Thoughts following lesson
Aug. 19th, 2022 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI mentioned my strugglebus issues with counter canter re: its general terrifyingness to my instructor last night. She did the knowing nod of commiseration during the "DANGER, horse will fall over!" explanation of why I feel it's terrifying. (4H leaders from the early 1980's in Greater Rednecklandia weren't all that wrong about don't canter on the wrong lead for their redneck beginner riders on poorly-muscled and unbalanced backyard ponies. I am not blaming them for what, at the time, was valid and sensible advice.)
And then we did jumps and stuff on Mystic which was fine and probably prep for her for the minitrial up at Rolling Rock with her kiddo over the weekend. But while we were doing jumps n stuff there were walk breaks to reset jumps and give the horse a breather and so forth, breaks in which discussion happened.
Discussion was largely instructor informing me that flying lead changes take, like, forever and that I'd better settle in for the long haul. Uhm, okay?
If I were in a hurry for results, I would do something OTHER THAN pursue dressage tricks in an unlevel hayfield with tons of distractions and an inappropriate breed of horse that sucks at sit-n-lift and can't focus on the job at hand to save his life because he has SO MANY FEELINGS. Honest to dog, the vast bulk of the horse population would be perfectly happily do the damn job without the side order of feelings... and yet Bird is the horse I picked. I know he has feelings. I've known about his feelings since forever and I'm OK with him and his feelings. I like Bird and I do not want results enough to go ride a different horse. This is not about results.
Regular instructor's pep talk vis a vis flying changes put emphasis on Importance of Counter Canter (ugh) and WalkCanterWalk transitions (We are not really great at w-c-w yet and I feel like we will get more benefit -- improved timing of aids, improved abs, improved balance, etc. -- out of doing halfway decent t-c-t instead of complete shitshow w-c-w. W-C-W is on the list for later, tho.) and also mentioned that I need a better, more subtle, more balanced seat and vastly improved timing. Mmm. Okay. All of that is known and not really news.
And then instructor dropped that she's busily working on flying changes on her competition horse and it's been... more than a year with limited and frustrating progress so I shouldn't get my hopes up and stuff.
Mmmm. Okay. (I generally find it unproductive to argue with regular instructor's assessments of how long things will take or what is reasonable for me to be doing with my horse. I just work on my noncommittal responses when she starts with that stuff. And then I go home and do what I want.)
Driving home from lesson, I got to thinking. I've seen regular instructor's competition horse. I've groomed and tacked up and ridden the competition horse. Hell, I've looked at competition horse's topline.
Regular instructor and DLB (and, I guess, the entirety of the dressage world that is not "Whee! Let's go sideways!") pimp dressage as good for the horse and good for the horse's physique and helps the horse carry a rider and blah blah blah.
The point here, is that properly done dressage is supposed to make your horse fitter and better-looking with more-correct muscles and nicer flexibility. That's the party line and the selling point if you're not in love with developing a partnership or enjoying the journey or whatever.
Now Bird, as regular readers are aware, is a fairly slight and effeminate-looking metrosexual twink of an Arab gelding. He's 14.3hh and weighs maybe 950 lbs. (I haven't weight taped him lately. I should do that.) He just moved up a saddle gullet size this year and he moved up one two years ago and then probably a year before that. He is visibly changing size and shape as he and I get better at this shit. He isn't changing size and shape QUICKLY but he totally is changing. He does not put muscle mass on easily and I am a shitshow of a rider, probably only about 70% consistent. Bird would do better with a different rider, but my point here is that he is MAKING VISIBLE PROGRESS on his muscling and stuff even with my incompetent guidance. So I know this dressage shit works. I'm doing it, incompetently, on the wrong sort of horse, and it's working AS ADVERTISED anyway.
Now instructor's competition horse has a main job of dressage. She's doing second-level showing (scores for instructor's bronze medal are in the bag) and schooling third-level tests at home. Competition Horse is definitely further-along than Bird, who does not have a legit counter-canter or good lengthenings/collectings.
Instructor's competition horse does not have the neck-visibly-wider-at-the-top (by top, I mean the "along the mane" edge, not the 'near the ears' edge) thing like Bird has. (Seriously his neck is effing awesome.) I feel like that's a thing she should have because DLB is endlessly happy about Bird's neck and mentions it every time she sees him. It is probably an important thing, so why doesn't competition horse have it?
Competition horse (without tack on) has hollows behind the withers like Bird used to have (but which Bird has totally 100% filled in this year) and she's... rough where the loin joins the HQ the way Bird used to be. He's smoothed out there and broadened across the loin to where he's got flipping visible muscles there now. Competition horse, who is bigger and beefier than Bird, has a weaker loin-to-hq junction and a weaker loin overall.
I don't think that Competition Horse looks how a second-level/schooling-third horse should look. (My vast knowledge of what dressage horse muscles should look like (the internet could benefit from a sarcasm tag) comes from what happened to my horses when I started riding them sideways with intent. In short, I had two fairly wimpy-looking Arabs that chonked right up and looked 100% more like real horses just from going sideways purposefully.) She doesn't even look as good as Bird and he doesn't do as many dressage tricks as she does. If the whole point of dressage (according to DLB and regular instructor) is to help your horse muscle up correctly and be stronger and better at carrying a rider, you'd sorta expect the horse being ridden in dressage BY MY INSTRUCTOR under the tutelage of DLB to be all muscling up correctly and shit especially. So... why doesn't Competition Horse, who has been being ridden for the last three years by gets paid to do the wild thing instructor, have better muscling than Bird does? It do be a mystery.
I do not think that discussing Competition Horse's topline with regular instructor would be even remotely productive. So, not going there.
In related news, my friend Trys has been halfheartedly pissing around trying to unload Bird's full brother Tin. She doesn't really want to ride him enough to get him for-real broke and she doesn't want to dump him at auction or something but the world is not on fire to buy a sorta-broke 14.3hh twelve year old Arab gelding. I've pitched Tin to regular instructor (who wants a mid-size sound and athletic horse for intermediate students) repeatedly over the last three years and it's been a hard pass for regular instructor this whole time until about a month ago.
Regular instructor (having seen us, FINALLY, ride for DLB and Do The Thing) asked me about Tin the next time I was at lesson. "Is she still interested in selling him?" and "He could come here for a free trial to see if he works out. If not, you can have him back, no hard feelings and I won't charge you for the training he gets while he's here." and "He's Bird's FULL brother, right?" It was a lot of enthusiasm for Tin coming out of nowhere, right after we rode for DLB and regular instructor saw it.
So we're working out a deal for Tin to go to regular instructor to see if he can work as a lesson horse and thereby be not-sold-at-auction while still moving him off the property and out of Try's life. And I was OK with that. Was chatting with Trys about it this morning when she dropped, "You know (regular instructor) is just buying him so that she can do with Tin what you have done with Bird."
I was gobsmacked. I hadn't even considered that. I was kind of confused about what was driving the sudden enthusiasm for Tinnie, but not gonna look a gift horse, y'know? Also, getting a different horse is not how a person solves training issues. Getting a different horse doesn't fix jack shit. Training roadblocks or blind spots or skill shortcomings follow a rider from horse to horse until the rider buckles down and fucking fixes their shit. I mean, nobody likes to hear that, but it's the truth.
If regular instructor isn't building good muscle on Competition Horse with dressage work, adding Tinnie to the project horse list... ain't gonna make things better. He doesn't have special magickal ayrab powers that will fix whatever issues are causing Competition Horse's sad and shitty topline/muscling and her three years of lack o' improvement.
That said, he'll be fine in a lesson program. Structure will be good for him and he will be doing useful work under saddle. Hell, instructor might even enjoy riding him. We'll see how it goes, I suppose.
And then we did jumps and stuff on Mystic which was fine and probably prep for her for the minitrial up at Rolling Rock with her kiddo over the weekend. But while we were doing jumps n stuff there were walk breaks to reset jumps and give the horse a breather and so forth, breaks in which discussion happened.
Discussion was largely instructor informing me that flying lead changes take, like, forever and that I'd better settle in for the long haul. Uhm, okay?
If I were in a hurry for results, I would do something OTHER THAN pursue dressage tricks in an unlevel hayfield with tons of distractions and an inappropriate breed of horse that sucks at sit-n-lift and can't focus on the job at hand to save his life because he has SO MANY FEELINGS. Honest to dog, the vast bulk of the horse population would be perfectly happily do the damn job without the side order of feelings... and yet Bird is the horse I picked. I know he has feelings. I've known about his feelings since forever and I'm OK with him and his feelings. I like Bird and I do not want results enough to go ride a different horse. This is not about results.
Regular instructor's pep talk vis a vis flying changes put emphasis on Importance of Counter Canter (ugh) and WalkCanterWalk transitions (We are not really great at w-c-w yet and I feel like we will get more benefit -- improved timing of aids, improved abs, improved balance, etc. -- out of doing halfway decent t-c-t instead of complete shitshow w-c-w. W-C-W is on the list for later, tho.) and also mentioned that I need a better, more subtle, more balanced seat and vastly improved timing. Mmm. Okay. All of that is known and not really news.
And then instructor dropped that she's busily working on flying changes on her competition horse and it's been... more than a year with limited and frustrating progress so I shouldn't get my hopes up and stuff.
Mmmm. Okay. (I generally find it unproductive to argue with regular instructor's assessments of how long things will take or what is reasonable for me to be doing with my horse. I just work on my noncommittal responses when she starts with that stuff. And then I go home and do what I want.)
Driving home from lesson, I got to thinking. I've seen regular instructor's competition horse. I've groomed and tacked up and ridden the competition horse. Hell, I've looked at competition horse's topline.
Regular instructor and DLB (and, I guess, the entirety of the dressage world that is not "Whee! Let's go sideways!") pimp dressage as good for the horse and good for the horse's physique and helps the horse carry a rider and blah blah blah.
The point here, is that properly done dressage is supposed to make your horse fitter and better-looking with more-correct muscles and nicer flexibility. That's the party line and the selling point if you're not in love with developing a partnership or enjoying the journey or whatever.
Now Bird, as regular readers are aware, is a fairly slight and effeminate-looking metrosexual twink of an Arab gelding. He's 14.3hh and weighs maybe 950 lbs. (I haven't weight taped him lately. I should do that.) He just moved up a saddle gullet size this year and he moved up one two years ago and then probably a year before that. He is visibly changing size and shape as he and I get better at this shit. He isn't changing size and shape QUICKLY but he totally is changing. He does not put muscle mass on easily and I am a shitshow of a rider, probably only about 70% consistent. Bird would do better with a different rider, but my point here is that he is MAKING VISIBLE PROGRESS on his muscling and stuff even with my incompetent guidance. So I know this dressage shit works. I'm doing it, incompetently, on the wrong sort of horse, and it's working AS ADVERTISED anyway.
Now instructor's competition horse has a main job of dressage. She's doing second-level showing (scores for instructor's bronze medal are in the bag) and schooling third-level tests at home. Competition Horse is definitely further-along than Bird, who does not have a legit counter-canter or good lengthenings/collectings.
Instructor's competition horse does not have the neck-visibly-wider-at-the-top (by top, I mean the "along the mane" edge, not the 'near the ears' edge) thing like Bird has. (Seriously his neck is effing awesome.) I feel like that's a thing she should have because DLB is endlessly happy about Bird's neck and mentions it every time she sees him. It is probably an important thing, so why doesn't competition horse have it?
Competition horse (without tack on) has hollows behind the withers like Bird used to have (but which Bird has totally 100% filled in this year) and she's... rough where the loin joins the HQ the way Bird used to be. He's smoothed out there and broadened across the loin to where he's got flipping visible muscles there now. Competition horse, who is bigger and beefier than Bird, has a weaker loin-to-hq junction and a weaker loin overall.
I don't think that Competition Horse looks how a second-level/schooling-third horse should look. (My vast knowledge of what dressage horse muscles should look like (the internet could benefit from a sarcasm tag) comes from what happened to my horses when I started riding them sideways with intent. In short, I had two fairly wimpy-looking Arabs that chonked right up and looked 100% more like real horses just from going sideways purposefully.) She doesn't even look as good as Bird and he doesn't do as many dressage tricks as she does. If the whole point of dressage (according to DLB and regular instructor) is to help your horse muscle up correctly and be stronger and better at carrying a rider, you'd sorta expect the horse being ridden in dressage BY MY INSTRUCTOR under the tutelage of DLB to be all muscling up correctly and shit especially. So... why doesn't Competition Horse, who has been being ridden for the last three years by gets paid to do the wild thing instructor, have better muscling than Bird does? It do be a mystery.
I do not think that discussing Competition Horse's topline with regular instructor would be even remotely productive. So, not going there.
In related news, my friend Trys has been halfheartedly pissing around trying to unload Bird's full brother Tin. She doesn't really want to ride him enough to get him for-real broke and she doesn't want to dump him at auction or something but the world is not on fire to buy a sorta-broke 14.3hh twelve year old Arab gelding. I've pitched Tin to regular instructor (who wants a mid-size sound and athletic horse for intermediate students) repeatedly over the last three years and it's been a hard pass for regular instructor this whole time until about a month ago.
Regular instructor (having seen us, FINALLY, ride for DLB and Do The Thing) asked me about Tin the next time I was at lesson. "Is she still interested in selling him?" and "He could come here for a free trial to see if he works out. If not, you can have him back, no hard feelings and I won't charge you for the training he gets while he's here." and "He's Bird's FULL brother, right?" It was a lot of enthusiasm for Tin coming out of nowhere, right after we rode for DLB and regular instructor saw it.
So we're working out a deal for Tin to go to regular instructor to see if he can work as a lesson horse and thereby be not-sold-at-auction while still moving him off the property and out of Try's life. And I was OK with that. Was chatting with Trys about it this morning when she dropped, "You know (regular instructor) is just buying him so that she can do with Tin what you have done with Bird."
I was gobsmacked. I hadn't even considered that. I was kind of confused about what was driving the sudden enthusiasm for Tinnie, but not gonna look a gift horse, y'know? Also, getting a different horse is not how a person solves training issues. Getting a different horse doesn't fix jack shit. Training roadblocks or blind spots or skill shortcomings follow a rider from horse to horse until the rider buckles down and fucking fixes their shit. I mean, nobody likes to hear that, but it's the truth.
If regular instructor isn't building good muscle on Competition Horse with dressage work, adding Tinnie to the project horse list... ain't gonna make things better. He doesn't have special magickal ayrab powers that will fix whatever issues are causing Competition Horse's sad and shitty topline/muscling and her three years of lack o' improvement.
That said, he'll be fine in a lesson program. Structure will be good for him and he will be doing useful work under saddle. Hell, instructor might even enjoy riding him. We'll see how it goes, I suppose.
