DLB round 3: Fight!
Jun. 2nd, 2022 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo because my horse is a snowflake and he mostly works on grass (and is barefoot) and the ring at Lesson Barn is stone dust that regrettably compacts to cement when it rains and my horse does not care for that, I booted his fronts for DLB round 3 in the hopes that this would improve his feelings about working in the ring.
It went better. He's well-used to the boots (we also use them on pavement for road work days) and he definitely went forward more freely in them. But dang it, going forward in a ring is a skillset and it's one we don't actually have. *sigh*
Mostly, we are in an unenclosed hayfield at home. It's not got a fence. It's... big. Like thirty-round-bales-of-hay big. I do not have nearly so much of a lack-o-forward problem at home.
Hell, here lately (what with 2-a-days of chow and second cut grass hay that I'd eat if it were sprinkled with balsamic plus also three nighttime alfalfa flakes plus also post-work hand grazing on grass because the playpen does not *have* grass) I have rather a lot of forward from my working six days a week horse.
Now, he's not fat. Swear to god, he's not fat. He is "in good weight" if a little on the lean side according to the accustomed to looking at quarter horses in a halter class folks in these parts.
This is him like two weeks ago:
Other side, same day:
Butt view:
There is not-a-lotta fat on this horse. You can't see his ribs, but he's not carrying any show-ring "shine". The meat on him is muscle. Getting him sweaty is hard because he cools like a trooper and he's... kinda fit these days? There are palpable muscles all over him, more muscles than I have ever heretofore seen. I've been working on that, honestly, so yay?
To get him appropriately tuckered out, our work is no longer just riding but more complicated and harder riding. Like... please Fancy Trot at a nice solid pace THE ENTIRE LONG SIDE OF THE FIELD keeping balance and frame despite the rolling hills in the actual landscape. (It's super hard for him to keep balance and frame when the slope changes. Downhill in particular invites the llama posture and he has to do Extra Work to keep the llama at bay.) Please shoulder-in in trot up the hill (thus reducing the pushing power of your hq and making the job harder). Pretty canter, walk, pretty canter, walk, pretty canter, walk. (There are some trots in the downwards transitions as yet, but we're working on it.) Halt and back dead-straight six steps uphill on every downhill slope. In your Fancy Trot, please to be halfpassing in the uphill direction. (For this, we are going ALONG the slope, the halfpass is going diagonally uphill because yeah, that's way harder. It's like he hits deep sand, he gears down visibly in order to handle the task.)
We do these things and more... but even so it's getting kind of hard to tire him out in an hour and a half of outing. He is not sore. He is not cranky. He seems perky, totally his ordinary good-natured herp-derp self, but now he does all the things with... power. And there's a lot of power.
I went out over the holiday weekend for two hours of marching up and down a mountainside with friends. So we're like 1 hour and 30 minutes into this ride, trucking along at an approximate 3.8 mph walk, having climbed up about 800 feet and then descended about 500 feet and we cross the little drain at the bottom of the big vertical downhill on the pipeline and start up the short, very vertical uphill on the pipeline. It is VERY steep, steep enough that horses generally lunge into a canter at the base of it, which okay, that's fine, the footing is good and this is a known thing. And he happily canters up the rise and, at the top, where the slope breaks to flat again, he throws a quite straight, quite forward, WHEE buck.
Sir! Sir, I am fifty-two years old. We are on a TRAIL OUTING and you are wearing a fucking bareback pad. (No, of course it does not have stirrups. That would be unsafe.) SIR! Attention, SIR! That is NOT HOW WE DO THINGS! (He does not buck under saddle. Ever. EVER. Like, this was literally his very first buck under saddle. I broke him as a four year old and I've been riding him since then and when I say that this was his very first buck under saddle, I know whereof I speak. He is eleven.) *ahem* No, I didn't fall off. He wasn't trying to unseat me and it was totally 100% a Happy To Be Here, Feeling GOOD! buck. But still. SIR. NO. That is NOT ALLOWED, especially not an hour and a half into a two hour mountain-oriented trail ride in 85 degree heat when I was expecting you to be somewhat tuckered out.
*sigh* Anyway, fitness, it is a thing and he is having some of it these days. So the lack-o-forward that we display in the ring in front of DLB is not due to a lack of fitness. It's a training issue.
DLB's homework directive for this round was to work on "having horse take some responsibility for maintaining gait" which basically is a nice way of saying that I am an ineffectual middle-aged horse-nagger whose horse blows her off because she fucking nags him forward all the time with an unquiet and insistent leg. Mmm. Yeah, I resemble that remark, especially in a ring.
Also, there was a time when I was SUPPOSED to nag him along. Literally, that was the DLB directive. For real. Apparently we are now better than that and he is supposed to be able to keep himself trucking along appropriately these days without so much input from me unless I want a change.
Mmm. So I went out last night after work (at like 6:30 PM because it was so bleeding hot) to make an effort in that direction. I did not get to work on fixing the trying-to-slow-down horse because the horse I got out of the field was the trying-to-accelerate horse. You gotta ride the horse you catch, even if you were expecting a different horse. So I spent time fixing that instead of doing what I had planned on doing. He got a lot better over the course of the ride, but the whole evening was more a "hey, buddy, not quite so much" event rather than a "dude, step it up a little" outing.
It do be like that sometimes, especially when the hay's just been made and we can work over the whole entire field instead of just the one edge next to the woods. Such room! Much possibilities! So excite!
Perhaps it will be boring tomorrow now that we've seen it once. (Today he gets the day off because I ride pony at lesson barn.) We shall see.
It went better. He's well-used to the boots (we also use them on pavement for road work days) and he definitely went forward more freely in them. But dang it, going forward in a ring is a skillset and it's one we don't actually have. *sigh*
Mostly, we are in an unenclosed hayfield at home. It's not got a fence. It's... big. Like thirty-round-bales-of-hay big. I do not have nearly so much of a lack-o-forward problem at home.
Hell, here lately (what with 2-a-days of chow and second cut grass hay that I'd eat if it were sprinkled with balsamic plus also three nighttime alfalfa flakes plus also post-work hand grazing on grass because the playpen does not *have* grass) I have rather a lot of forward from my working six days a week horse.
Now, he's not fat. Swear to god, he's not fat. He is "in good weight" if a little on the lean side according to the accustomed to looking at quarter horses in a halter class folks in these parts.
This is him like two weeks ago:
Other side, same day:
Butt view:
There is not-a-lotta fat on this horse. You can't see his ribs, but he's not carrying any show-ring "shine". The meat on him is muscle. Getting him sweaty is hard because he cools like a trooper and he's... kinda fit these days? There are palpable muscles all over him, more muscles than I have ever heretofore seen. I've been working on that, honestly, so yay?
To get him appropriately tuckered out, our work is no longer just riding but more complicated and harder riding. Like... please Fancy Trot at a nice solid pace THE ENTIRE LONG SIDE OF THE FIELD keeping balance and frame despite the rolling hills in the actual landscape. (It's super hard for him to keep balance and frame when the slope changes. Downhill in particular invites the llama posture and he has to do Extra Work to keep the llama at bay.) Please shoulder-in in trot up the hill (thus reducing the pushing power of your hq and making the job harder). Pretty canter, walk, pretty canter, walk, pretty canter, walk. (There are some trots in the downwards transitions as yet, but we're working on it.) Halt and back dead-straight six steps uphill on every downhill slope. In your Fancy Trot, please to be halfpassing in the uphill direction. (For this, we are going ALONG the slope, the halfpass is going diagonally uphill because yeah, that's way harder. It's like he hits deep sand, he gears down visibly in order to handle the task.)
We do these things and more... but even so it's getting kind of hard to tire him out in an hour and a half of outing. He is not sore. He is not cranky. He seems perky, totally his ordinary good-natured herp-derp self, but now he does all the things with... power. And there's a lot of power.
I went out over the holiday weekend for two hours of marching up and down a mountainside with friends. So we're like 1 hour and 30 minutes into this ride, trucking along at an approximate 3.8 mph walk, having climbed up about 800 feet and then descended about 500 feet and we cross the little drain at the bottom of the big vertical downhill on the pipeline and start up the short, very vertical uphill on the pipeline. It is VERY steep, steep enough that horses generally lunge into a canter at the base of it, which okay, that's fine, the footing is good and this is a known thing. And he happily canters up the rise and, at the top, where the slope breaks to flat again, he throws a quite straight, quite forward, WHEE buck.
Sir! Sir, I am fifty-two years old. We are on a TRAIL OUTING and you are wearing a fucking bareback pad. (No, of course it does not have stirrups. That would be unsafe.) SIR! Attention, SIR! That is NOT HOW WE DO THINGS! (He does not buck under saddle. Ever. EVER. Like, this was literally his very first buck under saddle. I broke him as a four year old and I've been riding him since then and when I say that this was his very first buck under saddle, I know whereof I speak. He is eleven.) *ahem* No, I didn't fall off. He wasn't trying to unseat me and it was totally 100% a Happy To Be Here, Feeling GOOD! buck. But still. SIR. NO. That is NOT ALLOWED, especially not an hour and a half into a two hour mountain-oriented trail ride in 85 degree heat when I was expecting you to be somewhat tuckered out.
*sigh* Anyway, fitness, it is a thing and he is having some of it these days. So the lack-o-forward that we display in the ring in front of DLB is not due to a lack of fitness. It's a training issue.
DLB's homework directive for this round was to work on "having horse take some responsibility for maintaining gait" which basically is a nice way of saying that I am an ineffectual middle-aged horse-nagger whose horse blows her off because she fucking nags him forward all the time with an unquiet and insistent leg. Mmm. Yeah, I resemble that remark, especially in a ring.
Also, there was a time when I was SUPPOSED to nag him along. Literally, that was the DLB directive. For real. Apparently we are now better than that and he is supposed to be able to keep himself trucking along appropriately these days without so much input from me unless I want a change.
Mmm. So I went out last night after work (at like 6:30 PM because it was so bleeding hot) to make an effort in that direction. I did not get to work on fixing the trying-to-slow-down horse because the horse I got out of the field was the trying-to-accelerate horse. You gotta ride the horse you catch, even if you were expecting a different horse. So I spent time fixing that instead of doing what I had planned on doing. He got a lot better over the course of the ride, but the whole evening was more a "hey, buddy, not quite so much" event rather than a "dude, step it up a little" outing.
It do be like that sometimes, especially when the hay's just been made and we can work over the whole entire field instead of just the one edge next to the woods. Such room! Much possibilities! So excite!
Perhaps it will be boring tomorrow now that we've seen it once. (Today he gets the day off because I ride pony at lesson barn.) We shall see.
