Continuing Ed

Yesterday Dixie and I went down to San Jose and took a Centered Riding lesson with Becky Hart.

Becky Hart is a name I've known for a long time.  She's one of the top ten US endurance riders, and one of the top international riders - I don't even pretend to follow FEI so I have no idea how well she's ranked overseas.  But she was the Chef d'Equipe for the US endurance team at the last WEG - she is the real deal.  (And don't even get me started on her horses - Rio was possibly the best endurance horse ever, with 10k miles and a ton of first-place finishes.)

And I'm a redneck from Mississippi with four months of dressage lessons four years ago, on a horse I've made, for better or worse, entirely on my own.  I was a little nervous, really.  But it's gotten to the point where I have to recognize that Dixie is a serious athlete, and she deserves a better partner, and I needed to go find out what I can do to improve myself and make her job easier.

SJ is only 60 miles away, but anything involving vehicles in the Bay Area takes far longer than you can comprehend, you lucky flyover state readers*, so I left the house at 10 to get to Becky's farm at 1, and I left there at 3 to get home at 6:30.  Dixie was a hot mess when I pulled her out of her pen, screaming and pawing like a completely unhandled filly, but I paid her no mind.  I rinsed her off (must scrub her with soap, that Foresthill red dirt is NOT coming out) and loaded her up and she snapped into grownup endurance horse mode.  She rode well and ate hay perfectly calmly while I tacked her up.  I started to think my lesson might not be a debacle.

Becky didn't laugh in my face at my goals:  Sunriver 100, 20 Mule Team 100 in February, Tevis '14, Decade Team.  (And the Nevada Triple Crown some year, but that's even harder than Tevis.  It's the Derby 50, NASTR 75, and Virginia City 100 all in the same year - but the trails aren't unfamiliar and at least it's not humid, so it's not out of the question...)  There's still so much that can go wrong, but it's not unattainable.

I could try to tell you all the stuff we talked about, but you know how lessons are - you learn a lot, but it's not something you can explain to someone later.  But somehow Dixie and I rode around that arena like a centaur, not like a monkey clinging to a horse's back.  We didn't do a single thing with my hands - all I had to do was sit back and shift my weight and she curved nicely around cones and stopped and started when I thought about it.

I finally learned how it feels when the horse lifts her back under me, and how to ask for it.  I learned how I'm crooked - I collapse my left ribs and wrap my left leg nicely around the horse, while my right ribs are braced up and my right leg is twisted funny.  It'll take some work to retrain my muscle memory to sit properly and cue properly, but that's the benefit of endurance:  I'll get those hours of practice hella fast.  I'm planning on going back for another lesson a week or two after Sunriver to see how we're coming along.

My mouth is often disconnected from my brain, and at one point Becky said she used to show TWH in the 70s, and I just up and blurted out "I'm sorry!"  Because I'm a huge asshole.  :headdesk:  She gave me this look like "did you just say that?!" and I explained that Dixie was a padded, sored show horse, and showing in Tennessee is barbaric, and I just hate the whole sport.  She agreed that she showed clean and had a hard time beating people who tuned up their horses, and we just left it at that and thankfully she didn't seem too offended.  D:

Dixie did me proud.  I just can't say this too often:  she has a great mind.  She really does.  She's hard to condition because she's so laid back, but she's so easy to ride when she's in shape.  I can't even believe I just typed those words - she was such a bundle of nerves for years.  Who knew that there was a relaxed, confident horse under all that panicked energy?  And I did this; I kept at it with her and brought out her good traits.  :)

And I got Dixie a massage on Tuesday.  There's a massage therapist at the barn who's an "endurance ally" - she does trails and dressage on her lovely Friesian, but she's crewed Tevis for her friends and she understands the sport.  She said she didn't do a lot of work yet, because she wants to keep the experience positive for her, but that Dixie seemed to enjoy what she did.  She'll work on her again after Sunriver.


*you know I'm not dissing the flyover states; I'm from them and I love them. But I assume that eastern seaboarders like Dom also understand how a hundred-mile round trip can take longer in a car than on a fast horse.  ;)

Horse

When we last saw Our Heroine and her horse... Hahah, I can't do this. I can't write in third person. Too pretentious! Anyway, I'd ordered some bell boots because Dixie was clipping herself, I was waiting to take a lesson, and I was thinking about touching up her hooves.

I had my lesson Tuesday, and it was very helpful. To start with, M asked me to trot in a circle around her. We hurtled along and managed a couple strides of trot, a couple strides of canter, and then a very braced pace for 3/4 of a wiggly egg-shape. I pulled Dixie up and said "That is our relationship in a nutshell, and that's all of our problems." We talked for a while about what my goals are and what I'm willing to do for them. I said that I'm willing to do arena-type work a day a week, and I want to get her soft and supple on both sides and able to collect up and stretch out. I don't want to show, certainly not at dressage shows, but I'd like to work on dressagey stuff because it's good for both of us. I want to get my horse broke - or closer to broke, at any rate.

She showed me a couple of exercises to work on. It's all stuff that I've read about but never could figure out on my own. How to tell when she's crossing her rear legs when I ask for that one-rein stop. A different cue for backing up from the ground. Some stuff that I'm pretty sure is just to get me aware of my seat - get her to walk more and more slowly without touching the reins, for instance.

When I could get Dixie's attention, she was smart as a whip. The problem, as always, is getting her to focus on me and my weird demands when she wants to stare off into space and call for other horses. I stuck with it and the longer I worked her the better she got - even when all the other horses at the arena packed up and went home, she started calling for them but was still really on the aids. I told M about The House and that I'll take lessons as I can afford it, probably every two weeks, and she was fine with that.

Then we cantered wildly home, as if to underscore the importance of following through on this. :) It was a lot of fun but it was the same old fight about how fast she gets to go - she wanted to gallop, I wanted to rack or even trot, we ended up with a canter.

Friday my Pro Choice Ballistic Overreach No Turn Bell Boots came in, so I picked them up, then I stopped at the other feed store and got a really good brand new rasp. I laboriously shaved off a fraction of the flare on her back right hoof - the flared quarter is just out of ground contact now. I think I will try to keep it off the ground for a trim cycle and see how it starts to grow in. Holy crap dude, her hooves are SO FREAKIN HARD.

Then I tried on her spiffy new bell boots. I'd asked them to order M and L for me, because I wasn't sure what size she needed but I thought I'd know when I saw them. M looked too small for her dainty (snicker!) legs, so I went with L. Here's the test fit:



They seemed to fit, she didn't care that they were on, and they didn't turn. Good enough.

Then we did some ground work with the clicker. She's almost given up bullying me for treats, and now she's turning all her attention to figuring out what I want her to do. (And doing it over and over to make the Treat Dispenser hand out more mini-wheats.) I got some lovely light straight backing up and some head down, so I moved on to getting her to move her hindquarters / turn on the forehand, whatever you call it, from the ground.

I held her head still and started twirling the rope at her hindquarters, which really pissed her off. Lots of tail swishing and backing and sidepassing and then the inside leg crossed the other and by god, I clicked at that instant! I am very much a novice clicker trainer, and my timing still sucks, so that was huuuuge for both of us. Lots of praise and treats, a couple more repetitions, and then the off side was relatively easy. And bending to the right is definitely harder for her - she clearly remembered what I wanted on the near side and was trying to repeat it for more delicious treats on the off side. I love that horse so much when she tries for me :D

Yesterday a big storm front moved in about 4 and cooled things off considerably, so I took the (incredibly hyper and bored) dog with us. I put on the full kit - breastcollar, crupper, and bell boots - and we headed up in the hills for a short ride. Well, short for us, long for Cersei in the middle of summer. Guess what! Bell boots are going to be expensive disposable items for us! How exciting!

Most of our fast work was downhill, so it was mostly pace. She doesn't clip at the pace - it's physically impossible, unless your horse travels really weird in the back and somehow clips a front leg with the other side rear leg. But we did get a bit of extended trot on the last straight stretch coming home, and she did clip herself, and the boot did protect her, and it's already ripped. So much for bulletproof-vest ballistic nylon. Argh.

Does anyone make Kevlar bell boots? I'll keep using these til they quit protecting her, but they're not going to last til fall at this rate. Better yet, someone should send me free boots to review. I'll take pictures and write words and my huge audience of loyal fans will rush out and buy the ones that work the best. It'll be like a cage match, Dixie's Adamantine Hooves vs. Man's Strongest Materials.

Back to school

So Dixie and I are going to try a lesson with a local instructor tomorrow night. I blame this one equally on Kate and AareneX. Aarene is always extolling the virtues of taking lessons (and I totally agree - but she keeps it in the front of my head!) and Kate just did that awesome clinic with Mark Rashid. So when I saw this lady's Craigslist ad for a discounted first lesson, and she mentioned how she'd worked with Mark Rashid, I decided to jump on it.

Things I need help with: posting the elusive other diagonal. Sitting the canter better. Getting Dixie on the bit, at least some of the time! Riding from my seat, instead of (or at least in addition to) my voice.

I haven't posted hoof pics in a while. AareneX asked if Dixie's toes were too long - they don't look long to me. I've seen her wear them shorter, but I haven't deliberately trimmed them much shorter than this.

There's a goat in this picture.


Side view. The phone cunningly chose to focus on the manure ball, but the hooves aren't too fuzzy.


RF solar. You can see how my trimmer took down her inside heel a bit. And that month of light duty really took its toll - I have to ride more, or at least touch up in between trims if I'm not riding more.


RF heel. On the right side of the picture you can barely see where she clipped herself Saturday.


Right rear. See the flare on that outside wall? I am almost positive that's what's making the rear boot fit poorly. (Thank you Kirt!) I am going to start keeping that rolled back once every couple of weeks.


Left rear doesn't bell out, and the left rear boot doesn't get sand. (I think. I forget which boot gets sand in it, despite my best attempts to remember.)


Left front solar.


Left front heel. In this view, it looks like the outside front quarter is a bit long... I might take that down too.


Bonus goat!


As always, feel free to comment on her feet!

On to Saturday

Ok, so I drove home at 4 am and crashed for a couple hours, then woke up and headed to my lesson. Except it wasn't my usual lesson; Hardy's mom is in town from Germany so I took a groundwork lesson with the barn owner instead. She does Dennis Reis stuff.

Yall have figured out that I'm a pretty sweet redneck but I am in fact a redneck. I kinda roll my eyes when I see "natural horsemanship" stuff, not because I fundamentally disagree with it but because many natural horsemanship devotees are, uh, total wusses who let their horses walk all over them and never ride. Well, I will say that most NH stuff coddles horses a bit more than I do, so to a certain extent I fundamentally disagree.

Anyway. It's not like I want to compete at dressage, but I'm learning a hell of a lot from those lessons. I definitely know I'm far from perfect with horses, and I'm sure there's something I can learn from Dennis Reis. So I woke up, only slightly drunk, and went to a NH groundwork lesson.

The first mini-lightbulb thing I learned was how to ask a horse to change sides politely. I just normally ask my horses to stand still, and I walk behind them or under their necks to get from side to side to do whatever - brush, trim feet, cinch up saddle. Dennis Reis makes the horse move while you stand still. It's kinda cool.

You're standing next to your horse at liberty (in the round pen, obvs, cause it's NH). You put an arm under the horse's neck and gently move his head to the other side of your body. The horse just kinda lifts his neck up and back like you're a fence post and he's responsible for getting around your body. I like this idea, because psychologically the horse should be moving for the owner. It shouldn't be my place to scurry around the horse unless I want to - the horse should be moving for me cause I'm the one in charge.

The second mini-lightbulb was the psychological impact of roundpenning. We did role playing. I know! It's so dumb! But it worked.

We split up into pairs - there were three students and the instructor. Each "horse" picked a circle and wouldn't go outside of it. Each "human" walked just barely behind the horse's shoulder, in a tiny circle in the center. May I stress again just how DUMB this felt?

I started walking in a large circle. The instructor started walking in a very small one. I felt like a retard for half a circle, then I realized she was following me. No matter how fast I walked, I couldn't get away from her. She stepped slightly ahead of me, and I understood, viscerally, why horses slow or turn when you get ahead of them in the round pen.

Look, I know that whole explanation sounded dumb. It FELT dumb. But it really hit home on a gut level. I understand how and why roundpenning works so much better now.



... I still can't take the man seriously with that crazy handlebar mustache. More tomorrow!

A lesson, a lightbulb, and a deer.

My dad's pretty cool. Generally, he supports whatever I want to do - from "let me actually physically help you with this" to "I don't understand it, but I'm right behind ya!" Horses are definitely in the latter category. They're big, he doesn't understand their behavior, they're expensive, and they're dangerous. He'll ask about them, but it's more out of bemused politeness than any real desire to hear the answer.

And he really doesn't understand the whole lesson thing. It's not snobbiness about dressage, it's just that he plain doesn't understand what else I could possibly have to learn. I don't fall off (much), the horses do (roughly) what I want, end of story. About every ten days he asks if I'm through with my lessons yet. I keep telling him it's something you can keep learning your entire life, but he has no frame of reference and you can tell whatever I say doesn't really sink in. Ahh, well.

I'm certainly not "through" taking lessons. I was thinking about it Sunday - not in a "am I really getting my money's worth out of this" sense, but more of a "I wonder what I am learning" sense. Then I had my lesson, and I learned two things.

The first thing we did - the VERY FIRST THING after I got on Clipper - was a turn to the left at a walk around Hardy, the instructor. I'm always odd and clumsy when I first start a lesson, and I muddled up the first turn. I activated my left rein, looked to the left, and asked for a walk. My right rein was flappin in space, probably so loose it was banging Clipper's neck. Clipper started wobbing off in a strange oval, Hardy said "pick up your outside rein!," I picked up my outside rein, and KA-BLAM!, Clipper started bending perfectly.

It was a lightbulb moment. More like a lightning bolt moment, really. It was exactly what I've been reading about for what, two years now? The outside rein contains the energy of the horse and supports the bend. The outside rein supports the bend. I can't tell you how many times I've read that, or something like it, and puzzled over it and mentally shrugged my shoulders. There's a thousand more little lightbulbs waiting for me - reading dressage without ever doing it is like reading fiction - but there's one down. Too cool.

Then we walked and trotted in a bunch of circles in one half of the arena. I still make mostly wobbly circles, or lose my impulsion, or my legs start flapping around like a barrel rider, but I'm improving. And again, since I was noticing it, I could tell that when I got it all together and asked for a bend with my reins and legs just so we'd bend, me and Clipper, smoothly. I can even kind of almost feel when my outside leg is right, how it helps contain his butt. Yay!

We were working in half the arena because a kid on a pony was having a lesson in the other half. The pony in question doesn't like other horses and apparently will kick any horse that comes near her. Anyway, the kid's lesson finished a little before mine and Hardy wanted me to trot around the entire arena and do voltes in the corners or something. So off we went!

I swear to god I didn't ask for a canter depart. I just squeezed no harder than I'd been doing all morning and asked for a TROT. Clipper, for whatever reason known only to horses, took off like greased lightning. As soon as we hit the first turn, he settled down into a canter, but I was trying to grab reins and sit down and not lose stirrups or fall off or whatnot and it took two laps before I could even hear what the instructors were saying. "Sit DOWN" was the gist of it, but then we were on the long side and Hardy yelled "outside rein!" and I just barely pulled the outside rein and we skidded to a halt.

I scratched Clipper's neck and apologized for whatever I'd said to him that made him decide to do THAT and we turned and walked quite sedately to the middle of the arena, where all the instructors were standing trying not to turn white or purple or green. I just kinda laughed and said "told you I don't fall off much!" and we started trying to figure out what brought that on. Hardy didn't think I'd done anything wrong, per se. He thinks maybe it was just suddenly having the whole arena, plus that we were pointing towards the gate and going past some trees. I privately suspect that Clipper just wanted to see if I'd fall off or get the lesson over with any faster, cause that's how horses roll.

Anyway, my calves aren't perfect but they're getting there. My hips are still waaay too stiff and thus the bouncing. Bouncing is no good. "Must quit bouncing" is the second thing I learned in my lesson. Obviously I still haven't gotten off my ass and done any yoga. Swear to god, tonight I will.

After all that excitement, I went over to the field and grabbed Champ and we went on a nice sedate trail ride. Found some more trails leading off to a different pond. It's SO pretty back there - next time I'll bring my camera and take more pictures. On our way back out, we flushed a good sized doe. She went bouncing off while we sedately admired her. Cersei smelled her trail and thought it was pretty exciting but came right back when she realized Champ and I weren't going to chase the deer with her. She's a wonderful dog.

And Champ's a wonderful horse. He gave me some "what the hell are you doing that for, woman?" ears when I practiced riding with my calves wrapped around him, but he quickly realized I wasn't expecting anything different from him. I think it is easier to post with more leg contact.