Trying to recreate the magic at home...

...is a lot harder sometimes than in lessons. Well duh! In lessons, I have an instructor holding my hand, giving me confidence which also gives Tillie confidence. So yea, it makes sense why the magic comes easier in lessons with the puppeting my instructors do that manipulates me and Tillie right where we need to be.

the beginnings of what we were trying to attempt (except this is the RIGHT way to do it)

The point of this post is to sort of laugh at myself and learn from my schooling ride last night with my barn mates. We had it all planned out. We would jump some jumps and set up a one stride line exercise of oxers.

Simple right? We do it every saturday in our P jump lessons...except P is there slowly building them up rather then putting them right up to the final height.

We are all smart adults...but for some reason we didnt think to go hmm maybe we should put these down to cross rails first.

So Tillie and I warm up beautifully. I let her canter out a bit more and she responded coming back nicely. My thought for this was, if I can find this balance during the show season where shes got enough gas to safely compete, but not too much she is harder to half halt Ill be golden.

Anyway, we pop over a small cross rail a few times, then a few random 2'6 ish verticals and she was fine. I worked on my release and trying to find a good distance in our rhythm and not always reverting to adding since that tends to be my go to.

The longer (non short) spot really promotes tillie to stretch better and jump up rather than over her shoulder

So after those felt good I looked at Brita and said ok lets try the one stride line (two one strides). I got a nice canter and made the turn...which in hindsight I should have circled because Tillie lost her shoulder but I closed my thigh and thought hey we got this.

Jump #1 we swiveled with Tillie taking off and seeing the other jumps and just reallllly backed off. so I landed in a heap, lost my left stirrup and in true - lets get er done fashion sat up, closed my leg and clucked her on.

Looking back to a more successful jump

 We got through it. Barely. Tillie landed and cantered off like we just finished and grand prix course with my left stirrup flopping around and all. Which I was super excited about in a way because A) I ALWAYS lose my right stirrup not my left which means maybe, just maybe I am evening out from my last few schooling rides working on my own alignment and B) I didnt feel at all unseated without that stirrup which hopefully means my stickability is improving.

MMMMAAAAYBE we should have been smarter about this and opted to take turns slowly building up to a 2'6 one stride grid eh?

I cant speak for the rest of us, but I can attest that my brain wasnt all there yesterday with how stressful life has been lately in other non horsey areas so Im giving myself a "laugh it off and Ill try to use more of my brain next time".

We did ultimately lower it and go through a few more times just fine and just sort of play around to rebuild our confidence (mostly mine). I found myself not feeling too happy with Tillie being uphill enough and wondered if I was being too hard on her, accurate in what I felt or if the judge from Sunday was still in my head.

Tillie also felt a bit different when switching diagonals which leads me to believe she was a bit weaker on one of her hinds...which it felt the right hind again to me. I always worry, but am trying to chaulk it up to some pretty crummy footing probably making her sore because when I got off to check her legs and poultice her to be over the top safe, both legs felt cold as ice.

So I did feel a teeeeennnyy bit better when a barn mate said she sneaked in a video and I saw it showing Tillie jumping pretty darn uphill. So maybe I need to stop worrying so much about it and just let her figure it out:

Shes getting over stuff without having trouble, she doesnt take rails down a lot at all...so the uphill thing? Who cares (well yes it matters but I think it will come). My horse may not be a power house jumper, but she has game, is brave and does have scope even if it doesnt look all that amazing. And hey, these struggle bus rides that I apparently plan but not enough...Tillie clearly tells me what she thinks and it keeps us knowing where we need to be right?

As far as seeing my form, I now am realizing my release is getting there and my heels are too...but I now notice it isnt the release that is posing a problem, its how quickly I am sitting back in the saddle on landing. So back to the age old question of how to prevent that without my shoulders getting ahead?! UGH.

Post Snowpacolypse riding - Jump lesson recap

The weekend of January 22nd, we got hit with the biggest snowfall our state has ever seen since recorded snowfalls in history of our state. Pretty darn impressive. It was nice, at first. The first few days cleaning, cooking and catching up on the neglected things...but after 3 days of not ONE snow plow down our street and being forced to work (from home but it still sucked since everyone else was off) I was going stir crazy.

Sooo much snow...

Even as recent as yesterday some roads are still not plowed to the full width of both lanes...meaning riding was not happening. I was soo envious of barnmates that could go during the day to ride the fluffy fresh powder, but I couldnt get out there before dark and the lack of lights sort of put a stop to me trudging through almost 3ft of snow by myself to ride.

For those that could play in the snow, I got some pics to hold me over :)

Tillie clearly enjoyed her mini vacation. 

With snow/ice covering all available riding surfaces, that meant no teaching lessons for like I usually do, but luckily our usual saturday jump lesson with P was still on since they have an indoor! I was so excited I got to the barn early to do a bit of grooming and love on Tillie. 

Never so happy to see this face! 

The plus side to all this snow - her whites on her legs have never been whiter! Now we have rain moving in and that will quickly change that, but thats ok...that hopefully means a ride-able ring with the lights!

We loaded up to go to P and once again she self loaded like a charm! I really am getting quite spoiled! The indoor here is quite small, so trying to fit us all in was a bit hectic on top of snow occasionally sliding off the roof sending all the horses into a frenzy. Tillie got used to this by the end and only had a few sassy mare moments.

Because most of us havent been riding and because the deep snow does wear them out, we did a simple low grid just to get us all back in the swing of things. I dont think anyone was particularly thrilled with their rides...but all in all you could tell our horses were true champs just trying their hardest despite being fatigued.

I spoke with P about the head wagging tracking left and we ruled out soreness since she just saw the chiro, decided to try the dentist (since shes due anyway) but that it was most likely that she isnt really through enough in the bridle. So during warm up I really thought about riding her forward without rushing and getting her into the contact more. That really seemed to help! 

I made sure to giver her a lot of walk breaks through with all the recent time off...so that wasnt helpful for our rhythm, but was great to work on transitions. 

oh hey!?

P had us warm up over some trot poles and then raised a few to be cavaletti. Tillie seemed bored and did it no problems. We moved on to cantering one ground pole and then two. Tillie did it tracking right beautifully...tracking left the first time she got a bit flat and grabby but second time through figured out her balance without trying to goad me into helping her. 

So onto jumping:

First attempt through, you could tell Tillie just wasnt quite sure and the tightness of the indoor made her a bit nervous about her balance/feet jumping:

When P had us try to come through again things got a bit interesting:

So ok, it wasnt great...but we recovered and I took a deep breath and knew I needed to let her go a bit more and stop micromanaging her. When I do, she feels claustrophobic and gets behind my leg, too light in contact and just stops listing to turning off my aids. What is nice about P's lesson format is you get to sit and reflect while others go...so I took some time to reset before we tried again:

MUCH better this time through even tracking left. So the answer all along is to stay off of her face...well duh!!

So P raised the fences a teeeeeny bit more and we all did it a few more times. These last two times Tillie really started getting tired. This round, I should have trotted another lap to wake her up after sitting still for so long, but she pulled us through and got it together:

 P had us go through ONE more time and commented that Tillie would jump the first one well, the second kinda ok and the third one like "OMG I cant make it over" so we called it quits after this one:

I walked away from the lesson a bit ambivalent. I was really happy with the fact that Tillie was pretty much all business aside from a few minor incidents...but I didnt feel like we had done anything great or worthy of improvement. Regardless, I realized I actually wanted to do more in a lesson...when in the past I would dread running through the exercises and get a sinking feeling. Its awesome that now, I cant get enough.

Sooo tired after the lesson

I also was fully prepared to watch back the videos and be disappointed in both my form and Tillie's...only to be pleasantly surprised at Tillie! (My form still left some to be desired, but I am not beating myself up too much here with all the time off - Mainly my release lacking). 

Despite these fences being small, Tillie was jumping really well...mostly over just the first one through the line and her form would die out more and more over each additional one. BUT the fact that shes jumping even these smaller fences so well is promising right?!

Not to mention her trot looks pretty darn amazing too despite time off:

FANCY PANTS

I know I am gushing a bit...but I self doubt ALOT. Both myself and Tillie so its nice to see footage that makes me feel good.

Mid-January Dressage Lesson Recap

I know I know, this is so overdue I almost didnt blog about it...but the footage from this lesson is just way to epic and funny not to share. (in hindsight is funny).

So back when I thought Tillie was broken and my house was in shambles, I begged C to let me still come take a lesson on any horse she had available. See the intro and background story in my past post here.

I was glad I went to get my mind off of everything and it worked because I ended up getting really frustrated in my lesson...so not exactly a good distraction but one that is a step towards growing all the same.

C has a retired 3rd level pony horse (youll understand this description in a mere moment) that I rode in this lesson. While tacking up C starts warning me of all the devious things this horse does and going down a laundry list of do's and donts and I finally ask her "Should I be worried?..It sounds like I should be worried" I have heard this horse is quite particular and another friend rode her and said she felt like she didnt know how to ride all over again. LOL oh joy.

Walking Star between trotting

So, I do as I am told and walk Star all the way around the ring since she is also really spooky and proceed to get on. I was pleasantly surprised that not only did I not die, Star was ok...ok as in I could ride and maneuver around in the walk without much drama. I did get a lama/giraffe mode for a circle or two, but even C sounded surprised when commenting how much Star seemed agreeable with me.

I knew the real test would be once we started to trot. She did revert to a giraffe a bit just to establish I really dont know what I am doing but fairly quickly and without much fuss started working for me. Probably because I was thinking so hard about not losing my stirrups...idk what the heck was up in this saddle (not mine) but I felt like my ankles were so loose! C even thought they looked TOO short! I managed to just grin a bear through it, but do think it made me less noisy or in Star's face which came to my benefit.

so fancy!

I remarked at how similar of a ride she felt to Tillie...a bit picky, sensitive at times and then stubborn / ignorant others. Just all around a but finicky but I LOVED the challenge. That is until we started adding in lateral stuff.

Leg yielding was fine, just worked on really making sure the shoulder doesnt lead and her body remained straight. This was great for me to feel since I am also starting to set this boundary with Tillie and take her leg yielding to the next level.

Then we started working on shoulder in. On Tillie, I can shoulder in in my sleep...and I often times accidentally get her to, especially tracking left. Oddly enough, I did the same thing on Star warming up to. BUT ask me to do it on purpose on Star and I turn into a blubbering idiot apparently...LOL.

It was not pretty at first and Star wanted to make sure I knew that SHE knew her job...that it was me that needed to pull it together. I started scraping a few together and of course C goes and makes it harder by telling me to sit Star's incredible hard to sit trot to do it.

LOL by the end of the long side C told me to post before I would die...whew glad I survived that one!
But seriously, this horse has the most springy and active movement through her back that sitting the trot compare to Tillie took every ounce of concentration I had.

Because of my extreme focus on that, I somehow missed the memo we were transitioning to working on half passes (which I expressed interest in learning the aids for) If you get a chance to watch the video you can even hear me ask, "wait are we trying to half pass?" to which C explodes in laughter, "UH YEA!!"

This marks the point I was starting to get frustrated and luckily didnt have much longer at being tortured before we cooled out and I felt like I didnt have enough brain power to control all the million different parts of my body at once. I know its from a lack of trying this movement that the body control and coordination just isnt there, but when you know what it looks like and studied it so you conceptually get it but cant put it into practice...well that just sucks.

All in all, I decided I need to force myself to keep taking lessons on Star once in a while...it was a bit refreshing to ride something I didnt have such a history with as well as one that is trained so highly to teach ME for a change.

Hope you enjoy! I did put amusing music to the video to drown out my trainers voice...she would probably kill me if I didnt...

Bloopers

It has been non-stop raining here since Monday...soooo I am stealing this idea from fellow blogger Emma and putting together some bloopers from the last year for some content.

Hope you are all ready!?

Last winter...and so much sass

Bolting and taking off really is hard work...I need a snack

Tillie expressing just how wonderfully exciting flying lead changes are

Just showing everyone how flexible she is

A few clips from my own youtube account:

The vet is sooooo much fun....

And more of me leaning with my shoulders...
have I mentioned how much I hate down banks? maybe I just wanted to take a peak?

Noticing a trend yet? Me and my terribly leaning shoulders! 

Burrs everywhere and its the one time my hubby comes to the barn....Tillie clearly is amused.

and the time I fell off and sprained my ankle.

Hope you guys enjoyed!!