Ride Well Without a Trainer

My fashion sense is spot-on, though

My downward transitions on Courage are abysmal.

Period, full stop.

His upwards are usually decent as long as I keep him moving forward. It's actually a really funny problem for me, because I've just always had horses that sucked at upward transitions and did nice downwards.

I've tried a couple of different things to try to fix them, and while they maaaaybe aren't as bad, they still pretty much suck. Now I realize that this is a green horse thing and nothing is fixed overnight and all that, but usually I can at least feel like I'm making progress.

Here's the thing with green horses--they don't usually know the "right" answer to any given question, especially if they are a race horse who is just learning about this whole sporthorse thing.

So huge

That's why I've been enjoying some recent opportunities to ride nice, broke horses. I can't take lessons right now and I certainly can't put Courage in training, but I can ride and break down what I'm doing. 

Meet Jasper. He is an absolutely huge warmblood of some sort. He's forward and bendy and supple and ridiculously uphill and totally broke. He put up with my pathetic attempts at dressage, and then we did walk/trot transitions until he was beyond bored.

He didn't need the schooling. I did.

I needed to know that I could still ride a good transition. Check.

I needed to know what elements Jasper brought to the equation that made him more balanced. Check.

I needed to know what I was doing that hindered him in the first place. Check.

We are the best at working on stuff

It's not just his general hugeness and brokeness that make Jasper easy to ride, although those help a lot. He is a forward going horse, so I'm able to change his gait without causing all his energy to go crashing into the sand.

It also helps when I focus on you know, RIDING through the transition, instead of just sort of shutting down and inhibiting him. Think about how I'm using my legs and core, what my posting is saying, what my hands are doing. All that.

I'm back in the irons on Courage today and I'm excited to play with these concepts. I have no illusions of turning him in to Jasper overnight, but I can set him up with more good experiences and start tuning him in to the life of a proper sport horse.