Experimenting

Finally got out on Tuesday after being sick all week last week. Star holds up pretty well mentally after a break (although Alyssa points out, correctly I think, I tend to ask her for more than I probably should after these breaks.) Colonel probably should go out 6 days a week and work up a sweat nearly every one of them just to keep him mentally fit, but his ability to recover from downtime has improved.

The first thing I experimented with today was looking at different saddles on Star. I'm not super happy with how the dressage saddle fits her, but it seems to be radically better than basically any of the other ones. I think its probably fine. She doesn't really have any girthing issues so maybe her sourness is because I ask too much of her when shes out there. Its not terrible really, she's just been avoiding being caught a lot more than I'm used to.

I tried listening to music while I ride today. I think that for longer conditioning type rides it might be a nice thing. It distracts me from my psychological fatigue. I dont have much of an impulse (so far) to match the beat of the music like Alyssa does so I can listen to basically anything. I just need one of those thingies that you attach to your upper arm to hold your music player. (I'm using my palm pilot because I'm old school like that.)

Most of all I worked on something I read in the blogosphere. Long and Low. its something I think I had heard of before, but I found a nice explanation of the execution here and here. Basically what I wound up doing (my interpretation of what they were explaining) is riding Star until she relaxed a little mentally. Took my normal contact, then I pushed my hands forward (which dropped the contact) and then pushed her with my legs (hoping that she'd pick up the contact again.) I think it was helpful. She did wind up seeking a light contact about 40% of the time. I'm thinking this might get higher as I get better at asking for it and she gets at doing it. When she did reach for the bit, she took nice light contact, and her trot became more comfortable, which I attribute to her using her back more. When her body is "in a frame" its pretty obvious that she's lifting her back better. With the long and low work its more subtle but its definitely there. I'm not totally sure how this is supposed to be turned into collection, but its obviously helping her use her back properly; and I think the next post at Glenshee e-questrian center might explain this. It will be a while before I'll know whether or not its working.

At work we are now seeing patients only on Mondays, so I think I'm going to start coming out to the barn every tuesday and thursday and probably saturday once I re-arrange a few things. I'm thinking the consistency will help a lot to speed up these already slow processes.

Speaking of slow progress, the next horse I rode was Colonel. I didn't have a whole lot of time for him before feeding. We continued to work on calm walking and trotting without pulling on me. The calm part was going rather well. After a little while trotting around the pulling started. Maybe he really does get bored. I dont think of Colonel as a horse with the intellectual capacity to be bored, but who knows?

As I think I've written before, the current anti-pulling method I'm testing is pushing him forward when he pulls. Once he has stopped pulling on me I use mostly my seat to slow him back down to what we were doing before. Its too soon to tell how its working. In the short run bumping him puts his head back up. Hopefully in the long run it will make him reluctant to pull on me. Once he gets tense then bumping him is way less effective in bringing his head back up.

This I found out after sitting on him for a conversation with Robert, and then Robert leaving, plus returning to working, which also involved leaving the spot where Alyssa and Keno were standing. Poor guys happy place was just ripped apart, and he let me know it. So there was a lot of zooming around the arena at a speedy, choppy trot, getting speedier and choppier every time he pulled on me because he wasn't interested in slowing down once I had pushed him forward. Then Keno left the arena just as we were starting to calm down. This he recovered from much faster than before. Could this be a sign of learning? As always, time will tell.

Robert says we both need about 500 miles of good road. I'm waiting for the ground to dry up so we can get back to riding outside. Summer '07 he was pretty much fine to work out in the field, from a spooking standpoint. I think I can get him that way again, and then work with him on the pulling and speed control issues. Until then its all arena work.

Sigh.