winter time

With the time change this weekend, we started bringing the horses in at night. It was tempting to leave it a bit longer, as the weather has been quite mild - but then we weight taped Red, and he is starting to drop weight. We can't check what hay and so on he is getting when they all eat en mass (he gets his breakfast and dinner to himself). Once he is in, we can "trickle" food to him so he is not over-faced, but gets emough food to maintain his weight and condition through the summer.

Saturday night was the first night - they were all waiting for their tea and milling about a bit. We took Fi and Dudley up with a leader each - which was a good thing as apparently the barrel someone had been burning rubbish in, which was a good 500m or more away, was *really* scary :rolleyes:

In the meantime Rosie was squealing away - we had both "forgotten" her AND taken her pals away. Red put himself in the shelter (where he has his tea in the summer). But they were both fine to catch and bring up.

One change was that Fi and Dudley have swapped stables. Fi was really struggling in the smaller stable last year. Dudley is now right next to Rosie and they already seem to have worked out that they can scritch over the door :) Althought Rosie will get less "borrowed" hay (Fi used to drop it over the door), she was always a little wary of getting too close to bossy madam. Fi can see Red through the grill in the wall between their stables, but can't actually get to him. So they will be fine as well.

As it happened, Saturday night was rain with high winds - so it was a good call after all for them to come in. (ditto for Sunday)

Mum's leg is still sore after her fall last week, so I rode all 3 both days. I got mum to "lunge" me in Rosie so I had additional back up when she thought about stopping. It was more of a mental work out than physically tiring - but she seemed to find it quite hard to have to focus that long. She was more bolshie on Sunday.

Duds is one of those ponies that retains an impression, a feel, of the person who last rode him. I got on him on Saturday and he felt great - together, round, engaged. I have to let the person that rode him know :)

The over night winds had blown things about - and on Sunday Duds took serious exception to one of the compost bins having blown over on the next door veggie patch. He proceeded to leap about like he was ten years younger (I was lunging him to warm up before I rode). As he had already given himself an impressive work-out, I just worked a little in walk and trot.

Riding Fi beforehand, the compost bin and some rattly plants had made Fi spook slightly - but it was like it was on 50% power compared to how she has spooked before. So despite being in the english saddle - I sat it and she stopped :D I hope that is a sign of how things now are...

transitions

I rode Fi in the english saddle on Saturday, and had a short coaching session with a visiting BHSI (on a social visit not working). It was nice to have confirmation that we were doing the right kind of thing.

Later mum and I took Rosie and Dudley out on the stubble and things went ok. We came across a hare, and some deer in the far ditch, but the horses - although a bit concerned and interested - behaved. As we headed back I got mum circling away and rejoining, as I circled away the other direction. Rosie was pretty confused, but then got the idea. And confused again when we swapped sides (so she circled the other way) and then ok.

As we rode back to the school, I said I wanted to do some canter work with Duds before we finished. Mum said she would bring Rosie in also - but I was concerned they did not end up in a fight.... but she said she would let Rosie follow Dudley and hence stay in her comfort zone.

It all started ok - canter on the left rein, Rosie behaving. Then I swapped reins. First canter was fine, went to do a second and all of a sudden there was a kerfuffle as Rosie scooted towards Dudley, cutting across the corner, with her rider unbalanced and off to the outside. She fell between Rosie and Dudley and my main concern was that she didn't end up *under* Dudley :o

She's feeling a bit sore today, and questioning whether she should continue to ride :(

I think Rosie just lost it, and went into panic mode. I got on her once I knew mum was ok, and she had *big* sticky patches just past the school gate in both directions. My hypothesis is that she had a conflict between wanting to stop, and wanting to keep up with Dudley - slowed up, got behind, paniced, and scooted with counter flexion. Mum was trying to get her back out on the rail, so was off balance as Rosie led with inside shoulder.

I feel it was partially predictable and I should have been stronger in getting mum to stop rather than follow me in - things were ok up til then !

On Sunday my visitors came up for a play. I rode Fi first, in the western saddle, and got her warmed up. Then the more experienced rider had a go. I was pleased with Fi as she stayed quite calm and did not do her normal tension thing. We worked mainly on walk and jog. The second person also had a sit but Fi kept wanted to stop, and was not keen to trot. I think she (Fi) was struggling a bit more carrying a less experienced rider ?

Then we tacked up Duds and they both had a ride on him - in both cases he went very nicely although the less experienced rider took a bit more time to adjust to his trot (the horse she normally rides is mich bigger).

And finally we took Duds and Rosie out around the stubble, with me on Rosie, Had some trots and a canter or two. It is a picture to see Duds face - I'm normally on top *and* concentrating on keeping mum and Rosie on the straight and narrow. So its a treat to see the look of glee on his face when he gets to have a bit of a leg stretch :)

Rosie was a bit bolshie - not really bad, but wanting to be *there* rather than where I was asking her to be, and then not really wanting to be there either.

I was thinking after the visitors had gone about walk trot and trot walk transitions. It was something I was talking about to the more experienced of the two riders. He tended to ride a great walk, and a great trot, but something weird was happening in the transition. It was as if he stopped riding and started worrying.

We talked about it a bit - about confidence, about merging one into the other, that sort of thing. But back at home I was sitting on my gym ball, and realised that its actually not an easy transition for the rider to make.

Say I am sitting on the gym ball, in "walk" and my hips are swinging in a figure 8 in the way they do when the horse's walk moves them. Now I want to go into trot - where I turn the increased forward movement into a rise - and there is less side to side in my hips as I do so. It is an interesting challenge to make that change flow. Then changing back, taking the forward energy out of the rise and back into the figure 8.

I'd never broken it back down like that, and it was an interesting insight. (reminds why I like working with other riders :) )

handing over the decision making

I was mulling over the situation with Rosie, as I was pootling along the dual carriageway home from the railway station.

I was getting ahead of myself and wondering, if I took Rosie to a clinic with someone like Mark Rashid or Kathleen Lindley, how I would describe the issue and what I wanted to work on.

(This was top of my thoughts because the spring dates for Kathleen and summer dates for Mark in the Uk have just gone up - neither are getting as far as Scotland this time around :( )

Anyhow - a lot of people seeing Rosie's behaviour in the school would probably assume she was being "naughty" or "bolshie". But if she only has one choice (is by herself in the school for example) she tends to get on with it more. It is when she starts to have options that the problem shows up. It is as if she can't yet trust the rider to decide between what to do, but actually doesn't have the confidence to do so herself, so just stops instead.

So what would help was if she learnt to hand over the decision making to the rider (this is something Mark talks about for some horses).

Then I suddenly realised - I had been thinking Fi had been going very nicely in the school. Even when it is quite windy - and I have not been taking down the windmill bird scarers in the vegetable patch alongside the school. But I had just been seeing the symptoms -calmer, steadier, more consistent.

But I *think* this may be her being more able to hand over the decisions to me.

I know it is not applying very well anywhere else yet - the walk/jog pleasure class the other week showed that. But its a start :)

how interesting.....

I'm aware of the weather and daylight starting to close down, so any riding or other horse time is increasingly precious. We had some strange weather this weekend, as if it really couldn't make its mind up what to do - but I managed to ride Fi both days.

On Saturday we took Dudley and Rosie out around the stubble fields next to us. We're not sure which fields will be ploughed for winter sowing so wanted to make the most of what we could currently ride on. They were both good and we had both trots and canters :D

As we headed back, we had talked about "schooling" while riding out, as Rosie is much more forward going when out. But when mum asked Rosie to move away from Dudley, you could see the "won't go" attitude coming back.

Ah - a moment of revelation for mum. So it is not *all* about the arena. There is more to it than that ! It is about comfort zones. Rosie has a number of them. Ask her out of one and she struggles.

When mum got a nice walk away from Dudley, I yelled to her to turn back and make a big fuss. Mum's immediate reaction was to ask for more "if she can walk, then she can...." But Rosie can't actually cope with more yet. (When mum started to ask for something more, the nice ears-forward attitude started to go and the bolshie face came back). It was enough for today just to get the attitude change to positive and get her confident enough to walk away a short distance. That is something we can build on.

(Next time we can try walking away and back more than once, for example).

Sunday was somewhat windier and there were flurries of spitting rain - not quite enough to stop riding, but with the potential to get worse (in the end they didn't. So we made the decision to stick to the arena.

Mum had commented the week before that Rosie was so much better by herself, so I had already thought we should try without Dudley there. In addition we were playing with the idea of giving mum a lumge lesson on Rosie - so it seemed like a good idea to try.

It worked quite well. Rosie was better on the right rein - mum needed to intervene and steer more on the left rein. But we got some good walk and trot walk done, using the whole arena not just staying on a 20m circle.

In walk, I got mum to think about the foot fall, thinking about when the hind leg was off the ground. Just thinking about that seemed to free both of them up. Working on keeping the knee soft then added some more, and we had a nice free walk going on :) When mum needs to use her legs (when Rosie slows), her bad back means she tends to brace her leg and lean back slightly. This seems to be blocking Rosie's movement. I suspect it makes mum's back ache as well.

I also worked with mum on her rising trot. In trot, her knee tends to float forward and then to balance she has to brace it. We worked out this is because she was tending to rise straight up - partly because Rosie was not really moving forward in the way Dudley might. By getting mum to angle slightly forward, it helped her back, and freed Rosie up some more :)

We finished off by taking off the lunge line and working around the arena, with me as if I was lunging (carrying the lunge whip). Having got decent walk and trot on both reins, including the "bad" left rein, we called it a day as Rosie had kept a good attitude pretty much through the whole session.

Let's hope (plan) this is something we can build on to take things forward. It is not that Rosie is not improving, but she is not improving as fast as I would expect given her age and the work we have been doing. Last year the long reining gave us a breakthrough. Fingers crossed lunging will give us the next one.

lame again lame again jiggety jig

sigh

We went to the appaloosa show. The first of the two classes I had entered was the walk/job pleasure. The last time we did a western class was at least two years ago and was a similar class. I got there a bit late last time so didn't get a decent warm up. I was hoping to improve on that this time so was a bit worried when we discovered a bridge out on the last road in to the show. Luckily a local was walking their dog and told us how to find our way around, and all the classes were running a bit late because of the bridge issue - so I still had time to warm up.

This time the class was in an outdoor arena, with the warm up in one half and the class in the other. So I was pleased that she settled in to quite a good warm up. But it was a bit premature as we went into the other half of the arena for the class and she proceeded to get worried about the jumps and judges box on the outside edge of the school. Plus she seems to be happier in the warm up area with horses going in every direction than in a ring with them all going the same way. So she was a little tense.

Of course I could not use circles to direct the energy, so had to ride (and breathe !). In hindsight perhaps I could have used connecting to the footfall a bit more, rather than half-halting ? One for the future. We were 4th out of 5.

Still, we survived without any unscheduled exits or spins... so not so bad...

Then we had a gap until the next class - in-hand. While walking her from A to B, she stod on a stone and went lame for a few strides. She seemed to come right again and I took the time to whack her mane into plaits. But when we went into the (indoor) ring for the class, I started to feel the walk was not entirely ok... and then we went into trot and she did a 3-legged horse impression ! :(

Poor Fi. I pulled her up, and the judge was fine about it. But I was mortified.

I think it was more than just a bruise from the stone - I think the uneveness from the stone tweaked the joints in the off fore. Back home she was still unlevel on turns and in trot, but fine in walk. It hasn't stopped her being her normal energtic self - just limping madly as she does so :rollseyes: I think it bothers me more than her....

I checked out how level she was getting during the week and long reined her on Saturday - when she seemed fine again. I rode her today (Sunday) in her new WH saddle. In trot I just felt she was holding that shoulder slightly (off side) so we didn't try a canter.

We also had a visitor who rode Dudley in the school, and Rosie out around the stubble field. Someone's daughter - a slim teenager who rode both of them sympathetically. It was lovely to see. While she was riding Dudley in the school, mum rode Rosie. Rosie had her attitude on - and struggled to focus with both Dudley being ridden and me on the ground. It seems the more distractions there are, the more she struggles. Mum had ridden her during the week - by herself - and she was really quite a good girl.

I think we may have to consider - through the winter - having one session where Dudley is not in the school so that we stand a better chance of Rosie focusing on her rider !