Category Archives: horse training journal

This has been a rare winter’s week, in that things have been quiet at the barn.  Not a lot of lessons, not a lot of college students.  The other boarders either come later than I do and infrequently or they only ride in lessons.  Not a lot of kid lessons at the moment, either.  Temps aren’t too bad–temperate, not so warm that Mocha sweats easily with her heavy winter fur coat; not so cold that the ground is hard and icy.  The indoor surface is damp enough not to be dusty but dry enough to offer up steady footing.

Perfect conditions for getting us both back in shape.  Protracted riding in the Western saddle added to the layoff due to work/stress/back/travel may have helped straighten out her movement issues.  I still think she tweaked that shoulder muscle and it’s just taken time to rebuild and recondition, nonetheless I think going Western has been the better choice.  I think the Western saddle is also easier on my aching back right now as well.  Plus the correction curb gives me a little bit of lateral influence, so we can still school movements effectively.

And it’s worked.  Mocha appears to be happy to be back in regular work.  In this new stall, she’s now standing with her body parallel to the door, nose waiting to poke out the minute I open it.  She’s usually waiting when I arrive, but she’s not bolting or dancing out, just marching out all cowhorse calm, but that sort of cowhorse calm that projects a quiet eagerness to go.  Unlike a Thoroughbred, she’s not going to bounce on her tiptoes (nor would you want that in her because in Mocha that’s a clear signal of Lost the Brain, which really, really Ain’t Pretty), but a certain type of measured, precise, low-headed rhythmic swagger is the cowhorse equivalent.  Instead of boinging off the ceiling, she hits her marks.  Precise.  With pop.  Energy doesn’t get wasted, it gets used in short, explosive bursts.

We had a good work tonight.  My back cooperated and we did some nice schooling with lead changes.  Her shoulders came up nicely on a lot of the flying lead changes and she was willing to work one-handed in small canter circles, collected.  I’m really liking the way her shoulders feel these days.  Much better than in the Collegiate.  Sigh.  I so can not, do not, want to go saddle shopping.  Maybe Western Dressage will take off more here and I can do that.  But I still like riding in the Collegiate.  Sigh.

OTOH, there’s no way my back will support any English saddle right now.  Period.

So the two of us are making do with Western while we’re getting her shoulder and my back reconditioned.  Worse fates out there, especially with the quality of Western equipment I’ve got on her.  All good mid-range stuff.

Anyway, we had lots of energy and upward motion in the changes in figure 8s.  Not ready yet for three-loop serpentines–neither my back nor Mocha’s conditioning will support that.  But she’s readily coming back to me in complex small circle/figure 8 changes, which is good.

My back lasts about as long as her good rhythm.  A good match.

And now the daylight is such that we were able to go for a short ride by the tree farm after schooling, on a long rein, between rain showers.  Pretty much an amble on a long rein.

A nice evening ride.  It’s good to be on the path back to regular schooling.  And now that I’m signed up in the AQHA Horseback Riding Program, maybe I can actually track how much time I do spend in the saddle over the course of a month/year season.  Plus it’s a good way to record my schooling time, and who knows?  The program does have some nice prizes.  Worth the time.

Between health issues, work issues and other things, Mocha’s been on the back burner for the past month.  January’s probably the best month for such things to happen, because the arena gets wet, the weather is either nasty cold or else that upper 40s F that just about guarantees a wet haircoat no matter what I do, etc, etc, etc.  G turns her out regularly and gets worried if she doesn’t roll (he likes to see the horses roll in turnout and swears that it’s incredibly important).  Plus I’m sure she gets a little extra attention from him, as well as the college classes for groundwork.  So she doesn’t get ignored.

She does, however, get pushy.  G said she took off running hard this morning and did several loops of the round pen, then tearing down to do a sliding stop then a rollback in each direction.  He thought he detected a pattern to her playing because she’d do the same thing every time.  Doesn’t surprise me, I caught her brother practicing his sliding stops one time after coming back from the reining trainer.  Mocha definitely likes doing her patterns and thinking about her work.  Doesn’t mean she’s particularly cooperative, though, when it’s time for her to go back to work.  I ground drove her this afternoon and, yep, I had a pushy horse who needed to be reminded of the boundaries.

I like having her stand quietly until I ask her to move off.  That’s a safety issue when ground driving or driving a cart.  Driving 101, in other words.  Mocha was having nothing of that, however, and wanted to sidestep and dance around.  Not on her toes like a hotter horse would do, mind you, just two-tracking and moving around a little bit, fidgeting instead of standing.  So she spent some time backing up.  Got her to whoa again, went back to getting myself set up for the work.  She stood.  Then I asked her to move off and she wanted to go faster than a walk.  Hit the sidepull’s noseband and started two-tracking again, this time at a trot.  More backing.

This time she stepped out reasonably, and we had no further problems in the big circle warmup at all three gaits.  Challenges, however, resurfaced when we started the small walk circles.  When doing a small circle to the left, Mocha decided she needed to trot, so…More Discussions, More Backing.  We had to do several big circuits of small left circles before Mocha decided that yeah, she could walk those small circles to the left.  The consistency of the resistance told me that she was stiff in bending in that direction.  Not surprising, since she’d been moving a wee bit short at the trot on the left rein.  Not bad enough to count as lame, more of a muscle tightness/resistance.  So she needed the bend and flex to release that tightness.

But, of course, all she really thought was that it was difficult, stiff, and maybe a little ouchy.  Plus she was testing boundaries, so she resisted.

Mind you, none of this resistance was big or dramatic.  Just being pushy.  She never lashed out at me, never got dangerous.  Just testing boundaries to see what she could get away with.  Making sure the limits still existed.

The real battles came when two-tracking.  Again, it had to do with exercises involving stretching and bending her neck.  Moving to the right with a slight bend to the left—hoo boy, any excuse to avoid that movement.  Any excuse.  Not panicky, not mad, just the sort of resistance that said “I’d much rather not do this.”

I insisted.  After a bit, she softened up and as she softened up, she started moving better.  Her resistance lessened, and by the end of the ground driving session, she was moving freely, much more submissive, and, on the loose rein, much more relaxed.  One reason I’ve started doing this ground driving bit when I’ve been away from the saddle or unable to get a lot of saddle time in is because I’d sooner do this sort of session from the ground.  While she misses those cues of seat and leg, I think it’s beneficial for her to get this tuneup without saddle, bit or rider.  Tomorrow, I’ll ride her in Western tack, and she’ll be much more relaxed, supple and yielding to seat and leg than she would have been if I’d hopped up on her after a week off without the ground driving.  It’s like I need to remind her that we do this stuff for a reason, and the reminders just go better without rider and saddle.  Tiptoe into it, and then she’s back into the mold of yielding without the other stuff.

I’m sure that the amount of ground driving I do makes me a distinct minority amongst most riders out there.  But the more I do it, the more I realize it really does address some issues with my particular horse, and it’s a nice tool to have to keep her flexible, supple, and legged up.

Plus it can be awfully dang fun to work your horse and be able to admire how pretty she is at the same time…..

After Friday’s excitement, I decided I needed to go out to the barn and ground drive Miss Mocha on Saturday.  Part of my reasoning had to do with weather forecasts and plans, but the other part of it had to do with making sure that Reinstalling The Brain had taken.

Well, it had.  We had a short conversation at the very beginning about not moving off until I gave her the direction to do so.  She asserted herself a little bit, then settled in.

My other rationale for ground driving was to spend some time working with her body without bit, without saddle or rider, to get her shoulders loosened up and reestablish that good working rhythm she possesses when in good form.  Ground driving is one of the most effective means I know of to pull off that kind of schooling.  It gets rid of the rider and bit noise, gets rid of any saddle fit issues.  It’s just you and the horse, and for once you can school the horse in fairly complex figures and see just what is going on.  No, rollbacks and sliding stops can’t happen, and flying changes are a bit complex, but turning, bending, flexing, and two track can all happen using ground driving.  Using a sidepull instead of a bit also counteracts the bit noise from the level of contact you need to maintain.  I’ve wrapped the noseband in Vetwrap because otherwise the stitches in the leather (leather noseband only in sidepulls for me) can rub a little bit.  The browband on this sidepull also tends to be a little snugger than I would like for Mocha.  But here’s a pix of the setup I use:

Some people use a saddle pad under the surcingle.  Right now I’m not too happy with my square English pad because it tends to slip on her (it was a real challenge riding with it in a horse show!) and I need to move the straps that hold it in place.  My Western pad is way too bulky to use underneath.  Plus, at some point I might want to go with a full harness and break her to pulling a cart, and I wouldn’t be putting a pad under that stuff, so….

Working in figures means that the horse also has to be thinking and paying attention to your verbal, whip and rein cues.  To some extent (depending on how you’ve trained the horse), the whip can be used as a replacement for leg cues when you’re working close in and, for example, cueing a two track lateral movement.  In that case you use a gentle tapping motion with the very tip of the whip to replicate a leg, spur or dressage whip cue.  Of course, this assumes that the horse has been trained not to freak out at the sight or use of a whip, and a whip has been consistently used not just as a reprimand tool but as an extension of hand and leg, not just a “go forward” button.  The handler needs to know the more sophisticated uses of a whip as cueing device, otherwise you might as well not be ground driving.  The whip helps you straighten out the horse, especially in lateral work where the lack of leg and body cues may make things confusing for the horse at first.

We had confusion when I introduced a complex manuever–two tracking in a figure 8, wherein Mocha had to reverse the direction of the two track.  Piece of cake under saddle where leg and seat provide the additional support and guidance to say “hey!  Start moving laterally in this other direction!”  But in ground driving, where the cues are rein, verbal and whip, it’s easy for the horse to get confused and struggle with the change.  I had to hit my center point, give a verbal “walk on” cue, then ask for the opposite direction.  After a couple of times doing that, the light switched on and we didn’t need to do more than a couple of steps of forward walk before she readily changed the direction of the two track.  Under saddle, it would have been a simple matter of a weight shift.  On the ground, well, a bit more, including a gentle whip tap.  Mocha being Mocha, and always looking for a pattern to movement requests, it took only two repetitions and she had picked up on what I wanted.

At the end I got what I wanted…a much freer shoulder movement and steady, rhythmic gaits.  I could have gotten that under saddle, but given that I also am wrestling with a shooting hip pain on one side, I’m just not always as effective in the saddle as I would like.  Ground driving gave me the chance to do this work without the noise from rider impairment.  A good thing.

Or, in other words, a horse in wintertime who doesn’t particularly like the cold weather, hasn’t been ridden for a while, and even in turnout won’t move around after it hits a certain temperature.  It’s been a week and a half or so since I was last at the barn, thanks to schedules and this darn bug.  She’s been getting regular turnout from G. but he reported that she’d not do her usual tearing around, standing around instead.

I didn’t get a nicker from her when I got to the barn, but she was shoved up against the front of the stall with her nose right on that crack where the door first opens.  She didn’t explode out but her head was definitely MUCH higher than her usual self as she came out.  Maybe a wee bit of tiptoeing to let me know this wasn’t the usual Mocha self.

But, most of all, head carriage more like a Thoroughbred than a reining-bred Quarter Horse.  Ears forward, looking at everything.  And, of course, reacting in that classic equine drama of “ZOMG!!!!  Hand truck!!!! ZOMG!!!! This!!!!  ZOMG!!!!  THAT EATS HORSES!!!”

In other words, dramatic, sharp jerks of the head as she startled.  Pretty exciting on crossties.  Well, okay, not as exciting as a Thoroughbred doing the same thing would be (for one thing, Much More Drama And Eight Inches Taller on average).  But still, silly horse.  She actually set back a little bit in the crossties and started capering around when I was picking hooves and treating them, to the degree that I ducked out of there because I was working a hind when she got into Hand Trucks Eat Horses mode.

Being a sensible cowhorse at heart, of course, the moment she hit the ends of the crossties, she stopped and danced in place rather than pull back further.  I unsnapped her from the crossties, G muttered about it being another horse and marrying her to it while he ran it back and forth and she eyeballed it for a while before stopping her sillies.  She settled, he took it past her, and I clipped her back up to resume grooming.

Then she decided she had to poop, and, while I was scraping up the poop, squatted and peed.  Now Mocha normally doesn’t do that.  But, I figured (sighing), it might just be the first heat of the season.  Lovely.  Muttering about silly butthead mares, I grabbed a lunge line and hauled crazy girl off to the arena.  She wasn’t prancing down the alleyway but, as G said once about her, she was in the mode where she’d almost look like a Three Gaited Horse.

Once in the arena, after a circuit of walk, I clucked her up to trot.  Then it was more than a few circuits of Quarter Horse Does Paso Fino mode, or at least some sort of gait that sure as hell wasn’t a solid, smooth-cadenced Quarter Horse big trot with nice forward shoulder motion.  For a while there I wasn’t sure if I was looking at four legs or sixteen legs, and her ears were up in the rafters.  A couple of reverses (she was focused on me to the degree that all I needed to do to reverse her was switch whip hands–yep, round pen trained, got her trained to reverse on the lunge at walk and trot as well) and she started licking her lips, lowered her head to her usual level topline, relaxed a bit, and I started getting that nice swinging trot.  At that point I decided maybe it was time to throw on the saddle, and she was still tense and tight, earning more than a few muttered growls from me about how we’d Just Reinstalled The Brain, Damnit.

It took more than a few circles at the trot before she started relaxing under saddle because yep, once my butt hit the leather those ears were right back up in the rafters.  At least I got spared the Paso Fino imitation, which is a Good Thing, because that Mocha trot is one of the most teeth-jarring gaits you’ve ever sat.  I did get Grumpy Tail Switching because I asked her to bend and yield, in the correction curb with romal.  Not perfect for lateral work but actually not too bad because once she softened I could go back to single hand neck rein and I think that helped her relax.  We did a little bit of loping but most of it was jog, jog, jog, work circle figures at the jog.  Once she relaxed we did two track with haunches in and out for a circuit in both directions (four circuits in all), a good steady working lope in each direction (I didn’t even go anywhere near asking for lead changes, nope, not tonight), walk to catch her breath, and then a last jog.

A few strides into the jog, she asked for more rein and a bigger gait.  I let her go into a big long trot and started posting.  She picked up a steady, hard long trot asking for just a tiny support from my rein hand and I gave it, clucking to encourage her when she needed it.  We reversed across the diagonal several times, Mocha still trotting strong and hard, and put away quite a few circuits with her pushing through her shoulders.  I let her set the pace of it, encouraging but not pushing her to keep up the big shoulder swing and step right out.  With each circuit those shoulders relaxed and she reached out just a tiny bit further.  I kept out of her way, encouraging but not pushing.

And then she was done.  Her cadence slowed, her crest softened, and she eased back into a jog.  We jogged a quarter circle and I eased her back into a walk.  We must have walked for a good ten minutes while G lunged another horse, her head its usual low and relaxed, neck and haunches swinging big, nowhere near the same tense, tight horse I’d climbed up on.  Meanwhile G and I discussed horse minds and why she’d been acting like this.  Then we talked about the mind of the horse he was lunging (big, pushy gelding with good movement but a sneaky poop who was earning whipcracks from the lunge whip G was holding to his side and back–he can crack that lunge whip as if it were a bullwhip.  I’m envious because I’m nowhere near that good).

The horse I unsaddled in the crossties was nothing like the horse I tacked up.  Relaxed, semi-sleepy, her usual mellow self.  Mind you, none of this was scary stuff.  Regular Thoroughbred riders probably wouldn’t notice her antics.  But like G and I agreed, horses like her, you’ve gotta respect them when they get into this mode because there’s usually a reason for it.  We figured that since it was cold, she just wouldn’t go out and push herself like she usually does in turnout.  Her mama was that way too.

The other piece of it, too, is that if I’d punished her for acting like this or been afraid of her, I’d have created more problems.  By giving her the outlet to settle down by lunging her first (without allowing bucking, capering and running wild on the lunge), she was able to be successful at behaving correctly in the crossties and before riding.  I didn’t give her the chance to get wound up and crazy on the lunge but simply reestablished boundaries that she knows and welcomes. The lunge was more about “hey, here’s the routine of what I expect from you, here’s the boundaries again.”  Yeah, I could have ridden her without lunging first, but this way we got to avoid more craziness on the crossties and more drama that would have gotten her wound up and possibly even irritated.

As we went through the ride and she not only got her tight muscles progressively worked out but the structure and boundaries she’s used to got reestablished, she relaxed and fell back into familiar patterns.  Most horses prefer predictability, patterns and structures.  Mocha has a stronger pattern drive than many horses because she’s the result of a breeding program that focuses on horses who do well at working in patterns.  Reinstating those patterns in her life gives her the structure she thrives upon…so yeah, happier horse at the end of the ride than the beginning.

Dang, I love my horse.  Even when she’s being a butthead.