Keeping Up with your Tack!

Merry Christmas to Everyone! Hope you and your four-legged friend(s) enjoyed the holidays. Ruby got plenty of presents, including cookies, that she almost didn't get after this lesson...

"Do you have any duct tape?"

Connie set up the following exercise for me for this week

     oo                       oo                      oo

I did not get any pictures of this lesson (unfortunately) but I am going to try to describe in words how this worked:

The jumps were set up in a line in the middle of the ring. This is essentially nothing more than a serpentine: approach the first jump to the far left (the one near the gate of the ring in my case), come down the jump, make a half circle to go up the jump in the middle, make another half circle, and come down the last jump to the far right (the far end of the ring for me). To switch things up, make serpentines and circles with this exercise- this can be done going either direction. Seems simple right? With a fit and limber horse, yes. With a tight, out-of-shape, airhead -no.

I anticipated Ruby running out on me the first time we went over this simply because she did it to me last week over the first obstacle. Sometimes, however, the anticipation is what gets you in trouble. Anyway, here is what happened: "trot, trot, trot, HOLYSHITthereISsomethingTHERE!"

In this case, I can't blame Ruby too much for what happened- she simply was not paying any attention whatsoever to what I was asking her to do. It almost seemed like she was off in Rubyland and was startled by the fact that there was a pole in front of her. Unlike last week where she slammed on the brakes and ran out just to be an ass, she saw this jump and had a heart attack...and jumped 6 feet to the left. Unfortunately, I did not go with her (at least I did manage to land on my feet!).
     For those who are wondering, I fell off, held onto my reins, and talked to her until she calmed down. I then stepped away from her, asked her to come toward me, patted her head, asked her to back up (I did this a few times just to make sure she was entirely focused and listening to me), and then led her over the jump at the trot. With Ruby, it is very important that I get her to focus on me as soon as I can when she spooks (and her IQ hits 0). I got back on her (Connie went to my car and grabbed some electrical tape I had in there), taped my reins back up, and finished the lesson with no more issues.

Worst part of the lesson: through the process of having a meltdown and trying to calm her down, my reins snapped in half. Why? Oh yeah, because I hate cleaning tack and they were nice and dry. As much of a hassle as it can be, keep up with your tack! There are many different brands of saddle soap, oils, and conditioners. Some riders will clean their tack after every ride. Although this might be a good idea, I realistically will only clean my tack once a month or so. As far as oils go, I highly recommend Neatsfoot oil. For saddle soap and conditioner, I have always used Oakwood Saddle Soap and Conditioner. It cleans, hydrates, and conditions the leather without leaving any sort of residue, so you ride on the saddle after cleaning without worrying about ruining your breeches. The conditioner also makes the leather more supple, and has actually helped with areas that were already drying out or cracked.

My new reins are in the mail.

Darting Out...

"Was that even worth refusing??!"

Exercise for December 8-15 is as follows:

                                 8
                       8                  8
                           
                                 8 
These are our "circle jumps." As is consistent with gymnastic good practice, start off with four trot poles placed in a circle; these were placed on a circle approximately 20 feet in diameter. The main focus of this exercise is to ask your horse to jump at a bend and to hit the middle of each jump on the circle. Once you have trotted the circle successfully, raise the poles to jumps. I recommend (based on Connie's advice) jumping these one at a time at the trot, then two at a time at the trot, then trotting all four jumps in the circle at once. If you feel you have enough control and consistency, go ahead and canter this in the same sequence: one jump, two jumps, entire circle. When changing direction, I repeat the one, two, four jump sequence.

Although I have done this exercise in the past, it was more difficult this time for three reasons: the diameter of this circle was smaller than what I have done in the past, Ruby is still not quite where I want her to be (fitness-wise), and Ruby HATES white poles (we are still working on that).

So what was the biggest lesson I learned riding this? Yeah, don't expect your horse to simply go over everything- STEER! Ruby is usually pretty good about going over the jump once I point her to it (as long as I have leg on), but she decided to run out on me this time...

What causes a horse to run out? STEERING ISSUES! If I had to choose between refusing and running out, I would prefer her to run out, since it means it is an issue with my riding and not a behavioral issue with her (as refusing usually is). Note to self: use leg AND hands. Ruby does not like when I "get in her  face," so I tend to keep my hands quiet.. too quiet.

Part one: Slamming on the breaks. At first I though she was going to flat out refuse the jump. This is actually pretty easy to "ride out"- just sit up!

 Part two: The dart. Ruby can be super quick and darting out to the side is always a pain in the ass. Again, force yourself to sit up and move with the horse (for me, this meant bracing with tons of right leg!). It's funny that I can be a lazy rider, but when something like this happens, my leg position is actually pretty decent.

 Part three: GET OVER IT! If your horse refuses or darts out like this, IMMEDIATELY take your horse right back over the jump- it doesn't have to be pretty, just get over it (a difficult concept to grasp for a perfectionist, but Connie has helped me learn how to handle these events really well). Ruby darted right (odd for her, she usually chooses to go left), and I circled her back to the jump. Technically, you want to circle the horse opposite the direction he/she darted, but I think I was so startled I just thought "YOU ARE GOING OVER NOW" and missed that point. Here we are going right back to it. As you can tell from my face, I was not pleased, but she did go over it with no issues the second time.

 "Calming poles:" I keep a series of trot poles in the ring at all times, in case Ruby starts to get strong. When cantering the circle, this is especially useful, as she has to come back to the trot after cantering the circle in order to get through the poles. The more we have to focus on, the better Ruby and I tend to do. Connie started us out with just these three poles, but added more and ended up using five.

Thanks to Dan, my amazing boyfriend, for getting these shots for me!

Trot Pole Exercise: Prevent Rushing

"make a circle at the end"

This week's exercise was thus:

o    o    o    8 (one stride) 8 (two stride) 8

At first, all of these were simply poles. As we worked through the exercise, the last 3 parts were taken up into jumps- again, starting small and building up into verticals. Ruby HATES white poles for whatever reason, so the challenge is to get her to go over without looking straight down each time she gets ready to go over one.

The first time through, keeping the exercise at poles. The key here is to keep constant leg, look up, and aim for the center of the poles (and keep my lag back, which I seem to have forgotten here...)

To keep Ruby from freaking out, Connie sets the jumps up one at a time instead of moving all three components up at once.  I had Ruby trot the exercise, acting as if the jump was no different than the pole the previous run through

Although I wanted Ruby to trot the final exercise (we are working on muscle building, so trot work is better for us), but I do not punish her for jumping. As long as she is engaged from behind, I slow her after and continue through the line. 

This week was not much different than last week. Ruby has a tendency to rush after the last element in these gymnastics. The second we clear the last component, I begin to ask her for a circle. In the past, this has helped deal with rushing a TON!