Last night, the plan was for a short dressage school: long and low, pushing from behind, focusing on muscle-building.

I couldn’t stay in the indoor. It was too pretty. Rides in the outdoor are not productive, for a variety of reasons; or at least, they’re not the kind of productive that I wanted to be last night.

So I compromised, and we spent 30 minutes walking the big hay field to warm up. It was an absolutely gloriously beautiful night after a rainy morning, and though he was perhaps trippier than usual, Tristan felt great.

In fact, he felt so great, he bolted with me across the field. He got 10-12 good strides in while I sort of stuck to the saddle in disbelief. Then I thought about dropping the dressage whip to minimize distractions, but the idea of walking all the way back to fetch it late was incredibly unappealing. So then I hauled up on the reins and decided I was DONE. It was never a really serious bolt (trust me, we’ve done those!) and he was antsy and blowing the rest of the walk. So, if you’re keeping track, lunatic behavior two days in a row. Yay pergolide? (Hey, I’ll take it!)

We went back to the indoor and picked up a trot and I liked the feel of it a lot: not as loose and stretchy as I wanted, and not as forward, but I felt real power coming from his hind end. He felt solid underneath me in a way he hasn’t for a little while.

We did about 10 minutes of trot both ways, focusing on coming up through the hind end and the back, and then about 2 minutes of canter. He was blowing and a bit sweaty after the canter, which made me feel pretty rotten about his fitness, but so it goes – we’ll get it back.

I stripped tack and threw and irish knit on him and we took a walk around for another 15 minutes or so. He didn’t really need that; honestly, he would’ve been fine with a few minutes of walking and going back to his stall, but the weather was so lovely, and it won’t be for much longer.

Tonight: more of the same, with some short canter intervals, OR the night off, depending on how my thinking about the rest of the week’s planned rides goes.

Yesterday was fairly epic: important early morning meeting at work, followed by a day at the Tunbridge World’s Fair for work, then puppy class with Arya, and then I headed out to ride Tristan. Then I got home and collapsed. Whew.

I had tentatively planned on a dressage school, and luckily my headache cleared up in time.

We’ve been concentrating so hard on adding miles that this was the first time we’ve worked in a ring for more than a few minutes in…4 weeks? 5 weeks? Either way, a loooooong time!

I started off with lots of marching walk, and then modified that into some lateral work at the walk as I picked up the reins. We then segued into trot, and spent a lot of time working on getting the trot forward. Lateral work checked out ok in the trot, too.

He felt – not hitchy, or problematic, but uneven, so I focused a lot on getting him stable in the outside rein, on getting him to soften up through his jaw and poll and not brace against the reins.

Canter was actually pretty darn good. He felt strong, which was great, even when he turned that against me. I would call the canter work mildly productive, in that while he was strong and very heavy, I was able to lighten him up a little bit. He also stayed relatively straight, which was great.

He did get a little more winded than I hoped for, but we took frequent walk breaks and picked back up again when his breathing returned to normal. We took a longer break at the end and then finished with about 5 minutes of long and low trot to stretch him out.

He wasn’t exactly warm, but I did toss his cooler on him anyway, since the temperature was dropping fast. He then proceeded to freak me out by being slow and picky to eat his hay, which is VERY unlike him. I listened to gut sounds, and watched him drink and poop, then texted the barn manager anyway to ask if the hay was new. Turns out he had just had extra turnout that day and had gotten way more hay than he usually did. He was a bit tired and just not pretending to be starving to death!

I still got almost all the way home, couldn’t stop worrying, turned around, checked in on him, and made sure I’d latched his stall door. (A perpetual freakout of mine.) He was almost done what hay was left and just started at me like “Seriously, mom?”

Then I proceeded to worry until this morning when I knew someone else would lay eyes on him for breakfast. My brain, it is not always fun.

If you’ve been reading my blog for even a tiny amount of time, you may have picked up that one of my biggest struggles with Tristan is to get and keep him forward. He is a naturally behind the leg horse who feels quite firmly that unless there is a mountain lion behind him, he should be saving his energy for the moment when that mountain lion appears. (Corollary: unless there is an actual mountain lion actually chasing him, then yawn. No spooker at shadows is he!)

So, forward. There are all sorts of classical definitions but at its heart “forward” means that the horse is willing and engaged and holds in himself the energy to do what is asked of him.

How can you tell if he’s forward?

If you’re like me, and you a) have a naturally lazy horse and b) actually like having a more laid back horse because you prefer not to get run off with, it can be tricky. You get used to a certain rhythm and speed and even a tiny deviation upward from that feels way forward! Even if it’s not.

(Important caveat: forward is not synonymous with fast. Light-footed, speedy horses can be behind the leg as well. You’ll see why in a moment, hopefully.)

Here are a few ways that I’ve been taught, over the years, to help figure out forward and that have all proven useful to me.

– Can I take my leg off my horse – completely, 100% off, daylight seen between my leg and the saddle – for a significant period of time, say an entire long side, and still have him move out with the same rhythm and energy?
– Can I feel the seeds of each gait within the other – ie, do I feel like I could transition from walk to trot, from trot to canter, and back down again without significant setup, kicking, sourness, etc? Once you think about it this way, think about feeling the trot or canter that could develop from your walk, it’s actually a startlingly neat thing to have in your head.
– Is my horse willing to work with me – does he feel energized and ready for what’s next, is he with me, do I have possibilities at my fingertips and is he at least open and accessible to my aids, if not always spot on?
– How am I using my leg? Am I nagging, or keeping it completely off? No extreme is good. You should be able to keep a good firm leg on without constantly kicking OR being afraid your horse will blow up. That firm leg should feel like part of a solid foundation.
– Is it easy to post – is the horse’s movement and energy pushing me up and through so that it takes less effort to move my own body, as if I were sort of riding the wave of my horse’s energy? Is it easier to sit deep in the canter if I keep my hips open – can I follow a steady, even rhythm, or conversely, keep that rhythm without major course corrections?
– If you’re watching from the ground: what’s the overstep like? Is your horse at least touching his hind hoofs to the edge of the front hoofprints? Does that overstep increase as your horse warms up? Have a mental gauge of your horse’s average overstep: your goal in working is to increase suppleness to increase that overstep, but unless you keep those feet moving you’ll get nowhere.

Anyone else have any tips, tricks, or questions they ask themselves to help figure out whether they’re really forward?