Louie Notes

• Louie is in stall #58
• Key for tackbox is in green tray
• Sweep out leftover hay in tack room
• When hosing him down, no water in face
• Girthy - will lift hind leg, but won’t kick (probably) - hit his belly with hand because rude
• Use metal grate next to next door stall to help move wheelbarrow out
• Use green tarp over wheelbarrow when it’s too hot
• He has a bowed tendon on his front right 
• Use maroon or black saddle pad in addition to black foam 
• Hang girth from leather side so as to keep elastic side from stretching out
• Tie up or bridle before saddling
• Nose band on the first or second hold - same with throat latch
• Girth - 3 holes on one side, 2-3 on the other
• When he’s spooky, turn him out. No lunging. (As if I know how to lunge properly, ha.)

—-

• At the walk, shorten the reins for a quicker walk.
• 6-7 laps each way in the walk so he can investigate - otherwise, he’ll be distracted. 5-10 minutes warm up before cantering. Otherwise, he’ll be too stiff.
• Make sure he’s listening at all times.
• At the trot, shorten the reins A LOT and keep hands further up his withers. 
• When you sit down more heavily, he’ll take that as “go go go.” But not really because he’s more lazy than anything. 
• Keep firm contact on his mouth. He’s pretty strong, so..
• Canter cues are the usual kissing and outside leg back. I’m so excited to see how his canter is. Owner says it’s powerful, but slow. I can work with that, LOL.
• To get a nice canter going, keep urging him for the first several strides until you’re sure he’s got his motor running. No need to nag after that. 
• No crop. Spurs okay, but I really don’t trust myself with using them correctly.  I guess it’s time to toughen up my legs.

Lesson Notes 5/15/13

Syd was Not Happy today because not only was it terribly hot, he also got moved to another stall because Chulita needed his space to expand her attached turn-out. He was sulking, ha. Perhaps it’s because his new neighbor isn’t too friendly..

I put my stirrups up two holes in addition to being wrapped because the stirrup leather has stretched so much. Minor mistake because it changed the way I used my leg by a lot. I was a lot tenser in my thigh than usual, and the shorter length scrunched up my leg so that the backs of my thighs were closer to the saddle than they’re supposed to be. Whoops. 

We did a lot of two-point in walk and trot to relax my legs into draping around Syd’s barrel. Which is awfully scary in a dressage saddle because the point is for your leg to not only sink down, but to go backwards. Should Syd stumble to his knees from the trot, I’d be screwed because my upper body is forward and my legs are back. Scariness aside, this exercise really helps me stretch out my hips so that my legs don’t fly forward. After two-pointing a while, I sit back down and there’s an immediate change in my leg’s effectiveness as well as Syd’s responsiveness. 

Today, my instructor used ground poles to help me better control my outside leg. Four poles were set in the center of the arena, each pointing outward in a sort of windmill shape. I was to, first in the walk, go over each pole in a circle. Then, for the second lap, I’d go over the pole, cut in toward the center for a 10 meter circle and go over the same pole before progressing to the next one. Syd tended to blow through my outside leg (drift to the outside of the pole), so I’d have to be on guard with my outside leg and rein to keep him balanced. Then, we progressed to the trot for the same exercise. I need to stop leaning to the inside when turning or leg-yielding - learn to use your leg independently from your upper body. I need to support with my outside leg. Drop my heels more to stabilize my ankles and try to “cup” the barrel with my leg a little further back than is comfortable for me. More control on the downbeat of the trot - feel the stretch in the front of your thighs!

Important: TURN NOT ONLY YOUR TOE IN, BUT ALSO YOUR ENTIRE SHIN (aka pretty much your entire leg in order to achieve that).

Cantering! A bit less “whoo-hoo!” this time as Syd, though he isn’t the type to run away with a rider (seriously, he almost stubbornly refuses to spook at typically scary-to-horses things. see: roaring motorcycle, bright snapping runaway flags, barking dogs darting across the road, DEER in general..), was consistently going way faster than normal. The reason? He’s out of balance and crooked. AKA leaking out against my outside leg. The more crooked he gets, the faster it feels he’s going because he’s also going on the forehand more. 

What is should feel like: I should feel plugged into Syd’s back. My outside seatbone should “drop” first once the outside hind leg is in action. Then, a feeling of a slightly twist in my hips before the inside seatbone follows. 

What it does feel like: Syd’s back is braced, so it’s like AHHHHH HE’S GOING TO LEAVE ME BEHIND.

Don’t get me wrong - I love a pony with a big canter, but Syd’s canter isn’t always consistent. And that’s 100% my fault. I need to put more weight on my outside seat bone and push with my outside leg to get him balanced again. Easier said than done, y’know?

It was still fun. I mean, it’s Syd. His canter departs are almost always really lovely to ride. All upward and airy.. It just goes downward from there, though, ha. 

Hopefully, with more practice on my team mate’s horse, I can improve more quickly. I really hope her horse is forward. Not crazy GO GO GO, but it’d be nice to see how I ride without tensing up from the get-go (I tense when I need to urge Syd to go faster, damn it, which is most of the time). 

I’m counting down the days until school’s over, and I’m scared.

Lesson Notes 5/8/13

I’m really cross right now (not because of the lesson, but what came after), so things will be concise. Very concise for me, that is.

Guess who’s back? Louis!! My left leg screams just thinking of him, ha. 

When he counterbends when tracking left, he’ll hollow out his back and go FASTER. He’s a very forward horse and he’s bumpy when he’s hollow, so I have to control his tempo with more of my core. Slow down my posting, keep posting extremely close to the saddle. 

If he’s resisting the left bend for a very long time, pull your left shoulder back (b/c it always sneaks forward when I’m out of sorts), squeeze your left ring finger on the reins to ask him to look to the left. He will go around to the left the entire time without actually looking to the left. That’s how ridiculously muscled his left side is and how weak his right side is. 

If he’s still resisting, draw him into the smallest circle possible until he’s bending consistently and leg-yield out when you achieve bend. Basically, spiral in and out as needed. Louis actually lifted his back and lowered his giraffing neck during this exercise. Forgot to add that your inside leg must be sharper if he’s not responding at all. Use whip behind the leg if necessary.

Lots of two-point to diagnose which of the muscles of my seat were too tense. Answer: Lots of my muscles are too tense. Mainly the thighs and the bum. Need to close my lower leg on him because I was using his owner’s saddle which has endurance stirrups. Comfiest stirrups, but draws legs away from barrel.

Oh, and when using the inside leg, take care not to post too high. I have a tendency to do that, apparently. 

Use your core!!

My left leg really hates me right now.

Edit: Convert his forward energy into upward energy. The instructor really liked the way I phrased that, ha. Usually, I just babble uselessly at her.

“Think of using your shin instead of your calf when you need to use your lower leg for an aid.”

(paraphrased)

OMG, thank you CotH member! That’s really helpful visual way to think about using my lower leg without, y’know, scrunching up my heel (really, really hate my dance background). 

Basically, think about using the muscles on the outside of your leg more than the inside of your leg. It’ll also keep you from turning your heels in. 

The rest of the advice she gave matched everything I do already with my instructor (which made me think - did she ever train with Jec??). Though much more humorous. “Flap your thighs like chicken wings to loosen up your hips.” (again, paraphrased) Haha..

ALSO! Combat shedding with a pumice stone, boarder person told me. And then proceeded to demonstrate. OMG - it’s so much more effective than the curry combs in the trainer’s tackbox. I’m tempted to get one just to get an edge on Syd’s fluff of doom. He is still the wooliest of all the horses in the barn. :c

Lesson Notes 4/24/13

It was a pretty good lesson to have before a week’s break. :D

Syd was gellin’ with me for once. AKA we didn’t have to go through twenty walk-trot-walk transitions to get a snappy response to the trot aid. He was still snaking a little at the walk, though, so tap-tap-tap until he took proper steps forward.

We did a bunch of square turns, just tuning up my aids for bend. I’m very, very slowly getting my muscle memory to remember to lengthen the inside leg for bend instead of scrunching up the calf muscle (I want to point my toes because my muscle memory remembers effin’ releve from years and years of it). If I didn’t feel his hind-end swing enough in the turn, I had to immediately tap with the whip to get him to stop trailing his hind legs. After a while, Syd anticipated that a few steps from the turn on the square, I’d ask for bend and he just.. gave it to me for free. Oh! Turn soon, so I’ll just give ya some lateral flexion - you just have to make sure your outside leg is there to complete the turn, doll. ;) In my head, I sometimes imagine he’s more of a smart-ass sassmaster than he really is. _{Shut up, I’m totally fabulous!!}Shh, Syd. Go back into the recesses of my imagination. 

New problem: Whenever I’m successfully utilizing my inside leg, my outside leg tries to compensate for what my body feels is an imbalance by flailing out and forward. I need to consciously pin my outside leg to Syd’s side and keep it just a bit behind my inside leg. If I’m not thinking about it, it just does its own thing. Stupid limbs. Learn quicker!

Also, I kept accidentally cuing for canter. They were very lovely, light canter departs though! It’s because my inside leg accidentally pressed rhythmically at the same time that I was correcting my outside leg by pulling it back. Whoops.

I’m getting more used to using the whip in an efficient way, too. It’s really helping me keep my position (no need for extra tension) while communicating to Syd my intentions without need to nag him. 

I got a pretty nice trot out of Syd today, and I don’t even know what I did to achieve it! All of the tension went out of him, he stretched his neck out and down, and he rounded his back. I could definitely tell because my posting became so light and effortless. It was like posting on air. Then, when it came time to sit the trot (because Jec asked what I wanted to do and I immediately went, “Sitting trot, please!” I really love it), I felt really “plugged-into” his back. I kept my stirrups 80% of the time, too. And got back my stirrups the other 20%. Woo-hoo!

Actual canter work also happened today that was not accidental. First, we established the geometry of the circle in the sitting trot. Then, straight into the canter. Tracking right, Syd picked it up with zero problems. It was probably the best canter work we’ve done so far, which isn’t saying much, but it’s progress. I didn’t have to work so hard to “chase” the saddle because Syd’s canter was really together - that is, he didn’t speed up/lose the quality. Tracking left was another story completely. We lost the bend which meant we also lost the geometry. Then, he obviously blew through my inside leg and the canter went completely wonky. We fixed it, but the cantering tracking left really didn’t approach the quality of canter right. Also, I tended to balance on Syd’s face when cantering to the left. :/ Working on fixing that! 

I’m feeling more confident about using my legs in a more minimal way. I don’t need to push so hard with my muscles when I have correct leg placement and I’m using the correct seat bone at the right time. Excited for this!

Add-on: When turning on the forehand, tap-tap with the whip if you don’t feel your inside seat bone “dropping” out from underneath you (it means he isn’t really crossing over). When you feel the drop, it means he’s actually moving his inside hind across.

TLDR; My muscle memory is getting bitch-slapped until it gets things right. Syd is a sassmaster who really isn’t unless it’s in my imagination.

—-

One of the boarders was talking with me after my lesson, and she said she’d ask Jec if it’d be okay for me to ride her horse during a lesson to see what riding a “different” (read: cow-pony) kind of QH is like. Which is super nice of her and a bit.. too trusting? IDK if she’s ever seen me ride during more than a passing glance over the arena. I also flat-out admitted to her that my legs are sloppy and flail-y and I appreciated how generous that was, but I didn’t want to break her horse with my crooked ways. (She said I wouldn’t break him, but according to my nightmares, I probably would.) We’ll see..

One week break while my instructor teaches people on the other side of the country. Maryland, if anyone’s interested and in the area. ;) 

I have a visit/interview with the backyard barn on Saturday, so I’ll get my fix of ponies then, I suppose. I can’t wait until next week when the Icelandic dressage trainer contacts me (if she doesn’t forget like most busy and successful horsepeople)! 

Lesson Notes 4/17/13

Syd has a new game: Never Let Anyone Mount. He’s all fine and dandy at the mounting block until the point where you’re about to stick a foot into the stirrup, and he swings his hind end away from you while you cry a little inside. Also happens when you’re mounting from the ground. So I was forced to pin him between the fence and the mounting block. And he gives me this look, like, “We were having so much fun, you’d you stop??” SYD. NO.

I want to know how the hell this game developed because before my little riding hiatus, the only game he played was You Can’t Get This Bridle On Me. Which isn’t something I can solve as easily as the mounting game. 

It took me half the lesson to get Syd properly forward. He kept snaking around, swinging every which way. I tried a new dressage whip today and even though it was longer, I had less control over it (when I flicked it, it basically went nowhere near Syd’s side) and as a result, we dithered through walk-halt-walk-trot-walk transitions for far longer than usual. Since it was pretty unproductive, I’ll skip the the latter half of the lesson.

Syd started steppin’ pretty and suddenly, 100% easier to post (I didn’t feel like I was landing heavily on his back) and I didn’t feel the need to nudge him along every stride. Part of it was that I did some modified two-point to help him relax and round his back more (because my seat was tense and I needed to get off his back in order to get back to alignment). And the other part, I think, was that he stopped feeling bored and started mentally engaging. I think the constant transitions, the way I was trying to get him to respond to my leg quicker and quicker, became like a game to him. If he didn’t respond right away, tap-tap, walk, try again. If he hesitated before taking that surging step, tap-tap, walk, try again. After a while, I no longer needed extra leg and the whip. Dude was cruisin’ along all on his own which was a great feeling because I could finally ask him to bend before turns without his forwardness fizzling out mid-turn. 

I’m still inching my inside heel up when I’m trying to lengthen my leg to ask for bend, but I’m more conscious about it now. And I’m over-bending him.. I need to wait for the fence instead of taking sharp turns. 

We did lengthwise serpentines. We fit three serpentines (four if I was overbending him, yikes!) into the length of the arena. I had to keep him bent several strides before the turn without accidentally asking him to turn. It was difficult for me to keep him going straight because my attention was off today, and it resulted in my old habit of using my right leg when I’m supposed to be using my left leg. We did manage a fairly nice leg-yield, though! Everything is so much more manageable when Syd’s not behind the leg. 

Circles! I’m getting closer and closer to reaching my life goal - ride a perfect decent circle. I’m finally successfully pushing him to all four focal points of the circle. Geometry first, bend second. Syd actually ended up giving the bend for free. Also, reaching into my hands when I applied my lengthened inside leg. It feels like an accomplishment even though it’s probably just Syd’s generosity, ha. 

We cantered for the first time in, hm, two months? It was GREAT. I mean, my seat wasn’t great - I’m not totally in balance with Syd, sometimes leaning too far back and collapsing a shoulder and not having enough weight in the inside seat bone and losing a stirrup… BUT the circles were better than I’ve ever done before in canter. Like, I have more control over where I’m moving Syd and for once, he listened to my outside leg at the top of the circle. Oh, and he responded RIGHT AWAY to my canter cues. His canter transition jumped! Okay, so it didn’t remain jump-y and light, but it was still nice to feel him going uphill for a moment. 

I think I need to ask Jec for lunge lessons. Maybe on a colder day? It’s been very sunny lately, and I’d feel bad if she had to stand in the sun in order to teach a lunge lesson. :\ 

Lesson Notes Add-On

I forgot that we did a little practice riding on a loose rein. It went a little like this:

Syd. Syd. SYD. PAY ATTENTION. No. No, no, no. We’re not heading toward the gate. C’mon, outside leg back, inside at the girth.. Tuuuurn.. C’mon! Syd, no! (at this point, I accidentally almost sort of scraped my trainer off where she was sitting on the fence)

It went a bit better after I got his motor going and had him repeatedly go across the diagonal at a march. 

I think it has something to do with the increase in temperature, but my grip on the reins improved. I only got the “fingers closed!” rebuke one time yesterday. 

Lesson Notes 4/10/13

The weather was perfect today, IMO. 81 degrees and sunny, with a slight breeze. Syd.. didn’t see it that way, though, ha. 

Since it was warm out and Syd was definitely feeling lazy, we started with turns on the forehand to get Syd more responsive to my leg aids. It turns out that I don’t even need to use my calves most of the time! Just turning his poll, a slight shift of the inside seat bone, and TA-DAH - Syd turns on a dime. It was definitely minimal effort on my part, which is so exciting because it usually takes some bumping of my calf against his side to get him to turn. 

We worked quite a bit on getting a decent walk outta Syd. A forward walk during which you don’t feel the need to egg him on every two strides. 

*There was a campus-wide power outage that lasted 2+ hours and my laptop’s battery has been dead for a while. It gave me a chance to study and interact with people, but sadly most of my post wasn’t saved. Too lazy to rewrite my notes, so you get the sloppy version.*

Long notes short: We worked a lot on feel.

Instead of immediately thinking to bump Syd with my inside leg to ask for bend, just stretch down your leg and press it against him - minimal asking the first time around. Lo and behold, Syd did a whole lot of bending for me during this lesson, sometimes even without my prompting. What a perfect pony, right? 

Get the geometry before even thinking about bend. Doesn’t matter if he’s bent if you can’t even get him to touch the rail. 

10 meter circles are not as small as I think they are.

Stirrupless work - sitting trot - circles. Resist the urge to turn heels in. Make sure your weight is distributed evenly between your seat bones. Quit leaning in! 

I’m starting to ask for bend more promptly - a few strides before the turn - but I’m asking too much of him at once. I need to ease up on the bending aids and only increase the aid when I anticipate Syd blowing through an aid. 

Hopefully, I’ll add on some more notes tomorrow when I’m not tired and hungry and angry with my internet connection (I would not survive the zombie apocalypse).

—

Syd is a really lazy roller. He sort of just gives up mid-roll. LOL. That is all.