The Pendulum

As equestrians we can all be like the swinging pendulum some times.  Maybe even a tad Bipolar-ish.  You know...one day it's "oh my god I suck, my horse has taken ten steps back , I will never get good again, I should just retire."  Then three days later we are all like "I had the lesson of my life, my horse is amazing, we are on track for the Olympics."  Sound familiar?  

Last month when I took baby Monster to the local show to school I was feeling a little like the first scenarios.  He was just not the forward ride I enjoy.  I told trainer I was open to selling him as I think he is meant to be a hunter.  Then my favorite holiday happened (DLS) and things are changing.  Monster is back to regular work.  It's almost like starting over with his under saddle work due to the inconsistent work over the winter.  That in itself was frustrating but then we had a light bulb moment last night.  It didn't take long to get him moving softly into my hand and forward.  Yes forward in front of my leg.  And stay there!  He was better to the left than right but we were able to end with maintaining this forward trot both directions.  The light bulb hasn't gone off at the canter yet.  Key word yet. It will, I know it.  I have been focusing on this at the trot for just a week and have made so much progress.  Yes, we have only walked and trotted for a week.  Why

move on to the next gait until we are at a comfortable point at the previous one?  Last night we cantered and worked briefly on moving in front of my leg.  His head was up and he was wiggly.  Once I have him going in front of my leg I will work on head position and the wiggly stuff will also go away as he gets more comfortable.  

I ended my ride last evening with that awesome top of the world feeling we all know.  That feeling we strive for and that keeps us motivated during the darker times.  I am so proud of baby Monster.  Not only for his progress under saddle but look how grown up he looks!

I need to get a friend to help me take a proper conformation picture.  When he is on the lunge I have taught him that when stopped he must face me so he didn't understand why I was asking him to stand like this.  As you can see I backed him up too much so his front legs are too far under him.  Luxxx deserves a proper picture.  He has turned a liver chestnut color with gorgeous dapples.  He's just lovely.

What about you, do you swing on the pendulum?  Come on, fess up!

Riding Bliss

Longer days, warmer weather, and green grass starting to sprout has given me a bit of pep in my step.  It's the excitement of spring and summer!  My favorite times of year!!

I am so thrilled to be able to come home and work the horses without scurrying along before the sun sets.  And best of all getting to spend time with baby Monster.   His behavior around the barn is already improving now that he is back in work.  We continue to work on moving off the leg, bending, and stretching down into the bit.  He always starts out like a giraffe once we pick up the trot but it improving immensely at moving forward and bending.  Our circles actually resemble circles.  By the end he is moving into the bit and relaxed.  I'm pretty proud of how he progresses each ride.

His mane is also slowly growing out finally!!  Yay!!!  Friday I even pulled the few stands that never got rubbed out.  I realized that I had only pulled his mane one time since I got him before he rubbed it out.  Since I was expecting him to react like wtf, I unhooked him from the cross ties and put a chain over his nose. I would have preferred someone to hold him, but I didn't have this option.  I unhook from the cross ties because when they want to avoid what you are doing they back up.  When they hit the end of the cross ties they might panic because they can't evade you or because they simple hit the end of the cross ties.  We want this to be a good experience so we want to avoid all that.  The first pull he stepped back.  I lead him forward.  Another pull and he stepped back.  I tugged lightly on the chain to let him know he's not supposed to go back.  Then with each pull on the mane I have big pats and talked to him.  He stood ground tied until we were done.  Then of course he was rewarded with a peppermint.  With babies it's all about making things a positive, drama free experience.  That way they grow up to be solid citizens with good manners.  He's getting there...

Poppy has been really good.  Nothing exciting to report on.  We are hacking and jumping a little.  I feel that she is tighter to the right so I will work on that (circles, bending, stretching, etc) until our next show in April.

It's Here!!!!!!!

I feel like this weekend was my birthday, Christmas, tooth fairy, and all grand things rolled into one.  Daylight Savings!  I can feel less bitter about people at at work who are allowed to leave early due to having children while I have to stay because I do not and watch my ride time slowly setting as I commute home (ok, maybe still just a teensiest bitl bitter).  I don't care that I lost an hour of sleep, I get to FINALLY work BOTH of my horses!

I love the speed limit sign in the background

I worked Luxxx on Saturday and he was pretty good.  It was cool, windy, and the neighbors were running their four wheeler up and down the street.  Not the perfect environment for a 4 year old who hasn't been ridden in a week.  He handled it well.  He likes to pretend he's forgotten how to steer, bend, and move off my leg.  By the end he was doing all of the above pretty well.  Most importantly he was relaxed and moving into the bit.  We wrapped up with practicing leg yields and it seems so easy for him.  The lateral movements are good to touch on as we are walking and warming up or even cooling down.  He's the best at halting and even backs up perfectly now.  He also loves selfies (ugh...kids these days...)

I have to say this is my favorite picture from last week.

I feel very lucky to have so many pictures from HITS.  I can't wait to have a couple blown up for the house.

Rain is forecasted starting Wednesday through the rest of the week.  This means horses will need to get worked today and tomorrow before the mud sets in.  At least it's warm...

Friday Photos

The temperature has dropped 30 degrees from yesterday and is raining.  This makes me thankful to not be at the local show with baby Monster.

Due to today's lovely forecast I decided to hack Poppy last evening since everyone will likely get this evening off.  She was sassy and a tad full of herself.  Mare thinks she's awesome or something...

Being awesome means hacking, and circles, and bending are boring.  Such is life...

A wonderful example of why white breeches are awful.

I'm hoping the rain moves out tonight and I get some ride time in with baby.  I should probably clean out my trailer and unhook it to.  It's still sitting exactly where I left it Sunday night.  

I hope you northerners (and Texans) are unthawing and have a warmer weekend!

Regrouping

Sigh.  HITS is over for me.  I had 2 great shows there and now it's time for a break.  Maybe I am neurotic, maybe a tad obsessive, but I like to give my mare a break.  After 3 days of jumping she will get 3-4 days off and probably a week + off from jumping.  

I have pondered hard about returning next week for the $25K Classic.  I think it would be fun and we have as good of a shot at it as anyone but realistically it is a lot of money to go show for one class (entry fee is $475 + $25 late entry fee).  There is a 24 hour rule so I have to get a stall (at $250 + shavings to use for 1 night) and also enter one other adult jumper class ($50).  Then add fuel, hotel, training, office fees, late entry fee, etc.  I have reasoned that the next show is only a month away and what I would spend to go do the classic would be best spent toward other shows coming up.  That's my adult decision.  Not the fun decision but the financially wise one.  I also want to continue to focus on my goal of moving up a division.

So next up for Poppy is an AA show in April.  This also gives me time for baby Monster.  There is a local show this weekend that I am skipping even though it would be good for him to go school.  I am tired and want a weekend home.  Plus my employees are tired of me taking off all these Fridays I am sure.  

My most favorite day of the year is coming up this weekend.  Daylight Savings!!!!   I have lunged Monster the past 2 evenings and am looking forward to getting him back into regular work this weekend.

I am so thankful to my friend's husband for taking these beautiful pictures of Poppy last weekend.  I have a few more to sprinkle through my posts this week :)

HITS Week VII (Part 2)

You know how you just get that feeling about something?  You just know.... Yeah well I knew I would draw first in the order of go in Sunday's High Adult Jumper Classic and I did.  Perfect.  There are positives and negatives to first.  Positives: get it over with, lay down a great ride and make everyone chase you, & you don't have to watch a ton of people go and consider changing your plan from the course walk.  Negatives: EVERYONE will be watching your round, you have to hurry after the course walk to get on and warm up, you don't get to watch any rounds to see if that 6.5 stride line rode long or right on a 6, you have to wait until the very end to jump off and re-warm up your horse, etc

 

Fortunately the Children's class went first so I did the course walk with them and got to watch a bunch of rounds.  They changed it to an ab option which means you can stay in the ring and jump off if you are clean or come out and jump off at the end.  Alot of kids chose to stay in so I got to watch jump offs too.  There were a number of time faults in round 1 so I knew I would have to be efficient to each jump (keep the pace, don't lollygag in the corners and get sucked up in the big ring).  2 people also added the class which meant they had to go first!  Yay I was bumped to third.

Jump 1 was an oxer, around to jump 2 a vertical.  Left turn to 3 an oxer on the outside, seven strides to 4 the Equifit jump, and five strides to jump 5.  Poppy stared down the Equifit jump.  It had 3 or 4 individual black panels under it that apparently resembled a monster.  I rode hard and she jumped it.  Normally I will show her spooky jumps before I start the course and this one did not occur to me that she would look at it.  Jump 6 was a white plank six strides to 7abc, a combination which was a one stride to one stride.  Jump 8 to 9 was a 4 stride,roll  back to 10ab two stride.  Jumps 11 to 12 were on the outside, down the hill toward the gate. It walked in a 6.5 stride so I opted to whoa for the 7 to avoid getting flat.  We finished a nice, smoothe, clean trip well within the time allowed.  I opted to return at the end for the jump off so we had a nice 2 hour wait.  Only a few of us opted to do this.  The jump off started with jump 2, roll back tight to jump 3, a hard inside turn to jump 14, tight roll back to the two stride 10ab, then gallop to jump 11 and do 6 strides to 12.  I was worried about the turns from 2 to 3 and 3 to 14.  They were tight and both oxers.  I was slow from 2 to 3 and got deep which rang the bell in my head to speed up!  I found our gear and remembered to keep the pace out of the turns so I could ride up to the jump.  We finished great (and clean).  The initial slowness hurt but still good enough for 6th place in a large class.

Last jump in the jump off!

No video (boo for no friends available to video) but more pictures to come!  Although I was disappointed in myself for not having pace from jump 2 to 3, I fixed it and we finished up on point.  Poppy was great and jumped confidently out of the tight turns.  She did spook at the Equifit jump again before we started the course haha!  I need to figure out how to make that jump!  Overall I am beyond pleased and proud of her.  I feel like our jump offs are coming together. Tightening our turns and adding more pace (not speed---I would whoa and add versus riding up and finding the go distance) will put us out on top in the future.  Love that little mare :)

 

HITS Week VII (Part 1)

We are back and we survived HITS!  In true Florida style (they call it the sunshine state but really it is the swamp state) we had a deluge of rain the night before we left.  I got a late start to the show as usual.  I won't get into why but it involves getting stuck in the mud, my four wheel drive not engaging, wheel rolling off my manure cart, etc.  We finally made it to the show Thursday afternoon.  I unloaded, unpacked, set up, & hacked.  

Friday was cooler (for Florida) but no rain so I will take what I can get.  We did the High Adult Jumpers (1.10-1.15m).  It was a straight speed round.  I was using it as my schooling round so although I tried to be efficient with my turns I didn't push the speed and wanted a nice school. 

We were clean but not fast enough for a ribbon.  Perfectly fine, we accomplished our goal of a nice school.

Saturday was cool with an off and on drizzle all day.  That always makes it hard to motivate myself to show.  On the positive side it also kept me from wandering around the vendors.  I got lucky and the rain held off for our class.  we did the High Adult Jumpers again.

This course seemed simple and twisty.  Simple was probably the illusion the course designer wanted so people get sloppy and bypass the technical questions.  4ab was a simple one stride vertical to vertical.  In the jump off this same combination was used but backwards (13ab).  Because it appeared simple it was easy to get there too flat which is exactly what I did in the jump off.  I got there deep and flat and punched the top rail.  We finished with 4 faults but it was also a good learning round.  Poppy is jumping amazing and confidently so I need to move forward out of my turns and move up to the jumps instead of pulling.  Got it.  We were out of the ribbons but again, she was great and I just need to tune my jumps offs so I am giving her the optimal ride.

Gimme my peppermint or I eat your face!

Next up, Sunday's NAL Classic!