Good Rides

After posting my "bad rides" post, I did just what I said I was going to. I didn't make it through all of Centered Riding, but I made it through the basics to start. Thinking back, I had planned to use this move/horse ownership to START OVER. I don't know where that goal got lost, but I found myself asking too much of Otie and wanting him to be dressage superstar from day 1, of course he resisted. Yesterday, I did what I actually wanted to and took it all the way back to step 1. I ditched my spurs and focused on him moving off my actual leg promptly and with as little force as he would respond to. He wasn't sluggish, wasn't pissed off, and it was a good start. I tried to do absolutely nothing with his head except maintain light contact, and did a lot of transitions and figures.

Needless to say, it was definitely a better ride. He was a ton happier and so was I. We even had space (it's amazing how much space there is in a pasture when it's not constantly filled with jumps) to do 3-loop serpentines at the canter with nice, quiet, and balanced simple changes.

All of the classical dressage articles and books talk about how if you have their hind end moving and just super light contact in the front their head will naturally drop... I'm not SO sure it's that easy... but he definitely wasn't a giraffe, and I wasn't expecting amazing results for this first ride back at it. He was a lot better than past rides, and he didn't feel boxed in or resistant. That's a good starting point in my book!

I then went through my GoPro footage and saw a much happier, more relaxed, interested horse. No, he's not round, he's not a superstar (yet), but I am super invested in working toward a relaxed, correct horse... instead of a horse that's broken at the third and unhappy.

Working toward something like this, then we can work on him sitting down more and lifting the front end.

Hopefully by then I will have a trainer, because that enters the land of super difficult stuff.

I am not interested in going around like this, which sadly is fine with a LOT of eventers (Because jumping and xc is why you're there, right?).

Ok side note: I love eventing, and am not trying to bash eventers (I am one so...) but I know that a lot of eventers refer to dressage as "stressage" or just simply want to get through their time in the sandbox to get to the more fun things. Dressage is SO hard. If left in a field for 2 years, most people could teach themselves to jump decently by the end. If left in a field for 2 years, most people would still be clueless on how to do dressage. Again, it's so hard to do correctly. It's no secret that there is too much focus on the head and neck, and a lot of people just pull their head down to look "fancy" and think that that's all there is to it. This isn't exclusive to eventing. End side note.

I don't like getting on a horse and feeling them completely drop behind the vertical to avoid even the slightest contact. To the untrained eye, it looks "pretty". But it's not correct, and I am not interested in doing so. I didn't mean to get preachy or opinionated in this post... here are a couple screencaps of my happy horse to offset the rambling. 

This is what we looked like. Look at the tense contact, the spurs digging into him, and the complete

lack of forward movement. I knew better, but I honestly thought this was how you got good scores

because this was all that I saw.

Can we just take a look at that reaching hind leg.

I literally only have the slightest amount of contact and he's seeking it. This is huge for him.

This is what I want. (Also if I could pick up my hands a bit and stop riding in a chair seat, that'd be great.)

So I will probably try to avoid controversial topics like this again, but the good thing is I am trying to better myself and better my horse and have fun with him. I already see an improvement.