resilience

One of the coolest things about Murray lately has been his resilience to pressure. Not all pressure. There are still plenty of things that are a hard no-go. But under saddle? There have been some major changes.

I will not be walking past that new fluffy arena footing nope nope nope

Let’s take my ride with Kate a couple of weeks ago as an example. Kate encouraged me to habituate Murray to a “1” of contact (i.e. some contact, never no contact), and to pillow my aids into him so that he doesn’t just shake them off in an effort to avoid whatever it is he wants to avoid. In the past, when I’ve tried to walk with any level of contact there’s been a whole lot of nooooooooooo eeeeeeeeeee hrrrrrrrrrrrrrr *pffft* *pffft* *pffft* (those are farts).

But in the three weeks since I rode with Kate, and the three rides since I had Megan over to help troubleshoot, there has been an alarming lack of squealing and bucking. And it’s not because I’ve caved and gone back to the floppy-reins-no-contact way of life. Nope, I’m holding on to those reins. Homeboy is just… okay with it.

who are you and what have you done with my horse

Then last week I rode with Megan, and she had me really push Murray forward but keep him in my hand the whole time. (Another thing that has previously cued bucking.) We got to that place where Murray is really forward but also kinda tense, but not yet unrideable (it involved a lot of outside rein, I’ll tell you about it later).  Megan talked me through riding that tense ball of dressage fury, all while mentally walking him back from the brink of explosion. The best part was that I could still retain the impulsion, connection, and correctness that I developed while in that high-energy place. And STILL no objections!

There are other things too. Walk-trot and trot-canter transitions that are (relatively) prompt and (somewhat) on the bit without falling apart or diving onto the forehand. Sitting into Murray without perching and anticipating badness. Keeping a lid on the Murray bottle. Good work and awesome rides are coming hand over fist right now. I literally cannot believe that I’m sitting on the same horse that I had a year ago.

casual reminder of May 2017

Part of me wonders if I could have gotten these results by riding this way earlier.

Part of me thinks, “maybe??”

But the other part, a bigger part, is not so sure. I’ll never know because I didn’t try, but I don’t think that resilience to pressure was something this horse really had in his repertoire before. His standard response to pressure was 1) run away, 2) go sideways, 3) run away more, 4) lie down (+/- velociraptor screams and bucking).

Something has shifted lately. I’m not sure exactly what it is. Maybe it’s the magic of the looming 1-0 (next year!). Maybe it’s the clicker training. Maybe it’s the long break we took. Maybe it’s the biomechanics changes. Maybe it’s my growing understanding of training paradigms. Maybe it’s everything. I don’t fucking know.

The resilience is awesome though. It means I can go for longer periods of hard but correct work before backing off. And it means I can work on managing things like bend and geometry instead of whether or not my horse is going to lose his ish at any given moment.

OH SHIT I FORGOT. The best part is that even when he is losing his ish over something — not a huge thing, but let’s say a baby turkey just flies into the arena while you’re trying to canter a circle — he comes right back to me! It’s not perfect, it’s not gorgeous, but it is rideable, and it’s a semblance of reasonable.

puppies >>> dressage (sometimes)

So. Resilience. I wish there was a recipe for it, but I don’t have one. If you have one, you should let me know what you did to get there and how you reward and foster that resilience. Because I’ve learned that it’s essential, and I want every horse ever to have it in spades.

xc schooling: this is not a negotiation

The thing that sucks about being an integral part of event organization/management is that you spend all this time making courses fun and rideable, and then you decorate them and make them all gorgeous and even more fun, and then you clean them all up before you get a chance to ride them. I mean, talk about unfair. So obviously I’m all over any opportunity to school the course when one comes up — especially right after the event, when the footing is still awesome!

Murray was hard to read for much of the time we were on course. He was super calm and mellow walking around, not jigging or spooking or pulling ahead of the group. Just walking around and enjoying the scenery. And that is awesome! I totally want ponito to be calm and mellow out there.

When we started warming up over the easy, mellow fences, Murray got a bit of pep in his step. He pulled me toward the little logs on the ground, and even some of the bigger ones.

Then we came to a fence that was a bit bigger, and a bit more like a cross country jump — a pretty standard log box, nothing too exciting. Just a bit different. And Murray was like “okay, okay, okay” right up to the base and then “WOAH NO WAY”. Which is really not that easy to ride, especially when you’re not in the best riding shape yourself.

So I got a little defensive and kicked Murray toward the smaller fences for more of  warm up. And in response he got pissed.

The problem with riding defensively (for me, at least) is that it means I get left waaay behind over the fences, and I can’t stick with the motion of the jump. I unfold the landing gear way too early, and end up slamming down on Murray’s back and/or face with every fence. Which is understandably unpleasant.

not how i want to be landing

But when your horse is being pulling you forward one moment and slamming on the brakes the next, it’s hard not to get defensive. And when he bucks and leaps and throws his head up so high he’s looking back at you between his ears well… you don’t really want to let go of those reins.

That is, of course, why I have a neck strap. I was just too stupid to think of it at first.

hello, mother!

We jumped back and forth over the log for a bit, with an unnecessary amount of accompanying antics. So I decided to leave the log box for later, when Murray was in a bit better mental space, and we headed up the hill to watch the prelim and training team tackle the down banks.

I had wanted to practice over one of the medium (probably 3′ drop?) banks, since Camelot often has one. But we just settled for watching and laying down in the grass instead.

When we got to the little BN/Novice banks, Murray was like “YES UP BANKS YES” and he was awesome! Then I turned him around to go down them and he was like “NO HELL NO”.

Long story short we tried easing him into it by going off the edges and just representing and representing and representing and following another horse and Murray just doubled down with Nope. I could feel him pushing his sides out against my leg further and further back from the lip of the bank, and could just tell that the conversation was getting less and less productive. It would have been different if there had been an even smaller bank to step down, but as it was I called it off. I knew it wasn’t going to get better, only worse.

So we moved on to the water. After which came Murray’s piece de resistance of NOPE.

look it’s just a little rainbow chevron! it’s awesome, okay Murray?!!

So there’s this new rainbow coop coming out of the water. And I’ll admit, it’s painted a little scarily for a pony. It’s probably a bit weird looking in their not-quite-full-color vision. And Murray was having NONE of it.

I walked him up to it, had him touch it, let him look over both sides of it. Then we trotted up to it and he was like “naw” pretty far out. So I cantered up to it and he was still like “nope.” We switched to the other side so he was going back to the group and he SCREECHED to a halt basically right on top of the fence. And then he did it AGAIN. And then I smacked him with my reins, gave him a good long runway, and got a quality, rhythmic canter going. And he stopped again.

Each time he stopped he was basically on top of it. Front feet touching the base board, nose right on top of it. He just didn’t want to jump it.

I’m not going to pretend I was giving him the perfect ride every time. But it was a good enough ride and a small enough fence that stopping on top of it was truly unnecessary.

a much more reasonable landing position! yay

This might be too much anthropomorphism, but it really felt like Murray was thinking “I don’t know if you recall, but I don’t have to do this anymore if I don’t want to.” Which is, unfortunately for him, not the case. I’m not going to ask him to do anything too crazy. And in response, he’s going to have to do what I ask.

We had this discussion once more about a bright orange table (think Home Depot if it were a highlighter), and then a small green and blue bunker. After the green and blue bunker there was a long gallop stretch, and Murray really took off and flattened out. And I think something clicked then — that cross country is the place where we do the jumping and the galloping and it’s not soooooooooooo bad out here after all.

We schooled the ditches with a good bit of success (it really was my fault for letting Murray point himself at a ditch I knew had just been filled with white gravel — I should have given him more of an opportunity to look at it first), and Murray started pulling me toward the fences again. I felt like we were finally in a good enough rhythm that I could get into a proper jumping position and stay out of his way, and in return he could use his body the way he wanted to.

We ended with the last few fences on the Novice course — a large hanging palm log on a gentle downhill, short gallop, then a pretty sharp left turn to a little coop. Murray cantered down to the palm log and felt so good that I just let him gallop on to the final fence. He slowed to a trot for a hot minute when he thought that I was going to ask him to jump the training or prelim fences backwards, but then I turned him onto that sharp left and he saw the coop and was like “oh super!” and trotted right up and over it.

Getting into that groove felt awesome! I just wish it hadn’t taken us 90 minutes to get there! Fingers crossed that with a few more jump lessons and another XC outing under our belt we get back to that place of rideability more quickly and can actually, you know, run a whole course.

xc schooling hot takes

I had the gall to take Murray cross country schooling in preparation for Camelot this weekend. It was… interesting.

doing like the humans do

Last time we schooled (at Fresno), Murray was super displeased in general and spent a lot of time bucking instead of cantering, screaming and kicking out after fences, and generally making the fact that something was wrong known to the world.

So I got the saddle checked and reflocked and we’ve jumped a few times since then. So I was relatively sure that Murray wasn’t in pain during this schooling. Just opinionated.

And sleepy. Apparently pony was very sleepy. He found a nice patch of grass and got ready to curl up.

ugh fine I’ll get back up

There were many invisible fences.

just little ones

And I rode some invisible drops.

I also totally failed to ride some real ones.

Murray can change his mind SO FAST. One second he’s like YES LETS DO THE DITCH I KNOW HOW TO DO THIS NOW. And the next….

It took us a while but we did get our ish together about 2/3 of the way through schooling. We solved some problems and I figured out how to actually ride my horse.

not like this, is the answer

So all in all a fun day! With an excellent, excellent media outcome!

angry pretzel

Poor Murray was very disturbed to be taken out of retirement once again and put back to work. When I got to his stall on Tuesday he was like “who are you? stranger danger. don’t touch me. go away.”

no touching. also, i don’t eat hay any more only GREEN PASTURE GRASS aka crack. also go away.

He settled reasonably well under saddle and was forward and happy trotting around on a loose rein for warm up. Once we got back to our pre-hiatus homework was when the objections came out.

Both Kate and my trainer recently emphasized the importance of correct walk-trot transitions recently. I am utterly awful about transitions, especially walk-trot transitions. I’m not strict about them, and Murray doesn’t like them. So he does weird shit when I ask for them, especially when I insist on some semblance of throughness during them, and I back off and go back to accepting crappy transitions.

I’m trying to insist on correctness in those transitions from the very start of the ride, and not have to work up to it quite so much. And that’s when the angry pretzel came out.

this pretzel

When I put my leg on without giving away the connection (okay fine I’ll be honest, throwing it away) Murray responds by

1. moving his haunches over
2. going sideways
3. slowing down (are you freaking kidding me??!)
4. going sideways the other way
5. making his steps even tinier
6. stopping all together

It’s kindof a “pick any and all that apply” kind of situation. And Murray gets so tense and balled up that it feels like all of his fascial lines are tangled up inside his body and there’s no clear path let him put one foot in front of the other. It’s not a great feeling. Can’t feel great for Murray, either.

I unilaterally decided that we wouldn’t quit until Murray was back on board with the leg == go part of the equation.

AWW LOOK WHO IS LEARNING ABOUT CONNECTION

It took a while. Like, a real while. Murray used a bunch of environmental factors as excuses in addition to his standard angry pretzel moves. The wind rustled some trees outside the arena so he farted and bucked and squealed and ran away. Trainer was lunging a baby horse and the whip cracked and so he scooted and inverted.

And I just tried to not give up on asking correctly. Do you know how many ways there are for me to enable Murray’s crappy trot transitions? LIKE MILLIONS. THERE ARE MILLIONS OF WAYS FOR ME TO FORK THOSE UP.

So it was all “keep sitting up” and “don’t give up the leg until you get the right response” and “keep your fingers closed” and “don’t let your core get floppy” and then, and then, and then.

chipping away at sucking less

But you know what the cool thing about being incredibly, insanely, pedantically consistent in how you ask your horse to do transitions? The transitions get a lot better. Noticeably so, in even a couple of days.

On Wednesday, there was only one angry pretzel sideways moment. By Friday, there was no angry pretzel. Just a very slightly evasive pony with average, mostly-forward movement.

Of course, I slipped back into some old bad habits in the process (pitching forward, letting my legs slide back). So now I have another thing to add to my list of what not to do while trying to nail these transitions.

flat out

Flat out both describes the hours I was working in the week leading up to our first one-day this year, and my status post-show (as in flat out in bed). This show was hectic.

how many jump standards can you fit in a nissan versa? eight. eight is the answer.

Some unforseen equipment failures made it such that we couldn’t start working on the new tracks until way too late. I mean, a broken mower will do that to you. We also had a very lofty list of fence improvements, and were somewhat unwilling to compromise on what we would sacrifice to make sure it got done in time for Saturday.

So we got it all done.

we made a prelim-sized piece of chocolate cake! sprinkles tba

This meant three straight days of 6-8 work at Stallion Station by me and the course builder, and a ton of hours put in by the owner and a whole host of other volunteers. But it looked BALLER and it rode EVEN BETTER.

every level got a rainbow!!

There were also 35mph winds (with gusts up to 45mph) on Friday which made prepping SO MUCH FREAKING FUN.

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I love working this show, but I’m glad my life will be getting back to normal for a while. It really takes it out of you. Plus being forced to watch and not getting to show is definitely a bummer.

That and I haven’t laid eyes on my horse in…. 11 days.

We found this HUUUGE gravid female Western Pond Turtle on course while setting up. It was crazy!! Behind those oak trees to the left, Cache Creek runs through. I think Mrs. Turtle got confused looking for a nest site in the intense wind and came up much further than she needed to.

There’s no regularly schedule of riding in my life any more, but this week should be a nice one. Not too much on the schedule, so plenty of time for the pony.