Indoor arena ride #4

I did make it out to the barn yesterday.

I was biding my time, watching wunderground for the best moment to go.  It said:

winds 10-15 mph

I thought, "Great.  I can deal with that."  And I got in my car.  By the time I was outside of town it became apparent the winds were a heck of a lot stronger than 15.  My car blew all over the road.


I arrived at the barn outside of Glenrock in the middle of a windstorm so fierce Chev was sure we were going to die in the blowing sand while she tried her best to go around me on the line.

But--whatever.  I was already there.  I tacked her up and we had this kind of ride.





When I got up there the barn owner was just finishing up a lesson with a few little kids.  I had one of those moments when I mounted my horse where I felt like I was on top of the Sears Tower.  Or, Rockefeller Center.  Since I've never actually been on top of the Sears Tower.  But, anyway--

I forget how freaking tall my horse is until I'm around other horses...and we are just towering over them.  Yikes.

I started the video camera after we had done some warmup.  The other horses left, and Chev was sure she'd be stuck in the indoor arena with the howling wind for all eternity.  It was very stressful.  Poor girl.

I like the foam between her buttcheeks.  At least she was working with her hiney a bit!

I swear that my horse does stand when I get on.  It's really hard to tell how nervous she was in the video--as long as I kept her working she didn't lose her mind too much.  The sound of the wind was really agitating her.  A lot more than the last time we rode in there.  Of course, the wind was a lot stronger, too.

I was thinking a lot about forward, and how a forward horse is much less likely to come up off the ground (either in front or behind you).  I feel like it's just as much a mental thing for them.  It never occurs to the forward horse to rear.  So I tried to be happy with all the exuberant forward motion I was getting most of the time.  Again I'm surprised at how quiet she appears in the video, and how train-wrecky she felt in my hands.

On the downside I'm having to almost stand in my offside stirrup to keep her balanced in such a small space.

I can also see how crooked I'm riding.

And you can see how heavy she is on the forehand at the canter.  But four canter strides along the short side of the arena does not an adequately sized arena make!

We did manage to get outside for a brief ride afterwards, when the winds died down to about 40 mph.

I'll show you that video if I can ever get it to upload.  I think it's a good comparison video--she's being ridden with no contact and behaving herself pretty well despite all the wind in her face.  I'm not really putting her together at all, just letting her motor around.

Please check back by soon to view the outside arena video!

ETA:  Here's the outdoor video--at times I did feel like I was going to be blown right out of the saddle.  I'll try to get an angle next time that shows more of the arena.

Video--indoor arena ride #3

I had a pretty good ride on Chev today.

She looked absolutely FANTASTIC on the lunge today.  She was free moving and seemed to be in a darn good mood.

It was windy and cold again, so after her warm up we headed to the indoor arena for our 3rd ride there.

I was smart enough to bring the camera this time.  I unfortunately wasn't smart enough to bring more batteries, so the 2nd video I thought I was taking didn't work out so hot.  I did get this though.

I'm showing this to you for a few reasons.  

For one, a laugh.  Watching me mount up is pretty hilarious.  

I didn't realize I looked so ridiculous.  I mean, I knew if she were just a fraction of a hand taller I wouldn't be able to get up there, but this is just silly.  I will be using the mounting block in subsequent videos.

Mostly I want to post this as an example of riding I consider to be pretty sub-par.  It's obvious how nervous the horse is. 

She's fidgety and playing constantly with the bit.   Her body is stiff and over-reactive.  

In turn, I'm being way too heavy handed.

We both look pretty uncomfortable.  

You can see that at the far end of the arena, she's constantly either trying to break stride or rush out of there. There are also a bunch of sticky moments where bending either is happening too much or not enough.

Of course, you know the background for this ride already if you've read my posts on day 1 and day 2.

I like the part where she spooks right in front of the camera.

You can also hear the wind howling and her buddy screaming in the background.

Still--this is a vast improvement on her last ride in the indoor arena--ride #2.  Unfortunately this arena is too small to get any really good work in.  For a horse as big as she is, it's a challenge.  Her canter felt a lot more hair-raising than it looks in the video, but having said that, it still looks pretty bad.

After this we braved the wind and had some really nice canter transitions outside.  Again, my draped rein, nicely collected horse was back.

I noticed something today, too.  She can be straight as an arrow in the canter.  For a few strides anyway.  We had some really nice moments of her being lifted, straight and supporting her weight and mine without much help from me.

I'll try to figure out how to get a video out there sometime, so you can see me getting blown off my horse.

Obviously she's a lot happier working in the environment she's comfortable in.  Isn't that true of all of us?

Hitting a wall means you at least see it, right?

I've kind of been hitting a wall with Chev lately.

My riding has been inconsistent at best.  All summer I made the 80-mile round trip to ride at least 4 days a week.  My car has a lot of miles on it.  But my horse felt broke, light, soft, responsive.  It really felt like we were getting somewhere.

I'm not able to ride as much now that it's winter and crummy outside.  I'm lucky if I get one good ride in a week.

It's not that my horse is disobedient by nature.  I don't even think it's that she doesn't want to work anymore, or that she forgets lessons.  I think it's that her body just isn't conditioned to cues how it used to be.

You know, muscle memory?  Mine's suffered a lot, too.

You know what else you lose when you don't ride much?  Confidence.

I don't worry much about my horse being naughty.  She's not ever naughty for the sake of misbehavior.  She is not out to get me, even though I'm sometimes out to get her.  I try to remember that whenever I feel frustrated with the way things are going.  Even when she is difficult, she isn't bad.  She isn't doing it "on purpose".

The kind of confidence I'm talking about is the assurance that you are giving the right cue, and that your horse knows what that means.

It's all building muscle memory.

And I've lost a lot of that over the last couple of months.

 Sandy face.

I did bring the hackamore out with me to the barn today, and we did a little riding in it, just playing around and getting comfortable with the opposite kind of pressure and the way it acts on the face.  In hindsight, the best time to do all this would have been at the end of the ride, not the beginning.  But that's something to store away for later.

We started on the line.  She lunged for a few minutes in the smaller outdoor arena.  She looked a little muscle sore from the other day but worked out of it quickly.  After a few minutes she looked good.  I was starting to feel hopeful that we would get somewhere today.

Played around in the hackamore and that was challenging for her.  I switched to the snaffle after a few minutes and I immediately became aware of just how tuned in she is to it.  And how reliant I am still on the reins for steering.  Darn.

Unfortunately I had to ride in the large jumping outdoor since there was a lesson happening with four kiddos and four ponies all going crazy directions in the smaller arena we usually work in.  The jumping arena was an obstacle course.  All the jumps were blown down all over the place, and half the arena was still muddy and too slippery to ride in.

This translated into a pretty crummy space to ride.

We did our best to work around it, but today I had a freight train on my hands.

This is totally what I get for bragging about how awesome she works on a draped rein.

I hate riding with that much contact.  It hurts.  It hurts everyone.  Chev wanted me to hold her up.  She wanted to just lean on the contact and not have to think about balancing her own body.  She was feeling a bit frantic from our harrowing ride the other day, she wanted to look at the school ponies, and she did not like the wind blowing in her face.  She wanted to become a barrel racer.

You know that moment where you know people are watching you ride, and thinking to themselves, "Boy, that gal is having a tough time"?

That was totally happening to me.

After fifteen minutes of huffing and puffing around outside (both of us), and nearly getting blown off my horse, I decided it was a good idea to try the indoor arena again.

We walked up there.

And guess what?

She was a little nervous.

But she was so much better.

Only one poop pile this time instead of 10.

She shuffled her feet in the beginning.

But she listened.  She caught on rapidly to the rules.  She looked to me instead of the wind for clues.

After twenty minutes she was relaxing into a nice rising trot and staying at a walk whenever I asked.  Granted, it was a damned energetic walk.  But it was still a walk.

We did some trot pole exercises and tons of serpentines.  We practiced unsticking her incredibly sticky right shoulder and ribcage.  We stopped.  We walked some more.

I dismounted after a great stop at the scary far end and she followed me quietly out of the arena.

So, that's progress.

By then the kiddos were done with their lesson and I wanted to work a little on our canter departs.

I also felt it would benefit her to just lope some big circles and get all the bunches out.

I have a pretty one-sided horse.  I remember many years ago my instructors telling me every horse has a preferred lead, just as people are right- or left-handed.  They even stick the preferred leg out in front of them when grazing or eating hay off the ground.  You can teach them to be ambidextrous (and that is, indeed, the goal!) but they don't come out of the box that way.

My horse is in the majority.  She is definitely "left handed".

Her left lead is balanced, cadenced, and lovely to ride.  Which really means that the right side of her body is supple, relaxed, and strong, since it's the part that has to bend around for the left lead.  The right hind is also where all the power for the left lead is created.

Her right lead is choppy, lopsided, and sort of feels like riding a different horse up front than behind.  In her case this has to do with a lot of left side stiffness.  She also has some sort of mysterious shoulder injury from when she was a 5 year old (vet and I guessed it was a spectacular wipe-out in the pasture, which she is wont to do), so her mobility is a little decreased on that side.  At least, I can see it.

I put her in a big circle on her left lead.

My broke, draped-rein horse was suddenly back!

She felt great.  Slow and happy.

I put her into her right lead, more challenging.  She picked it right up and carried me along.  It felt pretty good.  She was elastic and bending through my leg.

We did a few big, swoopy loops, back to the left lead, rinse and repeat.

I kept expecting her to be tired, but she just seemed happy to stretch her muscles out.

I put her back into her right lead and disaster struck.

It's been a while since I've had one of those moments where I was sure I was coming off.  You know what I'm talking about:  time slows down incredibly, your mind thinks of what you could do, but your body is still too slow to do anything...

It was a major, catastrophic stumble.  The edge of the far end of the arena just drops off about three feet before hitting the perimeter iron-cable fence.  I had time to think about how much this was going to suck.  I think I yelled out some expletive.  And I cranked up on those reins.

I pulled my pony up off her stumbling knees and gave her some leverage to balance with.  She threw a little buck out the back trying to get her feet organized, came out of it on the other lead, and off we went.

I was laughing at this point.

I eased her down and asked for the right lead again, which she took gracefully.  We loped around a little bit, then we stopped, and we both aired up.

This is exactly why I never throw my reins entirely away.  You never know when your horse might need a little help.

Not sure how I didn't just go over her head when she stumbled face first, but I think it was mostly being lucky enough to do the right things in the right order to save the situation.  Total luck.  She literally had one foot over the edge when we were able to regain balance and move on.

I was really proud of her, though.  She could have come unglued.  She's never tripped to her knees with a rider before.  And given her past history, I think she handled it pretty damn calmly.

We both did, somehow.

We did a few more circles of canter, mostly so I could prove to her she really was great at it, and a good long walk cool-off.

So we ended on a great note today.  I had my soft, giving, moderately-broke horse back.

She earned her sand roll and her carrots today.

In other news:  my horse is officially winter fat...somehow she looks like a welsh pony in this photo, and is wondering why I stood her up so awkwardly.  That fence behind her is 6'.

Big plans

I can't wait to ride tomorrow.

It's winter in Wyoming, and that means lots of snow, ice and wind.  Chev is also boarded at a barn 40 miles away.

I can get three round trips out of a tank of gas--almost four, but it would be a real bummer to get stuck out on the highway with an empty tank 20 miles from the nearest town.

I am waiting for a check in the mail, payment for one of my reining horse prints, so I can go get gas.

Unfortunately for me, the distance and the $10 it costs every time I drive to the barn combined with my intense artist poverty means I don't get out as often as I'd like, especially in the winter, when the weather is also unpleasant or impossible to drive in.

But I really have to get out there.

I think tomorrow I'll try her in the indoor arena again.  I'm going to stick to my cardinal rules as much as possible.

Last time was her first time working in the new indoor arena.  You can read about our crazy first session here.  We've both had a few days to think it over, so I'm hopeful for a productive ride.

I'd love to ride her in the hackamore (bosal + mecate), but I won't use it if she can't focus.  She's new to the hackamore and I need all of her brain to succeed there.  She's been in the snaffle for 3 years, and we both know what to expect with that.

Here's hoping!

Not all days are good days

We have been experiencing some pretty strong wind in Wyoming lately.

Like, 50 mph gusts.

This kind of weather is pretty miserable to ride in.  The sand blows in your face, you can't hear anything with the wind in your ears, and your horse can't hear anything either.  Also, it's cold.

So I was pretty excited to try out the brand new indoor arena.

It's not like I didn't anticipate a little bit of a fight.

Chev and I relocated here in June of 2011.  She hasn't seen the inside of an indoor arena since before the move.

I got her saddled somehow, with the wind blowing in my face and the saddle blanket everywhere, and dragged her and all associated tack up to the new arena.  I brought my lunge line and whip, because I knew she was going to be a dufus and that lunging her would help get the willies out.

She walked right into the new arena (which was a plus), and promptly forgot me completely (which was a big minus).

She was all freaked out by the arena, the poles, and the ferocious creaking noise from the wind blowing full force against the opposite wall.

Since I had her saddled, I kept her on the line so she wouldn't get too stupid and hang herself on something.  She made circles that were more like rectangles with one goose egg shaped side.  She feinted, she dodged, she tried to switch directions which she hasn't done since she was 3.  She completely forgot how to lunge.

She was so preoccupied with everything but me that she was acting like an unhandled youngster.  It was like my calm, broke horse reverted back into something I hadn't seen since I got her almost four years ago.

I lunged her for quite a while hoping for enough exhaustion to finally get her mind back on me.  Even with sweat matting her coat, she wasn't willing to come back.

Eventually I decided I should just get on, since generally I have more faith in my ability in the saddle than in groundwork.

She wasn't willing to go to the far end of the arena with all the wind blowing against the metal walls without a fight.  I had three simple rules which I hoped would get through to her.


Rule #1:  If the feet are still when I ask for a stop, all is well.

Rule #2:  If the feet are walking when I ask for a walk, all is well.

Rule #3:  If the feet are moving when I didn't ask, we're going to trot around in the far end of the arena.

Normally, she would have caught on very rapidly.  It takes her about three times to "get" a plan like this.

Today, she was pretty much completely outside of her ability to listen to me.

I kept the feet moving anyway.

We had several episodes in the beginning of vehement head shaking, whirling, skittering, shooting backwards, explosive departs, spins, and leaps.

I admit I thought to myself, "Wow...it was really stupid of me to write that blog yesterday about how long it's been since I've fallen off."

But I had to admit, even in the middle of all this craziness, I didn't feel nervous.

I kept her feet moving all the time except when I asked for the halt.  I assumed that if her feet were moving, on some level I had some sort of control of her body.

I booted her forward whenever I encountered potentially dangerous resistance like balking, getting too light in the forehand, curling up, sucking back, or shooting backwards.  I tried not to worry about the times she shot forward, because she was doing what I asked--moving forward.  At the time it seemed kind of hopeless.  But she did start to come around.

Each time I asked for a stop, I made my cues very clear, and then went completely neutral.  At the beginning, she would stop, and immediately move off again.  I would push her into a trot and circle her back for a few laps around the far side of the arena until I felt like she was ready to try again.

If she stood still, which I always hoped for but rarely got, then she got a rest and a pat while I remained neutral.

I assumed that if she trotted off on her own, she didn't need a break.

If she walked calmly without speeding up, she got to go back to the near side of the arena.  If she started trotting to get away from the far side of the arena, I immediately turned her nose around and sent her back to the far side.

We did this for probably 30 minutes straight.

We did make some progress, but I felt like she was getting overwhelmed by all of the sensory information.

Also, despite sweat running down her legs, she just wasn't tired enough to switch off the nervousness in her brain.

I chose my moment to dismount after a good, solid stop and when she relaxed into it a little bit.  Then I brought her out of the arena, unsaddled her, and brushed her out a bit.

I have to admit, at this point I was feeling pretty frustrated.

I have long believed that work was the key to getting Chev's brain going.

But work just didn't seem to be working.

I felt like it was a puzzle I needed to figure out.  I led her back up to the indoor in her halter.

I decided to let her hang in there for a little bit to see what she'd do.

She was a distracted, calling for her buddies (which she never does), pawing, pacing, circling wreck.

I got out my lunge whip and drove her to the far side of the arena.

She fought to get back.

I chased her back and forth and drove her to the back corner until she stopped.  Then I immediately dropped all the pressure and backed off.

I relaxed my body and put the whip in a neutral position.

As soon as she started moving her feet, I drove her back again.

We repeated this for several minutes, and each time she paid a little more attention to me, and a little less to the howling wind on the creaking metal.

After twenty minutes, I had her full attention.

If she stood well, didn't move her feet and kept an ear on me at all times, I rewarded her by turning my back and walking away--taking the pressure off completely.

Instead of blitzing to the other end of the arena, she would make a beeline for me at a quick walk.

When she got too close to my personal space, I drove her back and we would start again.

By the end of this she was entirely calm, respectful and tuned in.

We left the arena, I rubbed and brushed her down until she was dry, she rolled in the sand roundpen to her heart's content, and I turned her back out with her buddy.

Her eye was soft and kind.


I feel like I learned a few things today.

1) My horse is not as broke as I thought she was (darn it).

2) We have some serious personal space issues to work on (nothing like a scary environment to expose a horse that wants to jump into your arms for protection, which is SO NOT OKAY)

3) Work only works if you're doing it right.

I always try to end on a good note.  I felt like she was calm and looking to me for how and where to move at the end of our session today.  It'll be interesting to see how she does the next time we're in the indoor.