Horse progress. So excite!
Apr. 10th, 2024 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWith the somewhat better (if unpredictable) weather and the advent of Springtime, I've been getting more spins on the Bird. (Finn has been doing boring groundwork that is boring and honestly he's got it down pat, so we just review known material, sometimes in new places.) And I'm revisiting the Flying Lead Change.
For people who don't play horse, and I assume that is most of you, this is a fancy horse move done at the canter that kind of makes it look like the horse is skipping. For reasons, and we shall not go into them here, I would like to be able to do this on my woefully inappropriate horse.
Most people who want flying changes installed on their horse (dressage style ones, anyway) pay someone to do that. It is not particularly typical for adult ammies to successfully install their own flying changes without a trainer doing at least some of the work. So that's a strike against me.
I've also Tried and Failed during last year (to zero success) but I have thought about it a bit over the winter and watched some YouTube and Spring is the season of optimism anyway and so I have some more ideas lined up to take another (ill-advised, I am sure) stab at it this summer.
Today, I spent my limited ride time (warm weather, humidity was through roof, horse is still in winter coat and can't work super hard because he's both hairy and somewhat unfit) working on a canter that can be walked from. Random voices on the internets suggest that you need canter-walk before you can have flying lead changes so I'm going to see what I can do with that.
I suspect (but do not know) that the actual thing one needs is "a canter that can be walked from" rather than the ability to do a canter-walk transition. It's about the QUALITY of the canter, but the measuring stick you use is "can you walk from this canter?" because that measuring stick already has handy ticky marks for "is the horse on board with your program, attentive and ready to do what you want without flailing, is there balance and strength and straightness and sit?" and you can thus measure all that shit with only one stick. It's efficiency, really, and we like efficiency.
Last year I'd had shit for quality in the canter because I was, er, throwing the reins at the horse and hoping for the best. This was not a particularly ideal approach to solving the issue. Bird is a good guy but he's not going to hand over the better canter if I don't even TRY to ask for it.
So this year I am going to try a little harder. And over the winter, I worked on some ideas for fitness and building the muscles we might need to get a better canter. Broke some of those out while I was doing assorted spring fitness outings with him. Today, with the field reasonably non-slick and the heat/humidity too high for him to be seriously stupid (because he's fuzzy and it's hot), we approached some of the "let's have a better canter" tasks in an area with some room (and not on the side of the road with cars).
They didn't really suck. And while he's not super fit yet, he made Good Efforts at the tasks and there were... signs that this might be a productive path to go down. He also was not upset or explosive or fretful. Like, it was very much a Time to Make The Donuts approach to the whole thing. Nice.
Preliminary fitness efforts included walk-to-canter departures on the fairly steep hill by the covered bridge. These were instantly exhausting for Birb so we did a total of four per outing, but we did do them. Goal was to get a clear and direct step into canter, which means lift off the front end and step deep (and uphill, so mechanical disadvantage) into the new gait. And with some practice, he got a lot better at them (but we still only did four, two per lead, because they were A Lot). Yay. We'll continue to revisit these (in small doses) because I do think they're helping the overall project.
Additionally we're exploring How Crunched Up The Trot Can Get. He's got a collected trot. It's pretty tiny. But... can it get tinier? Can there be more lift on the front end while going forward less? Let's Experiment!! This, too, is super difficult for Birb, so we don't do very much at one time and there are breaks between efforts. But I think we have some progress to make, here, and I'm gonna see how it goes. Extra practice making trot smaller and crunchier will not hurt us in the canter.
As for canter efforts, the focus is changing from "wish for functional lateral work in canter" to "howzabout working on the deliverables to achieve this goal." It turns out (shocker) that having the rider actually riding is more useful than having the rider wishing wistfully while tossing the reins in the general direction of the horse.
Having a better (more assembled, more organized, straighter, loftier) canter means better lateral stuff. Shoulder-in in canter is pretty legit and there are flashes of half pass in canter visible through the haze. I'm not GREAT at assembling the Better Canter, but we're getting faster through repetition.
All of this is somewhat encouraging except for the minor point that I KNOW that if you want to half pass in the walk or in the trot, first you need a walk or trot that you can half pass in, like, get the quality of the gait sorted out and the half pass will be right there for the taking. And now I'm kind of embarrassed/dumb because I apparently spent more than a year thinking it would be (magically) different for this stuff in canter? Also I didn't know what a canter-that-contains-halfpass-functionality looked like, felt like, rode like. Because you don't know until you know. I'm starting to know.
The lateral stuff (which Bird knows from walk and trot work) is helping us shape the canter to Better Canter because Bird knows what I am asking and he kind of ... fills in to help me build a better canter in order to do the things. I am hoping that we can thus scaffold our way to Better Canter by way of lateral support. (LOL I am so funny.) Worth a shot, anyway.
And so also we worked canter-to-walk which is not there yet but is miles better already than it was last year because now I understand more about what SORT of canter is needed, here, and I am starting to understand how to get the proper sort of canter out of my horse and he's starting to understand what sort of canter I would like.
We have an outing this weekend to horse friend N's new dressage arena that she had installed last year. Kind of excited to go ride in it and the weather is supposed to be not too sucky.
For people who don't play horse, and I assume that is most of you, this is a fancy horse move done at the canter that kind of makes it look like the horse is skipping. For reasons, and we shall not go into them here, I would like to be able to do this on my woefully inappropriate horse.
Most people who want flying changes installed on their horse (dressage style ones, anyway) pay someone to do that. It is not particularly typical for adult ammies to successfully install their own flying changes without a trainer doing at least some of the work. So that's a strike against me.
I've also Tried and Failed during last year (to zero success) but I have thought about it a bit over the winter and watched some YouTube and Spring is the season of optimism anyway and so I have some more ideas lined up to take another (ill-advised, I am sure) stab at it this summer.
Today, I spent my limited ride time (warm weather, humidity was through roof, horse is still in winter coat and can't work super hard because he's both hairy and somewhat unfit) working on a canter that can be walked from. Random voices on the internets suggest that you need canter-walk before you can have flying lead changes so I'm going to see what I can do with that.
I suspect (but do not know) that the actual thing one needs is "a canter that can be walked from" rather than the ability to do a canter-walk transition. It's about the QUALITY of the canter, but the measuring stick you use is "can you walk from this canter?" because that measuring stick already has handy ticky marks for "is the horse on board with your program, attentive and ready to do what you want without flailing, is there balance and strength and straightness and sit?" and you can thus measure all that shit with only one stick. It's efficiency, really, and we like efficiency.
Last year I'd had shit for quality in the canter because I was, er, throwing the reins at the horse and hoping for the best. This was not a particularly ideal approach to solving the issue. Bird is a good guy but he's not going to hand over the better canter if I don't even TRY to ask for it.
So this year I am going to try a little harder. And over the winter, I worked on some ideas for fitness and building the muscles we might need to get a better canter. Broke some of those out while I was doing assorted spring fitness outings with him. Today, with the field reasonably non-slick and the heat/humidity too high for him to be seriously stupid (because he's fuzzy and it's hot), we approached some of the "let's have a better canter" tasks in an area with some room (and not on the side of the road with cars).
They didn't really suck. And while he's not super fit yet, he made Good Efforts at the tasks and there were... signs that this might be a productive path to go down. He also was not upset or explosive or fretful. Like, it was very much a Time to Make The Donuts approach to the whole thing. Nice.
Preliminary fitness efforts included walk-to-canter departures on the fairly steep hill by the covered bridge. These were instantly exhausting for Birb so we did a total of four per outing, but we did do them. Goal was to get a clear and direct step into canter, which means lift off the front end and step deep (and uphill, so mechanical disadvantage) into the new gait. And with some practice, he got a lot better at them (but we still only did four, two per lead, because they were A Lot). Yay. We'll continue to revisit these (in small doses) because I do think they're helping the overall project.
Additionally we're exploring How Crunched Up The Trot Can Get. He's got a collected trot. It's pretty tiny. But... can it get tinier? Can there be more lift on the front end while going forward less? Let's Experiment!! This, too, is super difficult for Birb, so we don't do very much at one time and there are breaks between efforts. But I think we have some progress to make, here, and I'm gonna see how it goes. Extra practice making trot smaller and crunchier will not hurt us in the canter.
As for canter efforts, the focus is changing from "wish for functional lateral work in canter" to "howzabout working on the deliverables to achieve this goal." It turns out (shocker) that having the rider actually riding is more useful than having the rider wishing wistfully while tossing the reins in the general direction of the horse.
Having a better (more assembled, more organized, straighter, loftier) canter means better lateral stuff. Shoulder-in in canter is pretty legit and there are flashes of half pass in canter visible through the haze. I'm not GREAT at assembling the Better Canter, but we're getting faster through repetition.
All of this is somewhat encouraging except for the minor point that I KNOW that if you want to half pass in the walk or in the trot, first you need a walk or trot that you can half pass in, like, get the quality of the gait sorted out and the half pass will be right there for the taking. And now I'm kind of embarrassed/dumb because I apparently spent more than a year thinking it would be (magically) different for this stuff in canter? Also I didn't know what a canter-that-contains-halfpass-functionality looked like, felt like, rode like. Because you don't know until you know. I'm starting to know.
The lateral stuff (which Bird knows from walk and trot work) is helping us shape the canter to Better Canter because Bird knows what I am asking and he kind of ... fills in to help me build a better canter in order to do the things. I am hoping that we can thus scaffold our way to Better Canter by way of lateral support. (LOL I am so funny.) Worth a shot, anyway.
And so also we worked canter-to-walk which is not there yet but is miles better already than it was last year because now I understand more about what SORT of canter is needed, here, and I am starting to understand how to get the proper sort of canter out of my horse and he's starting to understand what sort of canter I would like.
We have an outing this weekend to horse friend N's new dressage arena that she had installed last year. Kind of excited to go ride in it and the weather is supposed to be not too sucky.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-13 02:23 pm (UTC)Yeah, I wish I could have had the changes installed. We're getting there.