Clinic Video

Watching dressage is a lot like watching grass grow or paint dry.  It is not the most exciting equestrian sport for sure.  But for you hard-core dressage enthusiasts (like me), here is a link to my evaluation ride -- our first ride -- at the clinic.  It is circles and circles and circles.  Lucy doesn't look as tense in the video as she felt -- except for the canter work at the end.  She really throws her head around and worries in those transitions.  The spook-scoot-buck happens just past the 24 minute mark.

Sandy teaches transitions from your seat.  The idea was for me to ask when one of her front legs was on the ground by squeezing with my calf.  Additionally, Sandy teaches us to never brace; she does not want the supple movement of the horse's back to be compromised.  In the transition, the leg which hangs softly against the side of your horse squeezes with the upper calf and stills -- a pause in the following movement of the lower leg.  Eventually, this momentary stillness becomes the primary aid.  Thinking about the canter aid, we slide our outside leg back -- kind of a windshield wiper movement.  But, we also slide that leg back for leg yield, half pass and other upper level movements.  The stilling of your leg says "transition", your upper calf says "now", and your hand receives the energy with a light ring-finger half halt before and after the transition.

My biggest take-away from this clinic (and there were many) was the expectation of prompt clear transitions between gates.  I had been asking for my downward transition from trot to walk by sitting, slowing my seat, sitting a bit heavier and we gently dropped into walk.  Nope.  Not any more.  We need to transition from an active trot to an active walk and it has to be Bam!  Part of what we worked on in the video was teaching Lucy that when I sit the trot it doesn't mean slow down.  I have her conditioned to think we are going to gradually make the transition.  The same is true for the walk to trot, upward, transition.  A gradual build to a forward trot isn't acceptable anymore.  She's not a young, green horse (all I've ever owned before Lucy).  She can go from zero to sixty in a stride; I need to expect that (and be comfortable with the surge of power).  As Sandy said, Lucy is an "ambitious" horse -- she likes to go; forward is not a challenge (relaxation and patience are).

By Sunday morning, Lucy and I were in sync.  She felt amazing -- controlled power, like driving a Ferrari (well, I've never driven one, but one can imagine).

I love, love, love this horse.  And, the workshop was awesome.  Even with the heat and the stinky cat-pee smelling fly bait dousing, it was awesome.

Workshop: Transitions (Part Three)

Sunday morning, thankfully, was a bit cooler.  I limped to the barn, my heels covered in band-aids to cover the blisters that grew, burst and bled as a result of my sweaty feet slipping in my tall boots the day before.  I skipped my tall boots on Sunday and wore paddock boots and half chaps.  And I was luckier than the others who had ridden their lessons in sitting trot and, as a result, were so chafed from their breeches that Sandy had to ride their horses.  My lessons were in rising trot -- I think to help Lucy with rhythm but possibly because my sitting trot sucks. So, I didn't have the chafing issue which was possibly worse than smelling like cat pee the first day.

Lucy was very relaxed, she'd been in the covered arena three times already.  It was much cooler at 10am, around 82, when I took my lesson.  After our warm-up, we worked on asking for trot from the walk -- sounds easy, right?  Not so much.  Sandy wanted me to get the timing exactly right so that Lucy could step directly into trot.  No mincing half-steps, shifting to medium trot in a stride or two.  I was to give the aid and Lucy was expected to launch herself into a foward, expressive, nicely tempo-ed trot.  The first time she did it correctly, she left me behind a bit and I choked -- she surged and I went ACK! and slammed on the brakes.  oops.  Thank goodness she is a sweet and forgiving mare.

Once we were doing those transitions well, Lucy was rewarded with some more stretchy trot.  Then we moved on to work on our trot-halt and halt-trot transitions.  Lucy rocked the halts -- square and prompt.  And then she raised her head and looked around at her fans, watching from the observation deck.  She twitched her lip at them -- then she fussed, she backed up, she clearly wasn't thrilled with holding bend in the halt.  But we got there too.

Last, we worked on transitions from a forward trot to a collected trot and back again.  She felt... different; more powerful but in a controlled way.  She was pushing from behind, she was responsive, and the only thing holding us back was me losing rhythm in the corners (tried sitting the slower, collected trot and I changed my rhythm as a result) -- which made her lose rhythm.  As long as I stayed in posting trot we were good.  If I sat, she thought "canter coming - woo hoo" or "what the ?? is she doing?" -- either way, it was much better when I didn't sit the trot.  So, I didn't.

It.was.awesome.
Will we go back in November for the half halt workshop?  You bet.

Workshop: Transitions (Part Two)

Saturday, all the workshop participating riders were scheduled for two rides.  The first ride was 30 minutes, and video-taped.  It consisted of an initial assessment and a way to identify areas for improvement.  We were then able to see our videos at lunch time, before our second ride.  My baseline ride was at 9:30. It was 88F in the outdoor dressage court.

I am not a fan of heat.  My body does not do well in the heat.  I have a tendancy to get nauseaus, dizzy and pass out.  But, 30 minutes isn't a horribly long time and 88, while very warm, is bearable for a short time.  Lucy was a bit looky in our warmup (in the covered arena) but she listened and she settled... eventually.  She was less tense in the dressage court -- she likes being outside and I had hand walked her around the court the evening before.  There were no trolls residing at Clay Station Ranch.  Phew.

Most of my assessment ride consisted of me riding with my inside thumb hooked through the bucking strap so I could focus on making transitions with the ouside rein and my seat.  Lucy was tense and my fussy inside hand wasn't helping her relax.  A few minutes after we started, Sandy asked me if I thought my inside hand was contributing to Lucy's tension in the transitions and I said "No, I think it's pretty quiet.  But, don't put a robotic sensor on my or anything because I'm probably wrong."  Once I hooked my thumb and forced the hand to be quiet, Lucy immediately settled.  Hmmm.   We tried some canter transitions and Lucy was a bit sticky.  We worked through that and had a nice canter going on a circle, in front of the area where people were sitting under some small trees.  One person scooted her chair back, rustling the tree branches, and Lucy jumped forward and crow hopped.  But she settled back down and we finished on a good note.

My second ride was at 2:30.  It was 95F by then and Sandy had moved to the indoor.  I have a Cool Medics vest and I soaked it in a bucket of water while I got Lucy ready. Without that vest, I never would have made it through the lesson.  While waiting to mount, and while I watched the rider before me, Lucy rested her forehead against my cool wet vest.  I didn't make it through my entire 45 minutes but I was pleased with our improvement and impressed with how much energy Lucy still had.  She has a very forward brain, that horse.  Sandy wanted very prompt, very forward transitions.  Lucy was on her toes.  We also worked on transitions from shoulder-in to haunches-in -- back and forth as we went around the arena.  ...and then I was out of gas, unable to retain any of Sandy's instructions and starting to feel a bit queasy.

It was a difficult day, mostly because of the heat, but we made progress.

As Promised... pictures and a video from the clinic

Here we are getting ready to open the rope gate

Here's Brett & Flash opening the gate

The balloon popping obstacle.  See the pointy stick in Brett's hand?

The pole turning thing.  We had a lot of trouble with this one.  Video below...

Brett going into the scary flapping car wash... Jackson not sure.

Brett and Flash did fine.  You know we didn't...

Here's a picture taken just before Jackson charged forward, breaking the obstacle and taking the line of yellow streamers with him/us:

That's Brett to the right, looking on in horror... or fascination... not sure.  You can see the yellow streamers wrapping around Jackson's head.  Poor horse - no wonder he freaked!

And here's the cleanup crew after we wrecked the obstacls.