How did the clinic go?
Jul. 9th, 2020 10:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickHorse was more-or-less soundish for clinic. I booted his fronts and he was ouchy but not limpy. Also he was out of shape. But we got through two days of clinic, and that was the important thing.
It was blazingly hot both days of clinic, which sucked. I generally do morning rides at clinics if at all possible, mostly because summertime weather in the afternoons is either brutally hot/humid or thunderstormy. Mornings are typically fairly decent.
Day 1 of clinic we worked on stuff. Day 2 of clinic we worked on other stuff. The days have somewhat run together for me in the time since clinic and I should totally write up my notes more... promptly. But, y'know.
Mishmash notes. Items of interest.
1. Please keep left hand on the left side. Keep hands close together, not straying off beyond rider's hip.
2. Transitions need work. Upward transitions are not snappy and prompt. They are soft and sluggish, new gait needs to be buffed into happiness over the first few strides. Downward transitions allow horse to collapse like a one-horse shay. Rider stops riding. They need to smoothly downshift into lower, appropriate gait. More deliberate, more supportive.
3. There can be a soft, gathered-up, engaged walk at all times of walking. Please see to it that this is so.
4. Rider rides "beautifully" when asking horse for sideways riding (leg yields, shoulder-ins, haunches-ins). Rider sits tall, weights seatbones equally, keeps hands in useful locations, encourages a deliberate and attentive gait from horse, uses small and appropriate aids to reshape horse before he is way far afield, yadda yadda yadda. Why does rider not ride like this all the time? BECAUSE RIDER SUCKS
5. Rider ought employ calves instead of heel grinding. (We have addressed this before. I forgot.) Also, horse needs to assume some responsibility for maintaining level-of-gait. He should not need to be nagged every stride. Try taking legs off to make them more meaningful when they are applied.
6. Some progress on fancy canter, more work is needed.
Those are my "work on these things" notes. I have, at this juncture, forgotten which things were which days of the clinic.
In addition, during the Day 1 ride, the tent hut for shade outside the ring blew over the ring fence and INTO THE RING while I was riding my horse. (We were headed away from it, so this was a thing he saw coming at him from behind.) He was all HALP I CANNOT WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS!!, which, yeah, that's kind of a reasonable response to a rogue tent flying over the ring fence behind you.
I stayed on and got him stopped, but he was in his FULL ALERT pose, quivering and staring at the tent, which was at this point rocking gently on its roof with its legs in the air. He was PRIMED TO EXPLODE if the rogue tent made any further threatening moves. So, I hopped off and held him in-hand until someone took control of the rogue tent, put it out of the ring, and strapped it down better.
After The Tent Episode and a few deep breaths for everyone involved, I still had ten minutes of ride time left, so I hopped back on and we worked some leg yield zig-zags down centerline. We got some compliments on our leg yield zig-zags but the rebending part is super-hard. I think we can improve with practice on the rebending thing. We have added this to our at-home work stuff. At clinic we were doing it in the walk but I like it better in trot at home. Lateral stuff in walk feels so... sloppy what with four feet all doing their own thing. In trot there are only two feet and it's a lot tidier. Also, I like it in trot when it's...
Okay, the leg yield thing works better if you cue when the front foot is rising for the side you want to go to. So if you are going to the LEFT, you cue when the left front is coming up. In trot (again, simpler because only two feet to manage), you can do three (start with left front leg rising so it's Left Right Left) and then straight for two or four (Right, Left) or (Right, Left, Right, Left) so that you have a RIGHT FRONT available coming off the ground to go into new direction to the right. For a trot-zig-zag in leg yield, you would go like this...
(Beginning kinda when the right front has landed)
Step over (left front) step over (right front) Step over (left front)
straight(right front) straight (left front)
Step over other way(right front), step over (left front), Step over (right front)
straight (left front) straight (right front)
Step over (left front)...
So, it's three diagonal, two straight, three diagonal, two straight. Or if you are not so organized, you can do three-four-three-four.
Doing three diagonal, three straight, three diagonal puts you wrong-footed for the laterals. You CAN cue 'step over' with the wrong-side foot but you don't get as pretty a step and it's harder for the horse to do/understand. The three-two-three or three-four-three pattern works better since you are asking for the step over with the proper leading leg to strike off. It makes an exercise that rides better and helps you perfect your timing. (Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.)
This was not explicitly stated at clinic but I tried riding it at home and the three-three-three was muddy and sloppy and sand in the transmission. Three two three just fucking works better. Do it that way. Or three-four-three if you can't get situated in two steps.
Also, at lunch break on Day 1, people were all "Wow amazeballs, good save, such seat, what ride!" and from all that I guess their horses don't spook very much. It was a solid spook but not unusually awesome for da Birb. He didn't bolt or buck or anything, just spooked and whirled a time or two.
I did rag instructor on the fact that The Tent Attack happened to the nutjob Arab. Not helping us be Breed Ambassadors, here, when you attack my horse with a tent so that he spooks in front of people. People already think Arabs spook "too much".
Day 2 of clinic we did some more-advanced lateral things (at the walk, which I hate because so many feets to organize but since clinician wants to see them in walk, we had better work on them at home) because I had mentioned same as exercises we'd been doing in pursuit of more abs to support fancy canter for when the footing does not support fancy canter. So we went down quarterline in shoulder-in and diagonally across arena in haunches-in and he totally does do these things, reliably and fairly consistently, to both sides, without a fence to help him. Clinician sounded a little surprised that he did these things, but also then pointed out that I can actually ride decently when going sideways. Me: "If I don't do that stuff, he doesn't go sideways." Clinician: "You might try that level of interest and enthusiasm for all your riding." Me: ...
So that was mixed. But hey, sideways validation.
I have signed up for more clinic at the end of August. Horse is currently sound, being ridden daily in the late evenings and then hosed off. I think he's looking for something to step on so that he can be lame again.
It was blazingly hot both days of clinic, which sucked. I generally do morning rides at clinics if at all possible, mostly because summertime weather in the afternoons is either brutally hot/humid or thunderstormy. Mornings are typically fairly decent.
Day 1 of clinic we worked on stuff. Day 2 of clinic we worked on other stuff. The days have somewhat run together for me in the time since clinic and I should totally write up my notes more... promptly. But, y'know.
Mishmash notes. Items of interest.
1. Please keep left hand on the left side. Keep hands close together, not straying off beyond rider's hip.
2. Transitions need work. Upward transitions are not snappy and prompt. They are soft and sluggish, new gait needs to be buffed into happiness over the first few strides. Downward transitions allow horse to collapse like a one-horse shay. Rider stops riding. They need to smoothly downshift into lower, appropriate gait. More deliberate, more supportive.
3. There can be a soft, gathered-up, engaged walk at all times of walking. Please see to it that this is so.
4. Rider rides "beautifully" when asking horse for sideways riding (leg yields, shoulder-ins, haunches-ins). Rider sits tall, weights seatbones equally, keeps hands in useful locations, encourages a deliberate and attentive gait from horse, uses small and appropriate aids to reshape horse before he is way far afield, yadda yadda yadda. Why does rider not ride like this all the time? BECAUSE RIDER SUCKS
5. Rider ought employ calves instead of heel grinding. (We have addressed this before. I forgot.) Also, horse needs to assume some responsibility for maintaining level-of-gait. He should not need to be nagged every stride. Try taking legs off to make them more meaningful when they are applied.
6. Some progress on fancy canter, more work is needed.
Those are my "work on these things" notes. I have, at this juncture, forgotten which things were which days of the clinic.
In addition, during the Day 1 ride, the tent hut for shade outside the ring blew over the ring fence and INTO THE RING while I was riding my horse. (We were headed away from it, so this was a thing he saw coming at him from behind.) He was all HALP I CANNOT WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS!!, which, yeah, that's kind of a reasonable response to a rogue tent flying over the ring fence behind you.
I stayed on and got him stopped, but he was in his FULL ALERT pose, quivering and staring at the tent, which was at this point rocking gently on its roof with its legs in the air. He was PRIMED TO EXPLODE if the rogue tent made any further threatening moves. So, I hopped off and held him in-hand until someone took control of the rogue tent, put it out of the ring, and strapped it down better.
After The Tent Episode and a few deep breaths for everyone involved, I still had ten minutes of ride time left, so I hopped back on and we worked some leg yield zig-zags down centerline. We got some compliments on our leg yield zig-zags but the rebending part is super-hard. I think we can improve with practice on the rebending thing. We have added this to our at-home work stuff. At clinic we were doing it in the walk but I like it better in trot at home. Lateral stuff in walk feels so... sloppy what with four feet all doing their own thing. In trot there are only two feet and it's a lot tidier. Also, I like it in trot when it's...
Okay, the leg yield thing works better if you cue when the front foot is rising for the side you want to go to. So if you are going to the LEFT, you cue when the left front is coming up. In trot (again, simpler because only two feet to manage), you can do three (start with left front leg rising so it's Left Right Left) and then straight for two or four (Right, Left) or (Right, Left, Right, Left) so that you have a RIGHT FRONT available coming off the ground to go into new direction to the right. For a trot-zig-zag in leg yield, you would go like this...
(Beginning kinda when the right front has landed)
Step over (left front) step over (right front) Step over (left front)
straight(right front) straight (left front)
Step over other way(right front), step over (left front), Step over (right front)
straight (left front) straight (right front)
Step over (left front)...
So, it's three diagonal, two straight, three diagonal, two straight. Or if you are not so organized, you can do three-four-three-four.
Doing three diagonal, three straight, three diagonal puts you wrong-footed for the laterals. You CAN cue 'step over' with the wrong-side foot but you don't get as pretty a step and it's harder for the horse to do/understand. The three-two-three or three-four-three pattern works better since you are asking for the step over with the proper leading leg to strike off. It makes an exercise that rides better and helps you perfect your timing. (Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.)
This was not explicitly stated at clinic but I tried riding it at home and the three-three-three was muddy and sloppy and sand in the transmission. Three two three just fucking works better. Do it that way. Or three-four-three if you can't get situated in two steps.
Also, at lunch break on Day 1, people were all "Wow amazeballs, good save, such seat, what ride!" and from all that I guess their horses don't spook very much. It was a solid spook but not unusually awesome for da Birb. He didn't bolt or buck or anything, just spooked and whirled a time or two.
I did rag instructor on the fact that The Tent Attack happened to the nutjob Arab. Not helping us be Breed Ambassadors, here, when you attack my horse with a tent so that he spooks in front of people. People already think Arabs spook "too much".
Day 2 of clinic we did some more-advanced lateral things (at the walk, which I hate because so many feets to organize but since clinician wants to see them in walk, we had better work on them at home) because I had mentioned same as exercises we'd been doing in pursuit of more abs to support fancy canter for when the footing does not support fancy canter. So we went down quarterline in shoulder-in and diagonally across arena in haunches-in and he totally does do these things, reliably and fairly consistently, to both sides, without a fence to help him. Clinician sounded a little surprised that he did these things, but also then pointed out that I can actually ride decently when going sideways. Me: "If I don't do that stuff, he doesn't go sideways." Clinician: "You might try that level of interest and enthusiasm for all your riding." Me: ...
So that was mixed. But hey, sideways validation.
I have signed up for more clinic at the end of August. Horse is currently sound, being ridden daily in the late evenings and then hosed off. I think he's looking for something to step on so that he can be lame again.
