I Spoke Too Soon

February was not my best month.

I didn't ride my horse all month. He was fine. I was not.

The month started with a medication change that knocked me on my butt for a few days. I haven't mentioned it here, but back in the fall I was diagnosed with ADHD - inattentive and hyperactive. The new dose of medication for that left me feeling really slow for a few days and I had little desire to do anything after work.

I basically got over that and immediately got a head cold. Cue another week of not wanting to do anything while snot drained and dripped from my body.

And as soon as I felt better from that, I lost my job of 30+ years due to restructuring through an insolvency.

Another dump of snow and freezing cold temperatures a couple of days later left me with little motivation.

Stitch has been feeling good when given the chance to get moving on good footing. I never manage to capture the good rodeo moments though - they're much more exciting than this.

Job-wise, I'm still trying to figure it out. In Canada we have employment insurance that we pay into from our pay cheques that you can claim when you lose your job due to no fault of your own. It's not nearly as much as I was making before, but I should be able to make it work. I've been able to pick up some extra lessons to teach now that I have more time, and I've been offered the opportunity to do a couple of days of barn chores a week in exchange for board. I told the barn owner today that I'll do that and start in a couple of weeks (I have a bunch of appointments next week) so at least in the short term I think things will be okay.

Now that I have all this free time (hah! It doesn't seem like it!), it's time to get my horse going!

Stitch has definitely made good use of the winter. He's grown up and filled out. And has been feeling quite good when given a chance for a free run in the arena. 

I haven't been feeling any motivation to get in the saddle all month. Talking to a few other people, they're kind of feeling the same. This has been a cold, snowy winter, that started early, and seems to have no sign of ending. Sure, this weekend it's supposed to be +10C. But there was enough fresh snow in the field today that I was up to my knees trying to find a way out to my horse (who has met me at the gate every time for the last few weeks, but barely acknowledged my presence until I was almost in the back corner where they were all grouped together). And then it's going to drop right back down again to -10 daytime highs the next week. 

We are so over this winter. 

The blueness of the 5-ish pm picture taken on Thursday March 5th represents my feeling about this winter. So much snow still. A bunch of it melted over the weekend, but the temperature is dropping yet again, so we're back to needing to skate everywhere.

Tuesday, though, I committed. I was getting on my horse.

Uncharacteristically for me, I had a bit of anxiety about getting back on. I suspect that it was a bit worry about what my baby horse who has barely been ridden over the last three months would do. 

Spoiler alert - Stitch was absolutely perfect. Completely chill, he maintained the pace that I set, and was not at all worried about the person on his back who was trying to force herself to relax.

We didn't do very much, I think our ride was all of 25 minutes. But sometimes just getting on when you don't want to is all the win that you need. And that's okay.

Still the bestest boy. 

I really need to measure him again. I measured him a couple of weeks ago and he was a solid 15.3. But standing next to him while tightening my girth, I had to look up at the top of my saddle. I don't remember it being so far up before! But I'm not sure if he's actually gotten much taller as I didn't struggle to reach the stirrup, so ???

On Our Way!

I'm a big fat liar.

In my last post, I had said that I was planning to get Stitch going for about a month and then would start working on the canter.

I changed my mind.

We've cantered in two of the last three rides. And he was wonderful!

The first time was last Wednesday, which was his fourth ride in five days. Stitch was feeling it. He was being very good, but didn't have much oomph to his step. 

It was the kind of ride where he's doing everything right, with no need to school anything, so what could I introduce to him? Might as well try the canter!

There were also quite a few people around, versus a lot of my rides when it's just me and whoever is doing chores and probably isn't there to keep an eye on me. So it felt like a good opportunity.

I chose the right rein as it is our mutually stronger side. It took three attempts at revving up the trot through the short end before he fell into a right lead canter along the long side - at which point I immediately lost my inside stirrup. Oops! 

Surprisingly, since I haven't really cantered in almost two years, one-stirrup mode felt pretty good. Nonetheless, I brought him back to trot/walk through the first turn on the short end. We probably could have done the whole end, but I totally wussed out. 

Then we tried again, using anticipation to help by asking in the same place as before. He picked it up faster this time, but also picked up the outside lead, so again we came back down in pace in the first corner. 

I was very happy with the first attempts that were thankfully drama free. And also happy that the canter felt fairly comfortable to ride!

Stitch didn't canter on his next ride, because I put a different rider up on him!

One of my students from my old barn has been trying to come out and put rides on a pony that is owned by a beginner student and needs some tune-up rides. She came out to my barn with me after her lesson to hop on the pony and I figured it was a good time to put someone else in my saddle. It would also be a good experience for her to see what it's like to ride a green horse who still needs quite a bit of help.

Stitch was a perfect gentleman. She's a bit of a nervous rider, and when she's nervous she goes into the fetal position over her hands and gets a bit clingy (she was pre-warned that if she hung onto his face she'd be taken off) but Stitch stayed nice and solid under her. It was good for both of them and I'm hoping it showed her the effectiveness of rebalancing the horse before turning as Stitch needs at this time. 

Monday's ride was a bit late. I had a somewhat late end to my work shift, and didn't get out to the barn until after 7, and somehow wasted a bunch of time getting ready so I didn't get on until 8:30. I had also taken my Pixio out, with the intent on getting some canter video, but half-way through my ride something went wrong and it recorded the opposite side of the ring from where I was. No canter video at all.

This time, Stitch picked up the canter pretty well immediately on the right, got the correct lead, and I kept my stirrup, so we did two long sides and a short end before I brought him back to trot. Then we went left. He got the lead, but it felt a little less balanced (not sure if it was me or him that was more unbalanced) so we stopped before the corner. It was late, and there wasn't anyone there with me, so I said that was still a good win and left it there for the night. 

We are on our way!

I still think our focus needs to be on fitness over the next few weeks. It was supposed to be stupid cold this weekend, so I hadn't started back with the interval training as it looked like it would be over a week again with no riding, but the forecast has completely changed and we're only looking at a couple of days of freezing temperatures (by which I mean extra freezing, not the normal moderate freezing). Thus I'll get the app sorted out and should be good to start that up again next week. I'll add some little canters into it, at this point not timed, just what feels good on that day.

Hopefully the Pixio will work, but I'm a bit worried as something is rattling loose inside the robot. I won't be impressed if it no longer works as it really hasn't had all that much use and has been well stored and taken care of. Fingers crossed that this was just a blip.

This is Gonna Be My Year

Stitch and I have gotten five rides in so far this year - and he's been wonderful!

He hadn't been ridden for about five weeks due to the horrible weather we had through December. But, with the New Year came relief from Mother Nature and we've had above average temperatures for the last week. In fact, it's been so nice that Stitch has been nekkid outside since Saturday, though I'll have to put something on tomorrow night as the nights will be a bit cooler again.

The break in weather will allow me to make some much needed repairs to the circus tent suit of armor that Stitch has been wearing over his winter blankets. I'm determined to get the rest of the winter out of this blanket before scrapping it. If I wasn't able to make the repairs myself it totally wouldn't be worth it, but since it's mostly just costing me time I'm putting the effort in. 

On the first ride back, he felt really sold under me. With the young ones, it's always a crapshoot as to if they revert back to a wiggly worm after some time off, but no, he felt really good. The first ride was very simple. He wasn't bending around my inside leg as well as he had been before the break, but otherwise did everything else he was asked.  Except for the big scoot into canter spook - I didn't ask for that. (He was looking for an excuse. I think a D-ring on my saddle jingled, and he used that.)

On the second ride, he gave me a couple of moments at the end of bending through his body off my inside leg at the trot. It was the day after the first ride, and he definitely didn't have the spring in his step that he did the previous day, but surprisingly he had good forward intent at the trot. I kind of thought that he would have to be convinced that he wasn't dying. 

I am 2 for 2 in snowshoeing across the field to find the missing hood in the first place I looked. Don't tell Stitch - he doesn't need to make it more challenging for me. 

Stitch had the next couple of days off, and on Saturday, I set up a square of poles in the center of the ring to be able to trot over two crossing the diagonals. Stitch likes doing poles, and was dragged around with me while I set them up, so I'm not sure if that is why he uncharacteristically was very fidgety at the mounting block and had a hard time with standing still in the right spot.  Once I got him to stand still he was his normal rock solid as I got on though.

He was very happy to do the poles. I usually try to set up poles once a week for him as a bit of a reward, but it's been a while, even when we were riding through November. Even at a walk on a loose rein he takes us over them.

I gave us two challenges with these poles. The first, was to do a circle and hit two poles through the V-Shape of the box. He found it tough, and we didn't quite succeed. These poles are 8 feet wide, and if they had been 10 foot we would have been able to hit the ends of the poles on the size of circle that we could manage. With the shorter poles we were kind of sliding through the gap at the end on the second pole. 15m circles are a little tough for him at the moment. 

The second challenge was to be able to come down the long side, ask for a bit of inside flexion while staying on the track, then switching to the outside aids to turn the shoulders off the track and onto the line towards the poles.

We've been working on being able to get a bit of inside flexion and keep going straight. In November it was mostly through the neck, but he was trying. It's now starting to come a bit more through the poll, and much softer through the neck. This ride was the first time that I was asking him to turn after setting up the flexion, and though it wasn't perfect, he was trying. Where the poles were set up in the middle of the arena meant that I had to be a little quicker than ideal about being able to rebalance between the flexion and turning, and he fell out a bit through the outside shoulder in the turn. But still, I was very happy with the effort.

I tried to do a selfie, mostly so that I could show off this super cute shirt I got for $5 on Black Friday from onthehunteq.com. Short arms are not conducive to getting pony faces in the selfie.

Ride #4 of the year was on Sunday. We again worked a bit on the flexion and turn but without poles this time. He also started to remember how to bend around my inside leg, and gave me a couple of lovely shallow loop serpentines to the quarter line where he totally softened into the new bend off my inside leg with each loop. We haven't ridden them in a little while and in the past they've been very janky so I was really happy with that new feel.

Last night, Tuesday, I set up a couple of single poles again and repeated the same exercise as before with the flexion and turn, but this time left myself a bit more time before having to turn to the pole, and as I hoped the extra time really helped and he had some good turns with the shoulders making the turns. 

For the most part, he's been really good under saddle and feels like he's really starting to understand. 

The one that seems to be broken is the turn on the forehand off my right leg. 

He learned it pretty early when I started him, but then he wouldn't stand still to park, so I stopped doing it until he started parking without anticipating that he was going to be asked to do something. Parking has gotten much bettter, so I tried introducing the turn on the forehand again.

For some reason, it's been a struggle. He just wants to turn the shoulders into the turn, and on the first two rides that I attempted it, I don't think we got a single step of the hind leg moving away. If I try it on the ground, he immediately moves his hindend with a light touch from my hand in the area that my leg would be touching, so he understands there.

Now, in trying to get a step, we've kind of broken the park mode again. 

Last night, I was pushing it a bit more to try to get a single step behind, and tried to just wait out the turning the shoulders and click immediately when he did the step behind and stop. We got about 5 or 6 single steps, none without the shoulders moving around first, but they got a little bit faster at the end. And then I asked him to park on a loose rein. And he actually did! A little unsure as to if he should be getting ready to do something, but tried really hard to just wait it out. I hopped off there and gave him his cookie because that was super and to be honest, unexpected. 

So, I'm very happy with where we've started the new year. 

Fitness is the biggest thing holding us back at the moment. In November we were doing an interval training program to help us get there, but with the time off anything that we gained at that time was lost and we need to start over again. However, I don't want to start if we are going to stop again right away, and the forecast is saying that it will be cold again, though it looks like it's been pushed another week out. I also need to clip again, and I'm thinking of waiting until after the next cold spell to do so. 

Once we can get a solid month together it will be time to get the canter going. I want him to have some fitness first because I'm pretty sure he's going to think he's going to die after a couple of strides. Schooling-wise he's ready.

I don't know if I am though - it's been almost two years since I've really ridden a canter! Eeek!