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which_chickwait, what?
So I went to clinic (dressage, with the same dressage lady as previously) today with Da Bird. Truck (towing horse trailer) got us there and back safely. Good Job, Truck!
This dressage lady has seen us last fall, again this spring, in early June (at AHC), and now also in July. She is familiar with Da Bird and our half-vast efforts at progress.
At this clinic, we have the option to do jumping or flatting or a mix of both. Clinician is like “Do ya wanna jump?” and I’m like “Nope”. I suck. Following the shitstorm of AHC jumping efforts, I am not willing to take this horse out in public and make him jump in a clinic setting until he is way more confident. We can work on jumping shit at home, for free, until we’re both a bit more solid.
So we flatted. We flatted at the walk. She said it was a “nice” walk. She says it’s a nice walk every time. I don’t know what else I should be doing in the walk but it’s not like an awesome walk or anything. Maybe she feels like we’re unfixable in the walk. Maybe she feels like I’ll fuck up his walk and then he’ll never have a good walk ever again.
We trotted. Bird is not on board with this whole ring work schtick. He’s like “No point in going foward, there is nowhere to go.” So I have no forward to speak of, which is fun. He is exceedingly non-forward.
Clinician asks me to soften him very slightly to the inside, just a hint of softening. (He has pretty granular softening. This is not hard for him. He’s flexi.) We got compliments for softening slightly on the inside and holding that softness. (This was easy for us. Bird is not rigid. I feel like if we’re doing softening, and if it’s easy, we should be doing more with that. Like, if we can do this level, ask me to do more. Give me things that are harder for me.)
Clinician tells me to take my damn legs off. (Bird slows down – it is hot and we are in a ring.) I am to apply leg for a brief squeeze and take my damn legs off of him. If he does not speed up, I shall ask again, *harder* but only for that same brief period and then give him time to respond and the opportunity to maintain gait on his own. Legs should NOT be on the horse all the time. *sigh* I spent nine months in lesson being told to put some damn leg on the fucking horse, for the love of pete. Apparently not this much leg in a continuous fashion. I don’t understand what the hell my legs are supposed to be doing, here. Probably there is a middle ground between “LEGS ON DAMN IT” and “AIR BETWEEN LEG AND HORSE” wherein there can be subtle, invisible leg aids but I haven’t found it yet. Fuck. Something to work on. I eagerly await being told next time to get my damn legs on the horse because that is totally what is going to happen. Assuming, mind you, that I’m going to pony up eighty more bucks to be told to trot in small circles forever. It’s getting a bit old…
Clinician wants more straighter in our circles. I do this… it is a lot like work, but okay. I get compliments on this as well but it’s going to take work at home before I can do it regularly. Circles is not him, it’s me.
Clinician says that this remedial jogging that we are doing, with circles, is TOTALLY DIFFERENT AND NEW and NOT AT ALL like the same damn Remedial Jogging we’ve been doing since fucking forever. She uses the word round to describe it. Uhm, what? Like, the circles are better? I don’t fucking know. I am not sure I’m buying this line, anyway. It feels a hell of a lot like the same damn Remedial Jogging as we’ve been doing.
The horse looks better in the process of all this Remedial Jogging, but he’s also growing up. He might just be looking better because he’s not a weedy narrow four year old anymore. Who the hell knows anyway?
This is Bird in October 2015. This is about the start of Remedial Jogging.
Here’s Bird in December 2015, after a chunk of Remedial Jogging.
Things slowed down a bit in the dead of winter, but we picked back up with Remedial Jogging when the ice melted. Here’s Bird in spring 2016.
And finally here he is in June, All The Way 5.
He’s growing up in these pictures but he’s also muscling up a bit. I like to delude myself that it’s because of all the damn Remedial Jogging we’ve been doing. Clinician says he looks like a seven year old horse. He still looks five to me. Five is, however, better than four.
It is quite possible that we are BETTER at Remedial Jogging than we used to be. It’s likely, even, given that we’ve spent the last forever doing Remedial Jogging, that we are now halfway decent Remedial Joggers. Yay? (But it is SO FUCKING BORING AND IT FEELS LIKE NOTHING IS HAPPENING AND IT IS LIKE WATCHING PAINT DRY. When do we get to the fun sideways stuff? Yes, I still want to ignore the parts of the training scale that bore me.)
Clinician gives me compliments for feeling my horse almost about to fall out of trot and fixing it. Huzzah, I ride as well as my twelve year old 4-H kid. And for feeling my horse fall in on the corners and fixing it (we’d been working on better straightness and half-halts to organize him for turns and shit). If you’ve just been working with me on half-halts to organize him for turns and shit, isn’t the whole damn POINT of this to feel when he’s about to lose it and to straighten him out before actually he loses it? So, yeah, I can ride the exercise reasonably competently.
We tried some canter departures. Bird was not really feeling it but did offer a sedate five or six strides of “balanced” (clinician’s word, not mine) left lead canter. He put forth about three strides of balanced right lead canter. Boy needs more enthusiasm about ring work and also more respect for the leg. I’ll have to work on that.
Clinician was guardedly enthused about the quality of canter we did get, though admits that there is more to be done there. It does not really matter what nice things the clinician says. I will be unhappy anyway. Unhappiness is my normal state of affairs and neither external validation nor external criticism is going to do much about my state of mind.
I go to clinics because they make me unhappy with my riding.
