Huge news, guys—remember how I said this last week?
I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to be able to canter him in a straight line and have a clean downward transition at the end.
https://spymasterequestrian.com/2023/01/20/biweekly-wanderings-part-ii/
Ha. Hahaha. We don’t have the clean downward transition at the end yet, but guess what: we cantered through corners and straight down the long side of the arena on both leads last night.
It didn’t start off well. My trainer had skinny poles set up along both long sides, as well as one at X, so that riding the poles essentially took you through a very stretched-out serpentine (instead of doing the straight parts of the serpentine through the middle of the arena, we were doing them along the walls and centerline and doing the turns on the short side). We schooled the poles at walk and trot to start with, and didn’t have any major issues there (aside from me forgetting to support the outside hind a couple of times through the turn—sorry, Coops), but once we picked up the canter… oh boy.
What I was supposed to be doing was cantering a circle, cantering the long side over the pole, cantering another circle, long side, both directions (hard mode is serpentining through all three poles with changes of lead, but we are nowhere near being ready for that yet). What we were doing instead was picking up the canter, grabbing the bit, and losing our lead (as per usual) going into the corner. I’ve tried repeatedly to fix it, and sometimes we can keep it if I get up off of his back, but it’s been a perpetual demon for me to the point where it’s as much in my head as it is anything else.
I feel ridiculous saying it, because this January makes eighteen years since I had my first riding lesson, and sure, I wasn’t actively riding that entire time (we’ve got a total of about five years of time off in there between my various breaks), but I know how to canter. I should know how to canter. I had my reins and stirrups taken away enough times as a kid that it shouldn’t even be a question that I can sit (and I don’t go anywhere when Cooper engages in Antics™), but… it is. It is, and it’s been two? years now of me repeatedly trying to figure out why. At first I thought it was just him, and then we had his SI injected and I figured it must be me when it still wasn’t resolved, and riding has become such a mind game for me that I had to bring him to a walk after our repeated failures to get through the corner because I could just tell that I was creeping toward that level of frustration where it was just going to make me tenser and tenser (and thus stiffer and stiffer) and we weren’t going to get anything done.
We had trouble during our lesson on Monday too (although that was definitely more me than him) when we were working on switching between regular and counter-bend on a circle, and once again I had to walk then (although in that case it was because I was physically all over the place more so than mentally—I remembered to use my foam roller on my quads and hip flexors before I went to the barn yesterday and that helped a ton in regards to freeing up my leg). I just couldn’t get my outside leg back far enough to support him through the counter-bent sections and really push him around the circle, and the more I tried the worse my seat got, and eventually I just had to take a second to catch my breath and get my body back in order.
(We mostly got it in the end and then we did some halfway-decent stretchy trot—trainer took some video without telling me so there’s a clip up on my Instagram to memorialize that, lol.)
Last night I told my trainer that, that I needed a minute to collect myself because I knew it wasn’t going to end well if I kept going, because I was legitimately on the verge of tears due to frustration and I didn’t want to let it get any worse, and then I told her that at this point I just don’t know who the problem is, if it’s both of us or one of us or what. She told me that part of it is just him, because he’s weak in the hind end and behind the saddle right now and he’s worked hard this week (we did some bareback lateral work on Tuesday, mostly at the walk, plus flatting Sunday and lesson Monday) so he’s tired, and that he’s spent so long traveling around upside-down in his back that his feet just don’t know where to go because they almost run into his stomach because it is isn’t lifted out of the way.
She also recommended earlier in the week that I boot him up and get some pastern wraps for him, at least for now, because she thinks he might be catching himself in the hind enough at the canter to make him break to trot without actually injuring himself because his legs just aren’t organized yet—the wraps are supposed to show up tomorrow so we’ll see how much that helps. The last thing that she mentioned as far as he’s concerned is that there may be something else going on aside from the SI situation, namely in his stifles, which would make sense and tracks all the way back to when I bought him. We’re going to try what we can now to figure out what the issue isn’t (i.e., how much goes away as we work him carefully to make him stronger) and then when the performance vet is out in a few weeks, we can present her with the issues that we’re still having so that she has a better idea of where to start looking.
When it came to me, well… he hangs on the bit at the canter. She pointed out that I seem to lock through my wrists and forearms when he does that, which is a natural reaction to being pulled on, but it doesn’t do us any favors and just makes him pull more. I need to keep the movement through my hips to stay with him while also maintaining a dialogue with the inside rein (read: keep it moving enough that he can’t hang on it), and elastic contact in the outside to support his shoulders. I also needed to get my outside leg back (yet again) to keep the outside hind pushed under through the turn. She then told me that she doesn’t care if he’s doing haunches in through the corner—it’s not about having it be pretty right now, it’s about keeping him on the proper lead so that he can build the strength to do it prettily later, which logically I know but have trouble remembering sometimes.
Once we had that conversation, she let me collect myself and get my trot back together, and then we tried again. I tried to keep my hands low and my inside rein open, and in an incredible turn of events, between that and me keeping my outside leg outrageously back, we got through the corner and kept our lead. We then absolutely launched over the pole and Cooper had a little party charging around the arena, so he got to come back down and try again. My trainer had us do some canter-trot-canter transitions on a circle, just to get him back on his butt and thinking, and then we went to the next pole.
He was still pretty much charging them, so I kept bringing him back to trot afterward, and once he was moderately controllable, he got a walk break to think about his life choices before we picked it back up again. I wouldn’t call him super adjustable to the left, but it is our (my) worse direction, and we weren’t full-on taking off over the poles by the end of our work that way, so… small victories?
To the right he was so much better from the beginning. He settled fairly well at the canter, I didn’t have to totally fight him for the lead, and he actually adjusted when I asked him to lengthen a bit to get over one of the poles. It was challenging for him to come back on the backside, but he was much quicker about it than he was tracking left (so, note to self: spend 70% of your rides tracking left) and by the end we somehow managed to mostly string together the exercise as it was supposed to be (long side, canter circle, long side) rather than our attempts to the left which were broken up by me hauling him on his ass when he tried to take off instead of trotting (I’m making it sound more dramatic than it was, but anytime he tried to pull me around the arena at the canter, he had to come back to trot and trot quietly before he was allowed to pick the canter back up again).
My trainer was very pleased at the end—he really does have a lovely canter when he settles and it’s easy to ride when he’s not trying to pull my arms out of their sockets, so it looked pretty nice to the right—especially considering that it’s been two and a half weeks since we’ve moved and we’ve only had four lessons. She said the next sixty to ninety days are going to be difficult, because right now it’s really about retraining his (and my) muscle memory to do things correctly, and that would make anyone sore, but the glimmers are in there and (as I’ve said before) we’re going to work with the farrier and the performance vet to figure out exactly what he needs to have him feeling his best. My almost crying aside, I’m already riding better (since, y’know, it’s all still buried in there and I just need to be reminded of where my various body parts are supposed to go), and Cooper is already much more supple and has solid walk and trot work, so now we just have to keep chipping away at the canter.
I already pretty much knew what our homework would be, but my trainer confirmed it: a day of pole work, a day of heavy flatwork, a day of light lateral work where we mostly just walk and drill our leg yields and things (like I did on Tuesday), and a day where we do twenty to thirty minutes of flatwork and then get out of the arena to go walk the two-mile essentially private road that runs through the barn and one other person’s property, because walking to the bottom and back is four miles of hill work. Obviously some of those days will be my lessons (the heavy flatwork and pole work, mostly), and she said if I ride a fifth day, I should just structure it based on everything else we’ve done and how he’s feeling (so it very well might be us going for a walk around the pastures to check out the cross-country jumps out there and not much else).
I do a lot better when I have some semblance of external structure, so I’m glad to have homework. My parents keep acting surprised that I’m going to the barn as much as I am, but I have Things To Do™ now and, considering that my first lessons ever were in the dead of Pennsylvania winter, I handle the cold fairly well. When I was half-leasing as a kid, I always used my Tuesday ride as my homework day (Thursdays were lessons, Sundays were either homework or trail rides during the summer), and now I have enough of it to keep me busy through my two (or three) solo rides every week.
(I’m now trying to figure out if there’s a way for me to keep the two lessons a week even after I burn through my built-up lesson savings in the next couple of months, because it helps me so much, but my budget for the year is telling me that I shouldn’t… Maybe next year, though.)
As I was cooling down I told my trainer that I live in a dream world where one day we’ll have good enough brakes for me to jump around in a plain snaffle (instead of the beval that I use when we jump now) and she told me that we’ll be cantering around a 2’6″ course like that by the end of the summer. She then told me to write that down, so I told her I’d put it right next to my 20-something dressage score in our first competitive test this year. Consider this me memorializing that so that I can confirm whether or not it actually happens in the time frame suggested.
(Me: “Cantering in a straight line happened a lot faster than I thought it would.”
Trainer: “Hey! We do real work here.”
Me: “Oh, it wasn’t you I was doubting. I have full faith in you. It’s me I’m worried about.”)
All in all, I’m still pleased. I don’t love being in a position with my riding right now where I do end up feeling like I’m going to cry, but it’s growing pains and it’s hard to focus on those moments when I have so many good things to focus on instead. Assuming the weather cooperates, we’re going to go out and do our first road walk tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll be able to build up Cooper’s hind end (and my overall fitness) over the next couple of months so that we can actually have some fun this summer without looking half-wild while doing it.
In the meantime, here is a very cute pony, and I’ll probably be back next Friday with yet another update:
(Yeah, apparently we’re doing these posts weekly now. This is what happens when I have two lessons a week to report on.)
Spymaster Equestrian 