Oh boy, you guys are in for it. The rest of the pictures, all of the cantering pictures. Fun, fun, fun.
First, our canter transition, the first one and it was wonderful. It may not look wonderful, but, all I had to do was sit deep, slide my left leg back and poof, canter, it was the next stride and I didn't have to kiss. She came a little above the bit, but is normally much worse.
Of course, this was us just a few strides later...
And then, just some more cantering pictures. Obviously I have a much bigger problem with riding defensively when cantering. Next time I ride I'm definitely trying to sit up more. I do have a shoulders back device that I might try strapping on too, lol.
***********************Begin Canter Sequence***********************
In this canter sequence you can see the problems we have with BTV at the canter. I guess my problem is that I don't push her forward enough and maintain the right jump at the canter, but honestly, it feels plenty forward to me when we're riding! I'll probably hold off on doing a lot of canter work. I might do some work on transitions if we get too bored, but that's it.
***********************End Canter Sequence***********************
6 comments:
Wow! Who did you get to take all of those great pictures??? Don't tell me it was your hubby?
Are you really tall, or is Sophie small, or both? I wish that I looked like you while riding. I am only 5'4", and I I have REALLY short legs. I always wanted long legs when I was a kid...lol!!
BTW...congrats on your anniversay!!! One year is a really big deal. It only goes downhill from here!! I am just joking of course :)
Good luck figuring out your cantering issues.
nice riding
:)
Pic 2: you can see in this pic how you are breaking the direct line from bit to elbow with a downward action on her mouth – this makes the problem worse! When this happens, RAISE your hands and give with the outside - don’t fight! (and I mean RAISE them – like to your chest! – you don’t have to pull, but you do need to release the pressure on her bars and tongue while maintaining the contact, then slowly, gently take her head to the side a little *while releasing the other rein* and she’ll drop back down – then you follow softly down with your hand)
5: starting to get heavy and downhill because of break behind poll
i skipped over most of them so i don't repeat myself too much. In the rest of the pics she is tending towards BTV (someitmes with the LNM neck) and getting very on her forehand. The temptation is always to try to ride into the hand in an attempt to raise the front end, but the front end is actually raised by the back muscles, and when the back is tense from overbending the front end cannot be raised…
My recommendations: put these things on the back burner for now:
1.The bend in her neck – work on keeping her relaxed and allowing her to position her head where she wants. Then, gently work the lateral flexion regardless of how high her head may be – the lateral flexion is the key to obtaining the correct longitudinal flexion, so don’t fuss with her head position, just try to get a correct bend, wherever her head happens to be, and she’ll start to relax all of those tensed muscles in her neck and use herself properly.
2.Holding her in the outside rein - beware of a restrictive outside rein – the outside rein should be a FOLLOWING rein at this stage – she’s not ready for a collecting rein yet. Keep a light contact on the outside and allow it to follow the bend as much as possible
3.Keeping her round through transitions – it’s more important that she feels she can go forward into the transitions than that she stays in a particular outline. Worry about ‘fixing’ it after she’s settled into her stride a bit. Try an experiment: for one of your sessions halt, drop the rein to the buckle. Then ask for walk, gather up your reins lightly. Do that a few times. Then from walk, hold the reins at the buckle and ask for trot, each time letting her take a few steps forward before gathering up your reins. Keep doing that until she understands you aren’t going to give her conflicting ‘go-don’t go’ leg to hand signals. When you are comfortable doing this at walk and trot, try the canter… and don’t panic and grab the reins, just slowly establish a light contact. If you find she relaxes, then do this every time you make a transition for a while until you can make the transition with nothing but a light contact. But remember; always set her in motion before making any adjustments…
4.Cantering full circles, arena, etc.. – I’d work on getting her soft and relaxed at walk/trot, making the transition, keeping the contact light and quitting before it has a chance to get ugly – even if you only do a stride or two, don’t let her canter get unbalanced and out of control. Eventually, you’ll be able to add strides each time until you can keep her light and balanced for long periods. Riding in the wrong balance continually only reinforces the wrong balance and contributes to her tension, insecurity and, therefore, resistance… it will also help her learn self-carriage when she doesn’t have your hand to rely on for her balance.
5.Your “slouching” – there is a little slouching going on, but it’s not terrible and I think worrying about it and working to sit straight right now will make YOUR muscles tense, which will contribute to her tenseness. Relax and don’t worry about your position being perfect – it’s pretty good the way it is and it’s more important that you stay relaxed!
Your position is good. your horse is very cute and has good, regular movement. so, the good news is none of the stuff you want to accomplish is that far off – you’re halfway there! In general, just try not to rush things. I think maybe you want to be riding her at a level above what she’s ready to do right now, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a step back to help her understand what you want and build her confidence in doing what you ask.
All of this stuff is hard for a horse to ‘get’, and especially for a sensitive horse whose first line of defense is resistance. None of this stuff gets fixed by pushing through it – it is improved by going slow, breaking everything down into easily digestible pieces and addressing individual issues one at a time…
I went through all of these posts really fast so if I missed anything or I didn’t explain myself very well let me know. and again, sorry if it seems a bit heavy on criticism – I think you’re doing a good job, but I’m just trying to think of ways you could make it better :-) i'm very opinionated (in case you didn't notice) so as always, feel free to tell me to shut up if i'm being preachy or am out of line :-)
Yes, Melanie, my husband did take the pictures! He took 360 or so, I kept 80 to possibly post, and then whittled that down to 56. I was surprised because he wasn't thinking they were good at all. Of course, I did crop them and did a lot of color correcting to get them lighter in most cases. But he did a great job, his best yet, lol...and he thought for sure it was the worst ever. I'm 5'8" and Sophie is 15.1, so it's a little bit of both...
Thank you again jme! We really only canter 2 or 3 laps in each direction more to remind myself we can do it. I'll address each of your tips individually...
1. Sounds good, but she's sooooo tense I don't know if she'll ever relax. She's still bad about going past the open door even though she almost doesn't notice it at the end of each ride. Fortunately she's not spooky, but she looks and gets her head up and she only thinks about rearing when her head is already up...but I'll try seeing if she'll relax on her own without me trying to encourage her.
2. She does this snakey thing with her neck where it's almost like an "S" if I don't use outside rein to hold her neck straighter. She kind of bends her head so that it looks ok, but her neck is bulging to the inside too, especially if she's tense and above the bit or coming above the bit every couple of strides, which is why I'm using so much outside rein, though I wasn't aware of this problem until my last lesson on her where I was riding her.
3. This sounds like a good exercise. Due to her issues with walking we'll have to try it in the middle of the ride, but it sounds like something good to focus on for a ride.
4. I was wondering if maybe we should just focus more on the transition at this point. I think we'll probably do that, her last transition was really nice, so that sounds like a good plan.
5. I have always had a problem with slouching. As a 14 year old my 4-H advisor had me put a ski pole behind my back, between my elbows, to try to get me to sit up straight. I have a shoulders back device that I'm going to try using when riding and on the ground to retrain my muscles. We'll see if it helps, I've got to try something, definitely!
I think my instructor is definitely more of a push through it person and I'm kind of in between. In my last lesson (where I rode) she kept telling me that I would get a terrible submission score and I told her that I wasn't going to a show anytime soon, so it doesn't matter what my score would be that day, but I don't think she saw my point because she just kept encouraging me to ride Sophie deeper.
I'll try working on your suggestions and some others that I got on UDBB (mainly being lengthen my reins and sit up straight with my legs under me) and hopefully have some better pictures to post in a couple of weeks. Thanks so much for taking the time to go through this!
Well, you guys look good. She does dive onto the forehand doesn't she? I wonder if going up into a half-seat or 2-point is something you've tried? I always find my canter issue is improved by going up, getting the seat off the saddle, and getting my weight down into the thighs and such...This helps my TB when he plows down on his forehand.
I think she actually looks really nice in all but a few of them. She is *slightly* behind the vertical, but I would rather have that than head out in the air somewhere! My new trainer has me ride deep on purpose sometimes... It can be a useful training trick.
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