Cob Jockey

You know that saying, it goes something like "stupidity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?"  I would be stupid without my trainer.  We tried some decidedly unusual, but effective, things in my lesson yesterday.

I let him lick some coffee off my hand before our lesson.  He was not impressed.

My lesson yesterday started with leg yielding.  Off the left leg, it was smooth.  Off the right, I got nothing.  "Try something for me," she said.  "Don't touch your right rein.  Even if he bends the wrong way, just let him make some mistakes.  You're pushing him over with the right rein instead of inviting him over with the left and riding inside leg to outside rein."

So I did.  And that, plus asking louder and in better rhythm with my leg aids, gave me some really good leg yields to the left.  So the rest of the lesson was spent de-emphasizing my right rein.


At the walk: "Your right arm is actually moving less with him than your left, and I constantly have to tell you to shorten it, which means you've got to be riding diagonally too."  So she told me to straighten my right arm, to ride with less of an angle in it than the left, and it made a big difference, but trying to straighten it and not use it as much made me keep letting it slide through my fingers."

"I'll be right back."  She disappeared into the barn and came back with bright blue electrical tape.  She figured out how long she wanted my reins to be at the trot, then had me hold them there while she wrapped tape in front of my thumb and behind my hand, with the idea that my hands needed to stay in those "boxes".

Bleh, bleh, bleh.

It worked pretty well.  Visually, neither one of us had to guess if I was letting the reins slip through my fingers.  The tape didn't lie.  But it only told me if the right rein was slipping, it didn't prevent the slip, so she had me come into the ring for "one more thing."

She took the reins over Connor's head, with the buckle end under his neck, and gave me the reins back, with the tape.  I'll take a picture later this week.  With the reins like that, I couldn't shorten the reins because there was no excess to shorten.  It was a really weird feeling, but was incredibly effective.  We ended up with some serpentines that were just bangin' all around.  Balanced, with me asking for each turn by first sliding the new inside seatbone forward, then giving a bit with my outside rein "so that the outside of his body can come around the inside."

Letting his mane grow long, and keeping him in a hood all winter in an attempt to train his mane back over.

The diagnosis is that I hold him so much with the right rein, in an attempt to micromanage and prevent him from making mistakes, that he'll never be responsible for himself if I don't let go.  He was so straight and through on those serpentines - without me holding him in either rein - that I am inclined to believe that theory.  Our homework for the week is to do more with the reins under his neck like that (with twine connecting them, so that I can do it without her handing me the reins), and I am interested to see what happens.