New top height and Back to Work and Conditioning

Sunday I had a jump lesson on Charlie which was delightful. We did a little course and ended with a tweener (in between novice and training height - I think about 3') vertical. We took my stirrups up a notch which helped tremendously with my lower leg position, and I continued to work on rhythm (1-2-1-2) and then if Charlie got a little sprawling, collecting him up asap after the fence. It was a great ride and a lot of fun. I had a couple days off, so I finally caught up on some reading, and finally read "Back to Work: How to Rehabilitate or Recondition Your Horse" by Lucinda Dyer. For several types of injuries, it had some perspectives from vets, and then case studies with owners' experiences. Although none of the examples were identical to Willig's, the tendon & ligament section repeated several times the importance of slowly working back up (but the importance of keeping them moving - and the consistency of the owners' nervousness (will he spook and reinjure himself?) and frustration). The recommended schedule after walking, is to add trot work to 30 minutes of walking from two minutes on week 1 to 20 minutes by week 7. Then add canter work from 5 minutes on straight lines only (week 1) to 40 minutes by week 8 in an hour of riding. I thought it was a good book with some useful tips. The April Practical Horseman also had a conditioning article by Jim Wofford (he's almost always my favorite) that said for Novice and Training, you should canter once every four days and work up to a slow canter twice the distance of your course. So a 5 minute xc course, you should be riding a 12 minute slow canter every four days, and he should recover within 7 minutes. To build up, start with trot sets - 3 x 5 minutes, walk 2 minutes in between, then do 9 minutes of slow canter in 3 minutes with brief walk in between. Build this up to at least 12 minutes.

Schooling Lessons

We went to NWEC to school some cross country fences today, and I had so much fun. I'm also so glad we went because I thought I was completely a cool cucumber until the moment Shannon sent me off trotting by myself to do the first five fences, and then suddenly I got that tight anxious feeling around my ribs. But since Charlie is a freaking rock star, the only fumbling was on my end. My two big take-aways - ride him more assertively (for Charlie, this is faster than I'm used to going, and not timidly approaching every fence in a baby trot), and new one - keep my hands planted on his neck. So in between fences, I'm riding in a two point with my hands planted down, and then as we're about 10 strides out, I sit up into a light seat ... but my hands stay planted on his neck. And my job is to think rhythm (1-2-1-2) and then to steer him over the center of each fence. If I screw up and am riding too defensively, I let go of the reins so I don't grab him in the mouth. And corners and approaches are when I rebalance and sit up. Charlie is a total superman, and can totally take care of the fences all by himself. We will, a few strides from the water, trot into it, but then canter once his foot hits the water. He didn't even flick an ear at the water OR the ditch today, or the one humongo log. He just floats right over them. So I still have some switches to flip from my Willig riding style, but I think I am going to have a really good time this summer, and I am so so so grateful for this opportunity.

Charlie and Willig

Charlie peacefully grazing after his schooling session at NWEC, and Willig looking jealously at Charlie peacefully grazing.

Jumping George on a gorgeous spring day

Excellent dressage lesson on Charlie

After some wrangling with my schedule, I finally got a dressage lesson with Mike on Charlie. It was very illuminating and left me grinning and really looking forward to my next ride on him (until today, when I watched Shannon in a lesson and realized I'm a totally sucky rider and wondered why I even try).
First, a tip for George: when he's being heavy with his head, use my back to lean back, so it's my back muscles and the lever action working on him, not my flabby arms which will never win a tug of war with his heavy head. And when George squeals at me (which he rarely does) he is telling me a dirty word and he shouldn't get away with it.
Now, for Charlie. The take away was I'm not riding him hard enough. After 45 minutes with Mike I was soaking wet with sweat.
- Hold my hands higher (to lift his head) and have more contact. I ride him very very light, long, and low, and the contact isn't heavy, but definitely a presence.
- Use more leg - ask him to move until he's on the edge of breaking to the next gait. This is a little hard for me to judge, but as I get used to riding him, I'll know where this feeling is.
- The walk should have his hind legs stepping over his front foot steps by about 6-8". It's not how far down his head is (at his knees) that matters. He should feel like he's walking like Marilyn Monroe - with a swinging, rolling walk.
- A good ride feels like it's on the edge - don't be afraid to push it to the limit - that's where the 8's and 9's are. But be aware of what Charlie can do (his canter and walk can be 8's - his trot is more realistically a 7) - but if he's having a spastic day, it's better to play it a bit safer, like letting him go a bit long, low, but steady.
- My posture needs to be more elegant - sitting up tall with my heels down. Heels lifting up say to the judge that I'm nagging the horse.
- I need to ride him lifting into the canter - the elegant posture (and I saw Shannon do it today) collects him up and gets his hind legs underneath him. (I'm not sure how.)
- When I come down the centerline to halt, think piaffe the last few strides to get a nice, underneath, square, quiet halt.
- Also keep him bent "left" which makes him straight. (Something is really crooked in my right hip and it's messing everyone up.)
- Think canter to halt to get a nice down transition to trot, but also keep the forward momentum going.
- Every five to ten steps do a big kick to remind him his job is to go forward. No nagging every stride.
- It is ok to collect for a few strides to prepare for a transition. It is better to have a nice transition than to do a sloppy one exactly at the right place (for BN).
- Be done with what I'm going to mess with by the time I come around the corner. This was for the free walk to medium walk to trot, and the point was, as I finish the free walk, collect the reins up and get it back together BEFORE I start the corner to medium walk, to make us look neat and polished.
It was a great lesson. It made me feel like I could actually ride.

super fun jump lesson on Charlie

I really do feel like a weight has lifted off of me after I ride Charlie. As I accurately but not wisely suspected now maybe a couple years ago, when Shannon first offered to let me ride him and I declined, mine and Willig's whole lives would have been different these last couple years - ok, well, Willig had to go lame for me to ride other people's horses so maybe not - but I have FUN on Charlie. Willig is work. Charlie is enjoyment.
We got to take advantage of the nice spring weather and had another outside jump lesson (in warm sunshine) yesterday. After a few warm up fences, we did a little 6 fence course, roughly 2'7", with an oxer, the lattice fence, and the barrels. Charlie is a total champ.
I'm flailing a bit, but it's more because I spent the last 4 years trying to unlearn most of my basics to adjust to riding Willig, and now I need to switch the Willig skills off and go back to the way I was taught.
Which is:
- Ride in a light two point, with my hands in "jump position" up his neck until I come around a turn or about 10 strides out
- Then sit up a bit (but wait for the jump - legs in front defensive is one thing I think to keep from jumping ahead with those long sproingy frog legs)
- Keep it even - I have to say 1-2-1-2 otherwise we speed up
- Be ready to balance him after the fence, and not to let him rush towards it (because Charlie actually enjoys jumping)
- And for the connection, it's leg, then hand
I mailed my entry for NWEC today, and I am so excited!

a journalist's idea of dressage

http://news.yahoo.com/romney-talks-horses-dressage-missouri-fox-trotter-201433096--abc-news-politics.html

"Dressage is very competitive horse riding in which the animal's mane is often braided and the riders wear top hats and long coats."

Free Willig

Willig soundness update

After 6 more weeks of stall rest with 10 minutes of hand walking a day, Willig is still not sound.
Now he's going onto 8 weeks of tiny turnout and up to 60 minutes of walking a day (hand or, likely on what will be a rare occasion, under saddle) and then he'll get checked again.
He's also going to get the navicular support bar shoes to help support the navicular ligament.

2nd schooling video

Charlie: Leg gets a thumbs up, back gets a thumbs down

Until you watch the video and freeze the frame, then I have a flat back in the moment in the air, but bad lower leg and seat (swinging behind, jumping ahead). Sigh.


I had my first outside jump lesson in a while, and my third jump lesson on Charlie in the gorgeous spring weather we had yesterday.
I had a really fun time during the lesson, but (not that this was ever a real worry) there is still plenty to work on.
Charlie actually enjoys jumping, so he needed to be ridden in two ways majorly different than Willig: light seat but steady him (1-2-1-2) so he didn't speed up the last couple strides to the fence.
Not surprisingly, I'm also (still) not very fast on my reflexes, so this video with two bends was pretty difficult for me to do.
That being said, after we did it a few times I started to catch on, and I ended the day on top of the world and looking forward to more.
Same old from before applies: legs in front, even rhythm, stay in the center of the fence, look for the next fence as I do the final line up for the current fence.
Also, because Charlie is trained and reliable, I can also ride a bit closer to my jumping position (seat light) and also hands up his neck with reins shorter.
We also checked speed, and telling myself a slow, steady 1-2-1-2 we were exactly 350 m/m so for x-c we'll need to go just a bit faster.

Family photo

I (heart) Charlie!

I had a flat/light jump lesson on Charlie today, because I'm going to ride him later this month without supervision. I was really curious (in a dreading way) about whether the first time I rode him (which I put off for months and months because I didn't want to realize how difficult Willig was to jump) was just a lucky coincidence fun ride, or whether I really do click with Charlie. The answer is clicking. I had so much fun riding him today, and I left on top of the world, feeling completely relaxed and happy after a week of just ... ugh.
Now I'm curious how riding him without Shannon's supervision will go, if I'll drag him down to my level or if he's just a better match for me. Or if I just like the way Shannon trains horses.
We warmed up on the flat, which felt a bit easier than last time. My aids have gotten clearer and I'm better able to adjust to what he needs (although he's really different to ride, both conformationally and style, than Mike's line-up), although I need more time than one ride to get a feel for the "right place" for all of it.
Then we did a little cross rail and later a vertical on a circle from the trot and canter, both directions, with my primary mission to be not to pull with my hands. Because Charlie was nice and consistent, it was easy for Shannon to see that each time I got the teensiest bit nervous (over ANYthing), I'd clench up and pull with my hands - especially that darn right one that has a mind of its own. So she had me ride with "upside down hands" (like carrying a bucket with your biceps - not that helpful a visual but I can't think of a better way to say it), so that I couldn't get in a pulling war with his face. And at first, I hated it - I felt completely powerless. And then I got used to it and rode with my outside and my seat more, and then it was a cake walk. An ecstatic, joyful, wonderful, thank-god-I'm-alive-and-on-a-horse cake walk.
AND - Shannon complimented my lower leg. She said that they look like they belong to a different rider than from when I started working with her. All of that hard work is finally paying off! They feel better too - totally secure and I don't have to think about them all the time.
So now I can focus on other things and enjoy myself a bit more. Which I totally did today. It was just a little lesson, but it reminded me why I ride and why I have my whole life set up for riding.

Jump lesson on George

Yesterday I had a jump lesson on George. It's been a while since I've had a jump lesson, and George's tendency to kind of plow into the trot poles has reawakened the chicken in me (that we were finally dampening).
We started with some flat work, with the "usual" instructions from Shannon that I hear, but somehow don't follow in between the lessons:
- Ride him more forward. If he wants to be flinchy, don't clutch up with my hands but kick with my legs. While contrary to every instinct I have, every single time this works like magic, so I don't know why I can't learn it the "new" way (the way that works).
- If he wants to be a bit of a pill (like he's, oh, had a day off), let him canter it out. Get up in my two point, shorten the stirrups and dig my hands into his neck, and let him do a couple laps each way. That lets him settle down and focus, just like when I have too much energy.
- Quit being lopsided with my hands! Even in the two point, my right hand would be all sneaky and snake down low and to the right, even if I touched my thumbs across the top of his neck. I'd have them touching, and then my right hand would try to sneak off and I'd have to force it back into place.
We did some trot poles and then some canter poles, then the poles, halt, back, turn around, trot back over them, repeat, and then variations of those on a big circle, where my job was to keep the same rhythm (1-2-1-2) and go straight over the middle of them. Sounds simple, right? It was fine until we started cantering and then the thing I posted about with Mike - the crazy bending to the left - went crazy again. It was like a battle of willpower to even get him straight - even with my right leg kicking and my right hand battling to pull him to the right instead of left so I could see his right eye. Shannon said to a) twist my heel in instead of lifting my heel, and b) to just ride him looking at his right eye until my body gets over whatever freakish thing it's doing.
Then she set up a little cross rail, so we did the 20 meter circle (cross rail to ground pole to cross rail) at trot and canter, then with a new block underneath, then with her strolling around near it.
Then she turned it into a little vertical and we did the same series.
For once, as we went along, it would start out ugly and messy, but she'd make me keep going, even when I was flustered and wanted to stop and pull myself together again, and then, lo and behold, I'd be able to pull it all together while we were going.
And once, he got surprised when something changed and went to run out, and my right leg, miracle of miracles, did its job and corrected him!
It was a very satisfying lesson, but at the same time, I still feel pretty much like a goober.

W's 1st follow up

Today W got another shockwave and did just a bit of trotting to see how he's coming along. While it's not bad news, it's not good news either. He's made some progress, but he's not sound.
We've put him on some Chinese Herbs to try to calm him down, because yes, it doesn't matter if he stands still 23 hours and 50 minutes a day if in the 10 minutes he's tearing around in his stall he's re-tearing his ligament.
While it's a judgment call, my guess is he's going to tear less in his stall than he would in even the teeniest of tiniest of outdoor paddocks, so we'll try the herbs for a week, but if he doesn't stop it with the bullshi*t, he'll go outside in a tiny paddock.
He may need April off too, if he isn't sound by the next follow up in a month.
I'm also going to try one of the Back On Track bell boots out of what is becoming desperation. I'm furious and worried at the same time. Why can't he just stand still and heal?!?

Respect My Authority?

Today I rode George and Prince with Mike, and was mostly discouraged but had a tiny flicker of hope.
Ok, so while he was gone, I would have described the issues I had with the horses I rode as very different. And I would have been wrong. The main common theme was a lack of respect for my leg aids.
They were openly taunting me, even with Mike there! As soon as he'd walk towards them, they'd suddenly get very obedient again, but when he'd back away, we were back to me being the teenage babysitter who gets slimed. It was excruciating. He'd say "canter" and I'd fumble around for two or three circles.
That was one of the discouraging parts.
So let's do the tiny flicker of hope - in my bungling efforts to give his horses a workout while he was gone, I actually had stumbled onto some of the right ideas. I didn't carry them through as well as I could have, but that's what I've got and I'm clinging to it. Like I had been working George over the trot poles at 4'6". And one day he was just slogging around like he had on lead boots and knocking the poles, and a fellow boarder suggested they should be wider. Something about that didn't seem right to me, especially with the slogging and the fact that he'd done them fine many other days at exactly the same distance. I did try them a couple days later wider, and he knocked less, but it didn't seem to have to do with the distance. Instead, I had figured it out earlier, it was whether or not he was coming in with impulsion from his hind end - vs. strung out and on the forehand.
Mike said this is George's approach to fences too - flung out and over them, and instead, to sit up and say "no, I want three more strides in before the fence here".
The second thing I was a bit right about, but this feels like inching my way up a mountain by my fingernails instead of the space walk leaps and bounds we made last year, is that the impulsion comes from riding with your core. I think that it's - if your hips are bouncing on the basketball, making the bounce higher (more time in the air), but how to actually explain what's really happening with your body is still beyond my grasp. This is both canter and trot - it's easier to do in canter, but it needs to be showing up in trot too (that's what makes them easy to sit).
I think the things I'm really struggling with getting - like I've hit a wall - is using your core and riding with your seat, getting that impulsion with connection, and then the lower leg still has too much static, especially combined with the weird passive personality I have about my aids (actually, ok, it's insecurity - I'm never sure I'm doing it right).
So, Mike wanted to work with me after I described the issues I had with both of them (I claimed Prince was easy, we just struggled with the 10 meter canter circle - then on George, I had an "ah-ha" and said, "oh, I just wasn't riding it enough from the outside leg and outside hand" - simple, right? But when I got on Prince today, suddenly I couldn't even canter anymore and at one point I started crying.
Ok, second side track - I have cried a few times at the barn lately, and it isn't really about whoever I'm riding, it's my frustration that it's not Willig leaking out of my eyes.)
So, here's the nutshell solutions to my problems:
- Stop screwing around with my legs all the time. Ask for the aid. Ask a second time if the horse was asleep. Then use the whip and demand respect. Hence, the "Respect My Authority". This was ALL horses I rode, without him there to fix it, and an ongoing problem with Willig (which he, somewhat remarkably, seems relatively immune to, at least compared to two weeks with Mike's horses.)
- Ride that impulsion all the time (after a couple minutes of warm up). This is really hard on my abs and lower back, so this is going to go with "work out at home on your abs and lower back every night". Because I CAN get it on my own, I just don't trust myself that I'm doing it right because I can't explain it. I get it by riding the basketball.
- When George tries to dive down or his shaking his head, then sit up tall, lean back, brace my core and back, and use my seat to drive down.
- By the way, I think I can't get the canter because I'm getting frustrated, and then I drive my seat down because I'm mad which = brakes and then I'm like - arrgggh just go forward into canter! while I ask for exactly the opposite with my seat.
- The weird open left hand? That's all me. Work on making squares and making all my turns with the outside hand and outside rein, and work on a 10ish meter canter (instead of 20) and think about leg yielding to the inside to ask for it.
- Lower leg down. Ride without stirrups more. Think at both the trot and canter about what I've called "frog legs" or "trampoline legs" where I push down with my legs (all the way from the hip to my heel), into the saddle. When I watched Mike ride, nothing on his legs or seat ever bounces at all, and I think his "soft" look is actually very refined frog legs. And drop my stirrups a hole - I'm riding with my knees all clenched up, which makes my aids up weird and high compared to his (he's got really long legs and I've got really short legs so I'm already at a disadvantage there about where my aids are on the horses).
- Our trot exercises are: ride the trot with the tall posture on a basketball like you're going over elevated trot poles, turn it into medium, take it back to collected, turn it into medium, take it back to collected. Simple, right? Ha! I'll probably spend the next year working on this.
- Our canter exercises are: ride piaffe (prancing in place), then walk to canter on a 10 meter circle, and it's walk to COLLECTED canter like you're leg yielding into the center, praise him when he does it right, give him a few strides, and then it's 1-2-3 walk again. For Prince, it's the same but then a break, and then try again, and then a break. For George, it's working on increasing the amount of time he can hold it.
- and I got to see the end of another lesson, where Mike had set up three elevated poles at canter distance to help another horse work on his impulsion in the canter. That was pretty cool.

UC Davis article on suspensory ligament injuries

http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/ceh/docs/special/Pubs-SuspBrochure-bkm-sec.pdf

Willig's MRI results

He has an injured medial collateral sesamoidian ligament (old name: suspensory ligament of navicular bone). He'll get 8 more weeks of stall rest (3 months total), and 3 shock wave treatments. In the future, he may need another MRI, and injections in his coffin joint and navicular bursa.
It's not clear to me whether he'll jump again.
The MRI images were super cool.
The indoor dog park in Portland was super cool.
The flat trailer tire on the interstate was not even remotely cool and almost completely overwhelmed me (and Willig) with the stress, making me realize that the ways he annoys me are basically reflections of my personality.
He's also going to get SmartPaks of Quiessence, SmartOmega3, and SmartFlex Rehab (which will change to SmartFlex III Resilience when he goes back to work).

This is what a flat tire on the interstate looks like

And Les Schwab are my new heros. They have a mobile tire change van that has a lift that can lift a horse trailer with a horse in it and the fastest tire changing guy in the world who doesn't even complain that it's raining.

Snow at Forest Park