course calculus + corrections

There are many reasons to like jumping as a chosen pursuit in horse sports. Fences come in so many variations of styles and combinations. There are basically infinite track configurations, based in no small part on arena size, shape or landscape. Every course is new and different, with countless permutations to challenge the individual horse and rider in unique ways. 

Meanwhile, tho, 2'6 is 2'6 is 2'6. So if you like jumping 2'6, you can keep jumping that height forever and ever without condemning yourself to endless monotony.  

charlie jumping around novice in spring 2019

I spent the first three years of owning Charlie constantly planning our next "move up." Obviously this was easier earlier on -- it didn't take a whole lotta training to progress from the 18" classes to 2'3 to 2'6 on behemoth Charlie, ya know? 

And to be perfectly honest, I was in a pretty big hurry to get back to Novice, which we did in the spring of 2018, about a year and a half into owning Charlie (not that anybody's counting lol). 

From there, tho, the urge to keep pushing continued. My riding friends were at that time starting to get pretty confirmed at Training level, and we were jumping some pretty big fences together in lessons. So it felt natural that Charlie and I would try to keep up. 

a look into the way back machine -- a july 2018 jumping lesson

of particular note, all the two stride lines in this course were measured at 30'

Turns out, tho, it got progressively more difficult. And I ended up switching trainers in mid 2019 in an attempt to get more personalized and intensive coaching. I was (and still am) seeking "mentorship" -- an investment in my training and journey, beyond the sort of transactional relationships that can come with intermittent lessons or clinic-hopping.

In retrospect, tho, bc hindsight is 2020, it's easy to see where I made a few key mistakes along the way lol. Like -- one of my cardinal rules for riding with multiple trainers had always been that their philosophies had to more or less mesh. That it was fine to ride with different people so long as they didn't want me to ride Charlie in meaningfully different ways. Bc, obvi, that would be confusing to the horse, right? 

But upper level trainer K *did* want to see me schooling Charlie over fences differently from trainer P. And, in fact, she advised me that some of the practice I did with P was actually counterproductive to my goals. Specifically, she wanted to see me consistently schooling Charlie over jump courses set for a 12' stride, whereas with P we often coursed over much shorter distances (think: 18' for a one stride; 30' for a two stride, etc).

K's arguments here made sense. We needed to be able to get down the lines in a 12' stride at horse shows, and meanwhile Charlie was just learning to be sluggish and behind my leg by always working over shorter distances. 

quick reminder what charlie's feet looked like in the summer of 2019. this should have, um, been a hint

So I stopped riding with trainer P, and got all aboard the bus of always riding Charlie on a longer stride. Never mind that Charlie had progressed in his training very successfully over the years. And never mind that we'd literally never had any trouble making the distances at horse shows.** 

The argument that Charlie was a slug and was behind my leg was compelling enough for me, esp when facing increasingly large jumps. Tho. Again, hindsight helps. I can now look back and recognize that Charlie was such a slug in our schooling because his feet hurt. I did not really have a firm grasp of how he needed to be managed, and the hoof soreness hens came home to roost by mid summer in 2019. I eventually ended up injecting his coffins and have since overhauled Charlie's hoof care. 

That's now, tho, and this was then. Then, we continued down the path of always trying to school Charlie on a more open stride. Which was all well and fine, tho it became pretty clear that Charlie could open up well past a 12' stride length too. Like in the example videos below - from 11/2019 and 7/2020, each of which contain a 60' four stride line that rode quite short for us. 

(**Except for that one time.)

practicing the 12' stride in 11/2019 with 4 stride lines

same idea in 7/2020, barely fitting in the 4 strides (end of video)

And of course, anybody who has been around for a while knows what happened in the summer of 2020. We finally made our second attempt at moving up to Training, and I got absolutely run the fuck away with in show jumping. Wherein my incredible little beastie accomplished a 72' line in four strides, among other things. 

Obviously a lot went wrong there, almost all of which originated with me as rider. But.... Again in retrospect, it's easy to see a pattern, right? 

this combination measured 36' to 72' (standard two and five stride distances, for the uninitiated)
not my proudest moment, not gonna lie.....

For all of Charlie's training with me, all throughout his learning to jump, we schooled him on compressed distances and asked him to shorten his body. Then at shows, amid the energy and atmosphere, he'd open up and carry us down the lines, even as he was able to be catty and adjustable where needed. 

When we stopped practicing that ability to shorten and compress, tho, we ended up losing a pretty important tool when Charlie predictably puffed up to his full event horse stature lol. 

So.... Long story short, we abandoned that training pathway. Not because it wasn't good or correct or whatever, but bc it clearly did not work for me as a rider of this particular horse lol. And so much has changed around Charlie's barn in recent years (for normal life-related reasons for various people etc) that going back to the way it was before isn't an option either. 

flashback to 2 weeks ago, prepping for a show by fitting three strides in this 36' grid

Thus, we've sorta arrived at this place where Charlie and I have been jumping around Novice courses for 4 years, with more or less no end in sight haha. And ya know, all things considered, it's pretty fine. I like jumping this height, Charlie likes jumping this height. We can still be plenty challenged, even while feeling reasonably confident. 

If we never end up moving up... Well. That'll be fine too. I honestly don't really know how much or even *if* I want it anyway. One thing seems certain, tho --- we aren't likely to make it happen without coaching. I'm feeling guardedly hopeful about the possibilities with this new trainer-on-trial, but only time will tell. 

at last week's show charlie just stepped down the 24' one stride easy as civilized pie despite all his preparation being done on shorter distances

In the meantime, I'm just gonna keep riding Charlie the way I know works for us at our level. And I'm *definitely* working to remind myself to stay realistic as an advocate for myself and my horse. Bc let's be real, any trainer who tries to tell you that everything you thought you knew about how your horse goes is wrong, is.... probably wrong lol.