DLB for September
Sep. 6th, 2024 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI took the day off today to go play DLB. It doesn't take a whole day to play DLB but it does take a lot of the day and it's just easier to scrap the day than try to get to work AND play horse.
It went pretty well? Kinda OK? We did some warmup walk and trot. Bird looked at the mirror (it's an outdoor ring with a new glass mirror that he hadn't seen before) a lot, he thought it was super interesting. He was a bit... whee enthusiasm, but not evil. Just whee.
To get started, I reviewed with DLB that we'd done work in the range of available trot adjustability last time. I added the stuff about my revelatory explorations in canter adjustability since then. She was "Right, then, let's see 'em." (At this point she's kind of on board with my enthusiasms. It's taken like eight years to get her here, but better late than never.)
So we saw 'em. First try veered off into WHEE territory, but not out of control. Birb settled down and came back to me and we got, like, compliments on effective, kind, non-flail-y riding in the face of whee! canter. (The tech for DLB has, over the years, changed from "DLB talks loud" to headsets and transmitters -- she gets to talk in a normal voice and also she can hear all my peanut gallery commentary and horse clicky noises. I talk a lot. I talk to myself. I talk to my horse. It's a lot. She should probably just put me on mute.) After the first one, subsequent canter efforts were a lot more of what I had in mind on the canter front, very respectful, very demure.
DLB was all big smiles, Very Lovely, Wow, what a difference. So much nice. What good.
I mean, I know he's doing better in the canter because I'm asking for better in the canter. But she is genuinely enthused about this, which I guess is good.
Having cleared the bar of "Is this really a better canter? Like, can other people see it, or am I doing the Legend In My Own Mind thing again?" I took a moment to remind her that I wanted a skipping horse and asked about some independent study material on that front for the fall and winter.
DLB: Well, let me think. (She's all about fairness to the horse, does not believe in poles or flopping them off balance or doing endless figures of 8 to teach flying changes. That's not her deal. So a lot of the things that people frequently use as tools for this are not tools that DLB is willing or able to endorse.) Okay. Let's try this thing, but first move him around a bit, etc.
First she had me do some trot efforts. Embiggen the trot, bring it back, make it bigger (but not too big), make it smaller, etc. The goal here is to get him in a work mindset, attentive and stuff (because we'd been chatting a little), stay rhythmic and balanced while showing nice clear changes in gait. These days, I have a pretty good handle on Bird's trot work so I ran him through his paces from "everyday" up to the very end of steady, right at the edge of "any more will be uneven" and held him there nicely and then backed him down through "everyday" all the way to smol and then back up again and back down again and then she asked us to walk. Apparently this was kinda impressive? Whatever. Also the adjustments were smooth and easy, I got compliments on that too, but he's really pretty on board with Trot Games and we do them on the regular at home.
Then we did some leg yields to kind of move him around off my leg and stuff. Like, one nice medium-sized-trot leg yield each way. Bird leg yields, he is a good leg yielder, he's not going to suddenly be unable to do that shit. So we did that too, which DLB was all kinds of happy about but she should kinda know by now that we can do this.
Anyway, then she was on board with looking at the exercise: "in walk, turn on the hq 90 degrees, but I want you to work on better balance and feel and stuff, like feel, like both legs doing stuff, for real balanced"
The which we did, nicer and more balanced turns on the HQ with two legs, not just the inside bump bump leg but also the outside leg saying "this far and no further", kind of guarding and helping shape.
(derail)
I talk about shaping the horse a lot. But, like, what I'm going for is kind of shaping. Hold your body like this, bend here, form up like this. And as we truck onward into the more complex parts of dressage, it's gonna take more precision and more ongoing contact. It's like... you gotta move from "approximating the area under a curve" by using a bunch of little rectangles and adding them all up to actually integrating your damn function. (It's calculus. I'm talking about calculus. #stealth-math)
In order to advance, the rider has to move past just using a bumping-over leg because that's not really controlled. It's imprecise and little rectangles instead of a smooth curve. It has a point of failure because leg loses contact and it's not as nice as if you use both legs, one to bump over and one to "catch", kinda. If you want precise, you definitely need a catching/blocking leg to control the amount of "over" you get from the bumping leg -- the improvement in balance was pretty legit.
And so what we were doing with the stupid 90 degree turn on the hq is learning to use both legs to better balance and control and shape.
Maybe what I mean is more... pottery? Like, your horse is clay and you are trying to put him into a shape. Potters use both hands to work the clay on a wheel. They have an inside hand doing the pushing-out and the rising-up but they ALSO have an outside hand to help form the shape. You can't do much with just one hand on the clay. Potters use two hands for potting. Throwing pots? Playing clay? That thing with the round and round and the wet. Possibly a sponge is involved. Look, you know what I mean.
It's like that.
(re-rail?)
Anyway, once the 90 degree turns (in walk) didn't suck too much, we added leg yield immediately thereafter. So... 90 degree turn on the HQ with left leg bumping and right leg catching (horse moves in an arc to the right) and then immediately leg yield off the right leg (horse moves to the left, diagonally) and then promptly step into (soft, organized, reasonable) right lead canter from the walk leg yield.
This is a lot of ducks to get into a row and you definitely have to be very balanced and organized and your horse has to be with you in order to get this to fly.
And DLB was very pleased with how that went? They were not super lofty canter efforts, but they were quiet and clean and reasonable. Very deliberate. Not earthbound. From where I sat, I think they can be better than they were but she seemed very pleased.
We did a couple of those on each lead and called it a day. This doesn't seem like much but they were very strength-taxing for the Birb. He has a legit walk to canter from all our practice on the hill at the covered bridge, but he doesn't have like fifty of them.
DLB was very pleased with how he's doing and she didn't seem to feel like we were doing wrong things. I can't really read her (or any human) that well, but she didn't try to manage my expectations into a more reasonable pursuit or anything. She was visibly pleased about our canter improvements and seemed to feel that I had reasonable(ish) goals and stuff, so... I'm going to score it a win.
The exercise is fiddly and annoying with lots of things to do to put it together, but also it's simple enough that I can add it in to our rotation of activities and it won't take a whole lot to hammer away at it here and there. I've got a couple of months of reasonable weather, so maybe I'll get somewhere with it. We shall see.
It went pretty well? Kinda OK? We did some warmup walk and trot. Bird looked at the mirror (it's an outdoor ring with a new glass mirror that he hadn't seen before) a lot, he thought it was super interesting. He was a bit... whee enthusiasm, but not evil. Just whee.
To get started, I reviewed with DLB that we'd done work in the range of available trot adjustability last time. I added the stuff about my revelatory explorations in canter adjustability since then. She was "Right, then, let's see 'em." (At this point she's kind of on board with my enthusiasms. It's taken like eight years to get her here, but better late than never.)
So we saw 'em. First try veered off into WHEE territory, but not out of control. Birb settled down and came back to me and we got, like, compliments on effective, kind, non-flail-y riding in the face of whee! canter. (The tech for DLB has, over the years, changed from "DLB talks loud" to headsets and transmitters -- she gets to talk in a normal voice and also she can hear all my peanut gallery commentary and horse clicky noises. I talk a lot. I talk to myself. I talk to my horse. It's a lot. She should probably just put me on mute.) After the first one, subsequent canter efforts were a lot more of what I had in mind on the canter front, very respectful, very demure.
DLB was all big smiles, Very Lovely, Wow, what a difference. So much nice. What good.
I mean, I know he's doing better in the canter because I'm asking for better in the canter. But she is genuinely enthused about this, which I guess is good.
Having cleared the bar of "Is this really a better canter? Like, can other people see it, or am I doing the Legend In My Own Mind thing again?" I took a moment to remind her that I wanted a skipping horse and asked about some independent study material on that front for the fall and winter.
DLB: Well, let me think. (She's all about fairness to the horse, does not believe in poles or flopping them off balance or doing endless figures of 8 to teach flying changes. That's not her deal. So a lot of the things that people frequently use as tools for this are not tools that DLB is willing or able to endorse.) Okay. Let's try this thing, but first move him around a bit, etc.
First she had me do some trot efforts. Embiggen the trot, bring it back, make it bigger (but not too big), make it smaller, etc. The goal here is to get him in a work mindset, attentive and stuff (because we'd been chatting a little), stay rhythmic and balanced while showing nice clear changes in gait. These days, I have a pretty good handle on Bird's trot work so I ran him through his paces from "everyday" up to the very end of steady, right at the edge of "any more will be uneven" and held him there nicely and then backed him down through "everyday" all the way to smol and then back up again and back down again and then she asked us to walk. Apparently this was kinda impressive? Whatever. Also the adjustments were smooth and easy, I got compliments on that too, but he's really pretty on board with Trot Games and we do them on the regular at home.
Then we did some leg yields to kind of move him around off my leg and stuff. Like, one nice medium-sized-trot leg yield each way. Bird leg yields, he is a good leg yielder, he's not going to suddenly be unable to do that shit. So we did that too, which DLB was all kinds of happy about but she should kinda know by now that we can do this.
Anyway, then she was on board with looking at the exercise: "in walk, turn on the hq 90 degrees, but I want you to work on better balance and feel and stuff, like feel, like both legs doing stuff, for real balanced"
The which we did, nicer and more balanced turns on the HQ with two legs, not just the inside bump bump leg but also the outside leg saying "this far and no further", kind of guarding and helping shape.
(derail)
I talk about shaping the horse a lot. But, like, what I'm going for is kind of shaping. Hold your body like this, bend here, form up like this. And as we truck onward into the more complex parts of dressage, it's gonna take more precision and more ongoing contact. It's like... you gotta move from "approximating the area under a curve" by using a bunch of little rectangles and adding them all up to actually integrating your damn function. (It's calculus. I'm talking about calculus. #stealth-math)
In order to advance, the rider has to move past just using a bumping-over leg because that's not really controlled. It's imprecise and little rectangles instead of a smooth curve. It has a point of failure because leg loses contact and it's not as nice as if you use both legs, one to bump over and one to "catch", kinda. If you want precise, you definitely need a catching/blocking leg to control the amount of "over" you get from the bumping leg -- the improvement in balance was pretty legit.
And so what we were doing with the stupid 90 degree turn on the hq is learning to use both legs to better balance and control and shape.
Maybe what I mean is more... pottery? Like, your horse is clay and you are trying to put him into a shape. Potters use both hands to work the clay on a wheel. They have an inside hand doing the pushing-out and the rising-up but they ALSO have an outside hand to help form the shape. You can't do much with just one hand on the clay. Potters use two hands for potting. Throwing pots? Playing clay? That thing with the round and round and the wet. Possibly a sponge is involved. Look, you know what I mean.
It's like that.
(re-rail?)
Anyway, once the 90 degree turns (in walk) didn't suck too much, we added leg yield immediately thereafter. So... 90 degree turn on the HQ with left leg bumping and right leg catching (horse moves in an arc to the right) and then immediately leg yield off the right leg (horse moves to the left, diagonally) and then promptly step into (soft, organized, reasonable) right lead canter from the walk leg yield.
This is a lot of ducks to get into a row and you definitely have to be very balanced and organized and your horse has to be with you in order to get this to fly.
And DLB was very pleased with how that went? They were not super lofty canter efforts, but they were quiet and clean and reasonable. Very deliberate. Not earthbound. From where I sat, I think they can be better than they were but she seemed very pleased.
We did a couple of those on each lead and called it a day. This doesn't seem like much but they were very strength-taxing for the Birb. He has a legit walk to canter from all our practice on the hill at the covered bridge, but he doesn't have like fifty of them.
DLB was very pleased with how he's doing and she didn't seem to feel like we were doing wrong things. I can't really read her (or any human) that well, but she didn't try to manage my expectations into a more reasonable pursuit or anything. She was visibly pleased about our canter improvements and seemed to feel that I had reasonable(ish) goals and stuff, so... I'm going to score it a win.
The exercise is fiddly and annoying with lots of things to do to put it together, but also it's simple enough that I can add it in to our rotation of activities and it won't take a whole lot to hammer away at it here and there. I've got a couple of months of reasonable weather, so maybe I'll get somewhere with it. We shall see.
