Cob Jockey

Connor has basically been in full training for two weeks now with me traveling so much, and my trainer knew what she wanted to focus on in my first lesson back: the canter.

So wish we would have done these pictures after my Megan/Kate lesson but they're still good pictures even if my position is different now. PC: Austen

I can come up with a whole lot of excuses for the canter: it's not his best gait naturally, I was afraid of cantering for basically my whole childhood, we've focused a ton on his trot, CJF called him the "king of the tranter" once...I could go on.

May of 2013

He's never been particularly quick behind, and I'm very much a passenger at the canter.  It's not a gait I feel like I have much influence over, and even after I got over my fear of cantering, it remained sort of a survival thing.  Whew, great, did that, check it off the ride list, it's over!

But like, that's not good enough anymore.  A few weeks ago, Austen got on Connor, and it was eye opening to see how different his canter looked with her and with me.

Her:

To be totally fair, there was a little bit of "WTH is this lady asking me to do?!" tension in this photo too.  Turns out I am pretty easy on the little guy, haha.  Also: Austen was riding without stirrups in a child's Dressage saddle so the fact that she was able to be this effective is a minor miracle 😂

Me:

"Bleh"

Two weeks after that realization that my ineffective riding was contributing to the blah canter, I had that lesson with Megan where we just started to delve into my lack of influence at the canter toward the end of the lesson.  And finally, tonight I combined the ideas I started to explore with Megan with what my trainer was teaching after working on his canter herself for two weeks, and it started to click.

Early stages of understanding this feel here, so take this for what it's worth, but it feels like I need to intentionally be slightly quicker with my seat than he is with his legs in order to encourage him to "stay" with me.  There's more to it than that, but that's what I'm focusing on right now.

And it worked.  The canter felt very different.  Punchy, like I could take a jump out of it.  And it's always nice when the Equisense data backs up what I feel:

That is an absolutely staggering elevation number at the canter for us!

I'm looking forward to playing with this more.  Time to start being effective at the canter!