Bailey and Foxie saw the saddle fitter last week Monday, and I was super pleased with the results. Unlike last time, this fitter didn't try to sell me anything and did tons of fantastic work for a very reasonable price. I had her look at both my Classic Saddlery dressage saddle and my Courbette Vision, and she kindly looked at the fit of the saddles on Foxie as well as Bailey. She also (out of curiosity) flexed and looked over my two Philippe Fontaine saddles.
The Vision fits both horses really well and the fitter was super happy with it after adding some additional wool and fixing some lumpiness, she suspected, that was created by the previous fitter. The Classic fits Bailey well enough, but rocks too much on Foxie. It isn't perfect, but the fitter felt with some more muscle development and bulk (and evening out Bailey's larger left shoulder) we should be able to remove the shims from my Thinline pad and work out a better fit. The Classic isn't too long for Bailey (sigh of relief!) and the main goal is to get it sitting on her back better rather than lifting in the back.
After my fitting appointment, I took Bailey out for a quick jump school on the XC fences... and she was a Beast. Despite forgetting my crop, she jumped everything super willingly (except the Novice picnic table that had some flowers and ferns sitting on it - we only got that one direction successfully) and felt really awesome. I adjusted my back blocks up higher on the velcro and between that and the improved balance of the saddle post fitter, I think my leg sliding rear block killing problem to be a thing of the past.
Wednesday last week, we did some dressage and I noticed both that day and Saturday that my half pad was sitting crooked when I was pretty sure I started the ride with it straight. Both days were obedient, if nothing life changing. I still like the balance of that saddle and find it super comfortable, and Bailey doesn't seem to mind it. On Saturday, S, who own's Bailey's mom, Cali, was at the farm riding in the Dom Schramm clinic. I handed her the reins and had a lot of fun watching her put Bailey through her paces and hear how she compared to her mom. Bailey is sweeter and more compliant than Cali, but also is kind of sassy - but in "slow motion" which is quite funny when you think about it. Cali is 50/50 WB/TB and Bailey is 3/4 TB - technically she should be the hotter, more forward horse, but she's not.
Monday this week Bailey put in a brilliant jump school thanks to our friend Lindsey (and the adorable Ollie) who came and jump crewed for us. Bailey was generally good and forward, and we got most of our distances. I buried her once, and we had some wiggles to the last fence of lines, but generally she jumped clean and did so happily. I was very happy with her - the fences were larger than I would have set for myself and she jumped them with ease.
Yesterday, though, was a grass growing but also exciting day...
I took Foxie out for a long trot, which of course involved her taking off with me a bit. After having some major pain related protests to the farrier on Monday, I felt like it was time to start rebuilding her topline more seriously to counteract any soreness, while also resolving to Bute her before her next farrier visit. She came back in off of a canter to a long trot in frame, and was barely puffing. That fact in of itself made life so much less stressful - she's finally acting like the Foxie I know, and not the sweating, puffing mess she was this summer.
I don't usually ride Bailey second, and I think it's still not the best for me to give her the ride she wants. With Foxie, the contact is heavier and steadier, and when I ride Bailey second I go looking for that and end up riding her sucked back behind the vertical. I worked on getting her soft and walking forward, and while the trot had some struggles (we were in the small indoor and there were people doing lots of canter-halt-turn on the haunches type moves) I was generally happy with her. She wasn't brilliant, but she wasn't bad or disobedient in any way.
Her canter, however, turned into something really cool; I don't know how I found it, but I managed to get myself into a position and was able to half halt her into a really nice, sitting canter. There was a lot of power there and it felt much more like the back-to-front ride I've been looking to find forever. I see lots of collection work in our future, because I want to harness that power and see what that can do for us over fences. Apparently now that the saddle fits and I actually work in said saddle, we can do cool things like sit at the canter vs loping around like a show hunter.
Looking towards the weekend, I'm stuck between wanting to go play on the new XC fences and doing some dressage work. Maybe we'll do a flatwork session and then do a few XC fences to make a compromise; I keep reading about how your warm up changes your jumping, and I think we could definitely use some improvements across both.
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