An Ideal Day

I'm sure that many of us have ideas of what our ideal day(s) would like like. There are so many things that I think would make up an ideal day. A beach in Greece with a Mimosa would certainly be an ideal day for example ;) This past Saturday though was the most ideal day, especially horse wise, that I've had recently.

To start off I got to sleep in and then had some of my homemade cold brew coffee with my favorite vegan creamer. I pulled Youtube up on my tv via ChromeCast and watched a bunch of riding videos.

I had a delicious lunch and then took a break to bring the Vegetable out for a walk. Around 12:30 I headed to H's barn for a Janet Foy clinic! What's really cool about this barn and these clinics with Janet is that it's a really small audience and most of the people watching are also riding. I think I was actually the only auditor on Saturday. They aren't advertised beyond an occasional Facebook post by the owner (H's trainer) and with the small number of people watching (2-5) every time I've been there Janet really interacts with everyone.

The other thing that makes it fun is that this barn has the highest concentration of upper level riders in my area. Around here there aren't many people riding above 3rd level but on Saturday I watched two riders that were competing at Prix St. George, one at 4th, and one that was training Grand Prix movements on her baby horse that still isn't showing at that level. She did a couple of PERFECT one tempis and I got to watch as they introduced canter pirouettes, and worked on getting better piaffe and passage.

Ignore my inability to get a good canter picture, this pair was AMAZING!

H was the last ride of the day on her pony and it was really great because they worked on stuff that I can (for the most part) do even if we're not as good or consistent at it yet. They focused a lot on straightness since he's wiggly and then did some lateral work and ended with counter canter. H did a great job and it was great to be able to learn from Janet while watching someone riding at a similar level to me :)

Hungry pony after a great ride :)

I'd worn my riding clothes and went out to ride my pony directly from the clinic, after stopping for my favorite Starbucks drink (which I got to use my free drink stars for!) and stopping at Chipotle for dinner.

I got to the barn and the weather was so perfect that I decided to ride outside. I've been using the extra oomf from riding outside to really work on canter since Katai doesn't keep trying to quit on me. I really focused on maintaining the rhythm in the canter and getting it slowed down while maintaining the jump and longer stride length. I also did my 5-10 minutes of sitting trot and started to feel like I was actually getting somewhere. After another little walk break I did some walk/canter and canter/trot/canter transitions. She did so well! She was more hot about the walk/canter on Saturday and was launching more. I'm curious to check with Jane to see if it's good launching (powerful and engaged) or if she's launching so that she doesn't have to step under and carry herself up into the transition. As it was, since I didn't know if it was good or bad I just giggled and carried on. The canter/trot/canters across the diagonal were beautiful as well! She did fewer trot steps and maintained her rhythm better. Plus we got the correct lead every time!

These gifs aren't from Saturday and she's been getting better and better outside so I'll need to get some new footage soon but I realized that I'd never shared these.

The trot is getting so much bigger and more uphill! (I was pushing her sideways in the second one trying to get her off my left leg) 

Since she did harder work and spent a lot more time in canter along with needing to work harder with the uneven terrain I kept it shorter so our total ride was more like 35 minutes than 45 but that was still an improvement so I'll take it!

Slowly but surely getting more strength at the canter :)

It was an amazing, relaxing, but productive horse focused day :)

June Goals Recap and July Goals

June Goals Recap:

Practice More Lateral Work: Meh, we did start working on shoulder in again and I have been making sure to do lateral work each ride. The problem is that I'll do something like leg yield a couple of times to the right and then because I'm struggling I just switch to the other side. I need to do more (not drill but more) and just keep practicing or I'll never get how to do it.

Continue With Trailer Loading Practice: Meh again. I did some work, then we had horrible heat, then horrible bugs, and then (very unfortunately) Jane's young horse needed veterinary attention and stayed at the clinic for a few days which mean that the trailer stayed there with her. Bugs and heat are excuses but not bad ones and it's been tough to be motivated when I knew it would be over two months until I'm going to show again.

Practice Other Show Skills: We did a bit better here. I've been working with Katai and the wash stall/hose as you've seen. I've also been more consistently working with her with bug lotion, the spray bottle and other gunk. I need to do more work with the bridle number and I need to try a different way of braiding but mostly it's still been tough to be really motivated to do much work with this stuff since I have so much time.

July Goals:

Ride Longer: As I mentioned in my new and improved 2017 goals, I discovered that I've been averaging around 20-25 minute rides including warmup and cool down. Now that I'm riding more often (4-5 days a week at a minimum up from the 2-3 I was doing) it's time to increase the duration. To accomplish this I'm going to start riding with a timer. I don't need to absolutely hold myself to the time on the timer for every ride (If Katai does really difficult work or does something fantastic I'll end earlier) but at least I'll have more awareness of how often I'm cutting rides short. Both Jane and I want the majority of my rides to be 45ish minutes including warm up and cool down. Of course I'm not just going to start riding her 45 minutes each ride for 4-5 rides per week but we are going to start working our way up there.

Continue Outdoor Rides: Recently I've really been enjoying riding in the grassy area outside the barn since, in part, makes Katai enough more forward that it's easier to work on her canter rather than in the arena where she'd rather quit. I want to continue to ride out there and also start to take her down the road. I may also see if I can ride in the neighbor's arena again as well. I have a good stretch goal for the show in August so I need to put in the work to get there and getting Katai comfortable outside is one big step :)

Practice, Practice, Practice (or Sitting Trot): This goal is about not avoiding what's hard, instead I just need to do more hours of practice so that it becomes easy! Primarily right now that's the lateral work and the sitting trot but of course it could be anything else haha. Sitting trot is harder for me than posting right now and I feel like I'm going to hurt Katai's back so I don't do it. Instead, Jane want's me to do it for 5-10 minutes per ride so that I have plenty of chances to work on it but don't over do it. So far since my last lesson I have practiced it for that amount of time every ride and now I just need to keep it up through the month. If I do that, by August I'll be so much better! Of course this could also include doing more rides outside, trailer loading, lateral work, and practicing our medium gaits.

QuietRide

Close enough...

This has been a bit of a quiet week for rides. A couple of weeks ago it was the heat, then we had a 5 ride (or 4 ride one lunge) week and now this week it's probably going to end up at 4. This week it's more because I've been focused on other things.

I've needed to do this for awhile but I was sort of stuck in my winter routine of work/home/barn and didn't feel like doing more than that. I've pushed myself to do more outside of the barn this week though and it was a good break. On Monday I just took the evening off riding and then on Wednesday after work I went out to check out a vegan donut shop.

A small sample of their vegan menu.
Not shown, my maple donut or the Sriracha/peanut butter donut 

Unfortunately I didn't think to get pictures but my vegan maple donut was spectacular. Then on Thursday after work I went to the Mall of America with my sister. We got drinks, food, and did some shopping.

Mini story break here. I've had and consistently worn the same sandals for the last 19 years. Very sadly they gave up finally last week leaving me walking home with on bare foot. I wisely decided it was time to get another pair of sandals especially since I wanted something to wear for pony cup next week.

If you want the most comfortable sandals in the world
that will last forever try Speedo

I did manage to find a very comfortable pair of sandals but they just aren't the same as my favorite pair so my heart is still a bit broken ;)

Both days are typically Katai's days off so it was just the fact that I felt a bit burnt out on Monday and took that day off that will mean I have fewer rides this week. At any rate, it was needed and I'm feeling more motivated again after my mini break. Luckily it's just in time for the holiday weekend!

This weekend is going to be awesome because I'm going to watch H ride in a Janet Foy clinic. She's riding her pony cup pony in the morning and then her pony in the afternoon. I'll probably only be able to make one of her rides but I'm hoping to see a few other people ride as well. I may also check out my favorite tack shop (which is over in that area) because it looks like they're having a great Independence Day sale.

On Monday I'm "working" from home. Even my boss has said that there's unlikely to be anything happening so I'm going to be pretty free beyond checking my email periodically for emergent issues. Then of course I have Tuesday off so it will be almost a 4 day weekend. I'm back in the office for Wednesday and Thursday and then off on Friday when I'll be flying to Pony Cup.

I'm so excited!! 

Relationships

When I read Emma's post and some of the responses to it I knew that I wanted to do a post about this. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot both from the perspective of what I need and how Katai matches that and from the perspective of what I would do differently “next time”.

However, I sat down to type this up and I struggled. I’ve drafted something at least 3-4 times now but it never really captured how I honestly feel about this and that is that Katai is perfect.

Sure I can wish and dream for something “better”, after all the grass is always greener, but ultimately Katai is the perfect horse for me which made this either the longest post or the shortest post. Instead I’ve decided to share a little about how I got here.

 When I chose Katai I was in a very different place. I had found early in life what my limit was and unfortunately ended up with a lot of fear thanks to my first horse. I had conquered maybe 70% of that fear by 2012 when I got my first pony as an adult. Myshla was an incredible pony who was calm, quiet, cute, cuddly, and nearly a perfect kids pony. The only issue is that she was very forward and hadn’t been very well trained so she wasn’t very responsive to halts or half halts which made her feel a bit like a run away. The fact that she was a run away in the body of a small pony/teddy bear made it fun for me to work with her instead of scary.

When I first got her I was finally putting aside peer pressure and getting what I wanted which was a pony. She was the first horse I had after Sora and Sora had taken me on a journey that was way off the beaten path. In many ways Myshla helped me find my way back to riding dressage but even though she did that for me I quickly realized that she wasn’t going to be comfortable as my dressage pony, it just wasn’t her thing and she wasn’t built for it. She was such a perfect kids pony that I decided to find her a home with a kid and find myself a different pony.

 Now (while I wouldn’t change this for the world since it would have meant not finding Katai) I maybe would have done things differently but it felt important to have a dressage pony prospect asap. So with my very tiny budget I started looking. I found Katai’s ad but kept convincing myself to skip over it. I’d had my fill of green horses with Sora and Katai was a bit shorter and possibly not as athletic as I wanted. Now I maybe would have kept Myshla for longer and saved up some additional funds but at that time I decided to go check out Katai.

That’s when something really weird happened, I went to see her and didn’t fall in love with her. I actually felt sort of meh about her and while her size felt better than I thought it would (she was at least a couple inches taller than Myshla) and I liked her brain she was also very resistant, scared, reluctant to be caught or handled, and pretty much feral. Even then I had a pretty good picture of my limits and I just wasn’t confident that I’d be able to successfully train her. I still bought her, or actually traded for her, and after one failure and multiple hours got her on the trailer and home where she proceeded to completely ignore all of the electric fencing and escape to the neighbors.

The first two years where really, really tough and I thought a lot about giving up. Ultimately what made me keep her was that there wasn’t going to be a market for a young, untrained pony and I still saw so much potential in her. My budget was still very low at that point so hiring a professional just wasn’t an option. Eventually I got through the worst of it and was able to move her to a dressage barn (with J) which felt like the right track. Now if I could go back and change anything it would just be to not ever bring her to that barn or take lessons on her with J. I learned from J but it caused issues with Katai that we’re still dealing with to this day. Things went backwards for a bit and then we started to make progress again.

Overall it was another 2 years of struggle before things really started to improve significantly with Jane (plus Katai hit that magical age of 8 which I’m sure helped). However, after 4.5 years of blood, sweat, and tears I can say that my pony is perfect for me.

She’s still tricky, she’s still very forward, still gets tense, still frustrates me, still has meltdowns about things that just shouldn’t be a big deal after 4.5 years but I adore her and she’s good for me. Even though I can think/dream about what’s next and I’m sure Katai won’t be my last pony, I also can’t imagine finding any horse or pony that I would enjoy more than I’m enjoying Katai. Plus, she's still more talented at this dressage thing than I am and I'm still learning from her so it doesn't make sense to look elsewhere even if I weren't completely in love with her.

She’s just the perfect mix of bold, funny, spicy, forward, lazy, powerful, intelligent, cute, naughty for me to have fun and feel challenged but not ever feel scared. She also doesn’t have huge movement that makes me feel like I need to spend tons of hours at the gym. I work out to be a better rider for her, but it’s not another full time job. I never climb on her and wonder if she’s going to be naughty but I’m also not bored when I ride and she always challenges me in a good way. I just can't imagine a better pony for me :)

Goals, Mid-Year Update

I figured it was a good time to check in on my yearly goals and possible adjust as needed!

Goals for 2017

Increase Blogging Again 

Buy a Trailer

Trailer EVERYWHERE

Ride in Another Dressage Clinic

2nd Level Goals

Ok, so I'm going to keep the goal to increase blogging but that's about it. Honestly these just don't reflect much about what I want to improve this year and since I wasn't able to purchase a trailer a few of these are out.

I had good intentions with the 2nd level goals that were more about understanding and working towards the movements that make up a second level test than actually being able to successfully make it through a second level test in any sort of smooth, ridable sort of way. However, not really sure it's useful at this point at least not this way.

I've also become much better at making goals since my pony is actually rideable and can, you know, actually complete a good 20 meter trot and canter circle. I've spent some time outlining the things I actually feel like we need to work on and rather than keeping them in the background and limping through the rest of the year with these goals I figured it was time to clear the slate and start fresh.

Remainder of 2017 Goals

Build Katai's Strength:

This involves a few things including continuing to challenge Katai's balance with things like counter canter, walk/canter/walk transitions, trot poles, varying terrain, 10 meter canter circles 

Another thing it includes is riding more and longer. I've discovered that I'm only really riding for about 15-(maybe)20ish minutes each time I ride! I had videoed a couple of rides and found that including my walk warmup, walk breaks, and cool down I was in the saddle for about 25-30 minutes typically which just isn't long enough at this point. It's not my physical stamina that makes me cut it that short, it's more mental but I need to figure this out so that I'm riding closer to 40 minutes for at least 1-2 of those rides each week. I've really gotten my consistency up and have been keeping it there but now it's time to increase the duration of my rides.

Speaking of varying terrain I'd REALLY like to make more opportunities to ride outside. Jane has one small hill on her property and if I ride down the road I can ride up and down the banks on each side in some places. At the very least it's a good mental break from the ring but hopefully it's just one more way to strengthen the pony.

Show Experience:

As mentioned previously I'm planing at least two more shows this year. My main goals for these shows are to improve Katai's relaxation and rideability. I want to continue to be able to relax and have more fun, and I'm really hoping that she'll start to calm down more at the trailer and when I handwalk her around.

The smaller part of this goal is that I'd like to continue to practice my grooming and show prep including learning how to braid better and getting Katai more white and clean for the next show. This involves more desensitization to spray bottles and coat "products" for Katai so that she can let me do this especially when we arrive at the show grounds so that I don't just decide to throw up my hands and show with green spots on her legs.

Such grubby legs for this show!

"Fix" the Walk:

All I want is for Katai to relax in the walk. It's my fault that she's tense since she doesn't realize that walk is anything other than a way to get to trot. I just haven't practiced a medium or working walk enough so she's either on a loose rein or I'm just shortening the reins to trot. 

More consistency with riding a medium walk and practicing other movements at the walk should be all we need here. Now I just need to do it (see also, riding more and longer above)

Honest Connection to the Outside Rein:

We're pretty much there with the left rein but not with the right. She's starting to get it at the trot but at the canter if I put any contact on the right rein she trots. Again, I just need to practice and actually do it. This is sort of also connected to my loose hip on the right which means my leg turns out from the hip so my knee points out which also contributes to her bulging out through that shoulder. 

Latteral Work:

As mentioned I struggle with this but instead of practicing I just give up. I need to just practice, practice, practice. (see also, riding more and longer above)

Change it Up:

Originally part of what I loved about ponies was their accessibility and wanted/planned to do more different things. Without a trailer I'm certainly limited in what I can do beyond dressage right now but I have been spending more time riding outside and want more practice riding down the road. 

Retail Rewards

Awhile ago I put together a plan for a show outfit for me and Katai that looked something like this.

Of course I no longer have brown tack but I have almost everything else in this picture, albeit slightly different brands or styles, except a grey pad. Grey saddle pads are SO tough to find especially in dressage style and pony size. When I first looked I decided to get a Mattes euro pad since I have one and I love the size, styling, and quality and it looks really nice on Katai. However, since Mattes pads are pretty pricy I wanted to get one as a reward for  good show, or sort of feel like we'd earned it.

This past show felt that way to me so I went ahead and ordered a show pad. Except, they had free shipping if you spent over a certain amount and since two pads would get me over that amount I decided to go for it. Now I'll have three Mattes pads including my navy with the pink fleece, the
grey show pad, and another one that will be a surprise :)

Not sure if I've ever shared a clear picture of this pad
but I love it so much and it's held up so well

I also got some much needed summer stuff from Riding Warehouse. I picked out a fly sheet, fly boots, salt block, and I've really wanted to try Equifuse after reading a few good reviews so I decided to try that as well. They also have such cheap shirts that I got a couple of those since you can never have too many summer riding shirts.

I do have to say that this is only my second experience with Riding Warehouse and my first wasn't wonderful. It wasn't their fault, just a combination of a faulty pair of breeches and a show shirt I really disliked. Luckily they do have an amazing return policy so I was able to send both things back. I was anxious to try them out again since I've heard so many great things and my impression was much better this time around. My order shipped right away, arrived quickly, and everything was exactly what I expected. I look forward to future orders with them!

The Next Step: Lesson Recap 6/20

No new riding pictures so here are some adorable puppy pictures

This was the weirdest I've felt during and after a lesson in a long time. I went into it feeling sort of emotional and vulnerable. Still not sure what's up with me lately but I think it's a combination of things from my previous post. At any rate, it probably wasn't a good time to bring up show plans for the rest of the year but I need to at some point so I asked Jane.

To make a short story shorter, we're sticking with Training level for the rest of the year. She's completely right and I don't quite know why I've been pushing for 1st. I'm totally in this for fun and I want to build a strong foundation with Katai which means making sure she's comfortable at shows and I'm comfortable riding her at shows before we increase the difficulty. I've mentioned before how goals turn me into a lunatic and this is one example since after we discussed this I felt completely defeated and just completely lost all motivation.

Luckily the beginning of the lesson was just about getting Katai moving forward, stepping under behind, and getting her rhythmic. For the past month or so our warmup has been to start with serpentines and get her bending but now we're in a different place (already) so using the full arena and getting her cruising is the answer. We also worked on changing the rein length at the walk and getting her to stretch down and then come back up without a pony melt down. Happily the answer on this is to just do it many times since she just doesn't know that sometimes the correct answer is a medium walk.

Doggy trifecta, tennis ball, rawhide, and sun spot

We got such nice work that I started to realize what a ninny I was being and was feeling better by our first real walk break. At that point Jane brought up that we were going to work on walk/canter/walk transitions!

Talk about an emotional roller coaster...

I had been planning a post on how I've been practicing these with Katai occasionally on the lunge. It felt very "exercising the Black Stallion at midnight" since at that point we hadn't even talked about walk/canter transitions. I just hoped that by introducing them there she'd understand them when we went to do them under saddle. On Sunday this past week she had NAILED them and gave me one, textbook perfect, transition on each side.

I mentioned this to Jane but neither of us were confident about what we'd get. I was betting on these transitions making Katai hot and explosive and tense and I think that Jane felt like we'd get that or just lots of running trot. However, Katai surprised both of us and stayed extremely rideable, mostly waited until I gave her the cue to transition, didn't run into the trot before the transition, and I was able to keep her fairly soft in the poll in the downward transitions.

Yeah, he's not spoiled at all...

Of course they weren't perfect. There were some trot steps, some tightness, some rushing in the walk, and going to the left she really struggled to step down into walk without some running in the trot first but they were really, really, really good for her first tries. Most importantly to me she stayed with me and didn't get explosive but she also did some really decent walk/trot/walks in each direction.

We ended on that but for some reason I still just felt sort of dull. I KNOW what a big deal that was but I was just struggling to be happy about it in the moment. Katai got lots of pets, a peppermint, and Jane and I talked more about the show schedule. She's going to look at the calendar and figure out when she can drive me. It sounds like there's a show at the middle of August that she's bringing her young horse to.

It will be interesting since her young horse hasn't shown before or even been off property much and this will be Katai's fourth show so two noisy baby mares. I'll be bringing earplugs and taking lots of Advil I'm sure haha. I'm hoping I can do at least one more show after that. The show in August is rated so my options will be Training 1 and 2 again. Hopefully that will be good enough that we could consider doing Training 3 at a schooling show later this year.

This is from last year (Veggie is two from the left)
but we've been doing more dog parks this year

Again, I'm really not unhappy with where we're at. I'm actually so, so, so happy and having so much fun. I love my time at the barn, I've been so motivated to go, and this past week I've been to the barn 5 days in a row and rode 4 of those days which would have been unheard of not that long ago. It's just this other stuff that's coloring my time at the barn and I think because I don't feel like I can make progress there I'm pushing that much harder at riding.

I'm working on perspective and finding other things that I can obsess and make goals about such as getting the Vegetable to the dog park every weekend :) Also, I want to mention that even though my last couple of posts have been a bit whiny and negative that's not really how my last couple of weeks have gone. It's just been a small part of how I'm feeling recently  and happened, in this case, to come up during my lesson.

Life Update

Trying to remember this on the daily

I also have a post about my lesson this week that I want to get typed up but I felt like I wanted to do this post first to catch up.

This has been a weird year for me in a couple of ways. The weather has been odd and it was a long, cold spring, then we had extreme (for us) heat. Now for the next 7-10 days it looks like our highs will be in the upper 60s with rain which is cold for us at this time of year. The weather has been so bipolar that it's tough to make plans or get in any sort of rhythm.

It's also been sort of a weird year for me personally. The weather certainly hasn't helped but on top of that I think I've felt a bit aimless. I've always had something like 7 big items on a list that I wanted to accomplish. For so long they felt so far away and I was constantly striving for them. Now I've got something like 5 of the seven checked off (and those are better than I imagined they'd be) but the two things left which haven't been prioritized to this point feel really important.

I'm struggling a bit with where to go from here since it feels like one of those things (a relationship) isn't something I can necessarily achieve with hard work and I suck at sitting back and letting things happen. It's also been really tough to still be alone and I've been struggling a lot with it recently especially as more of my friends fall off the map as they get more involved with kids and their spouses and have less time for doing things with friends.

The other thing is moving away from MN and it's always felt weirdly dependent on the relationship being accomplished first. Not sure why, maybe I want to have that support person before I leave home or maybe it's that it would be a lot easier financially. Either way, while I have a plan to accomplish this it's still a bit further out and the only thing I can do now is prioritize paying debt and figure out where I'll want to look for jobs when/if I decide to take action on my plan.

Both exciting and sad to think of leaving
this beautiful, green paradise.

Other little things have put me in a weird place as well. I love my job so much that I can't imagine leaving it to move (and yet don't want to spend the rest of my life living in MN), same with Jane and my current barn. However, Jane is going to likely be retiring from boarding at some time in the near future and while I hope she'd still teach lessons that's a bit up in the air. She's allowing some of her things (like her truck) to come to the end of their life and so while it's amazing that she's willing to trailer me places for shows I'm also really sensitive to the fact that every mile she trailers me is a mile she can't trailer her own horse to a clinic. I prioritized paying bills this year over buying a trailer but now I'm sort of in a place where I feel stuck and can't do as much as I'd like.

I was really looking forward to trailering to shows with my fellow boarder, K, but now very sadly and a bit suddenly she's needing to make a tough decision about retiring her horse. It's not my story to tell and I don't want to share the details but it's tough on everyone at the barn especially since her mare is the nicest, sweetest thing on the face of the earth. At the very least there isn't much hope or any plans for her to show with her again.

I'm certainly not posting this to complain, mainly it's a post about how everything is going so well (other than feeling a bit lonely haha) that I'm just feeling a little lost without all of my goals and wants. Also, things with Katai are going great! I'm slowly improving my riding and Katai is continuing to be more ridable. I can't believe the difference in her quiet, sweet, well behaved attitude recently. She tries so hard every. single. ride. and I never wonder what I'm going to get when I show up at the barn.

I'm also continuing to get healthier and fitter and still really loving being vegan. My job is great and I have a really fun (they aren't always but this one will be!) work trip at the end of July for a week that I'm looking forward to. I'm SO excited about going to Pony Cup again this year and can't believe that I'll be flying out two weeks from tomorrow. I'm also rapidly paying off debt and still managed a (well deserved) small shopping binge for things that I'd told myself I could get after my first successful show with Katai. I can't wait to get that stuff and will share it in a post soon!

Overall it's all so good but I've just been struggling a bit recently and since it's been reflected in how I feel about my rides and lessons and how much I'm blogging I figured I'd share.

TBT

I don't typically do these but I was looking for a specific picture (which I haven't found yet) and stumbled over these.

I started with a different blog about my Arab who was named Sora. I don't know that I've ever shared pictures of her on this blog although I know I've mentioned her a few times. She really was a once in a lifetime horse who, despite some pretty serious issues with spooking that made her a poor fit for me, I really loved. She unfortunately fell and broke her hip which was tragic. It was after that happened that I got Katai and switched over to this blog. As you can see, I've also changed a bit since these pictures were taken :)

That's my sister and her horse, Jackson, in the background

Also weird to see the barn still standing in the background of this one

She was an amazing horse and I miss her but Katai and I are much better together. Looking at these photos though it's tough not to wonder what we could have accomplished if not for her accident.

Rhythm: Lesson Recap 6/18

My favorite view :)

First, as I was typing in the title to this I realized that we're nearly half way through the year. Where has it gone?!? It seems like just yesterday that it was December.

Anyway, back to the lesson recap. My lesson yesterday (which was rescheduled from last Tuesday because of the heat) was amazing! It was another one where all the hard work we've been doing paid off.

To start off we were unsure what Katai's mood would be like since apparently she'd been horrid for Jane that morning. Because of that we started off with an extended warmup with a few laps of the ring at the trot in either direction (after lots of walk) and then circles before we added in serpentines. It paid off and Katai's stride length was great and I was able to keep her really pushing from behind for the most part.

For this lesson Jane was talking about getting and keeping her "soft at the poll" rather than talking specifically about round or bend and it really helped me. I can feel when she get's tight but sometimes I don't do anything about it because everything else is going well. This lesson, by focusing on that feeling rather than some of the pieces that come from it I was able to keep her much softer and more through over her back. We even had some really nice transitions!

I think the tough thing is that I know it's leg before hand and that I need to always push her forward into the contact. The problem is that being a greenie myself when it comes to dressage means that sometimes I'm trying to do that when Katai is so tight through the poll that it doesn't do anything productive and that's when she starts to rush. Being tight through the poll is something that is so normal for Katai that I almost always need to get her to give first and then push her forward with MANY reminders to give along the way. It's not that I can't do that, it's that I didn't always know I was supposed to since to me that's hand/rein first and then pushing forward and that's certainly not what the books/clinicians/experts tell you. At least not in the black and white way that I was thinking about it :)

Next we worked on shoulder in again. It's been awhile since we tackled this (shows and back to basics) so I was pretty rusty. However, the skills I've gained in the meantime were extremely helpful and with some coaching from Jane I was able to much more effectively control the rhythm and be more correct with my rein aids. Well, at least to the right. To the left it was a hot mess that only got slightly better before we quit but we did identify some of what I was doing wrong which means that I know what to work on.

Hanging out with the Vegetable in the backyard
enjoying our now beautiful weather :)

Finally we went to canter. To the right Katai did fairly well and had a decently slow rhythm with long strides (this was her tougher side a month ago) but she was struggling to the left. In that direction it was all quick footfalls and rushing. She even got bolty on me once, then broke, and when I asked for canter again all I could get was a trot. Jane got really quiet and I thought I'd really messed up (typically she doesn't get quiet) but once we took a walk break (after I finally got some canter) we talked and apparently it was an AMAZING trot. Jane said that she couldn't believe that Katai could produce that with her tiny body and now if we could only get half that trot for her lengthenings :) At least we know it's in there somewhere!

It was great timing since one of my goals is to continue to practice the shoulder in (and other lateral work) and now I have more things to work on. It was also encouraging that Jane was really happy with my position (overall) and how effective I was with my seat. It wasn't that long ago that I would have been unable to control Katai's rhythm at the trot or canter and this lesson it felt easier and Jane said it looked much better and that she was happy with it. High praise coming from Jane!

Love

I've always kind of wondered if Katai likes me. Obviously it doesn't really matter but since she's my partner in this dressage journey I'd really like for her to enjoy her time with me. Often when I look at her she'll look a bit crabby so, while she whinnies to me as I drive up and walks up to me in the pasture, I've just assumed that she's not particularly fond of me.

Then I watched this video that I took to show Katai's progress with the hose and the wash rack. I can see here how connected she is to me and how, while she is looking for peppermints she's also looking to me for reassurance. So fun to be able to see this and to know that maybe she is sort of fond of me :)