The old girl looks pretty good, and Rolinette doesn’t look bad either

It rained, blessed rain. But then again, it’s race week so it has to rain. It rained a lot, to where the arena was essentially floating. Lessons were moved to McPherson’s Quarter Horse Arena. Rolinette hadn’t been off property for years (except for Friesian inspections) but was perfectly fine of course.

I just had two lessons with Lisa this week, and now a lesson with Andre. I would love to do this more often, or probably more like one lesson a week anyway. I would love to commit to something like 12 weekly lessons with Lisa Moose focusing on position using a lot of lunge work. Oh well. I’m glad for these lessons as I’ve had weeks, maybe months, without a lesson at all. Which had been fine too. I feel like we’d made lots of progress on our own, Rolinette and I, but we need help too.

So, lesson with Andre. I’m never sure if I should talk more in a lesson, or less. Is what I understand important, or should I just do what I’m told and understand later? So when we start in walk and do shoulder fore, I tell him my experience with her increasing lateralness. And he helps me in that he says that yes, sometimes she cheats by bending but just moving her hindquarters over too. But she also does it correctly too. So we of course work toward more correctness. She does rather consistently lose forward when she gets it right, probably because it is still difficult for her.

We worked on halt. He said twenty halts a session was minimal or you weren’t working on halt at all. From both walk and trot through walk. My key in that transition is to allow because it is in the softening, in the allowance, that she squares up.

He watched her trot a bit and didn’t say a whole lot. He did remark that the rhythm was good. Then we worked primarily on the stretchy trot and I learned so much from him here. Stretchy trot I don’t remember ever learning in my before life, so it is new. And I’ve never felt fully instructed in it in this life, though I have asked. I read some helpful info in a book or two and mostly trial and errored it. I understood that it is easier if there is a good connection prior to asking for the stretch, but what about in the stretch, when she stretches then stops stretching and I’ve only got a 20M circle to get it? Andre’s instructions were basically to keep the connection on the outside rein steady (which amounts to adjusting it pretty constantly for her continually inconsistent stretch right now) and asking for bend (and round) with the inside rein, and then just keeping the leg there, not asking for too much but not abandoning her with the legs either, remind her to keep trucking. So, for this show I’ve got a week, three to five rides, to improve that. Wonder how far it can come?

At canter we ironically had issues with right canter more than left, exactly opposite of usual. And kicking out again, big time. His advice was to use the outside leg to cue but only by sliding it back, not by using it per se, and to use (squeeze) with the inside leg, and to maintain that outside leg back position, without squeeze, for the entire canter, and if she needs help keeping it, to use the inside leg for that. Our downward transitions during the lesson were not good and we definitely need to get there to work on those. The good news on this for the show is that she’s strong enough now to warm up several canter transitions, so hopefully she won’t be too excited by it, or resistant, or anything but round and willing.

I admire how Andre can give you actual insights into how to be a more effective and make you feel good about it at the same time.

He also said to me, several times and in several different contexts, "Ninety-five percent of the time when there is an evasion, the first part of solving that is more forward." If you've been paying attention, if you remember my last lesson with him, you might understand why this tickled me! I totally agree with him. This time.

tippy tippy tippy

That's what I am, riding. Tippy. I once had a cat named Tippy, well, not mine but my brother's at a time when we each had a tom cat. Mine was Midnight and another was Spike. Spike was white. Tippy was Tiger's son. We gave Tippy away and Tiger and all her other kittens went hunting and found some poison on a strip job or something, anyway, they all died. And Tippy came back home. After we went looking for him at the drag strip. See what an interesting childhood I had?

I rode today. Nice warm up in arena and then I went in the dressage arena to ride through the test for the first time ever. Since we had practiced a couple of canter transitions already, I walked the whole and entire pattern of the test in the arena before we actually rode it. Anyway, the test wasn't bad. It wasn't good but you wouldn't expect it to be. My main learning was that this test goes really fast. Start off with that trot figure eight which is the slowest part, but after that it is f.a.s.t. And anytime I felt rushed, my body position got tippy. And it is just about impossible to get a round transition when you are tipping. Got to sit back.

After that we went and walked hills which is the first time we've ever done a short work then hills. Then she got a bath.

And I'll tell you what else. DO NOT do divination if you don't plan on listening to and acting on the results. Because of that, I'm planning on riding under the instruction of not Pierre himself later in the week.

I also got two lessons, a short one on Saturday solo and one on Sunday with Dianne and Adonis. I am sorry, I think too much time has gone by for me to do a blow by blow. I was really glad Lisa got to see how Rol, her horse, is going. And Lisa's main lesson to me on Sunday was to stay in the moment, to ride the next stride not the last one, and not just in the test but all the time. There is time to think about it later.

Oh, and I think we did decide to ride T3.

Mr. not Pierre

Finally the day came to ride under Andre's instruction. In some ways it has been a long time coming -- I think Andre has wondered if I really ride at all! In others, I think it is a miracle that it can happen at all.

Andre is very different. My previous teachers were students primarily of Germans, or those of the German school. Andre is of the French school. German is strength; French is finesse, to oversimplify a lot.

Also, what he told me was in some ways very different than what I was doing. What is funny about that is that it doesn't make me feel like I've been wrong but like there is more than one way to skin a cat as it were. I suppose that goes back to horses being the one thing that I'm not apologetic about.

His emphasis was on rhythm. Not so much forward. He said big horses feel slow. So at times today Rol felt plodding. He says, rhythm first, then bend, and in that bend (and with fitness), we ask her to step more under herself with her hind end.

And that was sort of it. He corrected my inside leg position saying it was just a smidge (like half an inch) further back than it should be -- that little bit more forward gives her the post around which to bend. He said it was an unusual fault. He didn't once tell me to sit back and when I remarked on that at the end of the lesson, he said, no, your position is pretty good, and besides, where she is right now, you have to be forward a tiny bit.

In the finesse, he did say to sit back consciously when asking for upward transitions and to not sit back when asking for downward transitions.

We did a lot of riding the corners, deeper into the corners, and asking her to bend, and consciously and consistently riding through the corners. Oh, that is so much something I remember from my old MM days, those corners were so important! I have probably been slopping through them, and I've known I haven't been neat in them on Rol but I've focused on other things. So ride the corners.

We did some shoulder fore. He didn't use it with me as I've seen him do with others as almost an idea of shoulder fore (almost a way to be straight) but with me he did it more an only a slightly less intense shoulder-in. Rol is not very lateral (understatement). Lateral work asks her to step under herself.

Also, don't lean. I didn't even realize I was doing that and that is so bad!

After the lesson, when I was off somewhere else walking Rol out (she was quite hot and huffing a bit although I'd been so transported with concentration I hardly felt like we'd worked at all -- I was so concentrated that I literally felt like I was in a different world, a world that was just horses, just riding, just being perfect and in perfect partnership), Andre said to Lisa (reported later by Lisa); "She's a good partner for Rolinette; she's not too busy." You know what? I'm good with that! I know how to be quiet on a horse. I like that a lot.

Of course, I got off wanting to do it again tomorrow, wanting to do it again everyday for a week, wanting to do it every day period.