I have been working really hard on increasing the amount we trot, but when looking at last month on average there was 30 minutes per ride with stirrups (excluding the rides that were completely without stirrups). This means that we did less than 15 minutes per ride of trot based on my estimates and that was only 10 rides out of 21. The bottom line is I am really not doing that much trot.
Needs more practice with human
I can't expect his trot to improve if I am not doing it. So the plan for December is to really focus on the trot and making it better. Hopefully, I don't ruin the walk in the process with him anticipating trotting. I intend to ride him six days a week until the end of the month and then I want to give him a week off. Of course, he may have other plans and if he starts flooding the barn and what not he will go back to work.
My goal is to trot a little bit every single day. I will still keep three days lighter and keep him out of the ring so hopefully his brain stay intact. In addition to still warming up without stirrups I am hoping to add two point back in. He needs to learn that he can function without my ass.
In other news I got the all ears selfie app and it was a massive flop. The most I got was a quick ear flick forward with one ear. Not. Even. Both. Ears. My super reactive curious horse did not even blink at the donkeys or wrappers or snorting. And to make things better, I played the wrapper noise and got no reaction, then crinkled an actual wrapper and immediately got his attention. Once again my horse is smarter than me...
Ha- I'm laughing at the app description. I didn't realize that was a thing. Good luck with the trotting you can do this. I found with Irish who got all in a knot about trotting that if I cantered before trotting it was much better.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that Stinker will be like that eventually, but right now it just results in him going "wheeee we go faster!" And that isn't super productive at the moment. Hopefully by this time next year I will be able to use that method.
DeleteI think having a solid plan to increase the time trotting is a great idea!
ReplyDeleteAlso bummed to hear about the app. I'm really interested in trying it but since I've only ever done free apps to date I've balked to far at the idea of paying for one 😐
I used some of a gift card I got last Christmas, because I don't like paying for apps in general. I thought I could get at least $3 of amusement from him... #fail
Deleteso idk if this is super relevant to your purposes here, but your talk about worrying about ruining the walk by working on the trot reminded me of when my trainer told me that when i was working on getting bend from isabel, i needed to not worry about her falling in or losing the shape of our circle. bc i was getting frustrated and insisting that she stay on the circle AND bend. but the trainer told me that in going back to work on the circle meant i was losing the battle of the bend. that i had to get that bend first, circle be damned. we can revisit the circle later when the bend is more confirmed. so.... long maybe irrelevant story later... my thoughts would be to just work on one thing at a time, and that knowing you've fixed the walk once, it's probably ok to go on and focus on the trot now knowing you can go back and reestablish the walk again later.
ReplyDeleteIt is a similar problem. I just don't want to go back to being frustrated because my damn horse won't walk. But I know it's going to get ugly again before it gets pretty. I have so many videos of him having a tantrum about legs touching him but now we can consistently leg yield and that couldn't happen without the ugly stage.
Deleteidk you've really accomplished so much with him already - and the difference in his walk work is seriously impressive. my bet would be that even if he regresses there, it wouldn't be a very far fall and you already know how to fix it. meaning it would probably get fixed again way faster than when you first had to make walk a thing he would even do. and once the trot is better confirmed, he'll ease up on being so anticipatory anyway! (in theory at least lol)
DeleteI'm going to have a chat with my favorite dressage judge and see what she thinks. I'm bouncing back and forth between it's fine to lose some of the relaxation because I can get it back and OMG must keep relaxation at all costs.
DeleteAw man, Leo is a sucker for the all ears app! It gave his bff Dan some serious anxiety though, and my dog is extremely unimpressed by it.
ReplyDeleteI was expecting some snorting and head up crazy eyes. At the very least some general curiosity. But not this in a million years
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