Bonnie's Blog post # 2

Today was, shall we say, rough. I haven’t ridden with anyone consistently since we got back from Florida in mid-March, and the lack of supervision was painfully obvious today. Jeff has been traveling non-stop and Missy was in Florida until April, and then in Europe with Gigi McIntosh, a para-equestrian student of hers who is making a bid for the 2016 Paralympic team (Go Gigi!), so this was the first real lesson we’d had in weeks- er, months.

In Florida, Jeff started having me warm up on a fairly long rein, to really try and get him moving behind and through his back without me worrying about where his head was. Not to stereotype on the TBs of the world, but, being what he is, Loki thinks relaxing through his topline is for the birds, and tends to get stuck in his back up to his withers and frequently up into his poll, a tendency which is not helped by my own habit of bracing with my forearms. Hence the long-and-low warmup strategy.

The strategy is fairly effective when I have someone on the ground telling me to sit up every, oh, fourth stride or so (horse’s head need to be down? Well, clearly my upper body should be right down there with it, no?!). So I have, despite my best efforts, reverted a bit to tipping forward, which means I lose my seat and leg, which means I lose my power, which means the whole point of the exercise is somewhat moot, as the whole goal was to get the horse pushing and moving behind. Oy vey. So our lesson with Missy went as follows:

Sit up.
Sit up.
Sit up.
Sit up taller.
Taller.
Ok now sit up.

Have you ever disobeyed the voice on your GPS unit in the car? And it starts telling you to “make a U-turn” to get back to the designated route? And it keeps repeating its directions in ever-patient, yet somehow increasingly more annoyed tones when you fail to U-turn? That’s sort of how my lesson went. Sometimes I think Missy thinks I have more vertebrae than I actually do. "I CAN’T sit taller, Missy! This is as tall as I am!”

Once we established that my upper body height was, in fact, finite (or she gave up that endeavor for the lost cause it was, hard to say which), we got down to the real issues. Loki, being an ex-Advanced horse, has a firm grasp on the concepts of straightness, collection, and impulsion. Not that you would ever know it, if you saw me on him. It’s like watching a blind cowboy try to corral six drunk cats. Loki believes that throwing all of his legs in different directions at once is much easier than going in a straight line, and his signature move is tucking his haunches in, especially to the right. He is also really into falling into a heap in his downward transitions. And he hates to go into the contact on the left rein. Ever. Like I said, six drunk cats. Maybe seven, if he’s in a mood.

Today’s lesson it was more like nine. I finally got him moving through his back and somewhat forward and started to pick up the reins a bit, and the legs just started going everywhere. If the haunches were straight, the shoulder was out, if the shoulders were straight, the haunches were in. I might as well have not had a left rein in my hand, that’s how much he wanted to go into it off my right leg going to the right. And he knows this frustrates me, which makes me tense, which in turn makes him tense and runny. Then every time I put my leg on, he canters. So the goal of every ride is to not buy into the Leg Spaghetti and get frustrated and tense, because he will look for any reason to feed into it with me.

Saving grace of this ride? I didn’t buy into it (small victories!) and he didn’t get his excuse to misbehave. And eventually, for small moments, he was straight. And found the left rein. And used his hind end in his transitions. None of this, of course, all at the same time, but it did all happen. And we practiced our trot lengthenings for our test this weekend (Training Level Test A at Fair Hill HT) and nailed them coming off both turns (to the right he sometimes likes to break to canter, if you don’t have him in front of your leg and into the left rein… do you see a pattern here?).

The awesome thing about riding an ex-Advanced horse is that they know everything. The annoying thing about riding an ex-Advanced horse is that they know everything. And Loki is a particularly smart ex-Advanced horse, so he knows when I am riding every stride, and when I slack off. His dressage was never anything to write home about at the upper levels, but he knows his job. It’s just that sometimes, he knows that I don’t know enough/am not a good enough rider, to make him do his job correctly. And he doesn’t give me an inch. At the end of the day I’m hoping it’s going to make me a much better rider, but sometimes I just think, “Seriously? Jeff made you do half pass and rein back and shoulder-fore and all that other crap, and you’re putting up a fight with me about a 20 METER CIRCLE?!”

Anyhow, we ended with a down transition that wasn’t a total heap (on the second try, the first one was, admittedly, crap), and a plan to flat with Missy again on Friday before the show. And tomorrow we have a jump school to look forward to!

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