ww: scenic strolls

The recent break in the weather meant basically errybody at the barn was trying to get out into the fields and woods to soak up the pleasantness. And naturally Doozy was super jazzed to join the parties!

I’m sometimes a little hesitant to take her out in very mixed company bc she’s so animated and energetic I worry she could trigger a nervous horse or instigate a race to the front. 

But that hasn’t happened yet! Most of our riding buddies either share Doozy’s electric joie de vivre or are satisfied to mosey along and occasionally trot to catch up LOL,

Doozy, for her part, doesn’t really seem to care one way or another what the other horses are doing.

Tho she definitely seems to generally prefer company.

And actually I think she likes following too. We often end up in front on the narrow paths in the woods just bc she’s the fastest walker, but if there’s a horse who wants or needs to be in front, she’s happy to relinquish the spot even if it means being stuck behind a slower walker.

There are a couple trees down in the woods right now actually that look like they’ll be fun to jump - hopefully they’re still there when Doozy’s ready!

Once we’re back out into the hay fields tho it’s easier to sorta mosey along as a group vs single file.

And natch, easier to get pictures of everybody LOL!

Doozy is so funny too… she obvi knows the route bc we take the same loop more or less every time, but she’s often her slowest when we turn toward home.

The happiest clam, I think she would have strolled along behind these horses forever haha.

Tho obvi it’s nice to be back at the barn too bc that’s where the #snax are lol…

“garçon! my snax!!!” - impatient mare

But there’s always another day, esp when the weather is this nice!

Doozy was super happy to go strutting off into the woods all proud of herself the day after her grand return to horse showing at Tranquillity haha.

Honestly, what a gorgeous day!

Tho Doozy was slightly sad that they’d been thru to cut and bale the hay already, it made her “grab ‘n go” snacking technique a little more challenging on the steep hills haha…

All good tho, obvi we stopped often anyway esp for pics!!

All my friends have phones with cameras so much nicer than mine, it’s insane.

Like honestly LOL… I knew my phone was old and clunky but maybe it’s finally time for an upgrade so I can return the favor of getting such nice pics (odd outfit choices aside!) haha.

As it is, tho, ain’t a bad way to spend a summer day, amirite??

post-injury IPO

Doozy made it back to her first horse show since April this weekend, yay!!! Tho don’t get too crazy haha, it was a very modest affair for us. Tranquillity was hosting the July running of their summer Mill Series hunter jumper shows, a super fun and popular local show opportunity that’s got a little something for everybody. 

this pic makes it look like we’re alone in the field, but actually there’s trailers on either side and all down the driveway in front of my truck too

Lots of classes, three rings running, absolutely minimal rules re: dress, tack, equipment etc. And from what I can tell, basically anybody can enter any class for whatever reason. Really truly, it’s just a super inviting horse show for everybody.

And you might actually remember I brought Doozy here in June of last year, after we sorta bombed out of our first intended horse trial of the year. Basically, I learned the hard way that maybe both Doozy and I benefit from lots of little opportunities to “dip our toes in” vs “jumping straight into the deep end.”

can literally not emphasize enough HOW NICE 64*F is for showing in JULY omg

So ya know. When the forecast looked **legit perfect holy mother of god after all the awfulness this is absolutely lovely**, ahem, I decided to more or less repeat our experiences from last year. Except without the jumper class, obviously, since Doozy isn’t jumping yet. 

One of the rings starts with a couple sets of hack classes, so I figured I’d catch a couple of those and see how we felt.

you’re nice too, doozy <3 <3 

So we arrived about 45min before the show started — enough time to check in at the office and tack up at an unhurried pace before heading over to the ring for pre-show schooling, natch pausing every few trailers to chitchat with random friends and acquaintances. 

Doozy was, not to put too fine a point on it, the epitome of civilized. Perfect princess. Relaxed, patient, alert but unbothered, and happy to go wherever I pointed her, or pause as needed, whatever. Perfect. Good girl!

she looks like she’s being tall or up in this pic but she was honestly just taking in the sights

Which ya know… lol… She should be civilized at this point haha, she’s 8 and has been haunting show grounds for three years now. But ya know. This was literally the whole point of us being here: reestablishing that, “Yep, this seems normal!”

Ymmv but from my perspective, so much happens on a show day long before the bell rings or the announcer calls out, “you are now being judged at the walk!” And with Doozy, so much of that “so much” was often **extremely** challenging for us, that we were kinda just clinging to the edge of some semblance of composure by the time we were actually doing the thing. 

i’m pretty sure she’d chill at the in gate forever

Anyway, she continued to keep her shit together once we started schooling in the ring too. For those unfamiliar with the local hunter circuits, basically riders can show up early to warm up and jump all the jumps before the show starts. So it can be a little chaotic, especially in this particular ring bc the jumps are all kinda snug against each other, making options for cutting across the ring somewhat limited. 

There’s basically open areas on either short end of the ring, a way to get across the middle, the gap you see in the picture below, and that’s it lol. Especially with a horse like Doozy, I’m not trying to crash into anybody in a tight spot, ya know? But it was all good, she kept a lid on anyway.

was overall a very solid citizen in our classes

Still, tho, I’m pleased with myself too bc we were here for a reason: pressure test the buttons in public. I didn’t want to just sorta delicately jog my firecracker around, handling her with kid gloves etc. I wanted to ride as if we were at home, building on some of the concepts and findings I’ve been writing about. 

Specifically, my pivo-induced ‘aha!’ breakthrough about how I’ve been trying to fix rideability problems by taking away speed, when really I need to just get my leg on and ride more forward into contact. So that’s what we did!!

zero photographic proof of us doing any of that, so here’s a recent shot from a trail ride instead lol

And spoiler, it totally worked out for us!! Not like, in the sense that we won our classes or anything haha. No no god no lol. We did the pleasure hunter W-T and W-T-C hack classes, each with about 6 other riders, and placed 6th and 4th respectively lol. 

Apparently the pleasure class judging is along the lines of, “Would you want your grandma to ride that horse?” and… ha, yea, no. Doozy is not that type! Again tho, she honestly was great about all the things (except canter). Tho I sometimes got stuck on a circle — Doozy covered twice as much ground as any other horse in the class so it was hard to stick to the rail.

But I felt good about our contact and bend, and was able to keep my legs on and ride the mare forward the whole time. Canter was… eh, far too wild. Mostly just fast, but there admittedly were a couple steps of that quintessential racehorse “flattening” which turned into a bit of careening around corners oops.

or alternatively this AI slop thumbnail suggestion from youtube for last week’s video hahahahahaha

But. Eh. All things in time, right? We only just recently started cantering on purpose again. And it’s taken this long in the rehab to just get the trot back to “normal.” Our canter was never that good anyway, so it’s no surprise that it’ll take more time and practice there too. 

Notably, tho, even after the somewhat chaotic canters, Doozy was able to return to her trot and walk to finish the class nicely. So it’s not that she unspooled or was getting worse or more tense as we went… Nope. Just normal run-of-the-mill sketchy flatwork LOL. I’ll take it!

back home + unloaded by 10:15am

Honestly I couldn’t be more pleased with the horse after those two classes. Canter needs work, sure, tell me something I don’t already know LOL, but actually the rest of the day went a bit better than I expected. And best of all, the “rest of the day” was still like, morning haha. Who doesn’t love an early show day??

Feels exciting to look forward again. Obvi I’m still paranoid about Doozy’s leg and recovery, but every day she proves her resilience. And days like this, she’s proving to be actually the “go everywhere, do everything” horse I hoped for! One step at a time!

ground truth

It’s hard to comprehend how I churned out a blog post every day for more than a year. From when I started the blog in August 2014, alllll the way to up until October 2015, I posted daily. It wasn’t until I was forced a bit more onto the sidelines after breaking my leg that I, uh, chilled out a bit on all that. 

These days once a week seems more like my happy place. Except… Well. Realistically this whole blog’s job is to serve as a photographic documentary/archive of my horsey experience… And therefore the number of posts is generally a function of available media content.

bebe crossover!

So it’s been a bit “content overload” the last couple days since I got a new Pivo (omg! better late than never!) and have been busy testing it and trying to get it to work!!! 

And obviously after getting the settings all wrong with our first test, I had to try again right away! 

this is one of the ways we practiced in the recent clinic with Matt

This turned out to be a really great ride to have video from, too, for a lot of different reasons. Mostly all centered around the fact that so much of how a ride feels is fairly disconnected to how it looks. And at least for me in particular, I might diagnose a feeling as one thing, whereas watching back on video, it might actually look like a slightly different issue.

stepping under the other way

Doozy was a super good girl for the ride too, making it a particularly good proof of concept. We started with doing some of the leg-yield-esque steps along the wall that Matt had us doing in our last lesson. In that ride, he had us integrate the steps into the whole session — first walking along the wall, or on a circle. Then also in trot and canter down the wall. 

good girl for playing my stupid games <3

I…. haven’t really gone quite so far in our solo rides, to be honest. But we’ve been practicing in hand daily during our round pen sessions, and then just little steps at a time under saddle. And Doozy is clearly getting the idea!

i swear to god the only thing on my mind in this picture is sitting up tall

She walks out of the exercise feeling super engaged and put together, so usually a nice connected trot transition is right there waiting for us. That’s about as far as we’ve gotten with the exercise, tho, at least for now. 

pivo stuck with us thru this dust cloud, but perhaps was haunted by its ghosts later in the ride since it eventually started losing us here

Mostly bc I don’t tend to do a lot of leg yielding in our outdoor ring. There are usually jumps in the way anyway, plus the long sides feel just a little too long — aka Doozy can get a little strong and strung out — whereas the short sides feel a little too short.

i edited most of the walking out of the video, but we did a lot of it!

And all of that is maybe a bit indicative of our overall trends too. Maybe I start a ride just trying to keep things light and fluffy and relaxed, perhaps sacrificing a bit of connection along the way. But the longer we go, the more tense and tight and choppy Doozy might start to feel. And esp with the lack of connection, she might start unspooling a little bit - anticipating canter, for example or just generally getting tight and braced.

mostly trotting tho, and neck staring obvs

Then maybe I start to feel like she’s running or going too fast, so I tighten and brace too…. And yea you can see where this goes lol. 

why is it that doozy always looks best when i look the most ridiculous? 

What I see in the video, tho, actually maybe looks slightly different. Well, ok, in my defense I was already starting to suspect this particular issue before seeing the video too. In fact, if you had watched our first pivo test video, maybe even you saw the issue as well — particularly when we were working on trying to turn from the rail on a half circle to go down that line of poles.

i’m beginning to realize our lateral suppleness (or lack thereof) might be a main driver to why she feels out of control even when she clearly doesn’t look it

We actually missed that turn, uh, a couple times, and had to circle around to try again. Not bc Doozy was being bad or anything, but bc I misjudged the level of preparation she needed relative to how laterally supple she felt. That experience kinda repeated itself again when I tried practicing riding a figure 8 around the pivo in this most recent ride — a couple times we only really made the turn bc there was a fence in our way.

needs more bend in the body, methinks

So I’m starting to think that perhaps what feels to me like speed and tension might actually just be a lack of adjustability and lateral suppleness. Which, natch, means that my go-to solution of trying to slow the horse down is actually exactly the opposite of what I should be doing: getting her more connected in front of the leg.

the canter felt like a disaster but honestly looks mostly fine

It’s particularly noticeable at the canter too. She feels tight and rigid and hard to sit on, so I keep trying to slow her down more and more. When in reality, her pace and stride length actually look fine. Like remember when I wrote yesterday about how she was able to comfortably do the short 4 strides in between the poles, even tho it felt “chaotic and rushy” to me?

me, sitting up, obvi

So ya know. Maybe most of our issues boil down to the classic case of a rider trying to solve rideability problems by taking away speed, when what’s actually called for is riding more forward, back to front. 

Go figure, the more things change, the more they stay the same LOL.

final trot circuit of the ride looks fairly different from how we start
apparently the pivo got tired by the end tho, started losing us repeatedly in that corner

Doozy did quite a nice demonstration of this for me too, when after we cantered around for a little bit, she was able to show me a much nicer overall trot. Still not perfect, obviously, but much more in line with the feeling I’d like to have.

overall feeling like more video will only help!

The tricky part with Doozy is, as always, calibrating the “more forward” aids without going overboard. 

mostly successful pivo video!

I also want to experiment a little bit with the figures and shapes we ride, obvi maybe with more visual landmarks to help guide us, that are accessible enough to not tempt me into unconsciously trying to slow the mare down (spirals, for example, can be problematic in that regard) but fluid enough to help Doozy be a bit more supple in her steering. Maybe more teardrops or rollbacks?

don’t forget to feed the meter!!

We’ll see. Either way, I’m super grateful for the video. It was kinda one of those rides where I felt better about it after watching the footage, like I understood it better. Or something, idk. 

One of my big goals for the year was to keep investing in our education through lessons with qualified professionals. We were doing pretty well with that too, before Doozy’s injury and subsequent layup. And presumably we’ll get back to more regular lessons soon enough! In the meantime, tho, hopefully the video will be a good source for “ground truth-ing” where we are in the work.

trying new things

Happy Wednesday!! Instead of another meandering quasi-conceptual deep dive into behavioral training philosophies, let’s get back onto a more practical and, ahem, materialistic plane, yes?? 

Yes!

my handsome mare <3 <3 
testing our new stübben bit in the round pen first

Specifically: I finally tried some new stuff this week, and have riding media omg to show for it!!

And spoiler alert::: basically all of it was a (qualified) fail, womp haha.

my handsome…. kitten LOL, and me.
testing our new pivo in the living room first

That’s never stopped me before, tho, so let’s get into it. Bc actually… there was truly a real win underpinning the day too!!

perhaps the living room was not a sufficiently good proof of concept re: settings 

The short story is that I finally tried Doozy in the new Stübben baby pelham that was highly recommended at the Windurra camp. 

Verdict? It’s way too much bit for Doozy right now. She never did anything bad or wrong with it, and it did give me a lot of control. But… I could tell that she was a little worried and backed off. There may be a time in her life where she’s comfortable and educated enough in her contact that she can hold a bit like this, but… for my purposes I want to avoid that ‘backed off’ feeling.

here we are, pivo! are you coming with us??

The other big test was my new Pivo Silver!! Yes yes, I knowww I’m a super late adopter here… But the reviews have always been so mixed, the expectation so much greater than the reality, that I’ve wanted to give the product more time to develop before clicking “buy.”

pivo! c’mon, you can do it buddy!!

Aaaaand… Well. Our first test was a huge disappointment LOL. It performed slightly worse than a $200 tripod — bc it occasionally locked on and tracked for a second without me realizing. So Even as I proceeded with my ride, centering activities around where I thought it was pointing, it still missed a lot. 

apparently you need to actually select “horse” vs “face” in the settings. who knew??

Joke’s on me, tho, bc I didn’t have it correctly set up. Which… Kinda seemed like maybe the case when it kept saying it was looking for a “face to track” and was able to follow me when I leaned over and stared straight into its eyes LOL. But nobody’s ever accused me of being a quick learner, so I’ll just have to try again another day.

still got some video tho <3 also i think this posture is the reason boyd why boyd likes the pelham

The remote worked well, tho! Esp compared to past phone remotes that were fairly unreliable. The bluetooth range itself is so limited (google says typically 30’ but that seems generous), plus many devices seem to need to be paired again after going either out of range or to sleep. 

ideally we’d want a bit more “nose out” but doozy wasn’t quite comfortable enough to push into it

I left this remote close to the Pivo so that it was easy to start / stop without interfering with the Pivo itself — and close enough that it didn’t unpair. And the app seems to keep everything awake even when you aren’t recording, which is nice. Uses up a lot of battery, I’m sure, but achieves its function.

Which like, Step 1 — Do The Thing, right? I want these things to work first. Then theoretically you can optimize for performance (like battery usage etc) later.

regardless, we went through our paces to try all things things anyway!

Anyway I probably spent about 10min fussing around trying to get the Pivo to follow us before giving up and just getting on with our ride. Bc we had important stuff to do!

pivo FAQs suggest keeping the target close enough to fill roughly 1/10th the screen. obvi these gridlines represent 9 equally sized areas instead of 10, but it’s close. i’m not sure yet if this accounts for the pivo’s zoom feature too, tho, bc otherwise you really can’t go very far away at all

Doozy finally gets to do ground poles again, yay!! Much rejoicing!! lol…

Now you may be thinking that ground poles technically *aren’t* jumping, in theory you should be able to just integrate them into your flatwork without meaningful change in the horse’s level of effort / impact / etc. 

omg doozy trotted a pole!!

Which like. Ya know. Maybe that’s true for *most* horses haha, but Doozy is not most horses. 

eeeeeeeeeeee!!! <3 <3

She happens to believe that even the merest ground pole can be quite fun and exciting, thanks! and therefore I’ve kinda felt like we shouldn’t even really go there (aside from at the walk) until I felt like we’d built up to a substantial enough baseline of trot and canter.

omg doozy CANTERED a pole — look at that face haha

So obviously this was always going to be an exciting ride haha. Except — perhaps the biggest win of the day: I admit to being a bit distracted especially by fussing with the Pivo. And recognizing that the pelham wasn’t quite the right bit… Eh, I was basically a fair bit less meticulous / methodical in my approach compared to the last few weeks. 

the most excited mare, doing a lead change bc why not

But… That practice is in the bank now, so to speak. Doozy was solid gold. Game, obedient, connected and with me. Maybe I was slightly less diligent or disciplined with every step, but she met me where I was. Which ya know… is pretty awesome, considering how difficult it’s been to just get her back to “normal.”

i swear this is not a jump… i guess nobody told doozy tho!

I did set up a few visual landmarks tho to help remind me of all my good intentions etc. Specifically, while most of the poles we did were just singles strewn around the ring, there was one line set as a short 4 from a pole to a little box (above). It seemed like the perfect configuration to introduce practicing walking straight before the fence line — so I put two little riser blocks down before the corner to help.

looking ahead at the riser blocks i set up to remind us to halt calm+straight afterward

And it was good! Doozy naturally was very excited about cantering a long straight line with #obstacles lol… but she always fit in the 4 very comfortably (even tho it sometimes felt chaotic and rushy to me) and after repeating a couple times with the halt, was able to do a lovely add stride too.

so good <3

It ain’t much, but it feels pretty good. I’ve written a lot about how I was always in such a rush with Charlie, always trying to grow and advance and move up. And that’s normal, right? I think a lot of us want to see some sort of tangible proof that we’re “getting somewhere” or progressing. 

It just seems, tho, that with horses, you can never really escape the fundamentals and basics lol. 

there’s video too tho i’ll warn you: it’s all in pieces since 

the pivo wan’t tracking us

So in a way I’m grateful to have this phase with Doozy right now, where the pace or intensity of our work is actually a little bit out of my hands. We have plenty of time for this stuff, and it’s honestly kinda nice!

Tho ya know. It’ll be nicer if I can get the Pivo to work properly LOL.