Virtual Brush Box

Two nice horses.

Time, health, and money to enjoy them.

A barn that continues to support me even as I stray from the True Faith.

& last, but never least,

A husband who thinks shipping horses all over the county is an acceptable way to spend a holiday weekend.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Training Journal

 

Turtle step are milestones when one is bumbling around in the intro-basement, leaping up in an attempt to catch the bottom rung of the ladder in any given discipline.

That was overly negative.

Turtle step are milestones when one is proceeding at the speed of an attack glacier.

Ahem.

Turtle steps are milestones when one is proceeding at a pace dictated by the horse’s learning speed and comfort level.

Herein, our turtle steps for the holiday travel spree [A Series of Ears].

Wednesday, July 3. Milton at Stepping Stone Farm. Lesson. Two beautiful canter transitions! One as good as we have been doing lately. The other perfect. Canter. Okay. Step off in the next stride. Leading to a terrific canter with even a bit of powering down the long side. All of this after I get done telling Coach Courtney that we have been having trouble with our transitions lately. Horses. They make liars out of us.

I wish I could take credit for the improvement. It is from the long-lining. I have become a huge fan of this training method. Allows horses to sort things out before introducing the complication of carrying a rider.

Thursday, July 4. Milton at Falcon Hill Farm. Schooling in the field. Walk and little trot in the grassy field/parking area behind the ring. Counts as out in the open for Milton. Rode at a trot over a little loglet. In the photo, Milton is avidly watching a jogger on the road, which is an excellent excuse to stand rather than work. Photo below from lunging that day.

Friday, July 5. Rodney at Stepping Stone Farm. Schooling in the covered ring. Canter! My eyes-on-the-ground said, ‘Why don’t you canter?’ I went to pick up a trot & Rodney cantered. The disadvantages of a horse who knows voice commands. A few lovely strides, then it got discombobulated and he downshifted on his own. I’ll take coming back to a trot as a response to problems.

Omitted from yesterday’s post. July 5, II. Milton. Home. Walk around field. One in hand. Two escorted. Last one by self! Photo taken during escorted lap. Milton was great, but I didn’t want to take a hand off the wheel during our solo lap. The feeling I got was ‘Ohh scary, but …. I think … I can … handle it.’

Saturday, July 6. Milton at Falcon Hill Farm. Schooling among the trees & up/down hills. More work “in the open”. Milton thinks hills are weird.

Sunday, July 7, I. Rodney at Stepping Stone Farm. Reverse ears. Never got on. Ride got rained out. Weather was clear. Got to SSF. As we tacked up, the sky darkened to a seriously nasty gray, and the radar lit up. At the moment, Rodney makes a few feints before he loads. We didn’t want to be dealing with that in heavy rain. We bailed. A branch blew down from a tree near the ring. A small branch, but enough to raise a welt if it hit one on the head. Okay. Okay. We’re leaving. A red splotch followed us home on the radar. As soon as we got home, the sky cleared and the radar settled down. The oncoming storm vanished. Well played, Rodney. Well played.

Sunday, July 7, II. Milton at Falcon Hill Farm. Lesson. Cantered an entire a 1’6″/1’9″ course!

Monday, July 8. Rodney at Stepping Stone Farm, redux. Make-up day. Schooling in the big ring. Moved up to the big ring. Walk and trot with smooth transitions. No trace of the anxiety he had the last time I rode him in this ring.

So that’s us. Making progress and getting nowhere, all at the same time.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

 
I’ve never worked so hard in my life.

Wait, that’s not true. I’ve worked harder plenty of times. Let me rephrase that.

I’ve never put so much work into a horse in my life.

Milton has a tendency not to move. Or to move too much. Either way, he is avoiding work. One way to address this is to make the work physically easier for him. However, basic walk-trot-canter is the irreducible minimum for a horse moving his body in space. I can’t make that any easier.

Instead, we are trying to get him fitter. We aren’t conditioning him for the Tevis Cup. By fit, we mean having his muscles soft and loose, his joints moving freely through their range of motion, and so on. To this end, he is doing lots … and lots … and lots of long, slow work.

During the day, a hand walk of four laps of the field which Map My Walk says totals over a mile. In the evening, lunging for 15-20 minutes. Trailering to hack around a ring. None of the workouts are long. None of them are arduous. We are hoping to build him up through gentle, consistent exercise.

No reason this doesn’t apply to Rodney as well. So, the goal is now to get both of them out twice a day.

Effect on the Blog
First effect. There’s not much to say. Rode in the ring at Stepping Stone Farm. Tiny step that might someday turn into progress. Sat on at home. Tiny step that might someday turn into progress. Had a lesson at Falcon Hill Farm. Tiny step that …

Are we moving forward? Yes. Is it narratively gripping? No. You can only repeat yourself so many times before you find yourself making pictures of random objects around the barn [Salt Block Art].

Second effect. Less time. Four-a-days gobble up time like Pac-Man gobbling up dots. Good for my mental health, bad for churning out in-depth content.

And that’s where we are right now.

Thank you for reading.
Katherine Walcott