which_chick | More horse-going-sideways, badly

So I finally heard back from my Dressage Mentor, who is a doctoral candidate living on the other side of the continent and busy Doing PhD stuff and also not getting PAID to squint at shitty video of my shitty horse doing his half-ass.

For what it's worth, I have more shitty video than last time so that you too can be amazed at our shitty half-ass.

Here is a playlist of our half-ass videos. We will get better.

Anyway, Dressage Mentor agrees that horse's effort is clearly recognizable as a halfpass. Like, she can tell what we're going for. "It's definitely the thing." It needs to be buffed, but it is the thing. This is a milestone because I got Nick (previous horse) doing shoulder-in and haunches-in but we could not figure out halfpass. (I think the problem there was that halfpass needs you to have a realistic and present outside rein. Like, it has to effing work.)

Anyway. So now that we have a reasonably-functional half-ass halfpass, we will start to buff it so that it looks better than it currently does.

With that confirmed by an outside observer, I took time from the AM of my turkey day to ride my horse and see about Lateral Things In Canter. Heretofore, Birb's efforts have been kinda LOLNope on that front. Like, I start cantering, get a decent canter, and try for shoulder-in in canter, coordinated with the lead, so if he's on left lead, we shoulder-in bent to left. Every time I have tried, up to now, Bird has flung his head up, hollowed his back, and troped off into the land of fail. It's been consistently ugly and depressing and so I just stayed there, stuck there at he says it's too hard juncture for like six months or a year or two years. Forever. We've been stuck here forever.

The YouTube horses who are just beginning half pass can do a shoulder-in in canter. That's a thing they can do. They can also haunches-in in canter. My guy has no trouble with trot shoulder-in and trot haunches-in. He's got it going on. No confusion. Respectable bend and consistency. Can do several long sides of each sort, in a reasonable trot, before being tired.

So... is lateral work in canter *really* Too Hard? Really? Or maybe my energy-conserving horse just says that because there WAS a time when it was Too Hard and he said it was too hard and I was Okay, Bubbins, it is too hard and I've not pushed the issue and he's not ever done more than Ooof, Lady DIS TOO HARD!!11!! because if that works... why mess with success?

*eyes Bubbins suspiciously*

So today I set out with Birb and after a legit warmup, I was like, okay son, Canter! Good, now Shoulder-In! And he was LOLNOPE, with the head up and the hollowing and the trope shit. And I quit the trope very quickly (if it's shitty trope, best bet is to downshift. I can't fix shitty trope.) and asked for canter again right away and then asked for Shoulder-In. He started to LO-- and I went *tap* one time not very hard and... Bird shifted gears into a lofty (but not at all frantic) canter and shouldered the fuck in. For the long side of our work area. Not 100% perfect, slight variability in bend, but definitely a shoulder-in effort.

Goddamn it.

We tried it some more, twice more on that lead and thrice on the other lead. Apparently, once I called him on the LOLNOPE and quit playing the trope game, the jig was up. Canter departures got a lot brighter and spiffier, too.

Well shit.

Once STUPID DEER SEASON wraps, we will revisit lateral canter work because clearly this is not TOO HARD. Perhaps we will haunches-in in canter. Anything could happen, really. (Stupid deer season kind of puts a two week hole in my riding due to the large number of people out and about with firearms at all hours of the day. While my horse is large and white, I feel like someone could confuse him for a deer and so we do not ride for deer season.)