Cob Jockey

Last night in my weekly virtual lesson, when GP trainer asked what I wanted to work on, I said simple changes, and the first one I did, I barely had to try for and it was effortless and flawless in a way I have never felt before.

"Holy shit!" I said probably too loudly into the microphone, "What just happened?!" 

"Balance," she said, "He was in a good balance from the moment you did the upward transition and he wasn't leaning on his underneck or either of your reins. The moment he uses his underneck against you, you're cooked."

He looks SO GOOD right now. Even over video GP trainer noticed how much muscle he's put on in his butt lately, and he has dapples and this gorgeous chocolate chestnut color that only lasts a month.

She had had me start the movement from the halt, where I briefly asked him to "look into a bucket," one of OLGW's phrases. I ask him to go slightly behind the vertical for a moment and completely release his underneck and make sure he's following his nose in both reins before asking him to walk on and then canter.

But I didn't just let him walk off however he wanted. I was to make sure his "breastplate" stayed up and that he didn't plow forward and down into the walk in a poor balance. If we didn't do the transition right, we stopped, did a reinback and did it again until it was good, because it mattered to the quality of the simple change that much. Connor naturally wants to initiate walking off from the halt with his front feet, which means I have to fix the balance of the walk first thing (and I often don't and just deal with the consequences).

I don't really have a good picture of it, but in this one you can see his weight is a little more over his forehand than his hind end, although this is way better than it can be. He's very comfortable keeping his feet where they are in this picture, but moving his bodyweight and torso more forward, to where the front legs aren't so perpendicular to the ground. If he walks off like that, we're asking for poor quality from the moment he steps off.

I asked for some first toolkit instructions for how to get him to walk off in better balance and start the transition from the hind feet, and she told me to ask the front feet to stay stationary by holding the reins steady while telling the hind feet to step toward the front feet by closing my legs.

Balance wasn't the whole problem though. Olivia really identified a key issue last weekend (which, credit where credit is due, my GP trainer has also harped on me about this for a year now, but her solution wasn't quite as crystal clear to me as Olivia's). If he's not supple enough to follow each rein, particularly the inside rein in turns, that means he's locked up against me in one or the other rein, and I have no chance of riding the simple change from my inside leg to my outside rein, which IT TURNS OUT is very important and I have not been doing that this whole time.

So while cantering, I would be on a circle, asking his body to follow his nose a la the Olivia exercise from last weekend, while also really exaggerating my inside leg to outside rein aids to prepare for and execute the transition. To the point that I was almost leg yielding him out of the circle in canter, which, I won't always do it that extremely, but it sure helped me understand the feeling of what I should be doing.

I still haven't found a reliable way to screen record virtual lessons, so how about another pic of the kid?

We probably did 15 simple changes total in both directions last night, and 13 of them were flawless. The two that weren't were both in his tough direction, and in both times she immediately said, "What rein did he lock up on during that?" and I said "Inside" and she had me get him following his nose again, try again and then it was perfect.

I'm trying not to let myself attach too much importance to last night or get too excited, because this is horses and Dressage: odds are I'll come out tonight and not be able to ride a single one. But it really feels like I'm starting to understand how the basics affect things like simple changes, and it feels like I'm really learning how to RIDE Second Level all of a sudden, which has me so excited for the future.