Cob Jockey

Ha!  I finally have media!  I asked my trainer to take some video in my lesson on Saturday.  I don't often ask her to do media for me because it's hard for her to focus on teaching when she's also taking video, and most of the time I'd rather have teaching.  I felt like I needed media this time though.

Things didn't end up being as good on Saturday as they were on Thursday - he came out pretty tired, possibly because he worked so hard in Thursday's lesson - but they were solid.  I love where "solid" is for us right now.  Solid today was "really freaking good" six months ago.

I even wore breeches with a belt and a sunshirt completely on accident.

For those of you who don't want to watch paint dry (the videos really are mostly of  trotting with a little bit of cantering), there will be screenshots.


The biggest thing I noticed in the video is that my reins need to be shorter, and she did call me out on that in these videos (although I removed the audio so you won't hear it).  She's been getting after me about it more and more lately, maybe because a lot of the other things that needed fixing ahead of my hands are now more ingrained.  When they're long, he gets BTV, his neck gets short and his underneck gets tight.  Yay pulling breed!

(Also, I am still wearing white gloves in my lessons for obvious reasons - my hands are beacons of terrible biomechanics in white!)

Bad:


Better?  Could still be better than this
:
She told me to feel like I was pushing his nose in front of me with the reins rather than holding them (and holding is an improvement over pulling so...?  #positivethoughts)

You can see how hard I'm working on my problematic left shoulder here...which means I've completely neglected the right one, which is lower than the left.

In an earlier video, she told me he was a touch too fast to achieve maximum suspension.  We never did get there really, he was just too tired that day, and it was either rushing or lacking impulsion.  That said, though, I'm totally in love with the fact that even on his 'meh' days, he's still balanced, soft and (fairly, kinda, almost, getting there) consistent in the contact.

Freshly pulled mane, holla.

Because he was so flat, we worked on walk pirouettes into canter, which almost immediately woke him up.  He has historically struggled with walk pirouettes, and we're to the point where they are 'almost correct' instead of 'wrong'.  She had me focus really hard on asking for the movement with primarily my seat and lower back, and to be absolutely as quiet in my aids as possible when he was on the path to getting it right.



And now, videos!

Video 1 - a very exciting video consisting of like two straight minutes of trotting:


Video 2 - possibly some canter in here!