We have liftoff!! Pogo has finally started jumping and is going EXTREMELY well(not that anyone should be surprised by this, as we have seen in his free jumping videos, haha) He is very quiet and likes to wait to the base, he does a great job of waiting all the way to the fence and sorting out where he and his body needs to be.

This is where my theory becomes a little bit controversial, but so far, it has worked for me on the handful of horses that I have started, retrained and taught to jump. As you may notice in my videos, generally I am in two point on a very loose or loopy rein. On this horse (and most greener horses) I can usually get away with this and will. Granted, this position is "precarious," being up on their neck, basically leaving every opportunity open for them to do something silly, and never say never of course, but I do have faith that I have instilled the go button and his own confidence that he will keep going. 

I also try and stay out of the equation as much as possible and allow for the horse to just figure out where he needs to be. With Jolie, I think this made her a bit opinionated and bold, but I would honestly rather work with a horse that is more forward and bold rather than one that is backed off or always searching for the riders help. My thinking is that if you are always training a horse to look for your command, you are in a way signing yourself up for trouble. As the saying goes, we are all human and we all make mistakes. If your error in judgement allows for the horse to make a mistake, you put both horse and rider in danger. However, if the horse can think on it's own what he needs to do and where he needs to place his feet in order to be safe, chances are these self preserving animals will get themselves (yourself included) out of the situation. 

As I introduce more half-halting and flatwork, I will obviously work this into jumping and working with striding in lines, but for the beginning, jumping is foreign enough without adding the complexities of the rider being in the way, so this is how I choose to work. If I do anything it will be to add leg and encourage the forward motion (as obviously forward is key and the whole point for success)

Obviously, this is boring (and almost every effort so far, with the exception of cantering flower boxes has been recorded and posted) but as mentioned previously, boring is good.

Our goals for the rest of the month include: working on the introduction of a half halt, doing more canter poles, and eventually elevating to small bounces and one strides, and by the end of the month hopefully schooling horse show fences with gates, brush boxes, flowers and the like. I do not anticipate this being a problem but time will tell. We are hosting an IHSA english show at the end of this month, so it will be the perfect occasion to get the boys out for a taste of a show and to school in a show like setting. (at least prior as the warm up gets a little bit crazy, especially for our babies!!)

As promised....

Well, reading material flies around the barn like wildfire...this week: The Chronicle of the Horse...
Specifically: Feb 6 and 13, 2012, Detecting a Genetic Pattern in the Thoroughbred Event Horse...
Passed along to me by Nancy...

So I am reading it....and it's a lot of what we hear all the time: there is no pattern, every TB basically goes back to Bold Ruler, Native Dancer, blah blah blah... (ok well it's not that boring, I love to be enlightened but for arguments sake...)

Skimming to "everyone has a favorite" 
Skim, skim, skim, any names I recognize?

Oh crap, Two Punch (Pogo's sire in case anyone has forgotten)...let's see what they have to say about this!
Steuart Pittman "The handful I've worked with have been really, really good movers and good jumpers once they know how"  (thought process: ok, I'll take it)

Ashley Adams' four star mount is by him...cool

And here's where everyone out there needs to be interested in purchasing Pogo:
"They have really solid bone, and they have a rhythm you can't get out of them. They're amateur friendly, and tend to be a little bigger and more attractive....they are all mirrors of one another; gray or dark bay and rarely chestnut. They're theamateur dream horse; they'll go out and do whatever you want them to do.."

Well, at least there are worse horses to start out as a sale project....chose a popular stud by accident...
Now to find a buyer!

Remember, his sale ad can be viewed on my website: thundercrestperformancehorses.weebly.com

I was having a chat with some friends yesterday about this site and a couple of things were brought to my attention...The first being that I never actually said how this whole project got started and number 2, training things are fun, but it's also cool to have other things included....with that being said, here's story time on how this whole idea came about..

Rewind about seven years ago: I was riding at a barn that was owned by some prominent people in the town, they happened to have dinner with the manager of a local Thoroughbred Breeding farm and he mentioned that he was looking for some help. The word was passed on, and I called about the job as soon as I could. Little did I know, it was a very LARGE breeding farm that was once one of the top stud farms in NYS (Keane Stud). Enamored with the almost 100 head of horses and all of the foals, I soon learned about a site, Pedigree Query ( thoroughbredhorsepedigreequery.com) and quickly became a junkie looking up EVERY horse that I could remember the name of. I would look up the stats, progeny etc. and became an endless encyclopedia of every horse on the farm. 

Now to May of 2008 for a quick sidenote: My boss at Keane Stud is AWESOME. End of story. He has given me endless opportunities, most importantly the opportunity to train the "freebies" (the horses that are our collateral for unpaid bills and inevitably become farm owned) as well as some track rejects that just didn't cut it. Namely: Cranky Pants who got my whole idea of  "lets retrain a TB" going in high gear. He was super easy, super fun and incredibly talented. It was for sure a learning experience but I credit all of that to my wonderful, super-fantastic boss (-es, actually) who allowed for all the shenanigans to happen :)

Ok, now back to about a year and a half or so ago: A friend posted an ad on Facebook that she found for a horse named "You Sure" a very well put together Cryptorchid at the Finger Lakes track for FREE. True to my Pedigree query-junkie self, I looked him up....and like that I discovered he was one of the kids from the farm. How cool!!?? So, I did some more research, found out that this site (Finger Lakes Finest) was a trainer listing for all horses that weren't making it...So the hunt was on to find more of my babies...

To clarify: when I say "my babies" I mean the foals that I saw be foaled, helped to halter break, taught to lead, played with, messed with, got dragged around by, stepped on, medicated, washed dirty bottoms, weaned, groomed, loaded onto the trailer for training and so forth. I may not pay the bills, but they are my kids... :)

 SO back to last spring: I became friends with a trainer at the Finger Lakes track when I went up to watch a couple of them race. I spoke about the others and also gave my contact info in case some of them came up for sale. He told me to use his name to get to the backside anytime to visit.....Big mistake. It's a rare occasion if I am not met by someone that says "Hey, you look familiar, weren't you just here?" Alas, not only a pedigree query junkie slash Finger Lakes Finest junkie, we can now add, backside regular..

So....the start of Fall Semester 2011, a friend of mine started looking at horses as she wanted to try for a re-sale project. I went up and got to looking and needless to say fell in love with some of the horses I saw. It amazed me that these young, and promising prospects were all available, rather cheaply, and who know what sort of end they could meet if someone like my friends (and now us) didn't come along. My friend found a wonderful horse (through my trainer friend, Charlie) and as she started working with him, I started to get the itch to work with a fresh slate again.

I knew I wanted to work with an OTTB, especially after my trip, but the fact was there were SO many....My first thought was, well you can't save them all....or can you? So, Tesla and I got together and devised a plan...we would approach our director with photos and descriptions (compliments of the lovely ladies at Finger Lakes Finest) and a list (and sob stories if needed!!!) and give her our pitch: We would do an independent study, for credit where we take our horses, take full care of them, work with them, document it, promote the breed, and at the end of the semester sell them to great a and loving homes. Much to our surprise (and without the use of sob stories!) she quickly agreed....

The rest is history (and most of it documented here)....we unfortunately did not purchase anything on the site as people come out of the woodwork and we were approached with two that were not yet to be listed. Our hope for this is that the school can profit enough to fund another round of this project next year and that two (or more) lucky people can find those lucky TB's and find more homes. If we are successful (and we will be if I have anything to do with it!) potentially other schools can catch on and even more TB's can be re-homed...

Anyway, that's all for now!!

On a sidenote: Pogo's bad day is a thing of the past and he has been wonderful since, he is going well and progressing a ton, potentially another free-jump day in the future!

"But its FRIDAY....I DONT WANNA WORK TODAY!!" said the exasperated little gray to the determined college girl. And so the story began... (For those of you that haven't caught on, this is going to be today's ride from the eyes of Pogo himself.

It was a great day, two consecutive days off in a row, complete with Sunshine and temperatures that were warm and cozy. It felt like someone had snuck me off to Florida in my sleep, a place that I have heard from my friends that is warm and where nice horses go to show off. I wasn't about to show off for anybody though, I was enjoying R&R the way cool kids do, stuffing my face with tasty hay, begging for grain (NOT treats, I don't get them. I swear they are POISON and these two legged things are trying to kill me with whatever that stuff is), and being turned out with my best pal, Ryker. 

Today was day three (I think) of not having anything to do, or so I thought. It was still early in the day, and I saw my two-legged person come walking from behind the barn, hopefully NOT to come get me. BOY, was I WRONG!! She took me away from my pal and what I thought was a good vacation. My first thought was, "I'll show her!" 

Normally I stand still and just right while she tacks me. Today, I decided I might try and run back to my paddock and find RyRy. I waited until she turned away and swift as ever, I started to sneak away....only to be caught and then I continued to be tacked up. Rats...

I let her think that today was going to be a normal day, I walked out, stood by the mounting block and waited for Kait to arrange herself in the tack. I picked up a walk and allowed for her to ask me to stretch. Boy, do I love to stretch, it feels good so kept up with it. BUT THEN, Kait thought it would be a good idea to take up the reins, As I mentioned earlier, I wasn't in the mood to work, so I didn't take kindly to this shorter rein....

"oh man, I have to lift my back and do WHAT?" I said..."you can do it Poge's...good boooooy" she said to me. I really didn't appreciate that tighter outside rein and inside leg pressure, what the heck is she asking me to do? Bend into a pretzel? I'm not Gumby over here...do I look GREEN to you?! (NO PUN INTENDED GUYS, DONT LAUGH AT ME!) I don't get WHY she insists on asking me to move my shoulders in every so often, whats so wrong with just doing what I want to do?

Oh boy now we got to trot, and, honestly, I wasn't feeling it. These stupid white things were on the ground and she makes me go over them and step OVER them. I hate that, sometimes I really just don't want to step over things, what is so wrong with my regular trot step? Why do I have to drop my head and work SO HARD?! And I thought life on the track was hard. At least galloping was fun, this stuff is SO BORING...Galloping on the track, hmmm I miss that.... 

::cue the light-bulb moment:: WAIT A MINUTE!! This four walled place is ROUND like the track, why can't I just PRETEND I'm on the track? There's a big stakes race at Aqueduct tomorrow,  I've heard my two-legged person talk about it, a horse she knows is in it...Well, why don't I give her a taste of what it's like?

::cue Kait's canter depart:: AAAND WE'RE OFF! And it's Pogo in the lead (for the second time ever in his life) until wait, wait, wait, what is happening? Why is she stopping this? We have already been through this, I DON'T WANT TO WORK HARD TODAY!! RUNNING IS SO MUCH FUN! 


::cue the temper tantrum:: small circles are NO FUN!! Why on earth does she insist on sitting on me and MAKING me work? What is this, I am a big bad race horse, we are not supposed to be sat down on and not supposed to go slow!" what is this?! I tried every trick in the book to try and get out of this WORK. I tried dropping my shoulders in, falling out, opening my mouth, putting my head up and putting my head down...Whatever she wanted I just did something else. I just didn't get why she wouldn't quit and leave me alone. Why is this girl so persistent? 

Finally, I decided that this was getting stupid. Not that it hasn't been stupid this entire time, but I was getting tired and was so sweaty. I just didn't want to work and this girl wasn't quitting. She wasn't going to stop until I gave her what she wanted. I don't know when my opinions started to carry less weight, but I am not a fan of this new situation. But, regardless I start to think, maybe if I just do as she asks, my job will just be done, and then I really won't have to work so hard after all....Voila! Give a little head down, stretch through my back, give sweet canter departs and in less than five minutes I was done. 

Boy, I wish I realized that sooner. Note to self: life is easier when I just do as I am told....maybe...

ps. Sorry Kristen fearless leader for the spelling and grammatical errors. I am only three, just going on four, give the baby a break! Kait sure doesn't!! haha :)

Pogo has been going really well and is making good progress. Nothing eventful, which we all can probably say we like, or at least admit that it's refreshing.

Today we tried out a standing martingale to help "clean up" what is becoming our high-headed canter depart. I have been being lax so as not to discourage the forward momentum to the canter and thus, not fussing over head placement. He is unfortunately starting to take advantage of that, SO time to go to work!

As always, when I come into the arena I turn my ipod on....first song to pop up was "8 second ride" and I was seriously hoping that was NOT an omen, and it wasn't. Our trotting started out as per usual: connection, no connection, stretch down, connection, no connection....although not consistent, it was better than we started initially.

Our canter departs got better and I worked more toward asking with a correct bend and outside leg instead of letting the lead just happen. He took to this well and displayed the most beautiful left lead canter, and the right lead although sloppier is coming right along. We did some single canter poles which he did not even think twice about as well. We took a break in between where Pogo out of nowhere decided to fill both of my reins with a connection and stay! At the walk and the trot....EUREKA! We've got it...aaand back to canter, SUPER...back to trot, took a little bit to regain the connection, probably because he was tired, but we got it re-established and ended on a good note!

See, boring but productive!

Finally, the highly anticipated videos of Poggio!!!
Enjoy!

So bummed to go write my post for TODAY to find that yesterdays didn't save for whatever reason. So, I will start all over again and then continue with my big step for today :)

Due to some arena time being available when it normally is not, Tesla and I took the opportunity to set a chute and get some free jumping done with the boys. I was not entirely sure how it would pan out, as Pogo is still figuring out his body and where all of his legs go, but I think it is safe to say that we were all very pleasantly surprised.

We started out on a lunge to get warmed up, and he surprised me by being very relaxed, despite all of the "new" looking surroundings. He also popped into the most perfect and balanced canter with no effort at all. We then proceeded to handwalk through the chute where Pogo followed very confidently and then moved up to a jog in hand where still he followed confidently without batting an eye.

Then it was the big moment, time to go alone and canter....No issues, figured out the striding and was perfect. We slowly started to build up from a single crossrail, to two, then three, and then introduced a vertical and then an oxer to finish.  He did take the opportunity to not go down the chute when people were waving the whip and were in front of him, an honest mistake for a baby, but a clear indicator that well, if he doesn't HAVE to, maybe he just wont :) There was no over jumping and every move he made was willing and confident. He met each fence at a proper spot and adjusted himself well in between each element.

The most interesting part was that each element was being built, he watched intently what they were doing. Almost like trying to figure it out on his own before being in line to it so he was well prepared to do his job. This one is a brave, honest, and willing! little guy who is definitely going to excel in the hunters and is handy enough to be a potential derby horse.

Onto what today brought us:
Free jumping helped the canter SO much! Today we worked more on accepting the bit and worked some on leg yield and shoulder in at the trot before proceeding to canter. Again, leads were a non issue, as was the depart. I mean, he is far from being the next Jersey Boy (yet) but for a first depart (I know we cantered before but not for the sole purpose of cantering as this was) it was more than I could have asked for. I had tops four strides of slight disconnection and finding our feet, but then settled into a lovely, rhythmic canter and slowly dropped our head down into as much of a frame as could be desired for his level of training. I was pleased at how comfortable he was just loping around, not a care in the world.

I do think that the free jumping exercise helped with today's results as he was more challenged to find his feet at a canter with jumping, so carrying the weight of a rider and just loping along was easy for him. I am excited to keep up with our work and to see what this little guy is made of.

There will be links to videos of the freejumping and cantering posted soon!!

Alas, you can never have the exact training plan for any horse written out and follow it exactly day to day...Today was one of those days.

Of course I ended my last entry with Pogo not being "ready" to canter, and well, today we cantered. However, the goal was not to canter, make it pretty, etc. it was to get forward motion without a fight, fuss, or making the horse crazy. Pogo generally has a great attitude, but if he doesn't feel like doing something, you can tell. I don't want him to hate life so, I am trying to work with him to move forward (literally).

Our trot work has been coming along, however his trot to the right was awesome, and to the left was lacking, he just would lay on my inside leg to the left and suck back. Along with sucking back, he would shorten basically every muscle in his body, and the more you asked for forward the more tense he got about it, to the point where he would almost just hop up and down (nearly cantering in a teacup stride). A great instructor I know told me once, "never ride a green horse, baby horse, clients horse, or your own without a stick. It's better to have it and not use it than to wish you had one and really need it." So true to this instructor I have been carrying a crop at all times, never having to use it. So today I tried the "flick" that jockeys do, just laying it on his side, even a tap to no avail (only slight irritation with the tap, irritation is NOT my goal)...So, we attempted a canter...

Pluses and minuses to this situation: Plus -> leads are a non-issue (both directions, I did push my luck just to see). Luckily my confidence building exercises on the lunge line with picking it up stuck. We struck off balanced, and forward and eventually leveled out to a pretty nice, relaxed and controlled canter on a loose rein, both directions.

Minuses -> mentally, a neutral move: he wanted to do more, but I don't think he expected that and if horses can think in retrospect, probably not one of his most brilliant "I want to do more" ideas. Physically, he is not fit enough to really hold a good canter. I guess this goes in with "physically" the boy is still growing, is quite down hill and isn't the most nimble. I think he is still trying to figure out where his feet are and how to keep them organized with a rider on his back.

Biggest Plus (and desired result achieved!) Both trot directions had a much better quality to them after the canter, including being softer into the bridle (w0w, there is a hind end pushing back there!) stretching down and accepting my leg to move forward and away from the pressure. We got a few steps of leg yield to the rail and trot and at the walk was able to carry a shoulder in for most of the long side and leg yield to and away from the wall, both directions.

From here, Pogo has earned two days off to let his lesson sink in (I am not sure how I calculate this, its just the feeling I get or a subconscious mathematical equation that takes everything into account, multiplied together and divided by .483,  haha). He will resume on Friday with potentially another lunge line lesson and resume to riding over the weekend...but as we all know, plans may change!

Pogo has had some time to just relax and figure himself out lately. I have not been pressing riding too much as now the arena is getting busy and not everyone is so kind to realize the needs of a green horse. Instead, we have been working on cantering on the lunge line, so we can be prepared and hopefully balanced enough to carry a rider when the time is right.


Our first attempt at cantering, wasn't much; just picking up the proper lead, swapping off and trying to go across the arena and change direction. Now that we are understanding the concept of staying on a circle on the lunge line, cantering is easier for him. He does on occasion pick up a wrong lead or swap off, which is not a big deal to me. I know that 1. thoroughbreds like to be balanced and 2. leads have not been important up to this point in his life. So, I allow a circle or so of the "wrong" thing and calmly go back to trot, allow for him to settle and try again. I don't want to blow his mind or make him frantic that he is "wrong" because, he really doesn't know what the heck is going on! To the right, you can see him thinking all the while cantering, "one, two, three, one to three, I know I have four feet, are they all together? Is this right?" before finally settling into a rhythm and then allowing it to be natural. 

A lot of the troubles also I think lie in that he is not totally fit, of course there is some residual muscling from being racing fit but from November until the second week of January, he has been sitting in a pasture. For Pogo being as young as he is (And quite high in the rump!) allowing him to find his feet, and get comfortable in the gait prior to adding a rider will be very important for him. I would like to think by the weekend we will be cantering under saddle but only time will tell. For now, I can just imagine what it will be like, as the small bits he gives me are slow, relaxed, rhythmical and balanced...

Also! As a reward for his brilliant first week, he is on the schedule for a massage compliments of Thunder Crest Equine Massage this afternoon :)