honest quite often to procrastinate. Anywho, as I'm back to putting off work hopefully I'll be back to writing my own blog, and reading & commenting on everyone else's.  For today, I just wanted to do a short write up on my thoughts on upgrading Cadence to Training:

So those who've stuck around for a while probably remember that last fall Cadence had several good runs at Entry (BN) and was starting to get bored at the level, so we tried to upgrade to Pre-Training (N)... and ended up getting eliminated at a bank out xc, and then I fall off at our last event. Oops! However, I've once again found myself close to the end of the season with a horse who is basically bored at novice, and has schooled all of the elements of a training course, and even hopped a few prelim fences. However, the last thign I want to do right now is upgrade too early and scare her. There are two events left this season: an 'easier' one that's generally considered a good upgrade course, and a 'challenging' one whose courses are always maxed out in both stadium and cross. I don't want to put unnecessary miles on Cadence, and run her at PT when really she should be going T, but I'm nervous about upgrading her too soon. I've walked the training course (from last year) at the upgrade event, and Cadence wouldn't likely have an issue with any of it. However, even though we've schooled a lot of training complexes, she's never run a full course so its difficult to know how she'd react.

Here's a video of last year's training course at the upgrade event:

(for some reason, Blogger isn't letting me put the actual clip in, so here's the link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ9Lx2Cw22U

Thoughts?

Silent Saturday- Champs in Photos

 Fit two strides in the two stride this year!

(barely...)

How to Ignore Your Blog 101

Step 1:
Be really busy (though not as busy as you are for the other 3/4 of the year) and dedicate what little leftover time you have to sleeping, eating, visiting friends/family, and watching movies; all of which (save for eating) will likely not happen again until next summer.

Step 2:
Ignore your laptop because its old, and frustrating. Et voila, you've just successfully ignored your blog as well!




Training bank combo (bank up-1 stride-drop-turn-skinny)


Corner


Other pony


Skinny (from bank complex... Cadence's first XC skinny. It was at most 2' at the base!)


Show jumping


Me on Balance Rock (family wedding/trip to Bar Harbor, ME)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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 ;)