Made it out to Suffolk again today for another session with Sue Gould-Wright on the wonderfully patient Douglas. This week we were working on transitions which are super challenging if you do them right! So much to think about in downward and upward transitions. For downwards I need to concentrate on:
Tilting my pelvis back and not letting it rock forward
Gently widening across my shoulders
Sitting taller and bringing my head and neck gently back
Using the muscles in my sides to gently squeeze my arm pits down, whilst still sitting up through the spine (this is a bit confusing!!)
Gently letting the elbows drift back into a downward transition
Upwards we did a lot of work about using the legs. This is through contracting the muscles up the whole length of the leg, rather than just trying to use the calves/lower leg which is not necessarily in contact with the horse. I found this very very hard! Especially on the left side where my hip is very stiff. It’s also very hard not to clench my bum whilst doing this and therefore block the motion and stop the horse. Definitely need more practice!
We’ve continued working on agility stuff this week and we bought some new trainers for hacking! Very exciting! Size smaller than his last ones as his hooves have got a it narrower as they’ve been trimmed better. Hoping to road test these on Wednesday with Sam 🙂
Overall we’ve had a sticky week. He seems a tiny bit footy and he’s still losing weight. I’m giving him a week off being ridden and focusing on lunging with his Equicore this week to start some strengthening work. His saddler will be out to check his saddle on Saturday which is a bit overdue and I need to look at his diet again as what we’re doing at the moment clear doesn’t work for him. A quick run of his current diet through FeedXL shows it might be a bit lacking in places – going to have a think about putting him on different (but more expensive!) vitamins and mins and more linseed to try and stop the weight coming off. Very weird to be trying to keep weight on him when usually the problem is the other way!
This week we have been working on the standing with our front feet in a hoop bit of the starter agility. We have nailed it…sometimes. I even manged it at liberty on Thursday night! (see picture). We also had a hack out on Wednesday so this is just the sort of week we need to keep having 🙂
Not much ‘hard work’ though and I’m still not 100% convinced I’ve got his diet right. I’ve been reading some Pete Ramey (expert barefoot trimmer. Like, if he doesn’t know it literally no-one else is in the whole world probably will expert) about diet which has set me musing again. Excess iron can be a bit problem in horses. I had no idea! So I need to sign up for another month of FeedXL and see if a different set of supplements might work better. Ho hum.
There will be less fun stuff this week. I don’t see where we can fit a hack in, but hopefully we can have some agility fun on Wednesday. I have ordered a curtain from the agility people as my home made one wasn’t up to snuff! I hope that will arrive quickly and we can get practising! Other than that I’m hoping for three nice calm schooling sessions to work on transitions this week. Watch this space.
Early January walk in Epping Forest; there should be more of this in 2019!
The ladies over at Happier by Gretchen Rubin (a podcast I recommend! Listen at https://gretchenrubin.com/podcasts/) have a thing where instead of new year resolutions they do a list of things they would like to do during the year. Since it 2019 this year they are doing 19 things! So here’s my personal 19 for 2019….
1.Have at least one holiday that involves a hot tub 2.Go walking in a National Park 3.Go to at least one cider festival 4.Visit at least 3 museums 5.Drink cocktails at least 6 times (in a cocktail bar) 6.Do a come and sing Mozart Requiem (or Mass in C minor) 7.Get to show 400 of Girls Gone WoW 8.Go to Blizzcon 9.Finally get caught up with Arrow/Flash/Supergirl/LoT etc 10.Eat more healthily 11.Regularly cycle to work (at least twice per week) 12.Read 20 books 13.Have Bibliogoth happen every month 14.Either get a pay rise or get a new job 15.Have a better mental health year 16.Compete at prelim 17.Compete in the online Horse Agility competition 18.Jump a clear round 19.Go hacking at least once per month
If I get these done it should be a good year! I’m also doing #365days photo project, again, but this year I’m using Instagram instead of Flickr as it will post direct to Facebook and I won’t have to upload and faff about each week. I feel like the one I did last year didn’t have many ‘good’ pictures in it because the year was exhausting and stressful so to give me some focus I’m picking a theme each month. I aim for at least five photos each month to be on the ‘proper’ camera and related to the theme – so not everything by any means and there’ll probably still be lots of photos of the cat, but a better chance at getting some actual practice at taking nice pictures!
My slightly random list of themes is as follows: January – Winter February – Buildings March – Movement April – Spring May – Tress and flowers June – Horses July – Summer August – People September – Landscapes October – Autumn November – Stillness December – Advent
It’s that time of year for a bit of reflection on what’s going well and what lessons have been learned. The Connection Training folk put up a useful framing for this exercise and I’m having a look through the blog posts from this time last year which is fascinating!
For a start I can see that the field lake was already formed at this point! Check out the picture here This year things have been pretty wet, and there is a small lake in the field but nothing like that size. And things are drying a bit now as the past couple of weeks have been better. I’m really hoping the weather stays dry and cold now for a bit. I don’t mind that so much.
So the questions then: Q 1: What are you most proud of from last year? Hm. Tricky one! There’s lots of places where I feel like we’ve made as much progress as I had hoped but there are some things we have cracked. We used clicker training to sort out his aversion to being groomed and now he mostly stands still and calm although we could do more work. I’m also pleased I’ve started work with Sue Gould-Wright to sort my riding out which is I think a big part of what’s holding us back under saddle! (Post about that here) We’ve also managed to get out hacking more. Not weekly as I’m aiming for eventually but we did something at the end of September, and then had a good long ride a week or so ago. That’s a big achievement.
Q 2: What was your most useful lesson from last year? I think I need to adjust *my* attitude. I’m too hung up on ‘getting somewhere’ with him and I think he needs a less pressured approach. But he also really needs to move to keep his hips and pelvis working which is a challenge as getting him to move without piling the pressure on doesn’t really happen! I certainly think we get better results with a clear plan, but I need to work out how to stick to one.
Q 3: What is the number 1 thing you’d like to achieve with your horse in the coming year? I would like to understand Dino better so we can train better together. I have some fairly concrete goals for things I want to do but I feel like there’s a fundamental attitude thing (mine – not his!) that needs cracking that might unlock all of it…. My list of things is: 1. Compete in the online horse agility league 2. Compete in a prelim dressage competition 3. Do a clear round jumping competition 4. Get out hacking at least once per month I also think he would benefit from working the core activation carrot stretches and some Masterson into his routine properly!
So there’s lots to do and I’m feeling in a better place for making plans than this time last year. The school is dry for the time being, and the pony is in decent shape I think. We’ve joined the Horse Agility Club to give the monthly video competitions a go and I hope this might give us a sense of progress and achievement. I’m already the yard weirdo so trotting along today with a hula hoop and a football in addition to the pony didn’t raise too many eyebrows! And hopefully we’ll do more of this… (hacking in Epping Forest!)
