Friday I went to The Stables at Union Hill for a clinic with Stephanie Mosely. She's a Mary Wanless instructor. Dan was able to stay in the paddock and I stayed with Cindy. Dan and I ran out of time for adjusting him and bathing him, but... oh well. I can only do what I can only do. He wasn't too dirty but.. not as clean as I'd like for a clinic. But at least Kelli was able to pull his mane so we weren't quite so feral. We got there and I groomed him as best as I could. As I was cleaning his legs, I picked a scab and he bled and bled. Sigh.. Oops! And the day or two before he somehow smacked his face and was missing some fur on his head. Oh well. As I was grooming him a nice lady walked up and introduced herself and said "I think we're riding together, I just wanted to let you know my horse is half-donkey". I replied with "Ha! That's okay.. mine is half app, so you're in good company". Then she kept talking and said something about how some horses are scared of him and I realized she meant he was a mule! Which... should be fine. Dan is okay with mules I think. (for the clinic, Stephanie taught two people at the same time... but you flip flop back and forth with your instruction. It's kind of nice because you get a few minutes to breathe and play with things on your own). Anyways, I got on and walked him around a little bit but we were riding in the covered, so ... I ended up going in as they were finishing with lunch so I was able to let him settled a little. ha ha! He did not settle. :) He wasn't terrible. Just sooooooo ADD. He was distracted by himself in the mirror, by the mule in the mirror, by the mule, by what was going on outside of the arena, by the people watching, by the chairs, by .... everything! He was cracking me up. The wall of the indoor came up to about his mid neck. So he would randomly stop, put his nose on the top of the wall and just stare out and over. Hee hee. Then he was pinning his nose and wrinkling his lips at the horse in the mirror... Um... that's you Dan!! You're making faces at yourself! EVERY... SINGLE... TIME... we went by it close. Ha ha. So... I tried to do noodle neck but he was so distracted. We got a little bit so.. oh well. Stephanie asked the other girl about her and her horse and their goals for the clinic. Then she got to me and was like "I know you! We're facebook friends...so what do you want to accomplish this weekend?". Neato!! That was kind of cool. :) She KNOWS ME! :) So I told her that I just wanted to be a better rider and not block Dan. I also told her about the "rein lameness" and that I was trying to figure that out. The first day's ride we just did walk and trot. She changed my position. She said I was a little bit too defensive, braced, and... "startled". I was leaning too far back, sitting up too high, and had my shoulders too open, which made me very ineffective. And also made Dan more inverted and hollow and braced. She told me to slide more forward in the saddle, up towards the pommel. She had me sit more on the front of my pelvis rather than back on my pockets. But I still had to be strong in my lower abdomen on the front... almost like how I lift my sternum, but in my pelvis. Then she rotated my hips and my thighs and calves so that my knees were pointing forward and my toes were pointing forward and had my snug my thighs up into my knee blocks. She had me ride more off my thighs. And... despite the fact that Cindy has been trying to get me to turn my toes in for years... for some reason, it seemed a little bit easier to accomplish this weekend. ??? No idea. Maybe it's because I changed how my pelvis was up top? Maybe it's just timing and progression in my body?? Anyways... she wanted me to drop my shoulders too... like make my elbows get heavy. And then she had me think "boobs to knees and knees to boobs". I think she called it "bearing down". It was a way of getting me more centered and stronger. She also said that Dan was all over the place and I sort of let him be that way. I needed to be more "Me Tarzan.. You Horse". We talked about how on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being no control and 10 being me controlling every footstep... where were Dan and I? I said probably a 6. She asked what I thought was necessary to stay safe.. and I said "probably a 6". So then as we worked through.. we got up to 8 or so.. and at one point a 9. :) Not that I was directing every footstep, but... I was able to keep him on track and focused and keep his body somewhat straight. :) So that was the gist of it. It wasn't anything amazing, but it was helpful. And I did feel like Dan was getting nicer underneath me. Except.. he felt sooooo lame! Not legit lame, but... that "rein lame" nonsense that I cannot fix. Stephanie seemed to think it was just resistance and evasion and told me to just keep doing what I was doing and not to get sucked into changing because he was all over the place. And.. to a point, I agree... but I'm paranoid... and to go off on a throught tornado... I understand that it's tracking left, at certain connection degrees, and not all the time.... so maybe it is resistance and/or evasion.. because it hasn't gotten worse and it goes away when I've got him put together and in work mode. But... why is it only tracking left? Why doesn't he evade tracking right? Anyways... we kept working through it and it did get a little better, but.. it was probably as bad as it's ever been... Sigh. Kind of embarassing as there were people watching. Anyways... After our lesson, I ended up adjusting Drogon for Amanda and she worked on Dan. She founds ome right hamstring tightness, some right shoulder and scapular fascial restrictions, and some right lumbar issues. She ended up doing kinesiotaping. Dan was a good boy and enjoyed being out in the pasture overnight and I had a good evening with Cindy and also Dawn.
This morning Dan nickered at me when I came up to feed him! :) Awwwww... he does love me! Then he immediately flipped his feed pan over and had to eat his grain off the ground. He was being super out in the paddock by himself so I let him hang until it was time to ride. We went back in to the indoor and he was much less ADD today. We got to canter today. :) We did the same stuff as yesterday. Stephanie said I was doing well today with what we had done yesterday, so yay for that! Then she had me use a grab strap and had me hold it at the base.... and push forward and pull up on it. It was hard as it hurt my hands trying to hold all the things. But she explained that it was isometrics training. (Later in the lunch lecture, she had us all sit on the edges of our seats, like in a saddle. Then put one hand in a fist, holding our reins, and then make a flat paper hand over it. She had us push the one hand against the other and asked what we felt. OHHHHH..... my seat on that side and my lower back/shoulders. That's the isometrics to help keep ourselves straight and tight and strong in the tack. And to help the horses create power. Aha! So the grab strap showed us how to do that. She also explained that most of us amateur riders tend to be slightly behind the horse and therefore any time we lost connection, we tended to fall back and thus pull on the reins. And.. she's right!! I found myself doing that a few times...even if it was super subtle. But that's not riding the horse into the connection! That's riding backwards! So anyways... I tried to use the strap, but.. I may just have to practive the isometrics out of the saddle until I can find a better way to ride with the grab strap. She also said that my right hand tended to live down and back and out... which is fine on occasion, but I tended to hang out there. So the grab strap kept me from floating out of the "box". So.. the only other thing we did today was canter. Which, was not done any differently than what we had done the day before. I had to sit forward towards the front of the saddle, get my thighs rolled in and forward into the knee roll... ride knees to boobs and boobs to knees... and drop my shoulders. She also had my drop my elbows and lighten my hands. Which.. I took to mean that my elbows needed to be heavy and stay at my sides, which let my hands rise up a little bit and be "lighter"/softer. And... what was cool was that Dan's back came up and he started to sit a little. And I think.. I THINK... that my butt was plugged in.. instead of bouncing up and down. I think I may have finally gotten my butt in the tack. Oh, and we also practiced walk to trot to almost walk to trot to almost walk to trot. Dan actually started to sit and engage a little! Whoo hooo! The very very beginning of half steps. And I was able to feel myself "startle" a few times and break the forward, so... Yep! VERY helpful and pretty neat how he changed. Or at least how he felt like he changed. :) And... today he was sooo much ... less lame! So... I don't know if it was less ADD... more comfortable because of the work Amanda did... ???
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