I think I mentioned this a few posts back, but this summer isn’t looking anything at all like what I had pictured. I’ve fit in only a handful of actual “conditioning” rides, and we’ve only made it out to one endurance ride. It was a blast, but we did the trail ride, so no addition to our official ride record. As I’m exchanging weekend farm chores for a friend with pasture space and rides on one of their horse’s for Kade, there’s no camping trips for the rest of the summer (though our Tevis trip helped fill that bucket!) We are making other strides, however.

The arena at the farm Tarma’s at for “summer camp” is a bit larger than our normal one, and I think that paired with a bunch of other things (plus just time plugging away at it) has majorly helped our messy arena canter. With work being so busy and meetings spanning from 7am to 10pm on any given day I didn’t have time to reset Tarma’s shoes or even haul out for a trail ride. We did fit in an arena ride almost every night in prep for our clinic today. It wasn’t even a clinician really on my radar; I’ve been more or less working Tarma haphazardly through the French classical dressage tradition, so when Estella asked if I wanted to nab an open clinic spot with Pippa Callanan, of course I said yes.

Last night I squeezed in one more quick prep ride late at night, after I had a massage to help loosen up everything that kinked up during our road trip. I was focused and calm, quiet but determined to be clear as possible. We’ve been working with renvers to find our bend, then transitioning as directly from that nicely rounded walk to a canter without a racy, too forward trot in between and it’s been helping have some of our most balanced, contained and adjustable canters yet.

Today’s clinic spot was just a joy, start to finish. I wonder if this went so well as I walked (rode) into it with very few expectations, I was just hoping to have other eyes on us and other ideas to work on, no set performance goals to show off. We were up early to do chores, feeding and tossing horses out quick as I could with Kade’s help…and most of the horses started blasting around the pasture, full of antics in the cooler morning. I watched them and chose to lunge Tarma in the round pen before tacking her up, just to give her a chance to let loose any silly business, but she was calm and thoughtful and didn’t toss a single buck or snort my way.

We introduced ourselves to Pippa, and did a quick under saddle warm up while I explained our journey together so far. Taking the earliest spot in the morning is interesting. We still had a small audience…though we had the quiet magic of a freshly groomed arena to play in. I mostly asked for Pippa’s insight on keeping Tarma’s mind with her body and with me…though I also explained that her ability to keep looking forward and anticipating finding ride camp or the next vet check is an asset on the trail and exactly what I need her to be doing. Though for a race like Tevis and the Decade Team body building we’re doing in the arena she needs to be able to stick with me when I ask without bracing.

Pippa watched us for a bit, gave me some immediate feedback about my wandering left hand, then set us to practicing an exercise I think our regular trainer has had us avoiding until now because the Tarma of two years ago response to it would have been to simple fold herself into a pretzel and keep going her merry way, and I wouldn’t have had the tools or ability to pull us out of it. We practiced our “flechi droit” (they told me it’s pronounced “fleshy dwa” so I spent a solid hour trying to track down the actual French translation and explanation!). This exercise had us keeping Tarma’s body straight, but asking for a pretty serious bend to the inside, think trying for 45-90 degrees. Of course we’re total beginners to this so on her good side (weirdly her left bend) was decent, but her right bend when we started was almost nonexistent. This is counter intuitive to me, as most of Tarma’s major scars are on her right side, so I would think her left bend, asking those scars to stretch, would be harder.

Pippa also introduced us to the concept of “decomposing”, going back to a slower speed (usually the walk) to “get back to good/decent”, then bumping up speed again. I’m thrilled to report that even when we added the trot, Tarma didn’t race away as she usually did, and she was able to reset and take a deep breath and lick and chew almost immediately each time we walked or halted. Even when we showed off a tiny bit of our renvers to canter work (which was so good!) she got a tiny bit racy and bracey but came right back down again. Tarma stayed with me the entire session, not fighting or exiting stage left or tuning me out at any point. Pippa’s encouraging voice in my ear (thanks to the ear bud thingy) and her nickname for Tarma of “good little mare” (she was the smallest horse I saw in the clinic all morning for sure!) kept us positive and working hard.

I’m so proud of my spicy chocolate lady, she really brought the best version of herself today and I like to think I was able to match her in that, learning all I could in a short span of time and watching my timing to tell her when she had what I was trying to ask for. A solid clinic and a supportive and knowledgeable trainer is almost a good as high as a completed endurance ride…almost! All photos in this post are courtesy of Estella, as Kade misunderstood the assignment and didn’t take a single one, though he did keep Benny out of the ring while I rode, which is a job in of itself sometimes.