Cantering

We have got a lot on our plate these days. Yesterday, after the show, I got star out and worked her on the long lines a little. I also loaded her into the trailer and we stood there for a long time. I think that the work on the long lines helped a bit with her balance. I also think that it will help build her topline since she does start to put her head down when I have the reins set low on the surcingle. Although putting her head down isn't the same as collecting, it at least permits her to collect herself a little bit. When she throws her head up in the air she really cant help but hollow her back too. Theres no point in having long-ish pasterns if you're going to hollow your back. I think I'll try to long line her as much as possible, but I would like to get some riding hours on her too. In my copious spare time I think I'll also try to take her out riding, especially outside, get her used to the world again. I have got to work on that bridge crossing if we're going to take her to McIver park.

I rode Keno too, for my psychological benefit mostly. I have this thing about cantering. In and of itself I think it scares me a little. I really like doing it but its also the thing that happens before bad things happen to me or its the thing that causes the bad things to happen in the first place. I havent done it very much out at stoneybrook really. Papillon was rarely sound enough to canter and Keno often wasn't ridden at all because I was working other horses. Star is too unbalanced to do it well so she frequently stops dead and rears up if you ask her to canter. In the canter if you throw her balance off even slightly she stops dead (on her shoulder of course) and rears, frequently she refuses to move for a while after that. Colonel has the opposite reaction to his poor balance, he canters very very fast. It feels even faster if you've mostly been trotting before that.

My two worst spills (both resulting in concussions) were off of bolting horses. The first one I was jumping a horse I really should not have been jumping. It was a cavaletti and the horse had been an A-circuit jumper before this. Supposedly he had been lunged on a regular basis and every day he was getting better and better. Anyway, it was dumb, he rushed the jump, overjumped it, bucked then galloped off with me. I was standing in my stirrups so I couldnt use my seat to stop him, I tried to stop him, the last thing I remember was feeling my knees start to shake, I woke up on the ground and I have no idea how much memory I lost because no one was around. (Also a stupid thing to do, never jump by yourself.)

Getting concussed falling off Colonel didn't help. When I woke up from that I remembered most of what had happened but on the walk back to the barn (stupid thing to do, if you get concussed and wake up on the ground, stay on the ground) I started forgetting things and repeating myself. (And to the peanut gallery I would like to say, I forgot things more and faster than usual and repeated myself more than usual, not just the normal forgetting and repeating.) At least one of the times I was told that I had fallen off after trying to race Colonel against Shaina and Blue (rider and horse, respectively) I thought it was a stupid thing to have done. Having regained all my memory except for a few minutes in the barn talking to Ian I'm not sure that was a fair assessment. Colonel had been behaving well, we started the horses with a pretty good distance between them and I was feeling good. We said go and Blue broke from the "gate" like a proper racehorse. Colonel started bucking. After he had simmered down I figured I'd at least run after her, who knows Colonel is supposed to be pretty fast we could probably come close to catching her and I could try to pass that off as a tie or something. I had run Colonel to catch up to Shaina before, when we were chasing coyotes and that was fine. When I asked him to slow down this time, he pitched a fit. I pulled on the reins one direction, he pulled on the reins the other direction, I got pulled over onto his neck and off I went. Ian claims this isn't possible. I claim he's an idiot when it suits his purposes. I grabbed his mane long enough to get my legs underneath me but I still hit the ground hard enough to whack my head. Ever since then I've had little faith in my ability to determine whether or not a horse was going to stop when I asked him, and once again, any suggestion of excessive speed absolutely terrified me.

Working with a lesson horse at another barn helped a lot but now I need to practice at stoneybrook. The plan is to canter with Keno for a solid 5 minutes every day, gradually increase the time that I spend cantering without stopping to check and make sure that he'll stop, or to make sure that I'm not too tired to keep going without falling off. Yesterday I did 3 minutes each direction.

It was an experience I'm still processing but I did notice a few things. My sense of the passage of time is very poor, three minutes seemed to stretch on forever the first time around. The second time around it came up pretty fast. When I become concerned that we're going too fast, or the thought enters my head that I would like to stop now or that I'm falling off, or anything of the kind, I stiffen almost every relevant muscle in my body, which not only causes the obvious equitation problems, but it also makes me feel very tired. I think its like on your laptop with the estimated battery time. When the screen is bright the estimated time is much smaller than if you dim the screen to use less energy. When I tense up the likelihood of falling off increases; and the time I can spend before I cant keep that all up anymore decreases. So relaxing really helped but it is genuinely the case that it requires a great deal of conscious effort to keep in a balanced position. I can get into a rhythm trotting and then just completely zone out and be fine. I started to get to that point at the other barn, but the amount of time I could canter without too much conscious effort was pretty short. What doesnt help is that when I'm having fun I tend to lean forward. Not just on horseback, but its most noticeable on horseback because leaning forward creates a vicious cycle of leaning forward even more. So I've been using Keno to work on that. Eventually I think Lady and Colonel and maybe Reno will be good to practice with also, but right now Keno is the most reliable/sound horse we've got.

In daily miscellaneous items: I lunged Lady, walk only. She was quite good but still a little lame I think so I put some hoof dressing on her and put her back. For those keeping track we're now up to seven horses to either ride or get ready to ride: Reno, Keno, Colonel, Luca, Lady, Papillon, and Star. Plus the morgan/paint horse is in full training so it needs attention also. I assume its in training to be a driving horse but I havent heard yet. No work on Colonel today. Robert suggests using the western saddle for our come to jessus operation. The two main advantages are 1) we can rule out a saddle fit issue and 2) when it comes to actually riding him if he wants to pitch a fit its pretty easy to deal with. (I make it my policy to fall off a horse once its reared up to a certain height, and I've tested this personally: you can definitely fall backwards out of a western saddle on a rearing 7/8ths arabian mare.) The western saddle has the added bonus in my mind of being heavier than the other saddles, thus more weight to carry, thus less time getting dizzy if/when he decides to pitch a fit. No work on the trail yet either but I'm all set to go out there with some giant clippers and do some preliminary cutting. Also, a picture of Ian's baby horse: