The sound of cogs and spindles

Hey, where's the canter? I seem to recall that wasn't on the table much if at all a year ago and sounds like it's now at least a semi-regular part of the program, yes? That's progress!

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You know what, there was some canter in there and I think I must have somehow taken it out again by mistake when exploring the whimsical nature of Windows Movie Maker.

You can see a few times when he's thinking it's time to break into canter up the arena. I never thought my "would rather stop than anything" cob would begin to offer that as an evasion xD

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dancing-crow.livejournal.com

Penny, very similar to your boy there, offers the same evasion. I had never run into it before. I think it is a large, slow pony evasion to a working trot.

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It also has an element of "if I go over to the gate maybe the session will be over" to it I think...

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My small narrow beastie goes through phases of offering canter when asked for more lift/carry/power in the trot. Makes sense to me: I say, "More," and he says, "Here you go," and then we discuss what kind of "more" exactly is being requested.

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Thank you for the video - that was great! I loved the backing up on the ground - he really balances himself and holds himself well, doesn't he? My favourite bit was him rolling at the end, though! Tam

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He's very nicely balanced now and he kind of balances for himself regardless of what I'm doing most of the time, which I think comes from my constant changes of direction both on the ground and in the saddle. I'm always trying to keep him asking what we're going to do next...

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Both of your hard work really shows! And I loved how soft and responsive he was, even with occaisional grumpy ears!

I went to a really interesting lecture/demo in Leighton Buzzard on Sunday, and the first half was a lecture by Dr Hilary Clayton on horse and rider biomechanics, and one of the things she showed us was actual analyses of how horses balanced themselves where they had measured the movement of the horses' centre of balance - and they were looking at how this changed during mounting, and how a healthy horse's balance pattern compared with that of a horse with neurological issues (thinking that this might provide a potential new diagnosis tool), how quickly foals developed adult balance - really, really interesting.

Re mounting from a block without the stirrups, she actually mentioned this (or mounting via leg-ups) as the preferred method of mounting in terms of mitigating the pressure forces on the horse's back, when compared with the pressure readouts from mounting from the ground and from a block with stirrups. So you're up there with the cutting-edge equine biomechanical advice... ;-)

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Did they show the difference with different saddles as well? I have been practicing getting on from the ground lately because it's easy not to with a block like that and then you find yourself having to get off on the trail and have trouble getting back on and because I didn't learn to ride as a kid so I don't have that experience of clambering all over ponies when I was small. I wouldn't want to do it in an english saddle or a treeless, but I slightly feel as though although I obviously create more counterbalancing force on my western saddle the much larger contact area should be helpful in that respect. For the same reasons I very infrequently practice getting on bareback from the ground and consequently I'm terrible at it...

Poor old Zorro sometimes has to suffer the worst of my education, but bless him if he thinks I'm at all unstable he will treat me like crystal glass. Once he thinks I'm solid on his back it's rollercoaster time.

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No, unfortunately it looked like they had only examined an english-type saddle - though she is based at the McPhail Institute in the US. They put a pressure pad under the saddle and it measures the ratio of pressure across the whole underside of the saddle. She showed how when you mount there are spikes of increasing pressure particularly at the top of the saddle near the horse's shoulders, on the opposite side that you are mounting from, and she was suggesting that it would be beneficial to avoid this if possible, ie by mounting without the stirrups, or alternatively to alternate the sides that you mount from, so that that pressure area is not always falling in the same place. I don't know whether having someone counterbalance in the opposite stirrup as you mount is better or worse in terms of pressure, as they didn't show that either. Very thought-provoking though...

I never learned to ride as a kid either - and I'm just starting to practice my bare-back riding on my very tolerant Icelandic pony (when he's not injured!) - and as for mounting from the ground bareback, I just embarrass myself!!

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I try and only do it when there's no-one else around to see me flailing. Zorro just stands very steady and occasionally brings his head round to look long-suffering at me.

With the saddle I suspect that if you could do it kind of vaulting style using even pressure and placing yourself lightly in the saddle on a big saddle like mine it wouldn't be too bad - it's never going to be the best thing for the horse but done right it's probably not too bad.

Buck Brannaman always mounts (and does a lot of other work ) off the fence, which is another neat way to do it.

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Lol! That's what my friend Josette does! She keeps telling me I will have to learn to do the same too! Clearly it is the way to go!

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She showed how when you mount there are spikes of increasing pressure particularly at the top of the saddle near the horse's shoulders, on the opposite side that you are mounting from

Did she happen to mention (or demonstrate) the technique they were using to mount? I picked up the habit somewhere along the way of setting my right hand on the right-side flap of the saddle while I mount rather than on the cantle in what seems to be the usual method--not sure where I got it, but it feels like it steadies everything and counterbalances the weight in the left stirrup as I step on, and I wonder what it would do (if anything) to those pressure spike.

(Bareback, I just do the belly-over-the-horse-and-shimmy-into-place thing. Which might work less well if I had a taller horse, but I don't, so everyone's happy.)

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That's the western method as well - right hand under the lariat on the far side of the saddle, left hand on top of the horse's neck with the reins in it, use a bit of pressure from both ( particularly the far hand ) and a bit of spring from your legs to get yourself into the saddle, utilising the stirrup as little as possible. Logic suggests that would be the best way of getting on from the ground in terms of pressure on the back, if well executed.

I think getting on bareback is probably good practice for it as well, each time I have got on bareback from the ground ( there aren't many of them ) I've been better at getting into a saddle afterwards...

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They showed some still photos, but it was projected on a standing screen, so the quality of the photos were a bit fuzzy for seeing the fine detail! It wasn't possible to see whether they were putting one hand on the cantle or over to the opposite side. I'm not sure whether for what they were looking at it would make so much difference in the pressure readings - and I don't know what else they had measured that wasn't covered in the lecture! - but I would guess that reaching across to the opposite side helps with keeping the saddle more balanced, but I would think that it would rather increase than reduce the pressure spike on that side? Though obviously that is without knowing how you mount!

The main point she made was that either way it wasn't a dangerous level of pressure (predominantly because it was brief) but that obviously anything that reduced it would be beneficial to the horse in terms of potential sore points. Interestingly, what she did say showed very high spikes of pressure (much higher than the full weight in stirrup of the mounting process) was when people in saddle then put weight into opposite stirrup to shift saddle sideways to correct movement while mounting - which I am definitely guilty of doing in the past, so I shall be much more careful to avoid that.

Re the mounting bare-back - it's getting to the belly-over-the-horse stage that I find difficult! And I really have no excuse because my little pony is not even 14hands, but I have no idea how to go from standing next to him to belly-on-back (probably not necessary to mention that I wasn't a very athletic child! ;-) ). It's not the height, I think, but the technique!

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The only way I can do it is to go there with a serious commitment to dive over my horse and fall head-first off the other side. If I'm not trying to do that I just don't go far enough...

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Lol! Well, that's clearly my problem right there! I'm trying _not_ to dive head first off the other side...! Maybe I'll have to take him into the sand school when he's better and try and just throw myself over - at least the landing will be soft! I'll let you know how it goes...!

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makoiyi.livejournal.com

Yep, huge improvement. In this one you look comfortable and confident, in the other you looked just a tad awkward. Might have been that saddle though. You relax more deeply into that western saddle and there's a kind of no-nonsense attitude from both of you. Can he see behind all that hair? Lol Merlin is only jealous.

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It was partly that I only had one and a half working legs in the last one and this saddle is a better fit, but I agree, I look much more right in the saddle now...

And I have no idea if he can see. He seems to think that either he can or it's not all that important...

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http://users.livejournal.com/blitzen_/

what a great vid. the music & the sunkissed lighting remind me of my childhood. hah.

he does look a bit grumpy, haha. especially at the front. his side passing (whatever it's called) at 2mins is good to see tho. nice work.

do you use the lead swinging to reinforce the neck-reining at this stage?

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I'm really using it to create a barrier to stop him dropping his shoulders in, which he was really thinking of doing there. I don't want to be pulling around on the rein so I'm just using that as another way of saying "I didn't ask you to go there, so why not keep going the way I asked you to?"

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wldhrsjen3.livejournal.com

Hey, well done! Y'all have come a long way in the last year and you have a lot to be proud of.

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:) Thank you very much.

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So I've been thinking about this video for the last couple of days (and again--I do think it shows good progress over the last year! you look way more comfortable up there. so kudos to you guys for that, seriously).

Had some questions (and a thought, but I'll save that for now, because depending on what you're going for it may not actually be at all useful) about the lateral work, if that's okay?

What are you looking for in that work, exactly? What's the goal?

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At the moment the lateral work is just kind of "hey we can do this" - practically I guess my goals for it are to be able to get around gates, get out of the way of traffic and generally be able to go sideways if I need to, but right now it's more of a consequence of the work we've been doing on trying to separate out the feet so that I can pick up a foot with each hand and a foot with each leg if I need to. Being able to do that opens up a lot of doors in terms of other stuff one might choose to do. Getting control of the hindfeet in that way should also give a path towards the more engaged work that we were failing at so much during the summer's clinics. We've got a pretty good communication in some respects now, but that engagement thing is just a whole new vocabulary and we're right back on the ABCs where that is concerned.

I guess the other way we use some lateral work ( but not really the sidepass stuff there ) is to rebalance when someone is falling into the circle by just picking back out onto the circle I wanted to ride, rather than the circle that he wanted to be ridden on.

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Cool beans. What I think I'm seeing is maybe halfway applicable, then. For the strictly-practical stuff, not so much, but maybe yes if you are looking for engagement and such down the road. So here goes, and you can (as always, of course!) do with it what you like.

What I was wondering about is that--I'm not sure what terminology you'd use for it, exactly? Whether what you call a fore- or hindquarter yield is meant to be different than what I call a turn on the haunches or forehand. So maybe it's just that, if so.

But what I notice is that you may not be getting quite as much biomechanical benefit out of the lateral work as you might. There'll be a good step and then he kind of loses his balance and the crossover and carry behind--he'll start to rush around the turn instead of stepping deliberately and/or he'll go crooked through his shoulder and neck and just be walking straight ahead behind.

Which, y'know, is not necessarily a problem if the practical goal is "flip ends here so I can get this gate"! And certainly there's a time and place for just teaching the beastie that he can and should move his body and/or a part of it in a given direction on request without worrying too much about exactly how he does it. And I suspect the work you've mentioned on learning to do more (and teaching Zorro to respond more) to your leg will make a pretty dramatic change in all of this as it progresses.

But to get the suppling and engaging benefits of the lateral work, I wonder if it might not help if you were to occasionally slow down a notch and act a little more deliberately? Really look for that one. good. step at a time? Obviously going too slowly and carefully has its own pitfalls...! But speed can be the enemy in this kind of work if you're not real careful--it can be a way for the horse to avoid engaging. So something to watch, anyway.

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I totally agree with what you're saying here.

That's a pretty good assessment of how we're working most of the time actually- it's really important for the whole "control of the feet" idea because you need to get that one foot and only that one foot which means most of the work we're doing in this direction is things like one-step-at-a-time turn on the forehand types of thing. The actual sideways is more something I found when I was experimenting with working on the rein and the feet and found that door was starting to open quite nicely.

In this case I thought that the one-step-at-a-time stuff ( which there is some of on the original video ) would probably send anyone watching the video off to sleep fairly quickly so it got edited - on purpose, unlike the cantering bit :)

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In this case I thought that the one-step-at-a-time stuff ( which there is some of on the original video ) would probably send anyone watching the video off to sleep fairly quickly so it got edited - on purpose, unlike the cantering bit :)

Ha! There is that. :-p

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penella22.livejournal.com

Skimmed the other comments but wanted to post before I lose my train of thought...

Awesome music! Totally catpures the mood of a good trail ride, and bonus! it mentions dark horses. This year you have to *tell us* what the music is...before it gets taken down. (I have to go buy it and put it on my mp3 player).

Your groundwork shows a more obedient and more *attentive* horse this year. You can see he's not bored here, not contemplating ways to take over the world. He's tuned in, waiting for your next idea, and in general, seems happy to make that his idea too.

In watching you work on the ground, it highlights for me how BIG a reaction I have sometimes. I tend to go to NONONONO! a bit too quickly, and one thing that is nice here is that are calm and steady throughout, and look to really be in the moment.

Also, I see a much more *bendy* horse. I'm not sure that was in his vocabulary last year, was it?

Under saddle he is much more balanced and less stompy. I almost get the feeling he's thinking dressage thoughts under that mane.

And your shoulders--they're better. Less fetal, more balanced. :-)

Zorro looks very handsome in his western gear.

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penella22.livejournal.com

*or captures as the case may be. not sure what cat-pures mean, but I'm sure some clever soul will now come up with a definition...

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I believe it's something to do with following the teachings of Ceiling Cat.

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