As many of you know, Tiny’s riding schedule over the past few months has been a bit erratic.  Between her foot abcess, my move, and the mostly rainy afternoons our riding sessions have been inconsistent at best.  I’m OK with giving her some down time under saddle, especially when we don’t have upcoming events and I’m not training consistently.  For the past couple of months, we’ve just been exercising – long trotting and some circles but no serious schooling.  Now that things have finally settled down a bit and I have been riding more regularly, I have decided to step it up and resume our schooling drills again.  Yesterday was the first time I practiced drills with Tiny in a few months.  Given my recent posts regarding leg and seat aids, I decided to take this opportunity to discuss my ride and give an example of real world troubleshooting in the saddle. 

My basic riding drills typically consist of a warm up at the walk and trot and then I start throwing in some tests to see how much control I have over Tiny’s body and how responsive she is being to my cues.  Generally I will ask for flexion in the neck and softness in her mouth, I will ask her to bend left and right without dropping her shoulders, I will ask for turns on the haunches and the forehand in both directions.  I will practice her “whoa” off my seat and voice commands – something I always need to reinforce with her.  If she is responsive with these drills at the walk and trot, I will then move on to cantering spirals or circles of varying sizes and work on transitions and softness. 

Yesterday did not go quite like that.  As soon as I started asking for hip movement, I realized that she was “sticky” in her left hip.  When I’d ask her to move over, she would lay on my leg.  When I asked her to stop, she’d kick her left hip out.  Her shoulder control was excellent, she was staying soft in her mouth and back, and she was responsive in her right hip.  She was giving no indication of being sore anywhere and seemed happy to be working. 

My initial suspicion was that she was just a bit stiff on that side after not being pushed for so long.  I continued practicing my drills at the walk and jog, asking her to stop and turn on the forehand to try to loosen her up.  I added in some lateral work, asking her to track right then left at the walk and jog.  She was a dream to the right, but was not improving at all to the left.  In fact, she started getting irritated - stiffening in her mouth, increasing speed.  Tiny does this thing when she’s frustrated where she’ll insist that she’s got an intolerable itch on her ear and she’ll duck her head and just rub on her front leg forever.  I know this is her avoidance mechanism, so when she started doing this I had to re-analyze my session. 

I ran through my mental checklist:  not sore, not showing a similar response anywhere else.  She was certainly showing no improvement with repetition, and I would have expected her to loosen up if it was simply stiffness.  I considered myself as the possible reason for her stickiness.  I rode around a bit more, really concentrating on my seat and legs.  It didn’t take long to note that I was having a hard time sitting hard on my left seatbone.  My left leg didn’t want to remain in the proper position and kept sliding forward if I didn’t concentrate on keeping it back.  The final clue was when I stopped and asked for a turn on the haunches.  To the right it was smooth and fluid.  To the left?  She wouldn’t plant her hind foot and wouldn’t stay in the bridle.  Based on the evidence I decided that I was most likely the culprit for her lack of responsiveness.  I do have an ongoing problem with my spinal alignment and my hips tend to rotate a bit, creating subtle changes in my cues.  I haven’t visited the chiropractor in months and yesterday Tiny told me that it was time to pay him a visit!  After realizing the problem, I backed off the drills and let Tiny relax a bit before cooling off.  It was important to end the session on a good note, especially because Tiny was simply reacting to my body alignment and I didn’t want her being frustrated. 

I wanted to share this story to illustrate a couple of things.  First off, I can’t over-emphasize the importance of using your seat properly when riding.  Even a horse that is not particularly responsive to seat cues will be affected if you are sitting off balance or twisted.  One of the easiest ways to demonstrate this is by practicing turns on the haunches.  It is essentially impossible for a horse to plant the proper pivot foot if you are putting weight on the opposite hind.  The horse will generally switch pivot feet or back out of the turn, but will not spin smoothly.  Also, the horse may not track straight, may lock up in the hip or shoulder, or may not stay framed up.  If you are having problems with your horse and there is no apparent lameness, analyze your body language.  The problem just might be you!  The second thing I want to bring up is the importance of staying calm and remaining in “investigative mode.”  It would have been easy for me to get frustrated with Tiny for not paying attention, not responding, etc.  but if I had immediately gone into “correction mode” it would have escalated into a battle of wills.  The end result would have been the same, because she was SIMPLY RESPONDING TO ME.  If you want a partnership with your horse, be willing to hear what they tell you.  Horses don’t lie and they are mirrors.  If you let them, they will give you valuable information about what is working and what isn’t.  Good luck with your own troubleshooting.  I hope this gives you another perspective to consider.  It took me years (and a great trainer) to figure out that my twisted hips were a big part of the reason that my sensitive show horse refused to hold a hind pivot foot! 

And now I’m off to call the chiropractor…..