(no subject)
Aug. 3rd, 2010 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickMore on pole bending. Sorry for the lame-i-tude, non-horse-people. I'm kind of focused at the moment.
Went out again with Waylie and Taku today. It took me forever to catch Nick, who was not particularly interested in being caught. *sigh* Go ahead, there, Nick, make me look a fool in front of the twelve year old. Yeah, you know I like it, baby. :)
We walked the hill three times and then trotted up out of the hollow at a solid and steady pace. Taku is getting better at picking up a non-sudden trot and staying at a nice, steady pace for Waylie. She's also getting more relaxed about dropping back into the walk for him. (We work on brakes a lot because there is a whole lotta gas pedal on this mare and he doesn't have many brakes.) Up on the flat by the jumps and the poles, we did some more walk-trot transition stuff, introduced the idea of lateral-movement-while-walking-forward, walked over the ground poles, took several solid steps toward the bridge (because I want him to win with Taku -- I don't want him to pick a fight and lose it.) and called that a day, then worked on backing up lightly. Finally we walked the pole pattern several times with emphasis on position and turning with your body, also hitting the center line at the middle distance between the poles.
I had Waylie trot about a pole and a half of weaving down and the same on the way back (the rest of the pattern was walking) to get started with the idea of turning head/shoulders/hips at speed. The slow jog that they do is not too fast but it is very bouncy so he has more movement going on while he's working on turning and body position. We will probably increase this slowly (also helps with control of his horse and his seat) over the next two or three weeks until he's trotting the pattern nicely.
For me, I have something of a handle on what I think is going wrong on the #1 end turn with Nick -- I'm not rating my horse on the weave down between pole #2 and #1, not leaving a wide enough swing leftward for three strides clockwise around pole #1. Must work on leaving bigger pocket, there. On the amusing side, Nick now wants to canter the damn poles -- when we do canter the poles, she almost always does her leads for them, misses about one per run and I think that's a *me* error rather than a horse error. She does not like having to trot the poles now that she knows cantering is an option. Still, we need better and more consistent positioning... so canter is not on the menu except once per day, close to the end of practice. Also, our footing is the hayfield. Truly high speed runs can't happen because the ground is not arena quality -- grass is slippery in comparison.
I sent off for a pole-bending DVD, will review same when it gets here. The dude who does the DVD has a website and some written tips -- seems like a sensible enough fellow, so I'm kind of interested to see what the DVD has to offer.
La says that Waylie wants desperately to beat Cass (his older sister) and that if he does, it will motivate Cass to do more work. (I do not see any of this being bad... if he beats his sister, good for him. If she then decides to work harder, well, fantastic.)
Cass is currently at the "I can already trot the pole pattern on my horse and OF COURSE I know what I am doing because I'm, like, thirteen and I've been showing for five whole years now." stage of things. She is not interested in listening to me explain how to do a better job at poles by walking the pattern repeatedly and concentrating on your body position for each directional change, making it perfectly spaced and smooth and rhythmic at the walk before going to the trot. Once the walkthrough at the walk is good, then there will be perfecting of the trot-through at the trot. None of this is exciting. It's like watching paint dry but also having to watch the paint dry CORRECTLY, every time, while concentrating on your correctness. It's not exciting or speedy. There's a reason people do not do this part enough... it's tedious yet effortful.
Cass does not want to hear me talk about how I feel people undertrain poles and try to use the Turn-n-Burn methodology of barrel racing for pole bending. (Hint: it doesn't work.)
She does not want to hear about how I think arabs are more suited to poles than barrels because of the physical and mental demands of the respective patterns.
Finally, Cass thinks that what looks fast *is* fast. Me, I know better. I saw Cinders run. Cinders was a non-famous pole pony from Somerset or Ebensburg or somewhere. She showed at our 4-H Districts some years ago. Cinders was a toast rack of a fleabitten arab mare, narrow and unlovely with wire scars on her hind legs. She was about seventeen years old and unremarkable in all respects when standing still, definitely a back-yard-breeder quality horse. Her rider said they'd bought her at a sale, no papers, but she was clearly an arab, one short enough to run in the pony division. (This is not uncommon in some lines of arabs. Nick is 14 hh on a good day and her half-sister Taku is also well under the 14.2 hh you need to be a horse.) Cinders went to states in all three timed events but what I remember most about her was that she didn't look fast on her runs. She looked *smooth*. Her runs were so smooth, so liquid, so even that they did not look fast. There was no bouncing around, no yanking, none of the jerkiness you see with nutty timed event horses. She just flowed through the patterns, making 'em look easy. On her poles run, Cinders fell to her knees (the ring was slick) at the top of the pattern, on the turn for home. In the time it took for the audience to gasp, that unremarkable little mare got up, re-accellerated, and finished her pattern in nineteen seconds and change. Under twenty seconds is an outstanding time for poles. Getting a time like that when your horse has gone to her knees on the run... yeah. Cinders could run poles.
Went out again with Waylie and Taku today. It took me forever to catch Nick, who was not particularly interested in being caught. *sigh* Go ahead, there, Nick, make me look a fool in front of the twelve year old. Yeah, you know I like it, baby. :)
We walked the hill three times and then trotted up out of the hollow at a solid and steady pace. Taku is getting better at picking up a non-sudden trot and staying at a nice, steady pace for Waylie. She's also getting more relaxed about dropping back into the walk for him. (We work on brakes a lot because there is a whole lotta gas pedal on this mare and he doesn't have many brakes.) Up on the flat by the jumps and the poles, we did some more walk-trot transition stuff, introduced the idea of lateral-movement-while-walking-forward, walked over the ground poles, took several solid steps toward the bridge (because I want him to win with Taku -- I don't want him to pick a fight and lose it.) and called that a day, then worked on backing up lightly. Finally we walked the pole pattern several times with emphasis on position and turning with your body, also hitting the center line at the middle distance between the poles.
I had Waylie trot about a pole and a half of weaving down and the same on the way back (the rest of the pattern was walking) to get started with the idea of turning head/shoulders/hips at speed. The slow jog that they do is not too fast but it is very bouncy so he has more movement going on while he's working on turning and body position. We will probably increase this slowly (also helps with control of his horse and his seat) over the next two or three weeks until he's trotting the pattern nicely.
For me, I have something of a handle on what I think is going wrong on the #1 end turn with Nick -- I'm not rating my horse on the weave down between pole #2 and #1, not leaving a wide enough swing leftward for three strides clockwise around pole #1. Must work on leaving bigger pocket, there. On the amusing side, Nick now wants to canter the damn poles -- when we do canter the poles, she almost always does her leads for them, misses about one per run and I think that's a *me* error rather than a horse error. She does not like having to trot the poles now that she knows cantering is an option. Still, we need better and more consistent positioning... so canter is not on the menu except once per day, close to the end of practice. Also, our footing is the hayfield. Truly high speed runs can't happen because the ground is not arena quality -- grass is slippery in comparison.
I sent off for a pole-bending DVD, will review same when it gets here. The dude who does the DVD has a website and some written tips -- seems like a sensible enough fellow, so I'm kind of interested to see what the DVD has to offer.
La says that Waylie wants desperately to beat Cass (his older sister) and that if he does, it will motivate Cass to do more work. (I do not see any of this being bad... if he beats his sister, good for him. If she then decides to work harder, well, fantastic.)
Cass is currently at the "I can already trot the pole pattern on my horse and OF COURSE I know what I am doing because I'm, like, thirteen and I've been showing for five whole years now." stage of things. She is not interested in listening to me explain how to do a better job at poles by walking the pattern repeatedly and concentrating on your body position for each directional change, making it perfectly spaced and smooth and rhythmic at the walk before going to the trot. Once the walkthrough at the walk is good, then there will be perfecting of the trot-through at the trot. None of this is exciting. It's like watching paint dry but also having to watch the paint dry CORRECTLY, every time, while concentrating on your correctness. It's not exciting or speedy. There's a reason people do not do this part enough... it's tedious yet effortful.
Cass does not want to hear me talk about how I feel people undertrain poles and try to use the Turn-n-Burn methodology of barrel racing for pole bending. (Hint: it doesn't work.)
She does not want to hear about how I think arabs are more suited to poles than barrels because of the physical and mental demands of the respective patterns.
Finally, Cass thinks that what looks fast *is* fast. Me, I know better. I saw Cinders run. Cinders was a non-famous pole pony from Somerset or Ebensburg or somewhere. She showed at our 4-H Districts some years ago. Cinders was a toast rack of a fleabitten arab mare, narrow and unlovely with wire scars on her hind legs. She was about seventeen years old and unremarkable in all respects when standing still, definitely a back-yard-breeder quality horse. Her rider said they'd bought her at a sale, no papers, but she was clearly an arab, one short enough to run in the pony division. (This is not uncommon in some lines of arabs. Nick is 14 hh on a good day and her half-sister Taku is also well under the 14.2 hh you need to be a horse.) Cinders went to states in all three timed events but what I remember most about her was that she didn't look fast on her runs. She looked *smooth*. Her runs were so smooth, so liquid, so even that they did not look fast. There was no bouncing around, no yanking, none of the jerkiness you see with nutty timed event horses. She just flowed through the patterns, making 'em look easy. On her poles run, Cinders fell to her knees (the ring was slick) at the top of the pattern, on the turn for home. In the time it took for the audience to gasp, that unremarkable little mare got up, re-accellerated, and finished her pattern in nineteen seconds and change. Under twenty seconds is an outstanding time for poles. Getting a time like that when your horse has gone to her knees on the run... yeah. Cinders could run poles.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-04 07:23 pm (UTC)Все прикольно сделано!
Date: 2011-06-05 12:00 am (UTC)Благодарю за блог
Date: 2012-02-09 09:52 pm (UTC)