dancinghorse | Work Blitz and Lesson Neep

I've been head down to the ankles in work this week--blitzing second draft. It's an Attack Project, as in, have to remind myself to eat and sleep and it's lucky the aminals need to be fed because otherwise I wouldn't go out at all. Or, why I kept the horse thing going in the first place. It used to be my sanity anchor in grad school, which is when and where I discovered Vienna-style dressage, and it just kept on mutating from there. It continues to be a godsend in Attack Project phases, when I might otherwise run myself into the ground. I have to get out and move around and rest the eyes and brain at least four times a day.

Works for me.

Yesterday two saddle fitters came over. I really do need another dressage saddle, with four horses being ridden, and keed's the only one who can use the Western saddle--and he can't do dressage in it any more. It gets in his way. (The others all have too much play in their backs, and in Pook and Camilla's case, their backs are too short--the saddle sits on their hipbones.) Finding saddles for Lipizzans is always such fun, since Lipps are built along the general lines of a living-room sofa. Luckily the dressage-saddle world has finally figured out that almost nobody rides narrow-beamed horses with high withers, and the usual dressage machine is a massive, broad-beamed thing with major back muscles.

So now there are assorted varieties of saddles for Widebodies. Most of them are in the wheeze-for-breath stratosphere as far as price goes--$2500 and up. Sometimes 'way up. Luckily a few saddlemakers have figured out that not every dressage rider is a major heiress with a seven-figure horse, and a couple of them actually make saddles that a human being can afford.

casacorona happened to be hunting for a saddle for one of her own True Widebodies(tm) recently and came across this option, and I found when I looked that there is a rep in Oro Valley--which is on the other side of Tucson.

So I e-mailed, and the rep and her partner came yesterday to measure and fit keed and Capria--the current version, which is adjustable, is working well for Pook and Camilla, and they're both still seriously under construction, so buying a saddle for either of them now would just mean I'd need a new one in six months. These saddles are nicely made, and I found I liked one model (the Largo) OK and one (the flatter, closer-contact Encore) quite a lot. The size we ended up with was, well, Wide. Dressage-saddle widths are measured across a particular point in the front (about where the saddle starts to curve down over the shoulder), and 32cm is considered wide. 34cm is extra wide and usually a special order.

Keed and Capria are 38cm. We didn't even try Pook--but he's at least 40 and probably the maximum, which is 42. That's the saddle that's made for the other Austrian Widebody, the Haflinger.

Capria loved the thing. She's never gone as well without a warmup as she did with that saddle.

Keed...well. We had an Adventure. As I was mounting up, and he was fussing because it was not his usual saddle, Mom!, he snaked his neck around and grabbed the off stirrup in his teeth.

And got his lower jaw caught in the stirrup.

Next to a certain Arab years ago going bananas in the middle of a dog attack and going straight UP and then plummeting straight DOWN (I could see nothing but daylight between my toes), that was probably the single most scary thing I've ever been through on a horse. He did not, thank god, panic and throw himself over backwards, but he was spinning wildly and bucking a little bit and I was halfway on him when it started so I ended up with my arms wrapped around his neck. Couldn't reach his mouth from the right angle to get the stirrup off, at all, and I was dinged if I was going off him, and he wouldn't stop spinning long enough for me to do a dismount. Finally the saddlers managed to get close enough to unhook his jaw. Then we got de-jangled as much as we could, and as best I could tell, he thought the saddle was OK. He went nicely forward in it and didn't fuss with his back, and he didn't pull his pissy-spook stunt, which he will do if he doesn't like his tack.

That keed. I think the poor saddlers ended up thinking Lipizzans are scary, scary horses, between keed doing that and Capria letting us know which saddle fit by snapping viciously at the air when it didn't.

Keed seems OK, but we think he has some bruising in the bars of his mouth (about an inch away from where the bit sits, but even so)--he wouldn't settle for Joni this morning, was sucking back off the bit. I ended up suggesting she take him out on a long rein and see if he'd settle down, which he did. I'll ride him in the sidepull for a few days and let his mouth have a rest.

Pooka's lesson went quite well, though there were Adventures there as well. We discussed the shoe-pulling issue and decided to really work on balancing him in walk and trot, and after a few minutes of wiggly bits, Joni decided to set up walk poles. Pooka does not like walking over poles. He goes around them. When she moved the first one, he went eek. The second one, oh well, another pole, so what. Then he realized he would have to walk over them. "We Don't Do This! This Is Not In The Script!"

Also, at normal walk distance (he has about 14 inches of overstep in his normal working walk, bear in mind), he started to panic. Joni brought the spacing down to collected-walk distance, and that felt better, he said. I could feel him sitting down and raising his withers--which was exactly what we wanted. Gotta love them collectamatics. We worked up to five poles, then he started to melt down. The projecting-empath thing means I was getting jangly sensations, then butterflies, then what felt a lot like a panic attack. I had to get off, tie up the reins, and let him RUNlikehell and get the kinks out. Then I got back on. ("That's Not In The Script, Mom!") And we had some nice trot work, with my drop-the-left-rein problem resurfacing yet again, but we can work on that.

So, a good lesson, and I think progress was made. We have homework. The goal is trotting poles, but we have to get Mr. Routine used to the walk version first. He really is a European reactionary. Change? Deviation from script? Anathema!

Joni and I did allow as how, in spite of all the challenges, it sure is cool to have a horse who, when confused, snuggles up to collected gaits. It's so hard to the usual modern dressage horse to collect at all--he can do the big fat extensions out the front end, but he isn't built to collect and it's really hard for him. Pook's reaction to confoozlement is to sit down and lift his front end. So, doing it in walk will help him get the balance for trot. And my homework is to hand-walk him up and down hills, so he can figure out his own balance. We have some serious hills around here.

Garigan's Gulch, here we come!