Cob Jockey

OF COURSE I don't have media of this (since I'm currently two hours away from my horse and all), but I nonetheless feel like this deserves to be commemorated in the blog.

I was sitting outside a coffee shop with a coworker in Indianapolis this morning when CGP called. I stood up. "Excuse me, I have to take this, it's my horse's trainer," I said. He knows me, he laughed. I'm at a point in my career and at an employer where I not only don't have to hide my weirdness, I'm encouraged to share it ("bring your whole self to work" means something here), and I do.

"You are not going to believe this. Are you sitting down?!" she said. I sat back down. "I am now, what's up?"

"Your pony did actual clean FLYING CHANGES TODAY!!! I am not even joking!!" I jumped up with excitement and squealed "NO WAY!"

She was riding him in the big open field today and he came right out with his "new" self-carried collected canter, happy and content, and so she decided to ask for one to see what happened. He gave her two L-R that were both late behind, and then she switched to R-L, and in her words, he went "OH I understand what you're asking now!!" and gave her three clean R-L changes in a row. Then she went back to the left lead and he gave her two clean L-R changes and she called it a day there. Five total clean changes.

My official goals for him for full training were that he develop a more educated understanding of the contact and simple changes. Flying changes were something I considered a stretch goal, like maybe she would get there at the end of the four months if everything else was going well, but she got there in four WEEKS. 

And - he's happy. He wasn't overfaced by them. She said, and I felt this too last Sunday, that he seems energized by each new thing he learns. I have a feeling he was getting burnt out on my complete inability to push us past the second level hump and that resulting grind, and with her, he's getting asked new questions, getting praised big time and getting told he's a good pony constantly, which is part of the reason I liked her enough to send him to her.

I sat back down with my coworker. "That sounded good," he said, "What was it?" "My horse is away at boarding school and he started doing advanced calculus without me today and I only know math up to addition and subtraction so I'm kind of amazed."

This is one of my favorite pictures of us <3 Thanks, Mom.

I have a lesson tomorrow, and although I haven't discussed this with CGP yet, I don't expect or want to ride changes tomorrow, or really anytime soon. He needs to be completely solid and honest in them before I fumble around on him, since I've never myself ridden a flying change before. But he has now, and I am just so excited to see how much father he can get in the next three months.