vocabulary

I’ve continued to let all the thoughts, ideas, concepts, etc from Windurra camp marinate for the last couple weeks, rolling around in my head sorta like a lapidary machine. Ideally, eventually all the rough edges will grind down into smooth polished gems, right??

i spy with my little eye…. a red horse and her spotted pony friend!

A girl can only hope LOL… But for real, there are ~3 main concepts I’m prioritizing. Bc realistically, I can’t really walk and chew gum at the same time, so I sorta need to keep a relatively narrow focus at any given time. And also, even more realistically, some stuff will just have to wait until we’re farther along in the rehab.

there she is <3 <3

The first big concept is “Composure.” Also known as “not overthinking” and “not getting desperate.” The round pen practice I wrote about last week has been instrumental in implementing this idea, in giving us space and breathing room to get on the same page for a working session with minimal drama.

ooooh we got to share the ring with emotional support barbie dream horse v2.0

For whatever reason, whether it’s truly related or just kinda coincidental (Doozy is, after all, a mercurial changeable critter!), we’ve been basically explosion-free for all our rides since we started with the round pen. Like, the tension is still there, it’s always there, ya know? But we’ve been able to work with it and through it. 

working on square turns and, uh…, “straight” lines LOL — can you tell??

Which takes us to the next big concept we’ve been prioritizing: line of travel and shoulder control. For whatever reason, this is one of those evergreen focal points for me. And apparently one that I’m constantly forgetting and then rediscovering, over and over again.

composed biscuit

There’s something about being really intentional with our line of travel that has something close to a “magic fairy dust” effect on us. Probably bc it forces me to really plug all my aids in, seat and legs first, and ride both sides of the horse evenly from back to front. 

routine maintenance — pretty happy with how her feet are doing!

And goooo figure, Doozy likes being ridden like that LOL. Maybe she has actually read the textbook? 

her tootsie turds!! little rolls of magic cushion for under the leather pads

Part of why she’s been so tricky for me to ride is that it’s literally the riding that increases her tension. My aids increase tension. Touching the reins, using my leg, adjusting my seat — she is sensitive and reactive to all of these things and it is absurdly easy to end up feeling like she’s ping-pong-ing all over the place, bouncing off all the aids.

farrier has this cool epoxy-like stuff that can help secure the clips if the wall got a little crumbly

Except, simultaneously, she also wants and needs direction. As a somewhat insecure horse, she kinda wants me to hold her hand, tell her where to go, maintain a constant “I’m ok, you’re ok!” dialog. And in the absence of any clear direction, she will **absolutely** fill the void herself. Generally with poor choices haha.

she might actually love her farrier more than she loves me — look how serene she is!

Somehow, by focusing on the line of travel, riding back to front, we’re able to maintain the composure, keep the train on the proverbial tracks, and let Doozy settle on the aids, no muss no fuss.

anyway. chickens, bc they is a part of our life now haha

Bc it is only at this point that we can start on the next big concept — all those transitions between and within gait that were such a highlight from the camp sessions. Which, makes sense, right? Like, from an order of operations POV, the composure + riding forward back to front, on the aids, are necessary requirements for the quality of transitions we’re talking about, right?

ooooh and off to the super fancy indoor — complete with the most aggressively powerful fans i’ve ever seen

At least, that’s the way it seems to be working for us. 5* eventer Matt Brown was back again at the lovely local farm up the road from us, so naturally we signed up for another lesson. And somewhat humorously, I reintroduced ourselves to him by saying “We’re the ones with the unhinged flatwork!” and he was like, “Ohhhhh yea” haha. hahahahaha…. What a way to distinguish ourselves LOL…

i swear i don’t set out to intentionally take absurd pictures of my horse. it just always seems to happen like that haha

Except yay, we weren’t unhinged at all, and the lesson picked up exactly where I hoped it would — on that next big focal area of the transitions. Which is somewhat insane actually bc I swear to god I did not even mention wanting to work on that AT ALL. 

But ya know. The basics are the basics for a reason, and that’s right where Matt took us after establishing that we can in fact now trot around on the aids with composure. 

anyway. moving on. breakfast time at the OK Corral!

I don’t necessarily have a ton to write about the lesson itself, bc this isn’t really ground breaking or new information, but it’s exactly the type of supervised practice we’re looking for right now. He provided a really solid framework and guidance on integrating the practice for Doozy, and also suggested adding in yielding the hind quarters to both our in-hand and ridden sessions.

then, drum roll pls!!! back to one of our favorite haunts!!! 

Which, naturally set us up perfectly for Doozy’s grand return to our erstwhile regularly scheduled dressage lessons with Trainer C! Wherein we picked up on all these various threads to put together a lovely (and carefully measured) little w-t-c session with Doozy on her absolute best behavior.

there’s still a fair amount of recovery ahead of us, but it’s exciting to keep moving along!

It was like she knew exactly where we were, and why, and was honest to god happy for it. Happy to see Trainer C, happy to be working in a lesson where she already knows all the answers and can show us all how smart she is… Happy for the familiar routine.

the happiest biscuit to be doing activities again <3 <3

I swear, this horse loves going places and doing things. She gets so much confidence from routine outings that it can have a bit of a snowball effect, with rides at home getting better and more “boring” after she’s been out in the world lol. 

Even so, “composure” will be our vocabulary word-of-the-day for… the foreseeable future lol. But I’m hopeful that maybe, at last, after all this time, we’re finally developing a sort of rubric / methodology / repeatable framework for bringing some order to the chaos. Maybe. Haha…