So, I just realized that I never circled back to do a post about the Derek McConnell clinic we did at the end of March. (I mentioned it briefly in a previous post and then apparently put it right out of my head. Which also reminds me, in a follow-up to that post: Poe started eating his grain again quite happily when I left his supplements out of it. I’ve ordered a fresh batch from SmartPak and hopefully we are good to go. Also had his teeth checked — he is scheduled to have them done, but he’s still been eating fine since I chucked the supplements.)

The clinic went well! It was pretty tough and to be totally honest I felt a little demoralized afterward. I just think Poe is such a fantastic boy and I am definitely not the caliber of rider he deserves. But, you know, he’s my guy, and I don’t think he’s sitting out in the field wishing it were Oliver Townend moseying out to get him. (Though who knows, maybe he is! If Ollie came up to me, with or without a pocket full of candy, I would happily go with him…)

We spent the first day really focusing on flatwork. We did quite a bit of warm-up work, with lots of transitions and Derek repeating his downward-transition mantra over and over: sit back, say whoa, and move the bit gently around the horse’s mouth with your fingers. Also lots of dressage-type talk about the proper positioning of your legs to ask the horse to bend. I think his over-arching message was about focus: have a plan for every ride, and make each minute of that ride count; be consistent. Train, train, train. He is obviously a man who is not afraid of hard work and who believes in the big Sustained Effort.

He had us do a little “course” over canter poles. When I rode it, I felt like Poe was blasting through it, just really running. He’d been pretty strong in the warm-up, really blowing off all my half-halts — he was definitely my away-from-home horse. When I watched the video back, I couldn’t believe it. You can see for yourself about a minute in. He’s just cantering along, la la la. He felt like a freight train but looked absolutely fine. That was my biggest take-away from the weekend: What feels way too fast is probably almost fast enough. (Apart from the time when he really is too quick and isn’t listening and leaps both the trot pole and cross-rail in one go. That is the difficulty with babies: it’s so so hard to know when and how much to push, because it changes by the second. You can watch that lovely moment at 2:18 — though, like everything else, I think it felt a lot worse than it looks.)

On the second day we repeated the previous day’s warm-up: lots of transitions and reminders about down transitions and changing the bend via our leg position. Poe was blowing off my half-halts worse than the previous day; he was by far the biggest-strided horse there, so we had some issues with running up on other people. I ran into some of the same difficulty the first day too — in the canter warm-up I was paired with a woman whose horse refused to canter at all, and all the fences created an obstacle course that made it pretty much impossible to maneuver around with our current level of steering. When sitting back, saying woah, and moving the bit gently around Poe’s mouth didn’t work, Derek had me do a sort of slow see-saw thing — I hate to call it that, but it’s the best I can think of to explain. He had me put slack in one rein and pull the other slowly but strongly, then switch. Poe was not thrilled about it but with Derek’s coaching it did prove effective. I wish now I’d asked him about graduating from that — it’s a bit too crude to keep around in our dressage work, but something for the toolbox anyhow.

After warming up we moved on to course work. Poe was wonderful, I am pathetic: story of my riding life. Again, the lesson is MORE FORWARD. I also need to get in the habit of (and in shape for) putting on a stronger leg at the base of the fence. He needs that support and encouragement, even when he feels totally committed — he can still stall at the last second.

(For those using a feed reader, the videos may not be displaying — you’ll have to click through to the site to see them, or directly to YouTube: Day 1 and Day 2.)

Thanks to my move, Poe got a four-day mini-vacation. I have to admit last night I was hemming and hawing about going to the barn — it was cold, I was tired, I have so so so much to do at home. But habit and the thought of the jumping clinic barreling down on me had me pulling on my breeches and boots and dragging myself out for that long grey drive. I thought, too, about a nice little post I read a couple weeks ago on Retreadeventer’s blog: The Big S.E. (where S.E. is Sustained Effort). It really hit home for me; this winter has been a bit of a long, ugly grind, and more often than I’d like to admit I’ve wanted to do nothing more than crawl under my covers and hide away until the world’s green again. I’m crazy about my horse and what we do together, and I feel like this horse thing defines a big part of who I am; any feeling of I-don’t-wanna is kind of heartbreaking. I recognize I’ve entered this phase where I don’t want to do the things that are good for me. So I’m pushing through, trying to do them anyway, trusting that they will lead me back to happy.

And last night once I had Poe inside, that magic thing happened: the rest of the world went away. I reprised last Thursday’s ride: warmed him up at the usual swingy loose-reined walk, then had him trot around on a loose rein, stretching himself out. I took a little gentle contact after a few laps, letting him come into my hand as he wanted, then followed with a bunch of canter in each direction, just lapping the arena and letting him cruise, working on my own half seat. Long walk break, working on encouraging him into a soft, bending contact, then more trot work doing the same. I focused focused focused on sitting correctly and letting the tension out of my forearms in particular (terrible habit of mine; I get very tense in the forearms), and he came into a beautiful light contact and really started to step under himself. It’s still very much a work in progress; he pops in and out of the contact regularly, and still occasionally grabs the bit and twists his head around, all ugly and gnashy-teethed, but we’re making progress. We ended with a few leg yields and some ground work — I’ve been teaching him to walk correctly next to me, to stop when I stop, and to back up when I step back. He’s a good boy and is starting to get sharper with it.

I felt great about the work I got last night, and left the barn on a real high. Now I just need to figure out how to carry that feeling back into my non-horse life.

I can’t even remember now when I bought this domain name — sometime last fall? And I’ve been waiting to do any posting because I (obviously) don’t have any grand (or even not-so-grand) design ideas (I spent a while browsing the WordPress Themes directory, and am trying this stylish, simplish one on for size for now), and I just couldn’t summon the effort to do the big First Post, the Introduction, the Here Is My Horse and He Is Wonderful. And I entered serious riding slacker mode in November, so there hasn’t been much to report anyhow.

But now we’re gearing back up. We’ve had a couple fits and starts, but the last two weeks have been pretty solid work-wise. They’ve been pretty frustrating too: we’ve both lost quite a bit of fitness and flexibility. Poe came back from vacation really ready to work and feeling great, but lost a bit of that somewhere. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting his attention the last couple weeks, and just a whole slew of frustrating and mediocre rides. I know we can be better. A LOT better. It’s tough letting go of where we were, what I know is in there somewhere, and just riding the horse I have that day, but that’s what I’ve been striving for. I’ve been digging deep for patience, to keep things simple, and to praise him at every opportunity.

And last night, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I have my horse back. We still have a lot of work to do, but he felt really willing and listening and like he was finally remembering the stuff we’re trying to do together: soft contact, working over the back, supple supple supple, listen to the leg. There are a lot of things I love about owning a horse, but one of my favorites is being able to leap off of them after a particularly good ride, or even just one good moment, and lavish them with praise. I love being able to tell him what a brilliant, good, hard-working boy he is, how clever and spectacular, what an amazing thing he’s just accomplished. I think he loves it too: he gets a sort of glow in his eye, a spring to his step, a brightness. He is such a pleaser, and I think these times when we nail it really buoy both of us up.

Two other things I’m super proud about: Since I got him last year, I’ve been working softly, just a little bit every time, on him standing at the mounting block. He is a really good boy; when I get on him he wants to go straight to work, and staying still right then has always wound him up. I can feel him get more and more tense; it’s like sitting on a powderkeg. He’s never done anything untoward, never bolted or bucked, but I’ve also always taken care not to push these tense moments too far. So, I let it slide a little bit. I’ve always corrected him, made him stand for at least a few breaths (some days are better than others and I’ve always let his mood dictate how far we can take it), but I’ve always had to correct him at least a little — until last week. Last week we had a small Come to Jesus. I was very stern (I hate being too stern; I always feel like a bully). He twitched and sidestepped and pawed and got himself all balled up but finally, finally, he stood and relaxed. He sighed, and I made a huge deal over him. Since then? He no longer takes that single step when I swing my leg over. It’s still early, but he’s been really solid on this the last few rides. It seems to have finally clicked. I know I could’ve enforced it harder earlier, but this timeline worked for us.

Thing two! Related to thing one, really. He can be Mr. Antsy-Pants in the cross-ties. He dances a lot, and paws, and I feel like I’ve been working nonstop for the last year to try to discourage all that annoying nonsense. It’s another one of those choose-your-battles things, and I’m taking a long-term view of it. I have definite small goals (he is not allowed to bulge into my space or he gets to jab himself into the business end of the hoofpick, no pawing, etc), and as he gets more solid on those he can graduate on to more complex goals. He is usually more receptive after we’re done riding, so that’s when I leave him off the cross-ties as long as possible and try to teach him about ground tying. It’s much easier when there aren’t a lot of people around (Poe is under the impression that pretty much anything that moves needs to have his nose stuck all over it), but he’s really starting to get this one too. Last night I stepped away to grab his brushes from the next grooming bay over — I wasn’t more than two horse lengths away, but he kept his feet glued to the spot and when I turned around he had his ears up and he was staring at me with the most earnest look on his face, absolutely bursting with pride that he had stayed right there, and that was what I’d wanted, right? Right? (I’m pretty sure I look like a complete lunatic throwing these seemingly random parties for my pony, all “AAHH Good Boy, What a Smart Dude! Look At You!”, but hey, it seems to be working.)

I didn’t actually intend to go off on this big, specific tangent, particularly not before I actually did the Here Is My Horse and He Is Wonderful thing. So: Here is my horse, and he is wonderful:

His registered name is Reliant, but I call him Poe, and I plan to show him this coming season as Poseidon. I got him at the very end of December 2009, after a long, arduous search, which is probably a tale for another time. (My dear friend Lennie helped me, and sometimes on these cold dark nights sitting in her Durango I have flashbacks to last winter, and feel an immense rush of gratitude that I’m not still looking.) He’ll be five this spring, and we’re eventers. We spent last year doing a lot of flatwork and some baby jumping, lots of larking around in the cross-country field, a handful of shows, and a fall full of trail riding. He is an absolute joy, and I still feel so lucky every day to have him in my life.