can't be perfect every time...

Our second full week of exclusively indoor riding went a lot better than the first, fortunately for everyone involved. Mostly I think it's bc I approached the week with a bit better planning. Still tho, being confined to a dusty 20x40m box gets old.

we got our MCTA year end ribbons!! 5th place adult novice rider and 6th place novice horse!

I've been sticking to a near-daily 5-6 day/wk schedule anyway tho. Bc let's be real, when the horse is turned out he's just parkin it at the round bale. And the rest of the time he's boxed up in his stall. But as a fairly high mileage thoroughbred, Charlie benefits from movement.

So in a way I feel a responsibility to get out there and ride him around, even if it's just doing a light walk/trot conditioning type ride in the hackamore for 40min.

prizes included bright white polos that i'm going to have to feel pretty brave to ever actually use lol, and black boot socks that may or may not get co-opted to work socks as needed haha

This approach has actually worked pretty well for the horse too! The stiff bracing resistance I felt the first week in the indoor has given way to a softer more limber horse who seems to enjoy the opportunity to stretch out. I'll take it lol.

Plus at the end of that first week, the horse was so so so excited to be aimed at actual jompies in our lesson, so I figured that would be the perfect reward after this second indoor week too!

Trainer P always likes to ask if there's anything we want to work on in particular, or anything coming up on the calendar. Right now the answer to both those questions is "No." So instead we basically just played around. 

The warm up was useful bc I could talk to P a bit about what I've been feeling lately in the indoor, and what I've learned from getting to ride more with mirrors. Mainly: wow Charlie's really wanting to travel with his haunches in while tracking right, esp at canter. Just more reason to keep practicing that shoulder fore, I guess.

we also won a handy dandy shoe care kit, although the cream is black so isn't going to get used on my new brown pretties haha. got a nice USEA pin too! will probably put that on my jacket lapel assuming i actually join this year lol

Charlie, for his part, actually warmed up really really well. Just further reaffirmation I guess that the horse thrives when being ridden regularly in a variety of frames. Round and on the bit for our schooling rides; and loose long and low on the buckle for our conditioning rides. Too much of one or the other and he seems to lose a bit of flexibility and elasticity.

For this lesson tho, he was really good. Esp in working on shortening and lengthening our trot. Charlie honest to god has what I think is a collected trot now. Finally. And like, it's little. And suuuper round, and suuuper buoyant. We don't hold it for too too long, bc it's hard yo, but then he really picks up and pushes out of it into more of a proper working trot. It's nice!

most of my ribbons are hung in my trailer, but so many of these pretty MCTA ribbons have found their way to my book shelf, naturally along with the blue and red charlie earned at his last two novices this year <3

In past dressage lessons with Izzy, we'd work on going directly from that suuuuper collected trot into her medium. But I found that in practice, that led to the horse anticipating the medium before we could even get the collection. Which made that exercise reeeeally challenging lol.

So with Charlie I'm trying to avoid sling-shotting him out of the collected trot, while still capitalizing on pushing that generated oomph and engagement forward into the working trot. Seems like he's figuring it out tho. And like, finally, after 2+ years of riding the horse he finally has distinct gears in his trot lol. Yessss!

anyway, back to our regularly scheduled brown blurry blobby lesson action shots: like us jumping the final grid element

This was also one of the first times I felt that schooling come into play with our grids. The lesson was pretty straight forward in terms of what we worked on: just putting together a couple single exercises starting with a grid of one strides tracking left.

I was happy to go left too bc we like to drift that way and there wouldn't be any wall to hold us straight. When I remembered to half halt and collect on approach, then really put my left leg on through the grid, the horse jumps really really well: very straight and with a nice bascule.

ooooh haha, not looking entirely convincing on approach to the skinny barrel!!

This would not be a ride for perfection tho lol. Esp since trainer P wanted to set up Round 2 of Skinny Practice!!! Yessss!! Like, I have this whole big long list of technical exercises that Charlie and I need to work on before moving up to T is realistic. A biggie on that list? Skinnies, yo. (And like, a fuck ton of other stuff too but who's counting, eh?)

Plus this week we ditched the V-poles as guide rails and instead used white upright poles -- similar to the flags Charlie will see when actually on course in competition.

and... yea.... houston, we have a problem here.... 

And??? Charlie was soooo good in our warm up! Jumped everything easily on the first try, including another skinny combination of a barrel on its side, one stride to an oxer.

I honestly don't know what the difference is between him now and when we practiced skinnies over the summer. But something is definitely different. He clearly recognizes these barrels as "jumps," compared to over the summer when he wasn't so sure why I was aiming him at the random junk blocking his path.

pictured: getting all tangled up with that barrel.... sorry charlie!! :(

Still tho, mistakes will happen. Bc uh. Well. It's ME in the saddle. And Charlie's a damn good boy, but he's green, not a miracle worker lol.

So when we went to string all the exercises together into one little "mini course," I maybe made a few errors in judgement. Namely: coming down the grid tracking left, I knew Charlie was probably going to land on his right lead. Bc he always lands right. Like, sure, when I got my positioning correct in keeping him straight down the grid, he would sometimes land left.

But the odds were still high that I'd need to have a plan for dealing with leads between the grid and the turn to the skinny combination.

he's a goddamn saint tho and somehow still made it out over the next oxer. good boy!!

And I guess I had a plan. Which was basically: just ride the counter canter forward and keep going. Which, eh, it's debatable if that was the best choice. But then there was a damn dog in front of the jump, and I started waffling about whether or not to circle out, and Charlie was kinda distracted by the dog....

I didn't circle tho, and instead made a last ditch effort to get the horse straight by pulling him back onto the line, (spoiler: probably not the right choice there either), and Charlie ended up kinda climbing over the barrel (now sitting on top of risers) and getting it all caught up under his legs through the combination.

our next attempt went MUCH better

This horse is an actual SAINT tho, and managed to somehow get his legs untangled enough to jump clear of the whole mess. God bless ya, Chuck!

And like. Ya know. Obviously I never really want to make those kinds of mistakes that put my horse in a bad place like that. And obviously it's not a safe bet to always be relying on the horse to dig us out of those messes.... But I really REALLY like that he *can* do it, and that he did it basically instinctively.

nice and tidy with that hind end! 

You'll see in the video, but damn this horse has come a long LONG LONG way from his earliest "free jumping" days haha.

Like who on earth would have thought that the horse who ate shit over a tiny cavaletti would turn into this handy little brontosaurus that can jump out of a combination despite having a goddamn barrel all up in his junk?!?!

and still just as excited to be aimed at the next barrel!

And what I liked even more than that? When we circled to regroup and try the combination again? Charlie aced it. Wasn't upset. Didn't second guess the jumps. Listened nicely to my half halt (while meanwhile I remembered to ride the horse straight from my legs instead of pulling, ahem). Just jumped through it easily and without hesitation.

I LOVE that this horse so far hasn't really held a grudge about anything. He just stays focused on whatever next obstacle comes up in his path. Which, in this case, was another skinny barrel on risers, but this time alone in the middle of the long side. 

i wish these pics weren't so blurry bc i just love his eager game face!

Which, naturally, Charlie also locked on to and jumped easily out of stride. Good boy, Charlie <3

This practice is giving me a LOT of confidence about eventually seeing similar types of jumps on course. Like, obviously jumping on a flat surface in a small arena that promotes a more collected stride is very very different from galloping outside on variable terrain. And we all know that once Charlie gets rolling, it becomes a lot harder to get those half halts through to him without resorting to pulling.

wheeeeeeee!!!! he is the absolute most fun, i don't even care that it's just a brown smear of pixels lol

We gotta start somewhere tho, and this feels like a good place. And hopefully all the practice on transitions within gaits etc will pay off once we're out on course too haha.

quick video (including our fail moment) here

But for now we'll just keep chipping away in our little dust bowl indoor considering winter looks it wants to settle in and get comfortable, ugh. Spring will be here eventually, right??