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which_chickOne of the weak points (foreshadowing) in the dressage tests is that the canters are draggy and sad. (Lacking in impulsion and forward, sometimes shift into four beat, unbalanced, blah blah.) Was this news to me? No. No, it was not.
I kinda knew going in that the canters would be draggy and sad.
Is your horse defective, that he can't canter?".
No. It's more of a me problem than a him problem. He offers draggy sad canter and I ... accept it?
I went anyway because the things I was practicing were not related to the draggy and sad canters. (Goals, I reiterate, were breathing and steering and not sobbing like an overtired toddler.) Waiting for the canters to not be draggy and sad before working on my own shit is dumb. I can work on my shit whether or not the canters are draggy and sad. So I did that.
But, now that I can (a little) breathe and steer and not-cry, maybe I should also work on other things, too... like non-draggy, non-sad canters? (Yes, yes, I've said I was going to work on this before, but this time I really mean it, for real. Lol.)
How might we get non-draggy, non-sad canters?
1. By doing more cantering. Nobody gets better at cantering by avoiding it. Yes, the work area is slightly non-level and that's a little scary. But it's not SUPER non-level and we have successfully cantered circles on it before, so the odds of us dying here are low.
Yes, the work area is currently covered in chest-high hay and that's not my favorite. The footing is obscured, but also it's the hayfield and not terribly treacherous. We will be able to manage.
Yes, my horse sees monsters and ghosts in the trees on the one side of the work area, leading to sudden and fraught accelerations away from said trees on occasion. That's a bit disconcerting but the fact that he doesn't do it in trot suggests that these monsters and ghosts are indeed illusory. Betcha that with repeated exposure, the too too solid flesh of them there monsters and ghosts will melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.
And, at the end of the day, if the cantering does not happen, there will be no improvement. So, I gotta canter.
This does, kinda, sound like a job for Big Girl Pants.
2. By doing the KIND of cantering needed for the test, which is Straight Lines and 20M Circles on flattish ground. Practice as you mean to go on. Cantering up hills is not scary but is ALSO not seen in dressage tests... so is of limited utility for these purposes.
It will not actually murder my horse to have to do like six 20M circles in canter (with a break halfway in between while I change directions) or to have to do a couple of polite straight-line canters where his shoulders and hips stay straight.
In fact, he can probably do several sets of this in every outing, allowing for reasonable breaks during the ride.
Also I know how to assess his "ab deflation" when we're doing difficult lateral work. I know how to judge and build his fitness for that shit and I know how to keep him within reasonable limits while still pressing for some growth. This is the SAME THING as that, only for cantering.
I do know how to do this and I need to ignore the voice of Glenda Jo yelling off the porch into my head Don't you kids be runnin' them ponies! because that was 1981. In 1981, I was a long-legged stick of a thing with perfect balance and no fear and an entirely different little grey pony. In these our modern times, I am not runnin' the pony, I am training the pony. It's different, not the least because runnin' the pony was fun and this is scary and hard.
Big Girl Pants, kiddo. It's time for Big Girl Pants.
3. By assessing the (draggy, sad) canters I have and then taking steps to improve them. Right now I have "This canter is shit" and that lacks detail and precision. What is lacking? How can I make it better? In refusing to accept shit canters and trying to buff the canters I do have, I will get better at telling what's wrong with the canters and fixing them. I gotta stop passively riding shit canters and instead try to do things to fix the shit parts. Bird ain't gonna fix himself. He doesn't know what kind of canter I want.
Honestly, for all he can tell, shit low-effort draggy canters are fine. I ask, he does that, I stop asking and leave him alone. Far as he knows, he's done complied with the ask else I'd still be asking.
These were the thoughts I had, following the schooling show of doom outing. So after work last night, I went out and tried to do more canter work in a productive way. It went fairly well and I have some "fix the canter" things that can help remediate a broken canter. So that was useful except that now I am starting to think of this as Remedial Cantering (like, long ago, there was Remedial Jogging). There's going to be heaping plates of Remedial Cantering. Yum.
I kinda knew going in that the canters would be draggy and sad.
Is your horse defective, that he can't canter?".
No. It's more of a me problem than a him problem. He offers draggy sad canter and I ... accept it?
I went anyway because the things I was practicing were not related to the draggy and sad canters. (Goals, I reiterate, were breathing and steering and not sobbing like an overtired toddler.) Waiting for the canters to not be draggy and sad before working on my own shit is dumb. I can work on my shit whether or not the canters are draggy and sad. So I did that.
But, now that I can (a little) breathe and steer and not-cry, maybe I should also work on other things, too... like non-draggy, non-sad canters? (Yes, yes, I've said I was going to work on this before, but this time I really mean it, for real. Lol.)
How might we get non-draggy, non-sad canters?
1. By doing more cantering. Nobody gets better at cantering by avoiding it. Yes, the work area is slightly non-level and that's a little scary. But it's not SUPER non-level and we have successfully cantered circles on it before, so the odds of us dying here are low.
Yes, the work area is currently covered in chest-high hay and that's not my favorite. The footing is obscured, but also it's the hayfield and not terribly treacherous. We will be able to manage.
Yes, my horse sees monsters and ghosts in the trees on the one side of the work area, leading to sudden and fraught accelerations away from said trees on occasion. That's a bit disconcerting but the fact that he doesn't do it in trot suggests that these monsters and ghosts are indeed illusory. Betcha that with repeated exposure, the too too solid flesh of them there monsters and ghosts will melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.
And, at the end of the day, if the cantering does not happen, there will be no improvement. So, I gotta canter.
This does, kinda, sound like a job for Big Girl Pants.
2. By doing the KIND of cantering needed for the test, which is Straight Lines and 20M Circles on flattish ground. Practice as you mean to go on. Cantering up hills is not scary but is ALSO not seen in dressage tests... so is of limited utility for these purposes.
It will not actually murder my horse to have to do like six 20M circles in canter (with a break halfway in between while I change directions) or to have to do a couple of polite straight-line canters where his shoulders and hips stay straight.
In fact, he can probably do several sets of this in every outing, allowing for reasonable breaks during the ride.
Also I know how to assess his "ab deflation" when we're doing difficult lateral work. I know how to judge and build his fitness for that shit and I know how to keep him within reasonable limits while still pressing for some growth. This is the SAME THING as that, only for cantering.
I do know how to do this and I need to ignore the voice of Glenda Jo yelling off the porch into my head Don't you kids be runnin' them ponies! because that was 1981. In 1981, I was a long-legged stick of a thing with perfect balance and no fear and an entirely different little grey pony. In these our modern times, I am not runnin' the pony, I am training the pony. It's different, not the least because runnin' the pony was fun and this is scary and hard.
Big Girl Pants, kiddo. It's time for Big Girl Pants.
3. By assessing the (draggy, sad) canters I have and then taking steps to improve them. Right now I have "This canter is shit" and that lacks detail and precision. What is lacking? How can I make it better? In refusing to accept shit canters and trying to buff the canters I do have, I will get better at telling what's wrong with the canters and fixing them. I gotta stop passively riding shit canters and instead try to do things to fix the shit parts. Bird ain't gonna fix himself. He doesn't know what kind of canter I want.
Honestly, for all he can tell, shit low-effort draggy canters are fine. I ask, he does that, I stop asking and leave him alone. Far as he knows, he's done complied with the ask else I'd still be asking.
These were the thoughts I had, following the schooling show of doom outing. So after work last night, I went out and tried to do more canter work in a productive way. It went fairly well and I have some "fix the canter" things that can help remediate a broken canter. So that was useful except that now I am starting to think of this as Remedial Cantering (like, long ago, there was Remedial Jogging). There's going to be heaping plates of Remedial Cantering. Yum.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-14 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-15 02:19 pm (UTC)He's not frantic. He can, if asked, buff up a shit canter into a nicer canter with some ab engagement and roundness and hinds up underneath him. That's pretty encouraging because with horses that aren't quite there yet, it's really tough to fix a shit canter from WITHIN the canter -- more often it's go back to trot and fix the trot and try again. But he's totally able to fix a shit canter from WITHIN the canter, which is pretty cool. Go Birb!
He does tire out quickly (this is a new thing for him, obviously he's not going to be GOOD at it yet) but he knows what to do when asked and can actually do it for a bit. (Balance still lost in corners or changes of bend, but it's a process. On a straight line or a circle, he can hold it together until there's a change. And that's fair.)
I'm getting a bit more confident about diagnosing failure. Like... inside shoulder has dropped or hinds are strung out or abs insufficiently engaged. Along with that, I am getting better about picking the right thing to try to fix so that the rest of it comes online. Like... I can often find the most important thing to triage and I have some idea of how to triage it. I'm not instant, it's like five strides of shit canter to get it fixed, but this is a start.
In totally obvious "discovery" items, I've also found that doing more canter, like a shitbucket more, makes it so that there is "less going on" than before. Like, there's extra attention span for things like "evaluate shit canter" and "apply aids to fix shit canter" because I can semi-automate things like "riding the canter" and "steering in canter". Things like "omg so much motion, I can't even" stops being such a problem. Probably there should be more cantering in the lives of most adult ammie riders, like, a lot more. It'd solve a lot of issues. I cannot be the only one out there scarred with the memory of Don't be runnin' them ponies.
Bonus win: Bird does not think canter is exciting and rare anymore. It's work time, not Jesus Take The Wheel time, not "Whee, I can loaf along and playspook at shit" time. His previous minimalist effort is no longer sufficient and he's been remarkably workmanlike about the whole thing. Good boy.
Bonus win: guess where it's level-est, thus where I have trampled a 20M canter circle track in the hay... the spooky corner of doom. We're wearing a lot of the shine off the spooky corner of doom in the process. Lol.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-19 02:23 am (UTC)