Perfecting the Basics

Beginning riders try to perfect intermediate things, Intermediate riders try to perfect advanced things and the elite level trainers try to perfect the basics. ~ Warwick Schiller

This is a quote by Warwick Schiller.  It is the first quote by him I've put on my blog but I can guarantee it won't be the last. If you've never heard of him, I highly recommend you look him up on either YouTube or his website.

I found Warwick by mistake one day looking at YouTube videos of reining spins.  I liked what he had to say so I watched another video, and another, and another, and...........

Most of what he teaches isn't much different from that of other clinicians/trainers - sometimes it just takes hearing it from someone else for it to hit home.

This weekend I took Cat for a short ride down the road and then when we returned I decided to work on some obstacles in hand.  Cat hates tires.  I'm not sure why, but she does.  I went and picked up 8 tires on Saturday.  I started out by asking her to go past one tire...SNORT!!!!!!  Once she did that well then I set up two rows of 4 tires making a chute with them and asked her to go between them.  She went through them but had a bit of worry in her so I continued to do it until she seemed more relaxed.

Once she was moving through the tires well I bumped two of them closer together making 1/2 of the chute a bit tighter.  I continued the process until all of the tires were touching each other making it so she had to pick where she was going to place her steps.  She was a little super star and I could see her gaining confidence and relaxing more with each step.

Next, I asked her to go over a piece of plywood laying on the ground.  She had no problems with this so I moved to the next and final step - placing the plywood on the tires.  MIL was fairly confident Cat was never going to walk over the plywood on the tires but to her surprise Cat did it with very minimal hesitation and almost fell asleep once she was resting on top of the platform.

Pre-Warwick I would have started out with the platform on the tires.  I would have been able to get her on it, but it wouldn't have been as pretty and I don't think she would have relaxed so quickly.

What does this have to do with the quote?  I've always been in a hurry to advance and in doing so I didn't perfect the basics.  Now, I have not time limit on perfecting the basics.  Tonight I'll work her on the tires again - starting back at the single tire and I'll continue to do so until she no longer greats it with a SNORT!!! 

Small Victories

Doing the obstacle challenges has really forced me to step up my horsemanship and focus on getting the little things good.  Last year I began sidepassing Cat more and she got really good at it - so good that she started to anticipate what she thought I wanted and would sidepass all of the way off a log when I only wanted her to sidepass over one step.  While her sidepass was good, I could never get her to sidepass over an object if I tried to start her next to it vs. straddling over it.

Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous January day in Iowa with temperatures reaching nearly 50*.  I had hoped to put a pole next to the fence and start the sidepassing process over from square one (exept with a pole there) in an attempt to get her to sidpass over a log without starting out straddled over it first.  The arena was a muddy, mucky mess and was slippery so I decided to forego this until another day.  Instead I worked on getting control of all of her feet one step at a time.  After about 1/2 an hour I decided to take her over to the obstacle course and line her up with a log on the ground.  Instead of asking for the sidepass I just sat there and let her take it all in.  After a bit I asked for one step towards the log.  I could feel her wanting to move away from it so I slid my leg back and got one hq step towards the log and then released.  Then I asked for on fq step and then..........we were over the log!

I sidepassed her back off of the log and started back over making sure to take plenty of time to reward each little step, and each little try.  I attempted this several times until she finally stepped towards it without hesitation.  For Cat and I this was more than a small victory - this was a huge victory.

Our first competition for this year is just a little over a month away.  I have a lot of work to do and only 5 weekends to do it in.

Ringing in the New Year

The weatherman couldn't decide what the forecast was going to be on New Years.  It ranged from 17* - 38* depending on the day/hour you watched the news.  I opted to not haul out so of course it ended up being a gorgeous day!

I had on my coveralls so opted to just go on a nice bareback ride around the pasture.  The ground is now frozen but is difficult to navigate due to the indents from when it was mud prior to freezing so I took Cat to the arena instead.

The nice thing about the ground not being up to par for speed work is it helps force me to slow down and work on the things that need to be worked on.