picking up the pieces

The last few weeks have been quiet for Charlie. After Plantation I wanted to get more serious about consistency and discipline in my own approach to riding, and felt like Charlie was in a good place to move forward with that.

But then he kinda went a little lame, felt like something high and maybe muscular in his often wonky hind end. But didn't feel like his "normal" wonky that improves with strength. Idk. It's Charlie, and he's often kinda a hot mess in the physical department. Sigh.

if all else fails, at least charlie has magnificent hair

I tried to keep a delicate balance of working him through it - days off interspersed with low key flat rides focused solely on getting him pushing through his hind end and stretching. Since the reality is that he's often at his best physically speaking when he stays in regular work.

maybe he needs an emotional support therapy pupper lol

After about a week of this, he was feeling much better so we settled back into our more normal routine. It was convenient that during this time trainer P was basically out of town with weddings and stuff to attend (I guess even trainers get a personal life lol) and I had opted to bow out of the week day lessons with trainer K to let Charlie keep healing.

tho of course there's always plenty of riley dog to go around!

All this meant, tho, was that we were rapidly approaching the Fair Hill starter trial I had hastily entered at the last minute after Plantation. I entered BN, and planned to go 100% alone. With the idea being that Charlie would have to contend with being alone and not having a friend waiting for him back at the trailer.

And he would be in a familiar place, one in which he's previously shown some of that resistance to being driven forward out of the start gate. But by doing BN, I'd be feeling pretty confident in my ability to kick him up and forward (zero tolerance!) without really needing to think much about the actual jumps.

bc yea riley's always there with the moral support lol

It was a good plan (aren't they always?) but it didn't work out. Charlie was back to being pretty sound, but I was unsure about following through with that "zero tolerance" approach if he had any sliver of an excuse for bad behavior, esp considering the limited prep.

So I opted to do a quick solo jump school the night before the show to serve as my litmus test for whether we should even bother. A couple jumps in, and.... Yea. A decision was made. We'll go to a show some other day. Bc we have some important work to do before then. Sigh.

bc it turns out, sometimes this brontosaurus has feeeeeeeelingsssss

After that, I felt pretty dejected so I ended up giving Charlie even more time off. Didn't climb back into the saddle until our Hulsebos appointment the following week.

Charlie obviously doesn't mind the time off, and actually for the first time ever didn't find some new and interesting way to injure or maim himself despite days in a row of neglect. Maybe he's growing up?? Lol....

lol... also, in case you were wondering what our jumps at plantation must have looked like, just imagine this, over and over and over again

Anyway tho, Trainer P was back in town so I was eager to finally get a lesson in. Charlie came back into regular work in the days leading up to the lesson, and then it was game time.

He was actually the most willingly forward and relaxed in his flatwork that he's been lately. The zero tolerance approach is paying off and he's kinda figuring out that it's easiest for everybody if he just gets to work instead of fussing around. Trainer P still wasn't super satisfied with it tho, and encouraged me to keep changing it up on him and demanding his attention.

look, here's another variation!!

The warm up jumping exercises suited us quite nicely too. We have a new boarder in our lesson, and while her horse is very willing and capable, he can be very lazy in his form over fences. So trainer P decided it would be a day of "all the placing poles all the time!"

She had ground poles on takeoff and landing, and in between jumps in a line. Poles errywhere!

pep talks with trainer P are always helpful tho. dis y i <3 lessons

This was useful for us bc the reality is that Charlie is kinda in a "I don't wanna and I don't care and nothing you can say will change that!!" mind frame lately.

He was grumpy about being asked for more forward, distracted by his grumpiness, then surprised by the placing pole and subsequently a disorganized mess over the jumps themselves. For my part, I worked really hard to not get baited into his grumpiness. When he's snarky like that as we approach a jump, my subconscious habit is to soften a little bit so that I don't distract him from the fence and cause the awkward jump.

let's never forget tho: gosh i freakin adore this horse tho

I learned my lesson about that at Plantation tho, haha, where it turned out that not fixing that problem only begat more problems. Go figure.

So what I'm doing now is basically shortening the progression of aids in asking for forward. Normally in training a horse, you would think of the progression of aids as starting with the softest, lightest possible ask and gradually increasing the intensity of that ask (think: the spectrum from asking to demanding) until the desired response is finally achieved.

Conceptually, if you're consistent enough, the heavier asks fall away because you attain the desired response earlier and earlier in the progression - eventually with the lightest possible ask.

and i'm pretty sure he *does* actually like the job i've offered him

Charlie understands this process. It works for him. He's a clever pony and learns well through patterns and repetitions. But with his latest phase of testing out "No!" as an answer, he just tunes out through the lighter progression of the aids, only begrudgingly acquiescing when I finally reach the "demand."

So..... that's cool big guy. I'm picking up what you're putting down. I can adapt to work with you there. I'll  still begin as always with that lightest possible ask - delivering an aid that I am confident that Charlie's prepared for and understands. And if he tunes out, gives me the finger, or otherwise just... doesn't? Well. There's no more progression. We skip immediately to the "That Was A Poor Choice, Charlie" aid delivery system.

Aaaaand he goes. Sometimes with attitude. Sometimes begrudgingly. But, increasingly, he's just going. And then he starts making better life choices the next time I ask softly.

sometimes it just takes a little extra convincing to get him clicked into gear

So back to the lesson, these placing poles set up everywhere were really effective as part of this process bc they basically recreated the same outcome - except it was just between Charlie and the jumps instead of being only between Charlie and me.

He'd be presented to the jump. Understand that there is a jump there. See the placing pole. All things he's schooled at and knows well. But he'd kinda just fart along, get distracted, not really feel like it, but then reach the placing pole and immediately realize the error of his ways when he'd kinda fumble and crash through awkwardly.

but once he's there??? 

And assuming I did my job of being clear in my aids of "Yes sir we are going forward to this jump" instead of sorta tacitly accepting his grumpiness and distraction, then the next time I put those same aids on, he'd have the fresh memory of the fucking awful jump to convince him that.... yea, probably he needs to listen.

It's honestly like a switch goes off with him too. Like once he gets his head in the game and starts going forward to the jumps, everything changes. He's happier, his ears are pricked, he's pulling forward in front of my leg, and we don't get that "dead" feeling at the base of the jump - that feeling of uncertainty about what the fuck is about to actually happen. Bc trust me, that feeling reeeeeally really sucks.

he's freakin THERE.

The placing pole exercises definitely helped in that regard too bc they really forced him to pay attention. We started by trotting into single jumps with the placing poles, then trotting into a 30' two stride line, an 18' one stride line, a fairly open three stride line, and a 36' two stride line.

And after a couple disastrous jumps (pictured earlier lol), Charlie got the point and started working more with me. It helped too that we finally raised the jumps up a bit, esp for our final course that was all set around a soft ~T height.

THIS is my horse. like sure, he's about to leave a stride out like his goofy gangsta self, but you gotta love that enthusiasm, right??

Trainer P was pretty clear that the reality is Charlie doesn't care about small jumps. He just doesn't. He doesn't look at them, doesn't think about them, doesn't give them any respect. Even with all the placing poles and whatnot we added to them.

Once the jumps go up, he gets more interested. Starts looking at the fence. Starts getting that feeling where he's drawn toward the fence - measuring it up, adjusting his stride all by himself, preparing himself for the effort. Which obviously is an awesome feeling, and coincidentally MUCH easier to ride haha, since he ends up doing the work himself.

i prefer this picture of him dragging me over a fence any day of the week, instead of those earlier shots of him kinda just barely climbing the jumps

Obviously tho we still struggled a bit haha. Like for some reason, we just could not with the 36' two stride. Idk why. We got the correct striding once or twice when there were placing poles set, but it was always kinda awkward and for some reason we kept trying to add. Which... wasn't cute.

but look! even after being all gung ho and taking a 30' distance in one stride, he still balanced up all clever and shit to do this 18' one stride too!

Then once we finally put all the pieces together for our final course (also in the video), Charlie managed to put three in the 36' and then did ONE in the 30'. Like.... uh.... ok? That's some serious #CharlieLogic for ya....

But I wasn't going to complain bc that feeling was freakin amazing! It's honestly been weeks and weeks and weeks since Charlie's dragged me to a jump like that, and even tho it was kinda awkward, it was like this refreshing feeling of "Phew, THIS is my horse! THIS is the feeling we've been missing!!"

that placing rail caused us a lot of grief earlier in the ride, ugh

The biggest deal of the lesson tho? In the course (and this is all on the video), we went from the 30' supposed-to-be-two-but-Charlie-had-other-ideas line, bent to an oxer at a related distance that Charlie jumped with equal gusto, but then had a very short tight turn immediately to an 18' one stride grid.

And? While the turn was hectic as shit with me basically manhandling Charlie around, the horse proved that, yes, in fact, he's learned something from this ride: he balanced, adjusted his stride, came back to me but stayed in front of my leg, jumped the very short one stride beautifully, then made another hairpin turn to come back up center line to jump the above oxer with placing pole.

And he did it perfectly. Kept his balance. Agreed with me about pace. But maintained that forward pulling feeling (but without being fast or flat!) in front of my leg.

he figured it out tho <3

And I couldn't have been happier. Like sure it's not beautiful, it's not smooth, etc etc etc.... But we finished the course with my horse being more or less his normal self: enthusiastic but learning to be schooled about adjustability and balance. He listened, carried me forward to the fences, and stayed in front of my leg even as we needed to compress the stride or make a tight turn.

video has some of the gymnastic warm up exercises, plus the final course

Trainer P and I talked at length about this whole process. She says Charlie reminds her a lot of one of her big horses, who was legitimately not fun to ride for the first year or two bc every day was that same battle, that same slog of insisting that the horse does, in fact, have a job.

And it can be a real drag to not ever let that guard down in schooling. I don't like feeling like a slave driver. I don't like feeling like I'm constantly picking fights with my horse instead of slipping effortlessly into some fantasy land sense of harmony. It's much easier to be tricked into complacency, to gradually and without realizing, be drawn into accepting less and less from the horse, and needing more and more effort from the rider.

But. Ya know. With horses, the proof is in the pudding. And Charlie showed me in this lesson that when I'm consistent enough in my own riding and expectations of him, all the distractions and grumpiness melt away into the horse I know Charlie can be: FUN and EASY. Not to mention he himself seems to enjoy this outcome much more, too. He looks like he's having fun by the end of the ride, despite the bumpy beginning.

So I guess that's just how it is. The horse can be fun to ride, and can have fun being ridden. But there aren't any shortcuts in getting there. Wherever "there" is....

Do you ever feel like you're having the same rides again and again with your horse? Dealing with the same issues ride after ride? How have you dealt with that? Or maybe you've had some similar sort of breakthrough moment where the horse finally "gets" it?