Cob Jockey

I've now been riding Disco about a month, although it really hasn't been that many rides thanks to the stretch of truly awful weather we had in there. 

First time I've ridden him with the doors open. This would have sent Connor into a skittering tailspin, but Disco just looked and then carried on with his life.

It's amazing, even still, how quickly things have started to change. 

His transitions are getting prompter.

His steering is getting more subtle.

He's starting to carry me forward more.

Forwarddddddddd

He retains things between rides so easily. After the first time we did two repetitions of a single step of TOF with BDT, every other time I've checked in on that skill he was like "YES MA'AM I KNOW THIS ONE HAPPY TO OBLIGE." 

I even - accidentally, at first - asked for a 180 degree TOF last night for the first time and he just...did it. I moved my boot back without thinking about it while he was stopped, and he took a step. I then asked again, intentionally this time, so he knew he gave me the right answer to my leg moving in that way.

Obviously not perfect but for the first time he's strung more than a step together? What a good boy.

It's such a rush for me every time I realize he's paying attention to my body that closely, especially my seat - whether that's controlling the cadence of the posting trot or playing with down transitions that happen on seat alone. Both because he's starting to understand that, and because somehow, against all odds, I actually have the body control to make that aid make sense to him.

He looks like SUCH a geeky baby to me right now.

The biggest change - I have started riding him when there's no one else at the barn. It's not ideal, of course, it never is, but with as few people as we have in our barn, I was finding myself going too long between rides if I only ever rode when someone else was there. Consistency is so important at his age, even when we're only riding a few days a week. 

And I really shouldn't get complacent, but I trust him so much already. More than Connor in a lot of situations.

Cooling out on the buckle

The other big change - I've started lunging him before I get on. Not for the usual reason (to let him get some sillies out), but for the opposite - to make #slugmode easier to manage! If I lunge him, I know he's warmed up and thinking "forward" when I get on, so I can skip #slugmode and immediately start using the trot to motivate the walk, if I need to. It has helped a lot.

Haven't cantered under saddle yet (not for lack of trying). He needs to build some strength and possibly feel like he's in a larger space before he has the confidence to pick it up with a rider.

I'm having so much fun with him already. Hard to believe he's not even four yet!

I am so new to driving, I don't know what I don't know yet. Which is why it took me a while to admit that the black cart wasn't right for me.

There's a lot about it that IS right for me, and in a world where I had the time and money to fix it up and the right vehicle to transport it more easily AND the space to store multiple carts, I would 100% keep it. 

But it needs more work than I could possibly have assessed until I got it home and hitched it up, it's not suitable for some of the classes I'd like to do, and honestly, it doesn't make me feel confident while driving, which is making me not want to drive - which, in a sport that already feels like it has a lot of mental barriers to me, I really don't need!

Fortunately I paid very little for it and should be able to sell it for the same.

But I'm an avoidant that will power through pretty much anything without thinking about it (hi, working on it), so it's not like I actually thought about all that until I saw a nearly new Frey Sprint cart for sale on Facebook Marketplace an hour from me for about half of the new price, and the exact amount I just sold Connor's Dressage saddle for...

Stopping me in my tracks while scrolling Facebook Marketplace. Well, hello.

The Frey ticks a lot of boxes - it's going to be suitable for anything I want to do in driving for many years to come (including CDEs until I get to a level that requires a four-wheeled cart), it's far easier to transport, and it's light and sturdy. 

The shafts come off (really the whole thing comes apart) and my goodness did I feel safer hauling this than the wood cart. It doesn't stick out at all past my micro truck bed with the shafts removed.

The only thing it won't do is win any "fancy turnout classes" - I can still do them, but I probably won't win. That said, I'd rather bomb around a cones course or a marathon course than win a turnout class anyway, and the wood cart is not suitable for either.

Hilariously, a few hours after I agreed to buy the cart with Disco's jump saddle money, Disco told me he wants to jump, but that's okay. Jump saddles are easier to find.

I got it home on Sunday, and I'm SO in love with it. My SO couldn't stop raving about it either - how much easier to move it was, how much sturdier it felt. The fact that we can swap out the wheels for snow sled runners.

The most handsome horse 💕

The seller also had carriage lamps for it that she threw in for an extra couple hundred dollars. I really shouldn't have, but that's not something I could say no to - they were $500 new and fit the cart perfectly. They are actual oil lamps, like, with flames and wicks, which blew my mind. They will also, along with the wood dash, class it up just a bit more when I'm in a "fancy turnout" class.

They also have red glass on the back - tail lights!

It's easier to get into, and fits me so much better - I can actually brace against the footboard properly (the wood cart doesn't even have a diagonal footboard) which even just resting on stands, felt so much more secure than sitting perched on the wood cart with my feet dangling.

And, on that note, the whole thing is adjustable in so many places. Seat height, shocks, shaft length, shaft width, cart length. I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting. We'll be able to get this perfectly balanced to Disco, although I'm sure it's going to take some fiddling at first.

Bolts, bolts everywhere.

So, all in all, I couldn't be happier with this purchase or the decision to delay getting Disco a jump saddle. It already feels worth every penny to feel EXCITED to drive again, rather than slightly intimidated and uncomfortable.

I already can't wait for my next lesson.

Ever since Disco came home, Mary has been dying to free jump him, but the holidays and the weather made that impossible until last night. And boy was it worth the wait.

Mary and I have free jumped enough non-Warmblood horses at this point that I know what to expect from the first time, even for horses that end up enjoying and having aptitude for jumping. They're uncertain, they don't know how to use their bodies, they jump weird. We give them a positive experience, but we don't push them, and it's not usually until the second or third time that they really start to figure it out and show us what they might be made of. 

Of course, with testosterone on our side, I also joked that I felt like Disco would have all the attitude of a 19 year old Tik Tok star as soon as he jumped his first fence, and, well.

Nobody tell him those were ground poles, he thinks he just won the Olympics, lol

He ate it up.

He sent himself around and around at first, ears up, kicking his heels up when he finished a line like "Did you see how awesome I am?"

Man I love stallions, lol

As the jumps went up, his enthusiasm continued. He had a rail or two as he made some green horse pace and judgment mistakes, but generally he was very aware of his feet. 

I was also somewhat stunned to see him actually move for the first time. Here I thought he wasn't capable of moving like this, but he's been playing me.

We don't normally put the third fence up to an oxer for a horse's first time through the chute, but Mary noted that he was not fazed at all by any of this, and he really seemed to be enjoying it even after all the fences were up to verticals, so she put the back rail up.

This was the first time he was ever impressed by something, but he still went over, and he showed us what those hindquarters are capable of.

Baby's first oxer!

We sent him over the oxer one more time so he could prove to himself that he could do it before taking the back rail down and letting him end on an easy, confidence building one:

"I'm glad he got a little impressed with the oxer. I think it’ll kinda challenge him and respect the “game” and blow his brain open a little more each time," Mary said later. I couldn't agree more. He wasn't scared, but it was the first time I saw him ever really forced to think through some circumstances, and it was good for him.

 

 

She also said he's got the hindquarters for scope and the canter for power, but that he's not naturally catty and we'll have to teach that. But the raw materials are there.

 

No idea why this GIF insists on being slow mo but oh well. Mary got on bareback to cool him out afterwards and walked him down the line so that he understood that poles don't always mean bomb around.

 

We won't be free jumping him that big again for a long while. Mary's plan from here is to free jump him over smaller, weird things for the forseeable future. Confidence building things. Flower boxes and little verticals with a tarp over them and barrels. And to start to incorporate more poles into my under saddle rides, but not to jump him under saddle until he's pretty been-there-done-that on small, weird stuff. At not quite four, I couldn't agree more with the plan.

 

But I'm already dreaming of getting back to eventing with this one... 

Yes, this is a video. He was so happy just to stand there with his ears up like this. I just love him.

Yesterday I took the first big step toward my goals and took my first lesson with a new trainer, one that can see me in-person regularly, which I felt was important for Disco's first year.

I reached out to her because it was her barn that Castleberrys Encore went to just over a year ago, and she has done a masterful, patient job with him over that time. He went from being basically unable to canter even at liberty to cantering politely with his adult ammie rider, on his own schedule - she didn't rush him. I could not be more impressed, or happy for Encore to have found such a perfect home.

Remember Encore? He's 15.2hh now!

But I shouldn't have been surprised - she's taken multiple driving-bred horses to the FEI levels, has a passion for off breeds, enjoys bringing young ones along, and has a particular knack for understanding what it takes to bring a pulling breed with a naturally high neck set up the Dressage levels. 

High neck set, you say?

When I learned this trainer (who I will call BDT) has a regular rotation of barns she travels to for lessons and was willing to add me to that rotation, I was sold. Not only would that enable me to lesson with her more regularly as my weekends fill up with barn chores and kid sports, but it meant that my fellow co-op members could ride with her too.

Connor being The Best Boy for his leaser in her lesson with BDT

We worked on three things in this lesson, which will serve as my roadmap for the next month: forward, flexion and moving the haunches. I'll add a number four not-goal: "Don't worry at all about where his head is."

Carrying me forward - but not too forward - was the biggest thing. He tends to walk very slowly if left to his own devices and leaves me feeling like I need to encourage him with my seat. She wanted him carrying me forward in whatever gait we were in, and to "let the horse train himself" by using the next gait up to incentivize him into giving me the gait I wanted. 

"You fit each other really well," was one of her comments, and I can't help but agree. He's the perfect size for me.

So, if he was giving me his "slug mode" walk, I would bring him up to the trot and stay there until he was carrying me at the trot, then I would bring him back down to the walk, and we would stay at the walk only if he was carrying me forward at the walk.

#slugmode

This, predictably, both really worked and also led to the most trotting under saddle he had ever done, which was another thing I just needed confidence to start asking for. My rides to this point have been mostly 15 minutes or less, and Mr. Work Ethic really rose to the occasion on the longer ride. I keep forgetting he is not Connor, and he seems to thrive on work.

BDT was also not shy about telling me when he got too quick, especially at the trot. "It would be easy with a horse like this to turn him into a rushy mess down the line, it can't be forward at the expense of everything else. You still need to help him find his balance."

Outside of that, we worked on the very beginnings of following the bit, which was (surprise!) easier to get when he was carrying me forward. And we worked on the very beginnings of hindquarters control (asking for one step sideways with the hindquarters while standing still), which he understood quickly.

At the end of it, he had had a full probably 30 minutes of riding, and he had been exceptionally good. He was not exhausted, but he parked himself in the center of the ring for final questions like he was. It's hard not to trust him - he's just so reliable under saddle already, behavior-wise.

I came away from the lesson happy and fulfilled. It felt good to learn again, it felt good to feel like I know where I want to go with Disco in the short term, and it felt good to feel progress on him from the beginning to the end of the lesson. I'm really looking forward to seeing where she can take us.

Sleepy baby stallion slept good that night

Anxiety at A had a good post about having an identity crisis, and after Wordpress ate my comment for the 6th time, I decided to just turn my comment into a post instead.

When watching the Olympics this year, I was struck by how icky Dressage felt to me. Eventing gave me the warm fuzzies - lots of great trips, everyone came home safe, horses that looked like normal horses. And then Dressage - just going off of my own gut feelings, the horses that moved beautifully and normally to my brain never scored well, and the ones that did score well seemed to me like they were moving like robots.

Photo used with permission

I'm not going to turn this into some holier-than-thou keyboard warrior post, it's not that. This is about me and what I want. I don't want that. I don't want a horse that has been bred to move like a robot at the expense of its common sense and durability and a bunch of other things that are a lot more important to a 37 year old adult ammy with a day job than a 10 mover. I want fun, sane, sound, reasonably competitive but not so athletic that they throw me into the rafters because they saw a leaf on the ground.

The best parts of horse shows aren't even what happens in the ring

North Forks Cardi

It means that I know what matters to me, and I align my goals to that. It also means that I support the parts of the Dressage world that I believe ARE doing the right things for the right reasons. My goals in years' past have been things like "qualify for my GMO's championships" (my GMO is awesome) and "compete at National Dressage Pony Cup" (a championship show I don't have to qualify for that puts me on a relatively level playing field for once? Sign me up!) and "finally ride the counter canter serpentine like I've actually seen a serpentine before" (which is a real problem, OKAY).

National Dressage Pony Cup is just a FANTASTIC organization.

I don't buy a full USDF membership, I don't set goals like "score a 70%", and I sure as hell don't give the USDF extra money for qualifying scores. Qualifying for Regionals/Finals is not on my bucket list and I'm, personally, a lot happier for it.

That's not to say you should feel the same way I do. I am forever and always in awe of Karen getting her gold medal and qualifying for the big shows on the self-produced and saintly Hampton, who is not a purposebred leg flinger. She fought hard and persevered through a lot more on-the-bubble scores than most people would have, and I admire the heck out of her for it. Would I do the same? I'm not sure. A gold medal isn't tantalizing to me, although learning to ride those movements is. But I don't need scores for that.

Don't need scores for this either

So where does that leave me? Still here. I'm not "a Dressage rider" any more than I'm "an eventer". The sports I compete in aren't my identity. I feel comfortable supporting the parts of these sports that work for me and my goals and skipping the parts of the buffet line that don't. 

Could literally make a montage of Connor's favorite horse show activity, which is this

Whatever horse you choose to ride, whatever goals you choose to set, whatever sports you choose to compete in, whatever levels you choose to strive for, my sincerest hope for all of you is that you choose those things because you know yourself well enough to know that YOU want them, not because some governing body told you that you should want those things either directly or indirectly. It should feel good deep in your soul to do what you do, and if it doesn't, listen to that feeling. Horses are too all-consuming to feel otherwise.