Playing with a Western Saddle

After my ride on Merlin last Friday I've been wanting to jot down what I did and a few thoughts as a blog post. I've recently started following along with another Lauren on her dressage journey with her horse Jux (check out her blog the Knotted Elm to find out more). I mean following along both through reading her blog but also literally following her to dressage lessons. But I think this more journal-like post may be stories-of-Jux inspired. 

A Back-Story Tangent

I've decided to take the leap and sign up for my very first 3 day event at the end of this season. October 4th at Heritage Park is to be the big day. With that in mind, I definitely want to kick up my dressage practice. I'm going for a practice-early-and-often type mentality. I get the impression that it doesn't thrill our local dressage instructor when all us hunter/jumper folk show up for lessons the week or two before an event and hope she will fix our dressage scores. So that's what I'm trying to avoid. 

I wanted to get a dressage lesson scheduled for this past weekend but it just wasn't in the cards. Which may be a blessing in disguise. I rode Merlin in a normal jumping lesson last Thursday, but now with the looming threat of riding in front of Liz (our very esteemed dressage trainer, you can check her out at Stony Hill Farm) I'm realizing just how rude he is. 

Particularly with halting. It's a little localized to specifically halting, on the rail, waiting our turn, in a group jump lesson. I do practice polite halt and wait with him on a semi-regular basis, but on our own I don't get the same behavior out of him so it's easy to school. 

In the past Liz has told me that he should not swing his head or look around at the halt. I should be able to have loose reins and his head/neck should stay perfectly centered and forward, waiting for my next cue. I was working on that a while back, but recently when asking just to halt he wants to side-step or spin slightly. I need to get his feet still again before I can work on his head. 

Western Saddle?

I can't honestly tell you why I tried out a western saddle on Merlin the first time. I think I was just wanting to have a little fun, break up the routine, and try something different. Besides one summer of lessons when I was eight or nine, and a series of family vacation plod-along trail rides, I've never really ridden much western. 

I've never been much good at it. My pelvis tilts the opposite of useful direction for that. But it was about a month ago maybe that I randomly decided to ride around in a western saddle on Merlin. It went a lot better than I expected. It's nice to know I'm making at least some progress in yoga, my low back and pelvis are much more free to sit deep in a western saddle.

The nice thing about changing up the saddle is that since it has a totally different feel, it frees me from falling into a few old habits. I have a strong tendency to perch forward on my seat bones. Because the feel of the cantle of the western saddle is so different, it created an easier reminder when I was starting to perch. Instead of an instructor I had a saddle reminding me "sit back" whenever I forgot. 

Even though I had tacked Merlin in his normal English bridle, I wanted to mimic the western thing and so I was trying to ride him in as loose of rein as possible. He's pretty upright with his head and hollow with his back anyway, so I liked the idea of seeing if he would stretch down through his neck when left to his own devices. 

We had many tripping, stumbling, wobbly, inconsistent figure eights (small because we had to share the arena) but by restraining myself from helping, forcing him to stay the path and pushing for the trot, he started to figure out how to hold himself up a bit more. Maybe an iota of self-carriage is in our future! 

After that first ride, I try to throw in a western saddle ride every once in a while. Which is what I did last Friday. For maybe the third time ever. 

Well this is not my normal view

What We Practiced

It was a beautiful day and thankfully dry enough to ride in the outdoor arena. Bonus, I had the whole giant thing to myself and didn't have to worry about being in anyone's way.

Warm Up/  At the Walk

To start I just warmed up at a walk along the long track around the whole space. For me this was a nice time to acclimate to the new saddle feel, get really relaxed and deep into the seat, feel Merlin's steps and movements under me.

For Merlin this gave me a chance to nitpick his straightness. The track along the rail is not very manicured at all. It's a little rough and rutted in places, it's not always an even width, and there are some back corners than can be a little muddy/squashy.

There are also bunnies, jump poles, and wayward tree branches just outside the fence that Merlin can sometimes be concerned about. The terrain and the worry factors combined means sometimes he doesn't stay as straight on the rail as he would in the indoor and he can get a little pushy about it.

It's much easier to get the correct timing and intensity to correct and nitpick this at the walk, so it makes a good warm up activity. The hope is, if I do it now, I won't have to fight it at the trot or canter.

At the Trot

Next up we trotted the long track. I'm still correcting straightness as needed, but less since we already went over this both directions. I'm mainly trying to get a nice slow trot that is balanced on his hind without using the reins to hold him rocked back.

This is where the western rein concept helps me. Even though I have an English bit, I still think about it like the western bump him back concept. I'm there with my reins to ask him to slow, but then I throw it away and leave it to him to maintain.

We would tend to speed up or get front heavy every few steps and need to get bumped back again. And/or if I needed to correct straightness he would try to interpret that leg use as a reason to go faster.

It's a good patience and persistence exercise for both of us. It's easy for me to fall in the habit of holding him up, so I have to remind myself to loosen the reins in between. He can't hold it for more than a few steps at a time most often, but I think it's a great thing for both of us to practice.

Since Merlin is a draft cross and therefore front heavy, I have spent a lot of time focusing on rocking him back, getting him off my hands. But I think we are getting to a point in training where he doesn't need that help as much as I think he does. Old habits that no longer need apply.

Now we can experiment with trying to get him to relax his head and neck down, and lift/use his back more. I know his abs and the related withers/back topline is a weak point for us.

I think it's very possible that I, in trying to balance him back, am now keeping his head up which in turn hollows his back. It's definitely not all me, but it's good to practice getting out of the way and seeing what's possible.

At the Canter

Now that we've walked and trotted a bit, I started to introduce the canter. Again in the western theme, I gave him a pretty loose rein and asked him to transition into the canter without me holding his face as much.

He definitely needs to balance back and use his hind end to step into that canter, but it's a very good thing for me to remember and practice that I can help with my seat and posture just as much if not more than my hands.

We practiced some circles at the canter, again with me trying to balance and bend him with just my seat and legs. I'm definitely using more rein now than I did in warm up, but still trying to be minimal as possible.

If he got a little too fast and forward I would bump him back with the reins like before. And if we got too off balance and he was throwing his shoulders around, I would go back to my old standby of trot serpentines until he was listening to my half halts and changing his bend accurately.

I also threw in some halts on the rail amid the cantering. In lessons we have a terrible problem with anticipating our turn to jump. When I try to halt on the rail he just sidles or backs, or generally wiggles terribly.

The outdoor still had jumps up, so I thought maybe with jumps around and after cantering we could replicate those jitters and work on them. But honestly he did really well. I don't know if it's because we weren't actually jumping, or something about the lesson format that sets him off. But for this practice he halted and stayed reasonably well.

This may sound like a lot but honestly I didn't stay on any one concept too long. In part because I was in play mode more than work mode for this ride. But also because I operate on a principle that if I am getting bored, they are likely too.

I don't want to beat a concept to death (unless we really have picked a fight) so I just work on it a little bit until it improves some, praise it, and let it go to work on another time.

Cool Down

For our cool down I went back to walking around the perimeter again. This time I would halt at least once per side. I had realized with my earlier halting that he walks forward as soon as I touch the reins.

It was a perfect cool down activity. I would have him halt and then I'd loosen my reins. I'd wait for him to get bored or change gears. I'm looking for a sigh, licking and chewing, some sort of relaxation in his body. Once that happened I would pick up the reins.

If he stepped forward even with one hoof, I would halt, back up and start all over. Initially it would take 3 or 4 tries at each stop point before I could pick up the reins without him moving. Pretty quickly we got down to being able to get it right on the second try every time.

Ultimately he only got it maybe twice where he didn't move on the first try of picking up the reins. I praised the heck out of that and made a big deal out of it. He's plenty smart so I'm sure if I remember to bring this up again he will get it with a few more sessions.

The only other thing I did on cool down was getting a taste for hill/terrain work. On one side of the outdoor arena the track is beaten down to be about a foot or so lower than our designated "jump arena" area. There's just a few inches of grassy slope between the two heights.

It's not much of a hill but it's all I've got. I worked on zig zagging him back and forth across that a couple times. I can't imagine it's doing much hind end work like a real hill, but I figure it's good for his brain and his feet to get used to the changing footing and slope. I also like how obedient he was about moving back and forth across a strange, uneven surface.

Western Play Bottom Line

It's definitely nice to just get out and try something different. It's amazing how just a silly saddle change gives me all sorts of new ideas for what to train and work on. There are so many articles about how cross-training really helps. I can really tell that Merlin likes breaking routine too.

I really don't believe in just doing endless circles around and around an arena, so I'm always trying to come up with something interesting. I will definitely come back to the western saddle on the regular basis. We will never be great Western Pleasure competitors or anything like that. But it's so good to change it up and have a little fun.