Sunday's Ride

Toler's doing just fine after his tummy ache. He was full of mud when we went to see him yesterday afternoon. I was feeling a little too tired to ride (plus, I still have the cold from hell). We brushed him and painted his hooves, gave him his food, and left him to it.

Sunday's ride, as I mentioned I would come back to post about, went very well. I rode him with the curb rein on and worked on dressage. We started with counter-flexing on the rail, interspersed with some 15-10m circles. I must say, he's coming a long way with his straightness at the canter. I've mentioned this before, I'm sure, but just in case. Ever since his stifle incident when he was five or six (seven? I can't remember...), he's had some problems about using his hind end equally. That translated to his chiropractic needs, and has carried on through these years of recovery and retraining as a weakness and very bad habit of keeping his shoulder to the outside. It's most noticeable at the canter because he's so insistent not to use his rear-end-drive.

Back to point, there is a noticeable difference in his strength now. He still has trouble going counter-clockwise, really wanting to stick his shoulder out and four-beat. But, it doesn't take much for me to drive him under himself and pop his shoulder in. Going clockwise, he's wonderful. I can even start releasing a little bit without having to worry about his tracking. His gait is also much stronger in that direction, and the idea of collection and lengthening is coming into play.

We breezed through Training Level Three. Well, we would have. Had *I* not made a bunch of mistakes the first ride-through.

It's been so long since we did Training level, that test three is almost completely different. The beginning with the figure eight at x is still the same, but the test I used to ride did not involve half-circles for the canter-trot transition. It's not a big deal at all movement-wise, but memory-wise, oh man. I kept going on down the straightaway and onto the next diagonal for the transition, then I'd realize I wasn't remotely where I was supposed to be.

Once the stupid two-legger got herself together, though, the test went perfectly. He had a lovely, smooth change in bend for the circles at X, a good stretching trot circle, precise transitions, and he was nice and rhythmic throughout. The only thing we need to work on if we continue to use the curb rein during our ride-throughs is my collecting the reins back up after our free-walk and stretching circles. It's only an issue because the second reins I'm using are webbed with leather stoppers, and I just don't get along with those unless they're my only reins. I have go downstairs and dig through our trunk of extra tack and find different reins to use. No big deal, though.

Toler has been so wonderful on the double-rein, though. I love the extra finessing-control, and we haven't had a problem. It makes me feel like we are ready for a double bridle--really the only reason we wouldn't be ready would be if you looked at it from the fact that we're still retraining. We're not even working solidly at collected gaits yet. But that's not to say he doesn't know how to do a collected trot. We're just training backwards. Anyway, that's what led to my looking around for a weymouth and bradoon--which I still have had no luck finding, by the way.

At the end of our ride, I decided to do something we hadn't done in a long time: half-steps. I introduced half-steps last summer and he was really coming along with them until we had the reaction to the strangles vaccine and he lost a ton of weight and muscle within a week.

For working on the half-steps, I either approach them through half-halts at the trot, or from "prancing" out of the walk. It really depends on Toler's mind frame of the day. Sunday, for example, he was getting really hyped up at the walk, so I worked on it from the up-transition that day. I collect him up, gather him on his hind quarters, and encourage him to come up from the walk. As soon as he breaks into the trot (really, the instant just before), I back off. At this point, I'm quite light in the saddle and concentrate on exaggerating my legs and hips. Toler finds it easiest if I exaggerate the side-to-side hip swing of a stride (that feeling you get from a free-walk) with just a little push from each heel. All I'm looking for is a shortened stride, a collected prancy-spring, a give on the bit, and three to five half steps. Then I'll either let him come up to a medium trot (or lengthened trot; he really likes to bound forward from it) or drop down into a quiet walk. Again, it depends on his mind frame and where we came from. I do like to mix it up a bit, though, so he doesn't associate half-steps with one particular transition sequence.

He did have some nice half-steps for me, one or two of which were even very impulsive, but it's slow work. He's still building muscle and self-carriage, so I'm not expecting him to develop a passage or piaffe anytime soon. It's all about giving him something new and interesting to do. The feeling of progress.