The Many Misadventures

Back in the Groove?

2012-01-01T22:03:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone! I actually went to a party last night, like a real college student and everything. I sipped my cinnamon whiskey, joined in the pull-up contest (sadly the ladies did lose, with a combined total of 17 to the boys' 45...the perils of hanging out with mostly rock climbers - the women can do pullups, but the men can usually do more!), and had a good time with fun people. 2011 was a great year for me, and I'm looking forward to what 2012 brings. I hope you guys all have a wonderful year as well.

I took a long-overdue dressage lesson with Leslie on Wednesday this week. Actually, it was a bit of an event - another boarder at the barn and my barn owner both took lessons too, so my mom and I came out to watch their lessons and everyone had a good time. We also brought cookies, hot chocolate, and tea, because we love Leslie.

Over the last few weeks, I'd been riding more often. Maybe three times a week, up from the once per week I'd been doing for pretty much the last six months. Still, that's not very much, especially compared to last winter when I was riding five days a week with one or two of those days a lesson. So I was very pleasantly surprised when, at the Leslie lesson, McKinna appeared to have lost nothing over the last six months.

Some lost fitness? Sure, she got tired more easily, so we kept working chunks short and gave her breaks. But everything we worked on in that lesson, from leg yields all the way up through trying some haunches-in at the trot and a walk-canter transition, felt beautiful. Like we never left off of training. Seriously, this horse blows me away all the time.

So we're just going to keep on trucking. I'm feeling encouraged about regaining our fitness and building back up to improving our training once more. Lately I have really been enjoying focusing on the walk, encouraging McKinna to really use herself properly, doing lots of suppling through lateral work. The fun has come back for me in the mental engagement part of riding, which is a really nice feeling. I'm feeling like I'm ready to start jumping again...which I'm pretty sure we haven't done more than maybe once since June.

Went out to the barn to say hi and longe her a bit yesterday. She is cheerful as can be. Furry as all get-out, of course, though maybe not for long. I gave her a little strip-clip on her chest and neck before the Leslie lesson, and it helped, but I think it's going to have to get expanded. Another lesson is on the schedule for next week, and a Pony Club clinic over the weekend. Maybe I really am getting back into the groove.

New year, new goals? Not really, at least not in the formal sense. It pains my inner goal-setter to even say that, but still. I'd love to go Training at Inavale this year, but if I find myself unable to put in the time and work to do it well, I'll be happy to go Novice again. I'd be thrilled if I could compete at more than one event, but since I'll be traveling to events specifically to do data collection for my thesis, I'm not sure if it'll happen. Mostly I just want McKinna to continue being the happiest and most wonderful horse around, and I want to keep enjoying my time out at the barn with her in whatever way that happens.

Fall Update!

2011-10-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

I swear summer gets shorter every year...blink and you'll miss it. Maybe that's because I seem incapable of doing anything with my summers other than stuffing them full of activity?

Anyway, here I am, about to start Week 4 of classes.

First things first: McKinna is doing well! To be honest, I've been averaging about 1 ride a week since...well...Inavale, in June. Turns out it's awfully hard for me to motivate myself to work hard on riding when I'm throwing everything into my research, and that definitely didn't get any easier when classes started. McKinna certainly doesn't mind this life of leisure, though!

We had a visit from the chiro last week, which I think made a big difference. McKinna had been fairly cranky about saddling and just wasn't into working - I didn't think much of it because I was so busy not being into working either. I hopped on for a little stretch-everything-out ride on Wednesday, and my mom has ridden a couple times since then, with positive results. Back to happy, ready-to-work pony.

Am now realizing that I never updated you guys about Inavale. The short story: it was fabulous. Dressage was pretty good for us, a little tense but not bad. I think we were middle of the pack. I was a bit concerned about XC because our entire XC-schooling of the year consisted of hopping over a few logs in Devin's back pasture, but I wasn't too worried. After all, this is McKinna, XC Rockstar Extraordinaire, we're talking about.

My favorite fence!

She did not disappoint! We blazed around that course and she took everything in stride, including a brand new ditch with very scary light-colored gravel on either side and a two-stride combination in the woods with a bit of a light-to-dark element. Double-clear, naturally. That moved us up to fifth.

If you'll recall, stadium was our downfall last year. So I was understandably a bit nervous coming into stadium on Sunday! I had a few things going for me, though. McKinna was overall a MUCH happier horse, because we decided to learn from our mistake last year and stable in one of the open pole corrals instead of a totally closed-in temporary stall. Huge difference.

McKinna's good-morning stretch in her pole corral

Also, we spent a good chunk of last year working really hard on our stadium to get up to C3 level, doing 3'3 courses and the like - so a Novice stadium course, even Inavale's fabulously decorated fences, looked pretty tame.

Even though it did have the dreaded horse-eating piano fence as fence #7.

Well, let's just say I needn't have worried.

We went in there and McKinna did her job. A little nervous, sure - but never any question about going over the fences. I did ride a little extra hard to fence 7! A clear round for us moved us up to fourth for our final placing.

So that was Inavale. Lots of friends and family came out to spend time with us, and I had a great time.

Other than that, nothing too exciting in horse-related news. I spent two weeks at the end of the summer doing paleontology field work in Eastern Oregon with my lab, which was ridiculously fun and also exhausting. At the moment I'm having a bit of a hard time juggling all my responsibilities. I've got a lot of short-term, recurring deadlines (classwork, mostly), a lot of Really Big Important Deadlines (mostly research projects and scholarships), and the handful of other things requisite to daily life like eating, doing laundry, and getting over a cold. So far I'm doing okay, but I've been spending a lot of time going between "Okay, I can do this" and "Aaaargh how the hell am I going to survive this term??"

Which, you know, sounds pretty much like I do every term, so I probably shouldn't worry too much. Maybe someday I'll learn to give myself a balanced schedule. On the plus side, I had a great ride tonight. It was sunny and crisp out at the barn, McKinna was cheerful (and insanely fluffy for a horse who was body-clipped a month ago), and I had a really nice dressage school. Felt good to get some solid work in.

I'll get up some video from Inavale for you guys to see. Other than that, don't hold your breath for frequent updates (I'm having a hard enough time treading water as it is!), but I'll check in when I can. Let me know what you guys have been up to! Maybe tomorrow evening I'll spend an hour or two getting caught up on everyone else's blogs.

The End-of-Term Crazies....

2011-06-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

May or may not be getting to me.

Yes, that is me galloping with a nerf gun. (Last week, when the weather was not doing its best impression of FREAKING FEBRUARY. IT IS JUNE. STOP RAINING, DAMMIT.)

Yes, that is a semi-accurate rearing horse skeleton that I may or may not have drawn in the midst of writing a giant term paper.

I had a lovely ride Monday night and tonight. McKinna is content to be worked a few days a week, and to be honest I'm thrilled with how well she's doing considering the lack of concentrated attention I've been giving her. She's still fit, she's still strong, I can go out and work on some nice canter lengthenings or trot cavaletti and she is perfectly happy to go to work, and she retains the stuff we work on too. It's great.

Horse trials at the end of the month! My brain is completely occupied with school right now but I'm sure I will start getting very excited about the HT shortly after finals are over.

A week and a half to go!!

Break!

2011-05-04T18:54:00.000-07:00

Hey there! It's been...a month...my goodness.

The rally went super well. We did the Horse I division, which goes up to 3'3. I was particularly excited because I discovered that McKinna has an ADJUSTABLE canter. In warmup I could send her forward in big gallopy strides, then close my leg and sit up a little and collect to short, bouncy strides. Very exciting. Very new.

She jumped her heart out for me and was a fantastic girl. A rail or two here and there, but overall it was great. The take-your-own-line round was spectacular, including a ridiculous rollback to a one-stride line that had to be jumped at about a 45* angle. We did take the first rail (because we didn't land on the right lead for the rollback - argh! - and had to drop to a trot before picking up the canter again), but McKinna jumped it like it was no big deal. Love her.

Anyway, life's been a bit crazy for me as always. School, mostly. Midterms. Research. Homework. More midterms. And it doesn't look like it's going to let up much at all anytime soon. It's all fun and exciting stuff, which is good. I've been riding regularly and having a great time. Adding alfalfa to McKinna's diet was the best decision ever (have I written about that?), because now she's got seemingly endless energy but she's not stupid-hot. She's just ready and willing to go to work with plenty of enthusiasm, and I can really feel the difference when we're jumping. So I've been riding probably an average of 4 days a week, which isn't 100% ideal but it's pretty good.

And on that note, it's time for me to officially take a little break from blogging. (The 'unofficial break' being the fact that I've been posting extremely sporadically anyway.) I've got a lot of stuff on my plate, and I don't like having one more thing nagging at me for my attention, even though you guys don't complain! So I'm going to not worry about the whole blogging thing for a little while.

It's possible that I'll be back soon, or maybe I'll just post once a month, or maybe I won't come back until into summer vacation. Who knows? I'll see what I can do.

Hope all of you are having a wonderful time with your horses. I definitely am!

Scratches Begone, and Super Awesome Jumping Lesson

2011-04-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

Well, sometime last week we gave in and I shaved McKinna's legs to better deal with the scratches. It was still spreading despite our best efforts, and while I wanted to leave the hair to protect her against the mud, at this point it was hindering more than helping.

So, zip went the clippers and her legs are now naked. We also have been leaving her inside over the last couple weeks, which isn't as bad as it sounds because she still has a run and the barn owner has been turning her out in the arena to blow off some steam. McKinna seems perfectly happy with the situation, and best of all it has really helped with the scratches. (Or so I assume - since we clipped, kept in, and medicated all at the same time, I suppose there's no causation established).

It's been a pain dealing with. Scrub legs with antimicrobial/antifungal shampoo, dry with towel, wait to dry more and/or dry with a hair dryer, apply lovely mix of antibacterial/antifungal/desitin/etc to all the scratches-y spots, repeat ad nauseam. On the plus side, it's almost completely gone now! Just a few little splotchy pink spots. We've been treating it just about every day, and we'll continue to do so, but it's mostly taken care of (which is nice, because I have the Show Jumping rally this weekend).

Speaking of jumping, everything is going awesomely. I went to a lesson with Devin last week which REALLY helped get me out of my riding funk. Next time I am whining lots about not wanting to ride, ask me how long it's been since I've had a @#*@!(&% lesson with my regular instructors, okay? Not that I'm not allowed to whine, but I've forgotten how much fun it is to ride with them. I went in, told Devin I wanted a solid, simple confidence-boosting jumping lesson, and proceeded to have possibly the best ride ever.

We worked on establishing a forward, powerful canter stride from which McKinna can collect or extend easily. And wow, what a canter! We did a lot of course work, and I ended on short course of 5 fences. Most of them were 3'3, and the natural vertical was 3'6. Yeeeeeeeah baby.

I love her expression. She is SO calm and confident about it, and really in tune with me. It sounds silly, but I can't tell where my thoughts end and her responses begin. We just kind of adjust everything together and it works. I had another jumping lesson yesterday where we worked on more technical courses, and it went very well too. McKinna is working hard to keep her rock-star status!

I'm doing the 2'6 - 3'3 division at the rally (ridiculous range, I know. And jumpoff can go up to 3'6). It should be a great chance to practice jumping flashy courses with show nerves, so wish us luck.

Scratches

2011-03-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

McKinna has developed a sad little case of scratches on her right hind fetlock/pastern. She doesn't seem to have it anywhere else, which is interesting - I'm wondering if it came up because she got a small cut in the area a couple weeks ago. Maybe that opened the door to the fungus?

It's not too bad, just pink skin that develops those crusty little scabs and some hair loss. It doesn't seem too painful. We've been washing it very well with betadine scrub every day, using a blow-dryer to get rid of all the water on her fur and skin, then smearing it with antibiotic ointment and vaseline. Last night we bought all the good stuff to mix up and put on it: an anti-fungal cream (since that's what scratches is, a fungus), antibiotic ointment (because apparently secondary bacterial infections like to piggyback on scratches), and desitin (to act as a water barrier).

Yesterday was a mega-score in terms of new apparel, thanks to Tack of the Day and eBay. (I am hopeless.) A few days ago I received my Mountain Horse Sportive High Rider II tall boots. They are zip-up dress boots and they are perfect.

I love the chunkier footbed, and have realized this is important to me in my boots. They're just a tad bit snug, which means they'll break in perfectly, and in general they fit me WAY better than my last pair. They're quite comfortable to wear already, though my right foot is apparently bigger than my left and starts to feel a bit squished after awhile. I'm planning to wear them to the Pony Club jumping lesson tomorrow, though I'll bring my paddock boots and half chaps just in case I'm dying halfway through.

The next item to arrive was: my very own pair of FITS breeches!!!

Yes, they are the dreaded monkey-butt breeches, and no, I don't care how ridiculous they look. I tried on a pair last summer and they are THE most comfortable breeches I've ever worn. It's like wearing pajamas, but with full-seat awesomeness. They've also become pretty much ubiquitous on the eventing scene, so at least I'll fit in ;)
I am also wearing these to the lesson tomorrow. So excited to FINALLY have a pair of these! I have wanted them approximately forever, but they retail for over $200 and that is way too much. But, I found a pair of the beige color in my size on eBay for $99 buy it now, and I was all over that like stripes on a zebra. Now I just need to find deals like that another time or two so I can have some schooling pairs in black and brown...

Finally, I got a package of some Patagonia tops from another eBay seller. Those I actually bought for hiking and other fun outdoor things, but they are definitely getting commandeered for lessons and clinics. They are form-fitting, warm, and sooooooooooft.

So yes. I essentially received a whole clinic's worth of riding attire yesterday, and it was awesome. I think this may do more for my riding motivation than anything else! (I kid. Mostly.) I have been having some good rides on McKinna in the outdoor, but keeping my energy up has been a bit of an issue. A bunch of things have kind of hit me in a row, from putting those 30 days on my barn owner's mare which took lots and lots of daily work, to getting sick, to hitting finals week, and finally this week the (loving and necessary but still very difficult) end of my long-term relationship.

Most times I head out to the barn, I'm just tired and don't feel like riding. Sometimes I make myself do it anyway, and I usually go on to have a good ride and be glad that I did. But that doesn't make it much easier to motivate myself the next time. When I think about all the stuff I have planned out for my competition season - the goals, the unrecognized HTs, the smaller shows, the recognized HTs, my C3 rating - I just don't get that excited, must-plan-things-now feeling.

It's not all bad. A big part of my horse-related reluctance is how much fun I've been having working in my advisor's lab on campus this term. I've been getting very excited about the science we're doing, I'm working on my very horse-related thesis project (which is going to be AWESOME), I've just started on another project that will hopefully wind up with me presenting a poster at a scientific conference next year...it's been a lot of fun and it's all happened very fast. Exciting, yes - but it's hard for me to maintain super high levels of motivation for more than one major thing at a time!

On the other hand, the new term starts on Monday, so I'll get a little reprieve from academic overwhelm (hopefully I can stay more on top of the studying this term). And I did just get all that fun new gear, which will help drag me out the door and onto the horse. My plans for the summer are flexible. Nobody says I have to move up to Training! My #1 priority is that I never ask McKinna to do anything for which she is physically or mentally unprepared. My #2 priority is to have fun. So I am free to shift my plans around as much as I want to accommodate what I'm feeling, as long as I never try to do something we're not conditioned for. Just deciding this has taken a weight off my shoulders...I think I built up all these expectations for the season and I was pre-emptively worried about it.

We'll get back in the swing of things. Leslie is back in town soon, so I can start taking dressage lessons again. And I've got a few things coming up, like the SJ Rally in two weeks and then an Upper Level Prep with Jen Verharen. Those should be fun.

Plus, the weather will eventually get nicer, and that always helps.

Thank goodness I have a horse who doesn't need to be worked 6 days a week for an hour. Though unfortunately she DOES need to be bathed in order to look presentable in public, which means today is bath day. Sigh.
It's worth it, I suppose. She is pretty much perfect in every other way, after all.

I Made It!

2011-03-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

Whew. That was a rough finals week.

I made it out alive, though. No grades are up yet, but it's the usual situation - I'm not 100% sure I got straight A's, but it's pretty likely. I didn't end the term as strong as I would usually prefer to...in fact, I ran up against pretty much all the deadlines and didn't put as much time into studying/final projects as I would like to. But that's the way it goes sometimes! All I can do is work to be better next term. (And hope I pulled off my A's.)

McKinna is doing well. I've recently discovered that the outdoor arena footing situation has improved to the extent that I'm comfortable riding out there! It had been a little deep over the winter. It's still deep-ish, but not bad, and the arena is big enough that I can do lots of canter work, so hooray for that. My mom and I had a lovely ride this morning in a brief window of sunshine, and then the rest of the day was rain/hail/general nastiness.

Mom having a very nice ride

I'm still working on recovering from the sleep deprivation and mental tiredness of last week, so you'll have to pardon the short post.

Fun fact: today we went to the horse evolution exhibit at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Lots of cool stuff there. Also, they have a station where you can put your hands into knitted horse feet (!!!!!) from early, three-toed ponies all the way up through modern Equus caballus, and test them out on different "grounds" from soft, squishy forest to hard, flat grasslands. So cool. The one where your fingers are all spread out in the toes feels very nice on the squishy stuff but weak on the hard ground, while a hoof (which only has enough room for one finger) feels unsteady on squish but awesome on hard ground. Way cool.

Man, I am SO glad the term is over. It's slowly sinking in, but it always takes a couple days for me to decompress. The thing I'm most excited about is finally getting my brainspace back to myself. I can use my mind to think about things I actually care about (thesis research! fossils! ponies! grad schools! thesis research!) rather than things I don't want to do (projects projects projects why are there so many projects).

Look, we can canter!

Right, so. Now that I'm free, you expect a quasi-regular posting schedule again, and by quasi-regular I mean no semblance of regularity except that P(1 post/week) > 0.5.

Okay, I'm Back

2011-03-08T22:12:00.000-08:00

That was quite the absence, wasn't it? Didn't mean to disappear for so long. I was in a little bit of a funk for the whole horse thing. Still going out to the barn and riding a few times a week, but I just wasn't feeling it.

Never mind that, the energy's back. I think I was just at a low-motivation point in the term. Right now I'm about halfway through dead week - have a lot of writing to do, but finals week is shaping up to be not so bad, and I'm riding a lot again.

I decided to lop McKinna's mane off and make her look like a real sport horse. Cut it last night, and then tonight started in on the pulling. Already it's looking pretty good. Her mane is SO dang easy to pull, and of course she is so polite and patient about the whole thing. It still needs to be shortened up a lot, and more thinning done on the upper part of her neck, but I have lots of time. She is going to look so damn awesome with braids in this summer, I can't stand it.

Photographic evidence:

So cute.

What else? We've added a bit of alfalfa to her diet to make sure she's getting enough protein, since the grass hay she's on is fairly low-quality (fine by me - she gets nasty diarrhea on orchard grass). She is going to be working hard this season, and things start ramping up next month. Surprisingly, no digestive upset whatsoever associated with the introduction. Cool beans. (Ha...ha...get it? Because alfalfa is a legume? Right.)

I took the stirrups off my jumping saddle and have been riding in it more often. This is a good thing for me, because stirrupless work was one of my weaknesses at the rating prep and I have another one coming up in April. It's been miserable work until tonight, when it was still extraordinarily painful (posting and 2-point, that is; sitting trot is pretty easy) but I felt like my position finally 'clicked' and held stable through the whole thing. Also, I have discovered that McKinna is capable of cantering in the indoor arena without totally losing her mind. She still doesn't approve too much, and she's more tense than she would be in a big arena, but it is very nice to know that I can actually school the canter at home.

What else? I'm working on a report for the ABC retreat. Wrote up an outline for the PC newsletter about it, but I know you guys will want more detail! It is also the 8th of March today, which means I need to get my butt in gear analyzing my February goals. I'll work on that one, and at least have it done by next weekend after finals are over. Probably sooner. Writing blog posts suddenly becomes very attractive when you have a mountain of OTHER writing to do.

McKinna is awesome and very fun to ride. I bought one of these lovely quarter sheets because I found it on super-sale, and earlier this winter when it was ridiculously cold out I felt guilty while warming up because I think her poor shaved hindquarters were cold. Also, I bought a pair of these from Tack of the Day today - I came to the conclusion that I dislike my Dublin Aristocrat tall boots because they are too big and the footbed is very thin. I do not like thin footbeds and I do not ride well in those boots. The Mountain Horse Sportives are perfect because they have a slightly chunkier footbed (perfect!) but are still dress boots and can be polished up all nice and pretty, unlike my tried-and-true paddock boots + full-grain leather half-chaps. Pretty polish is good when you're at a Pony Club rating.

Quick review of upcoming excitement: jumping lesson at the end of the month, Show Jumping Rally (yes, I decided to go!) and upper-level prep with Jen Verharen in April, dressage show and/or hunter jumper show + Inavale eventing camp + Inavale unrecognized HT in May.

And after that, things start to get really crazy.

That's all for now. Gotta make some progress on that pesky schoolwork.

Nnnnnnnnnnn

2011-02-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

That is the sound of me whining. Really I don't have a ton of excuses, just that I'm tired and it's cold and rainy out there and I'm busy with school. You know - the usual :)

On the plus side, I did just read a paper for my thesis about the evolution of shoulder morphology and the stay apparatus in horses. Interesting things all over the place. And, after forcing myself to learn the terminology, I can ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND sentences like, "Whereas the biceps brachii tendon of Mesohippus was directed medially as it passed distally on the sulcus, the biceps tendon follows a sagittal course in M. primus."

Yay me.

ABC retreat was fun, best part was obviously the leg dissections. Nothing better for learning what the tendons and ligaments in the distal limb look like than going in there and slicing it up yourself!

I haven't ridden since the schooling show on Sunday (which was AWESOME, because we are slowly figuring out how to put together a decent course at 3'3), mostly for all of the reasons I was whining about. We're going out tonight, though, so schooling ride ahoy.

Back to the homework grind. See you when I resurface!

Short and Sweet

2011-02-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

McKinna looking cute after the last schooling show

This week has been really nice out at the barn. No lessons or anything, just me and my mom and McKinna. Nice, quiet, easygoing rides.

Mom and I each got a new pair of Ariat Heritage gloves for schooling. They're very comfortable - thin enough for a good feel, a little grippy, fun colors. The palms are black grippy stuff, but the backs are breathable fabric. Mine are dark red and Mom's are way cooler - pink and black argyle. I told her she needs to wear a black polo with a pink shirt underneath and get a black dressage pad with subtle pink piping. I am all about color coordination in other people! I guess I can pull together my red-and-black color scheme at shows, but most of the time you're lucky if I'm not using a purple saddle pad and a green polo or something.

I've been diligently working on the no-stirrups thing. Just in the dressage saddle so far, where it's much easier than in the jumping saddle, but it definitely forces the open hip angle! McKinna is going along great and she actually stays really steady in the contact when I ride sitting trot with no stirrups. Mom and I are working on the walk, encouraging McKinna to stay soft and round but really stretch over her topline instead of bracing or kinda "crunching" up her neck as she would sometimes prefer to do. It's going nicely so far.

Tonight we just drove out to say hi and love on her a little bit. She was happily munching through her mountain of dinner hay, nice and warm in her blanket, nice and muddy everywhere the blanket doesn't cover.

Friday I'm off to the Pony Club ABC retreat, which is basically upper-level horse management on steroids. From about 8AM to 5PM on Saturday, we'll be taking in as much knowledge as we can handle. Included on the roster of topics: fitness for equestrians, concussions in riders, saddle fitting, equine nutrition, and leg dissection! The ABC retreat is tiring, but it's always a great time. (Says the girl who reads scientific papers in her spare time.)

Hope you are all enjoying your horses, and surviving the crazy weather if you're in an area that's been affected by nasty snow and such.

2011 Goals!

2011-02-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

Huzzah, it's finally time for the curtain to be swept aside on this year's goals! Never mind that it's February already, I like to take my time about these things.

Without further ado:

The big goals are to get to more competitions than last year, successfully move up to Training level, and to pass my C3 in August. Luckily, Training level and C3 level are basically the same thing, so all my goals are generally pointing in the same direction: make our dressage better and more consistent, become familiar with Training-esque XC questions, and make our stadium jumping bigger and more complex. Nothing to it! ;)

The Smaller Goals are a pretty big collection of things, but mostly they are aimed at pieces of the Big Goals and thus they'll be worked into my monthly goals, which I am definitely going to do this year. The idea is that if I complete all the Smaller Goals, then the Big Goals will just follow naturally.

(Side note: sometime over this autumn, I told Leslie that I *really* wanted to be able to canter McKinna down the long side of her arena, straight, without having to floor the accelerator just to make it down without breaking to a trot. We officially did this in our lesson last weekend! STRAIGHT, balanced, and we didn't have to rush. Mini-goal accomplished!)

Big Goals
- Complete at least one HT at Training level (preferably recognized)
- Pass my C3 in August
- Complete at least 2 recognized HTs

Smaller Goals
- Consistently work on my own fitness
- Develop and follow a regular conditioning plan for McKinna
- Able to maintain a soft, balanced, relaxed canter with connection (especially away from home)
- Score above 55% at a First Level (USDF) or Training Level (USEA) dressage test at a schooling show
- Complete clear rounds at or above 3'3 at H/J schooling shows
- Comfortably, competently school 3'6 in lessons
- Corollary: if all is going well, do some 3'6 rounds at schooling shows??
- Without stirrups: be able to ride 30+ minutes and jump over a 3' grid, without loss of basic balanced position
- Be able to get on an unfamiliar horse and have a productive flat session and confident, smooth stadium course at 3'
- Develop confidence and familiarity with Training-level XC questions
- School a few straightforward Prelim fences
- Practice longeing enough that I am 100% comfortable doing it the Pony Club way in an arena that's not mine

Whew, that's quite the handful of little goals. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure I can get them all done. Let's take a look at how those are going to fit in, month by month!

Also, Leslie has left for California for the dressage show season down there, and she will be gone until April. Sad face. On the plus side, we've been doing hardcore dressage work for the last several months and we've made tons of progress, so now I will be focusing on jumping for awhile.

Finally, I'm going to do something a little different with the monthly goals this year. I usually have a pretty solid idea of what my goals are for the next several months, but at 4-5 months out things start getting hazy and I end up changing the goals around a lot as I get there. So I'm only going to set my goals through April for right now. (Yes, I know that's only 3 months.) In April, I will take stock of where I am at on my Smaller Goals list, listen to the feedback I get at the Upper Level Prep clinic, and develop my goals list for May through July or August.

I think this will help keep my goals more focused and relevant, as well as keep me checking in more often. So here you go!

February
No-stirrups month! I am going to spend a LOT of time this month working no stirrups in my jumping saddle. Now that I've finished up with my 30 days on my barn owner's young mare (successfully started under saddle and w/t/c off leg and dressage whip, with no bucking!), I have a LOT more time to work on McKinna, so we'll be getting back into the swing of things.
End of Month:

my fitness (check in)
developed a conditioning plan for this season
can ride 30m stirrupless on flat with little to no loss of position
taken at least 1 jumping lesson
completed one clear round at 3'3 at JJPC schooling show
focused dressage work on getting McKinna to reach forward to the bit at all times
contacted 2 people about practicing my switch rides on their horse

March
My last free and open month until the fall, pretty much! I'll be using this time to get myself organized, enjoy a little more down time, and then start revving up for the season. In jumping lessons, I really want to work on McKinna accepting my leg, and the two of us growing more powerful and confident over big fences.
End of Month:

my fitness (check in)
begun to implement conditioning plan (and actually take vital signs!)
taken at least 2 jumping lessons and jumped at least a couple fences at 3'6
ridden at least 2x/week with no stirrups on the flat
worked over small (2'6 and lower) fences and grids with no stirrups
completed 2 switch rides
practiced longeing in Leslie's arena
focused dressage work on maintaining stretch over topline while doing lateral work and transitions

April
Things start to heat up a little with the Show Jumping Rally and an Upper Level Prep. I should feel like we're really making progress on the goals, building my and McKinna's fitness and confidence up, and by the time I get to the Prep in the middle of the month I want to feel like we've made huge progress since the last Prep in January.
End of Month:

my fitness
continued conditioning plan
continued no-stirrups work
clear rounds at SJ rally! (will be doing the up to 3'3 division, with jumpoff to 3'6)
taken my goals and conditioning plan to UL prep for feedback
checked progress toward Big Goals via feedback at UL prep
practiced longeing at least once
ridden 3 horses for switch ride practice (at least 1 over fences)

Well, there you have it. What do you think? Any goals that need to be revised a little? I am sure I'll mess with things as I go - you always have to adjust along the way. But with how my rides have been going lately, I'm feeling really excited for this season! I think it's all well within our grasp.

3' and 3'3 Jumper Rounds

2011-01-26T21:11:00.000-08:00

At our Pony Club schooling show this past weekend, I did a few classes with McKinna - a 2'9 jumper class to warm up, then a 3' jumper and a 3'3 schooling round (since no one was around to do the class with me).

Can I just say that McKinna rocks?

It wasn't 100% perfect, but I will say this: McKinna was responsive and jumping well. AND, 3'3 looked small and easy and doable. This is a big deal for me! We JUST moved up to regularly jumping 3'3, and already it seems easy (height-wise). If you watch the videos, you'll see that McKinna actually got better distances in the 3'3 class than the 3' class (except for that nasty half-stride on the very last fence...oh well).
It's really exciting that the height I am looking to compete at this summer is already well within our range. Sure, we need to polish, and come summertime I want to be schooling at least 3'6 on a regular basis because I like to school a level above what I show, but still. To have this level this early in the season is really cool and makes me feel good about ratings and competitions this summer.

3' Jumper Class

I love how she makes those itty bitty turns and angled fences for me in the jumpoff. I felt bad about the trip after she landed from the purple fence, but another horse tripped there in a jumpoff too, so I think the ground was just a little compacted there.
PS, I got first place in that class. And I actually had like four other riders for competition! Very exciting.

3'3 Schooling Round

Stupid last fence. It was better the second time.

I am very pleased with my pony. She's getting more and more confident - usually at shows she is a little more tense (you can see her canter isn't super relaxed and flowing), but at least she's not hesitating off the ground as much and she is getting better about softening up laterally so we can make reasonable turns.

Next schooling show is just in a couple weeks, so it should be a great chance to get a comparison ride.

The next order of business will be to just start a nice, steady conditioning program (as long as it's not pouring outside, anyway). The more strength she has, the more she will be able to generate the big rolling stride and the power that she needs to be able to launch over those bigger fences even more confidently - it will also help her get us out of weird spots more easily. I read an interesting post on Jim Wofford's (aka Eventing God, for those of you who aren't familiar with him) blog about conditioning for eventing. You can read it here, but basically he says Novice and Training horses should be able to do three reps of 4-minute slow canters by the time they start their competition season.
Long walks and slow canter sets, here we come!

An Award! (Or Several)

2011-01-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

I usually suck at picking up awards, but since so dang many of you posted on my last entry, I decided I'd be on top of my stuff today and actually pick them up!

So, without further ado: the Stylish Blogger Award.

Here are the rules:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award

2. Share 7 things about yourself
3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

Okay. So, I've received this blog from:
Chasing The Dream, Riding From the Ground Up, Nina's Story, Adventures in Colt (Filly) Starting, From Bones to Beauty, and Tucker the Wunderkind. Did I miss anybody??

Here's a few things about me. Goodness, what is there that you guys don't already know?

1. I'm a junior Biology major and school is a really, really big part of my life. I get A's, I love being in the Honors College where I can be in challenging cool classes, my advisor is amazing, and in general I love what I'm doing.

2. I have a cat named Rascal, who has long soft white fur with orange points. I also have a dog named Kuma, who is a 105-pound Rottie-Chocolate Lab cross with a heart-stopping death growl and an absolute puppy love for his people. Best dog ever.

3. I was a band kid in high school. Wind ensemble, jazz band, marching band, pit orchestra for the musical. I played trumpet, and for two years I was a drum major for our marching band. Joining band was one of the best things I ever did; it's where my closest friends are from, and I learned a lot about leadership and teaching during my time as a DM.

4. Once, I rode my horse through a Dairy Queen drivethrough. (Actually, my high school's whole equestrian team did.)

5. I have no clue what I want to do for a career, but I do know that I want to spend a couple years as a working student for an eventing barn after I graduate. General career interests: teaching, science, writing, horses. We just did a unit on scientific teaching/literacy in one of my classes, and it was really really interesting. Pedagogy for the win!

6. Project horses? I'm a sucker for them. I covet horses all. the. time. Sure, I have the most perfect horse in the history of existence. Sure, I really enjoy all the extra time and money that comes with only riding one horse. But, man...I see potential in horses. I imagine what they could be with six or nine months of proper conditioning, dressage training, lots and lots of nice hay, and an introduction to over-fences work. Little grulla ponies. Big TBs that move like warmbloods and are currently ridden western. 3 year old warmblood crosses. It never ends and I am hopeless. (Most of the time, I can restrain myself. When I can't, I do things like buy a 6 year old Appendix with a rearing history when I have a broken ankle..though we all know that one turned out well!)

7. I like sleep. A lot. I'm not lazy, my body just wants lots of sleep. 9 hours if possible. 10 is okay too. Anything less than a full 8 and I'm a sad panda for the day. I can fall asleep anywhere in about 5 minutes flat, which is great at horse shows or other situations in which napping can be beneficial. On the other hand...I'm in college. Sometimes, you gotta stay up late! I'm happiest in bed by 11, but sometimes I have to stay up late to finish something that I've been putting off, and those times it really sucks. In a perfect world, I'd go to bed at 11 and get up at 9 every day! Also, I really really really hate early mornings at horse shows. One benefit to moving up the levels is that I don't have to get up as early anymore, because the higher divisions go later =D

Alright...so there's 7 completely irrelevant facts about me. Now to tag more people! Lots of these blogs aren't new to me, and I can't hit 15 (a lot of you have already gotten this award!), but here's what I've got.

The Jumping Percheron
Talk to the Hoof
Wet Reins
SprinklerBandit
Dapple of My Eye
Behind the Bit
Barn Door Tagz
Eventing-A-Gogo
Adventures of the $700 Pony

There you have it, folks. Check out those blogs, they are some cool people writing cool stuff.

Stay tuned for my 2011 goals! I know you are all dying to know what they are ;)

PS, we had the kick-assest (yes, I just made that a word) dressage lesson yesterday. McKinna is in heat or something and was really "up," actually calling out to the other horses and generally being kind of tense. But when I put her to work, man! All that extra energy comes shooting out as this gorgeous power. It took a little more effort than usual to get her trot work relaxed and soft, but when I did, she just let me squoosh into her and I felt like I could ask for anything. It's like plugging into an electrical socket or something, except with less pain.

And then, the canter work. Holy crap. She had real jump in her canter. Big, rolling, powerful, horse-not-pony strides. And to keep her from motorcycling, all I had to do was half-halt my outside and squeeze a little with my outside leg - and magically, easily, she softens on the outside rein and stands up and carries herself. I was cantering around with such a giant grin on my face that Leslie started laughing at me.

Seriously, though. In Leslie's words: "That wasn't just SOME of your best canter work, I think that was THE best canter work you've ever done."

We actually stopped after a half hour of work. After schooling some beautifully connected trot work, shoulders-in, haunches-in, leg yield, and gorgeous canter work, what more do you want? Not much!

It was a very good ride. Have I ever mentioned how much I love this horse? Because I love her. She is amazing, and the approximately 10 sugar cubes she got yesterday can attest to that fact.

2010 Goals Recap

2011-01-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

Alright! Time to get started on these goals posts.

First, I want to review last year's goals. I already did a short progress check in October, and we were well on our way...so let's see how things ended up.

1. Pass C-2 rating in Pony Club [passed in May]
2. Master Novice-level eventing [considered achieved in October]
2b. Begin to school some Training-level eventing
3. Clean tack consistently
4. Get a dressage saddle that fits Pandora and me [done before I sold her]
5. Kill the Judge Stand Monster for Pandora [untested - sold before I got to a schooling show]
6. Stick to a fitness schedule for myself
7. Take monthly progress reports

Okay, so it looks like goals 2b, 3, 6, and 7 were the only goals that remained open after October. Let's take a look at those ones!

2b. Begin to school some Training-level eventing
At this point, I am calling this goal officially PASSED! We have only schooled a few Training XC questions, but since that is our strongest phase, I'm okay with that for now. Our dressage has been kicking serious butt lately: not only have we introduced haunches-in, McKinna now LOVES doing it at the walk and is beginning to learn to do it softly at the trot too. Also, we introduced walk-canter transitions, and those went swimmingly the first time we practiced them. After looking at a video of our flatwork from the prep clinic (which I will post soon!), we are doing really well in just going along looking like we know what we're doing.
As far as Stadium, we are moving right along there, too. 3'3 looks perfectly manageable, and it rides like that too. In our lesson on Saturday Devin had everyone working on dropping the hands lower for an automatic release, and it felt great - video of that coming soon too! And Devin's always got some crazy bending lines and angled fences in her lessons, plus this time we had a triple combination, so I think it's safe to say we are schooling Training-level SJ.

3. Clean tack consistently
Um, right. About that. I mean...it was more consistent than last year, which is a plus. But it definitely wasn't consistent. So, FAIL for this one. As I consider adding this goal to this year's list, I think: does it really matter? And I come to the conclusion that no, it doesn't. My tack gets cleaned probably once a month. Is that ideal? No. But I take good care of my stuff, it never gets grossly dirty, and it never takes more than a damp sponge with a little bit of Effax Ledercombi to get it clean. So not only do I declare this goal failed, I declare it not particularly relevant, because once a month is good enough for me!

6. Stick to a fitness schedule for myself
Not so much here either - another FAIL. Last year I really sucked at working on my own fitness. However, this one IS going to make it onto the current year's list, because one of the biggest things I took away from the Prep Clinic was the need to improve my core and lower leg strength. Luckily I am already making progress on this: I am in a Yoga class this term at the University, and I just ordered some Yoga DVDs with a Borders gift card, including one that's focused on core strength. Yay me!

7. Take monthly progress reports
Sigh...another FAIL. I pretty much didn't take progress reports. I think this is partly because I didn't have monthly goals - everything I had was either long-term (begin to school Training) or ongoing (clean tack consistently). So I will take this into consideration for the structure of this year's goals, which are going to include monthly goals to provide a checkpoint.

So there we have it, folks! Obviously we were highly successful in all riding/training goals and not so much in the personal responsibility ones. That's okay, though - it shows me what I need to work on.

Just for kicks, let's take a look at what things were like over the last year.We have made some really amazing progress, in my humble opinion.

In January, I took McKinna to our very first dressage lesson with Leslie because Pandora had just hit her head on our trailer. When Leslie saw McKinna's canter, she said, "Oh my." I went to the Pony Club ABC retreat and learned a lot of interesting things. And finally - perhaps most significantly - I revisited the idea of selling Pandora so that I could finally explore McKinna's potential. (Not such a bad idea, eh?)

In February, we had our very first jumping lesson with Devin. I took a deep breath and decided that the real world can wait, and after I graduate in a couple years I want to be a working student for awhile. At our JJPC schooling show, Pandora and I jumped our first 3' course together.

March saw yet more progress, though it was a light posting month because I was in the misery class of doom (AKA, Organic Chemistry 2). McKinna elicited numerous comments from jumping trainers about how nicely she jumped, despite that canter. And I mused: why horses?

April came along and Pandora was doing great in jumping and dressage lessons. At last, Pandora went up for sale on Dreamhorse. And I rode McKinna in the Show Jumping Rally, where despite a minor meltdown I was very pleased with her.

Spring was in full swing and May was a big month for us. First I passed my C-2 rating on McKinna! A few days later, after almost two years together where we made a lot of progress, we sold Pandora and she went off to her new and perfect home. McKinna and I had some ups and downs. I returned home from the Inavale camp, where my dad took my favorite picture ever.

In June, I had an interesting ride at the Eventing Derby. I finally wrote up a more thorough Eventing Camp Report. I rode in my first recognized Horse Trials at Inavale (!!!!), where we had a reasonable dressage score, one of only 2 double-clear rounds XC (including our first ever trakehner!), and then got devoured by the horse-eating piano fence in stadium for a sad elimination.

In July I supported National Helmet Awareness Day, groomed for Devin at the wonderful, educational, exhausting Event at Rebecca Farm, and got a happy update from Pandora's owner.

August was another busy month, in which I attended Quiz Championships in California, decided that I love dressage, and was seriously jet-lagged when I returned from an awesome 10-day trip to Taipei.

In September things kept improving. McKinna and I had a great jumping lesson and played around with some clicker work just for fun. We had a great ride in a schooling show, then kicked butt at the eventing rally, with video of dressage and stadium.

October saw a chiropractor visit after a less-than-stellar XC school, followed by the conclusion that she definitely needed it. I spent some time thinking about how lucky I am.

In November I got tired of mud. Now aiming for our C3 in August, McKinna and I went to our first Upper Level Prep Clinic. I discovered that I can, remarkably, ride pretty much an entire lesson in sitting trot. And it snowed!

Finally, in December, I celebrated the end of Fall Term (at last!), continued to have a great time riding McKinna, jumped our first ever 3'3 course together - which McKinna rocked, of course - had the jumping saddle reflocked, and spent some great time with my family over the holidays.

What an awesome year. I can't believe that in January and February of last year, I was just taking my first lessons with Devin and Leslie! Just trying to get McKinna to soften to the bit a tiny bit...working hard on Pandora and deciding to sell her...wow. Seems like forever ago.

I can't wait to show you guys my goals for this year. It's going to be even better than last year!

Pony Club Prep Clinic

2011-01-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

I rode in an upper level prep clinic this weekend with Jen Verharen, a Pony Club national examiner. Though it was miserably cold (come on, weather, we're in Oregon, not north Idaho!), the weekend was quite the success and I absolutely loved working with Jen. She is one of the highest-quality clinicians I have ridden with in recent times - extremely thorough, has a great eye for what horse and rider need, super friendly, and really dedicated to helping Pony Clubbers through the rating process. I've got videos and maybe some pictures, so I'll see what I can get uploaded.

Upper level preps are designed to help PCers make the jump from club-level ratings (D1 through C2) to the national ratings (C3 through A). The certification process for examiners is more extensive, the expectations of candidates are a lot higher, and I know in the past (maybe still?) Pony Club has sometimes had issues with kids coming to their first national test at C3 being unprepared for the rigor of a national rating. Thus, prep clinics! You ride with a national examiner, get traditional clinic-type feedback focused on the progress you need to make to prepare for your rating, and you're able to ask questions about how you compare to the rating standard on that particular day.

We rode twice each day, and we had a wonderful goal-setting discussion with Jen on Saturday evening. More on that later. I am a C3 candidate: this means I am expected to have an independent and very secure seat, confidence and control on the flat, over fences, and on XC, proficiency at relating my flatwork to the dressage training scale while discussing it, a developing training ability, and so on. The test is basically equivalent to Training-level eventing, an in fact one requirement is that we ride the USEA Training Test A.

Other requirements include the switch rides, in which you must show confidence, control, and free forward movement on another candidate's horse. You also have to jump another candidate's horse over a 3' course, and evaluate your rides. The courses you jump on your own horse are 3'3, plus you jump through a grid set at 3' with no stirrups.

So that's the context of the prep clinic. McKinna was, as one would expect, a rock star.

Saturday Dressage: Jen had two big pieces of feedback. One, I am a very effective and tactful rider, so now I need to develop my position to be more "elegant." This involves stretching my legs longer downward (thus stretching those darned tight hips!) and sitting taller without the slight forward tip I tend to get. No comments about my elbows though, huzzah! The second piece was about McKinna, who was kind of "sticking" in her transitions both up and down. She sort of flows along nicely, then braces and stops the energy for just a second when I ask for a transition before she complies.

We addressed both of these at once: I got to drop my stirrups, and also make McKinna much quicker through the transitions, keep her prompt and that energy shooting straight through. I was skeptical, and a little concerned...I have worked so hard to get and maintain relaxation from McKinna that I really didn't want to throw it away by getting her worked up about snappy transitions. Still, I went ahead with what Jen said, and in the end it worked out marvelously. After sorting out an initial 5-10 minutes of McKinna getting a little anxious and tense, I learned how to relax my hips and sort of squoosh myself into her while still sitting tall, and McKinna responded by keeping her energy forward and free through the transitions without becoming tense. Cool stuff.

Saturday Jumping: this was alll about me, because my pony is basically perfect. Essentially, my lower leg has gotten WEAK, and I let McKinna talk me into not using it because she tends to rush if I have it on snugly. My orders were to get that leg out in front of me a bit more and keep that calf on! I was able to make a huge improvement once Jen showed me what she meant. I think I have just let it slip now that I'm not as strong as I was over the summer, and I needed a reminder of what exactly to do. She said it was much much better, I just needed to keep practicing so it was a natural and easy thing.

We also jumped through the 3'ish grid with no stirrups. OW, OW, OW. The landings are not soft! It is difficult to keep your legs up in jumping position with no stirrups, not to mention keeping your calf on! It is hard to keep the upper body tall with strong core! Again, I made improvement, and McKinna was a total gem about cruising straight through the grid without a care in the world, but man. I clearly have some core and leg strengthening to do. Too bad the superfit Stacey isn't close enough to whip me into shape ;-)

Sunday Dressage: switch rides! Also, we had a little trouble with relaxation at the beginning, and Jen noted that McKinna tends to lock up in her poll before anywhere else. She often does it very subtly, but it leads to the rest of her body stiffening too. We worked briefly on small wrist movements to encourage her to let go in the poll, which resulted in relaxation elsewhere too. One more tidbit of information.

Anyway, the switch riding was very educational. I rode a big, slow, somewhat stiff warmblood gelding (exactly the type I knew I needed to practice, which Jen confirmed!) the first time. He did not want ANYTHING to do with softening! Eventually I discovered that I had to really use my outside aids, keeping him turning, to get the hind end to come up underneath him and once I got him there I could soften and he would soften back. He had gorgeous gaits. The second horse, a really really nice TB gelding, was further along (his rider is going for her B, the next step above C3) and I guess I just didn't know what to do with a horse with that much training! I did some leg yields back and forth to encourage him to keep his outside shoulder under control, and cantered some smaller circles focusing on turning off the outside shoulder. I had to shorten up my reins to really get him working.

Jen's feedback: my rides were fine for C3 level, and I need to just keep working on riding tons of horses so that I can be a little quicker to pick up what I need to do on them and a little more assertive in the saddle about what I am doing. She said my analysis of my rides was very good.

McKinna's switch rides, incidentally, were pretty good too. It was really nice to see other people having positive, soft rides on her! Not 100%, but still pretty darn nice. It's nice to know I won't ruin someone else's C3 by having the impossible horse to ride...

Sunday Jumping: coursework. All the horses and riders were, in a nutshell, totally wiped out and not on their top game - me and McKinna included! We hit that point where she kind of scooted around instead of really reaching out in her canter, I couldn't see a distance to save my life, I couldn't seem to keep my leg on, and it just didn't work out so well. Because she is a rock star we had no stops or anything silly, just not-the-prettiest courses. Still, if my position had been solid, it would have been an adequate ride for C3, and we jumped around the 3'-3'3 height with no issues. It's nice to know that even on our worst, exhausted days we can still make it around a course looking reasonable, but it was definite confirmation that I need to work on my strength. It is early in the season for all of us, so I think horses and riders just aren't quite up to this level of intensity yet. We'll be there by the next prep clinic.

The overall takeaway: we're on the right track! I really need to work on my overall strength, mainly my core and my ability to keep my leg on. Jen said she would really like to see McKinna more accepting of the leg by the next time she sees me, which will be in April at the next prep clinic I'm riding in. She says we are an excellent pair and we're working on all the right stuff.

That being said, I'm already working on the fitness stuff. One of my classes this term is yoga (oh yes!) and oh my goodness, I almost died today. I must be really out of shape, because I swear it wasn't that hard a few years ago! Lots of plank to side-angle pose, high leg lunges (LOTS of those) and warrior pose. And more plank. So this will be good for me! I'm thinking of taking another yoga and/or a martial art PE class in the Spring. We'll see...

I'll talk more about the goal-setting session we did soon, which ties in nicely to my own goals, which I've finally mostly ironed out! About time since we're already almost halfway through January, eh?

Pony got a WELL-deserved day off today. I poked my head in tonight and saw that she managed to get herself thoroughly muddy again. Oh well. I went for my first real ride on the young horse I'm working with! We longed, I leaned on the saddle a bit, mounted up, and off we went. I had a ground helper with a longe whip to swish, because obviously the mare doesn't know about leg signals yet, and it was a great success. She was very calm, willing, not wigged out by my legs at all, and while not as forward as I'd like she wasn't horribly slow either. A very successful first real ride, in my book!

Time Off: A Great Tool!

2011-01-05T17:20:00.000-08:00

Remember how in my last post I said I wasn't too worried about McKinna having a light month last moth, since she usually comes back well after a break?

I love it when I'm right.

At our dressage lesson last night with Leslie, McKinna was back and better than ever. She felt free and swinging in her shoulder, and generally focused on the task at hand. Together we're really developing a feeling of straightness in the trot: Leslie uses the image of one of those little levels sitting on her withers. Will the bubble be in the center? At the trot, yes it is. And I am consistently able to develop more of a trot lengthening without losing suppleness or freedom through the shoulder.

Best of all, remember the first baby steps of haunches-in that we were trying out? Well, I haven't really practiced it. Mostly because I have barely ridden! But at the lesson last night, when Leslie had me ask for haunches in, McKinna just said, "Right. Got it. What next?"

I mean, it wasn't exactly that easy. It still takes some effort to get her to hold the correct positioning, and my mind has to jump around to a bunch of different things to fix - keep her supple, ask for inside bend, outside leg on to keep the haunches in, don't forget the FORWARD. Reminds me of our early attempts at shoulders-in. But the important part is that she now understands what I am asking for and she tries to give it to me. How she figured it out I'll never know.

Leslie even had me ask for a little travers to renvers - haunches-in to haunches-out. When I have more energy I'll explain the two thoroughly, but for now my understanding is this: haunches-in, you move the haunches to the inside of the forelegs while continuing forward and the horse is bent in direction of travel (i.e., when tracking right, the haunches travel to the right of the forelegs while maintaining right bend). Renvers is opposite, moving the haunches left and maintaining left bend while tracking right. I think.

The switch from travers to renvers was rather wiggly and I'm sure I contorted my body into all kinds of crazy positions, but we got the idea. That's the exciting part. Leslie commented that we are well on track to have a really successful season.

So maybe some time off isn't such a bad thing for your horse's training. Granted, McKinna went out every day in a big old pasture with 2 - 4 other mares, and still got ridden once or twice a week. Locking your pony in a stall for three weeks may not produce the same results. But if your horse is in a situation that allows an outlet for excess energy (e.g. turnout), maybe don't feel so guilty next time you end up really busy and barely ride for two or three weeks.

First Ride! (Sort Of)

2011-01-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

I haven't talked about it at all, but I'm working with my barn owner's young horse. She's a very sweet young mare, and also very feisty and intelligent. And MAN, can she throw in some athletic bucks! I think that's why my barn owner asked me to put 30 days on her ;)

So I've been methodically figuring out what I'm doing. Before me she'd been saddled and ground-driven twice, and liked to throw in big buck/spin/rear moves on the longe but was otherwise pretty obedient and chill. I decided to take things pretty slow at first, just to make sure I wasn't leaving any holes or rushing a young horse too much.

First of all, this girl LOVES to work. She nickers at me when I walk up to her stall. She actually stands at the tie rail and fusses around until I start tacking her up, at which point she settles down and stands still. Very cute. (Still irritating, but cute.)

We've made a lot of progress. She still doesn't like to canter on the longe, but bucking incidents are down to almost 0, and when she does it's just a little hop because she's mad that I made her canter, not full-blown bronc kicks. She'll back up and stay politely out of my space. She'll walk, trot, and halt almost totally off voice commands. No more humping her back at the girth - the first day all I had to do was pat my hand on her belly and she'd look uncomfortable, and the first time I saddled her she tried to roll with my saddle! She carries a bit, even though I work her off a rope halter or side pull. No need to go to the bit, but she's so darn mouthy I think having something in her mouth helps her focus.

And, most excitingly, I sat on her for the first time last night!! I was the first person on her back! It was a very cool moment. I have been leaning on the saddle for a couple days now and practicing giving to the reins with the sidepull. She couldn't care less about me leaning on the saddle, and she'll do the "one rein stop" move very politely. So last night, with my mom standing nearby, I leaned on the saddle, slid my leg over, and then sat up.

Filly went, "...and your point is?"

She didn't care at all, though she is still so mouthy she wanted to turn around and chew on my toes. We didn't walk at all, but she took a few steps one time when I asked her to bring her head around. I dismounted and remounted a couple times uneventfully, and called it good for the night.

It was very exciting. We definitely still have a lot to work on...now that I've been in the saddle and it only takes about 15 minutes to tack up and longe quietly to confirm obedience, I think I will make a grand return to ground work and iron out some kinks as well as do a lot more ground driving. The mouthiness, while improved, needs to be toned down a lot. And I want to work on her leading, she tends to want to trail along behind.

Anyway. I just wanted to share my triumph with you. I think I'll go read through Mugwump's archives for some baby-training ideas.

McKinna, who has had a pretty light month between finals and winter vacation, is getting kicked back into full-time work today. We're off to a lesson with Leslie, then a Pony Club prep clinic this weekend, a lesson with Devin, our club's schooling show, and another "lesson" with Leslie in the form of a clinic that my club is putting on. Whew! McKinna isn't going to know what hit her! Luckily she's still been in light work, getting ridden a couple times a week and lots of turnout, so I doubt she's lost much fitness if at all. Maybe I'll ask Leslie to take it easy on her tonight...though probably the person who needs an easier lesson is me!

Still thinking about my goals. I'll get back to you on those.

Pictures

2011-01-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2011, everyone! Today is my last day of break before I start classes again. True to form, I've got about 25% of the work done on my short story that is due tomorrow. Go me! Oh well...it's cooking along okay, but I do wonder why I do this to myself.

Oh, right. Because winter break is supposed to be a BREAK, and I spent time at the barn and hanging out with my family.

One bonus of winter break: the boy is around! And when the boy is around, I drag him out to the barn and he takes nice pictures for me. I'm currently stewing on my goals for the year and that will definitely be a post soon, as well as an evaluation of my 2010 goals.

McKinna finally has a halter as gorgeous as she deserves. It will definitely be a clinic/show halter only, but it is beautiful. I swear that was my FAVORITE part of Christmas, buying that for my mom. It was so hard to wait the month and a half after I bought it for her to open it!

Also, McKinna was in heat last week. In DECEMBER. This is her cuddling with the handsome TB gelding who lives next to her. He's a very sweet boy and athletic as hell - very fun to ride.

Have I mentioned before how much of a ho McKinna is when she's in heat? Any other time she won't give the geldings the time of day, but when she's in heat, she's all for it. That's great and all, but I want those blankets to stay in one piece!

My favorites. Mom with her pony! Even though I ride McKinna as my main horse, it is very good to remember that she belongs to my mother and I am really, really lucky to be able to ride such a kickass horse.

Goals post up soon. In the meantime, I have a story to finish..

A Good Day

2010-12-25T22:05:00.000-08:00

Today was a good day. Some presents this morning - everything I needed or wanted, from some new SmartWool socks (love!) to a few pieces of equipment I've been needing like side reins and a cotton longe line.

My favorite part of the day was watching my mom open her presents. From me, a leather halter with a McKinna nameplate on the side; and from my boyfriend, a nine-picture collage frame filled with pictures of McKinna, me, and my mom. Pictures will be up as soon as possible! We did not go out to the barn today, but tomorrow we will bring McKinna some carrots and get some pictures of her in her beautiful new halter.

The rest of the day we spent hanging out with my family in Salem. My family rocks. Going from the quiet of our three-person household to such a wild group is quite an adventure, but it's a good one. All told there were me, the parents, cousins ages 4, 13, 18, and 19 plus assorted boyfriends, my aunt and uncle, and a set of grandparents. Lots of laughing, especially when we got to taking pictures of our folded arms so they looked like butts. We even got grandma to take a picture...what can I say, sometimes life calls for a little immaturity!

But I have to say, the end of the night is one of the best parts. Cat's in the laundry room eating, dog's sacked out on the couch twitching and snoring, Dad's asleep. Just me and my mom sitting on the couch with our laptops and blankets, surfing the 'net and reading about horses.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!

Saddle Fitting

2010-12-19T17:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Leslie's barn had a saddle fitter out to work on one of their client's horses. I think this is something like the third time she's come out - it has been a very long process for them, but I guess when you're working with six-figure horses and aiming for the top levels of dressage, that saddle better be darn perfect!

Me? I just wanted my jumping saddle reflocked to fit McKinna a little better. It's great, it works, obviously from my last post she is happily jumping in it. But she's always much less willing to round into a steady contact when I'm riding in the jumping saddle. And sweat marks on the saddle pad always had a dry spot (of no contact, because there's no dirt there when she's dirty) towards the front-middle as well as too much pressure at the very front.

Since the saddle fitter they were using is an Albion rep and my jumping saddle is an Albion, I hauled McKinna over for a fitting session. They watched me ride a little bit at the walk and trot, checked the saddle with their hand at the halt and walk, and then took it away to mess with it. Interestingly, the excess pressure at the very front was actually because it was a little too wide through the whole front part. This brought it down too low in front, leading to the excess pressure on the very front as well as the lack of contact through the center.

They added more flocking in the middle and front of the saddle in order to even out the contact and raise the front up. Then they had me saddle up again. At first, Mckinna didn't seem much different than usual - moving around quite a bit in the contact, generally just not as obliging as she usually is in the dressage saddle. After a few minutes, though, she started to really lift her back and reach into the contact. I worked her at the trot and canter in both directions, then popped her over a fence I had set up that was maybe 3'. She jumped with a really nice bascule over the fence. Not that she doesn't normally jump stylishly, just that she felt very round over her back.

So, a definite success. I could definitely feel more saddle up front, but it wasn't such a huge change that it bothered me. The saddle fitter wanted me to try a sheepskin half pad, too, basically explaining that in a jumping saddle sometimes horses are happiest when you can get the points of the tree as far away from their shoulder as possible. Basically, she said, you're dealing with a much more concentrated distribution of weight than in a dressage saddle and you have a much more forward flap too.

I don't know if I am sold on that logic. For so long I have heard that it's best to be closer to the horse, adding more bulk is bad, etc. I will say that I rode with the fleece pad and McKinna seemed very pleased, very round and very solid in my hands, but I'm not convinced that this wasn't just a continuation of her happiness with the new flocking. I've decided that I will test that matter on my own time. I think I will borrow a fleece half pad from someone and ride with and without it - if I see a noticeable difference when I use it, then the horse's opinion wins and I will ride with one. If not, there's no reason to ride with one!

Of course I did not take pictures. When am I going to figure out the whole picture-taking thing? Bah. Maybe next time I get out to the barn we will go for a long ride in the jumping saddle, and I can show you the differences in sweat marks between that saddle pad and one I used pre-flocking.

All told the experience cost me $200. If McKinna's response continues to be so positive, I definitely think it will be worth it. Any change that produces such an instant willingness to use herself more properly is a good change in my book, and my hope is that over time it will just allow our jumping to get even better.

McKinna = Rock Star

2010-12-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a jumping lesson with Devin. Remember how I said in my last post that McKinna is jumping really well, and is ready to bump up the height?

Oh yes. I was right. So, so right.

We began with a canter pole exercise. This is literally the ONLY canter pole exercise that has ever been a positive experience for me and my horse. (Again: this is why Devin rocks and she is my trainer.) She started with four canter poles set at 9' distances, then 9' to a cross rail. Canter through on a 9' stride, a nice easy indoor canter for us.

Here's the beauty: even though we biffed the first distance a few times (because really, you have to be pretty accurate to a canter pole), there are enough poles that the horse can fix things before they exit the exercise. Without fail, McKinna was in perfect rhythm and distance by the 2nd or 3rd pole.

Huh. Imagine that. Canter poles that we can ride quietly, rhythmically, and successfully through.

She then rolled them out to 10' distances, which we did a couple times, and then 11'. And it was great! I definitely had to add leg for the 11' poles, but it was absolutely doable, McKinna was confident about the exercise and understood exactly what to do, and she was able to lengthen her stride without rushing or falling on the forehand or getting anxious. It was wonderful.

I am definitely going to keep practicing that exercise. What a simple, positive, effective way to work on developing McKinna's bigger stride.

Then we moved onto the course work. The first round was 2'6ish, easy stuff, McKinna was perfect. So then I told Devin I wanted to play with the big heights, mostly as a progress check for my C3. If I point her at a 3'3 course, what goes wrong and what goes right?

So Devin set up a 3' - 3'3 course for me, including one oxer that was DEFINITELY a solid 3'3 and maybe even a little bigger. True to Devin form, it was a pretty technical one - the first course had a rollback to the monster oxer and one fence on an angle, and the second course had a direct full two strides from an angled vertical to the monster oxer. There was also a triple on the outside that was either a forward two to a waiting three, or a REALLY FORWARD three (because it was off a short turn, vertical to oxer) and then a regular two.

McKinna. was. amazing.

She jumped her heart out for me. Need to leave a little long? Fine. She launches off the ground, pretty much never any hesitation (remember a few months ago we were dealing with her hesitating on takeoff almost every time). Need to add up? Fine. I add leg, sit tall with my upper body, and she turns into a little bouncy ball that pats the ground and arcs over the fence with no problem. The only mistakes were pilot error, and they were pretty minor ones.

We got some serious air time over those bigger fences too, especially the oxer. She was so tidy and good with her knees. The whole course just felt so together - everything I asked for, she gave me 110% without the slightest resistance. Whether we jumped long or short or perfect, from a galloping stride or a collected one, she landed and cantered off like clockwork. If I had to really set her up for a rollback, she sat back and did it. If I had to do ask for some really galloping, long strides to make the horse striding, she did it.

Excuse me for a moment while I squeal in happiness. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

The downside, of course, is that I was at the lesson solo and there is no video. It is heartbreaking, but I guess it just means I need to do it again soon! I'm riding in a Pony Club lesson with Devin on January 15, so maybe then, or maybe I'll get a chance to ride with her again before that.

I am still walking on clouds. That was some of the coolest riding ever. The best part is that even the 3'3 fences don't look intimidating - they look big, and real, but not scary and totally within our abilities. McKinna obviously thinks so too. I could not ask for a better performance from her, mentally or physically. She was amazing.

We've come a long way from the little auction pony learning how to jump cross rails!

<3

Truckin' Along

2010-12-14T22:08:00.000-08:00

I think all I ever write about lately is how much fun I am having riding McKinna.

Oh well. I think it's a great problem to have!

We continue to slowly but steadily improve. The jumping clinic with a Pony Club instructor on Saturday was lovely. Every time we jump, I see more payoff from our dressage work. This time McKinna's canter felt so much more powerful than usual once we were on course. We even got a pretty long spot to tall X oxer, and she just launched off the ground with no problem. Not that she never took a long spot if necessary before, she just feels so confident about it these days. The nice thing is that she never gets all excited about a weird distance, just lands and keeps clocking around.

Biggest take-away lesson: I need to make sure I keep enough forward in our jumping rounds. I wasn't holding her back too much, but I had one Good round where we took a rail and had a couple not-quite-perfect distances and one Awesomely Great round where I added a little more "go" and we nailed everything. Food for thought. She's also getting balanced enough to put that forward energy to good use, instead of using it to scramble around like a tarantula on roller skates.

Lately, dressage lessons have been continuing along the same path: more, better, harder. Leslie has me asking McKinna to really lift and bend through the inside in order to fill up my outside aids. There's a sense of yielding, softening the whole inside of the body and as a result really stepping under herself. It's a fine line between needing to get the yield but also really needing to keep the outside from escaping. When I get it right, McKinna is very soft and connected and has very nice transitions.

Sometimes, I can get lovely trot-canter transitions where the head doesn't go straight up in the air and she just steps beautifully under herself. I probably get these maybe one time in four? It's still progress though, and even our "bad" transitions are much better than they used to be.

McKinna loves straight lines now! Changing rein across the diagonal is a great feeling on her. Very steady in both reins, very even through her shoulders. We continue to work on the lengthening. If I can keep her from getting too excited and hollowing out, I can feel her start to push off the hind end for longer steps.

Leslie has also gotten us started on the first baby steps of haunches in. This is exciting! If I can master haunches in, I can do half pass, because half pass is essentially haunches in across the diagonal. Very exciting. I can tell McKinna is wondering what the hell I'm trying to get her to do, but she is slowly learning that yes, I want the butt IN, and I still want inside bend. She's very compliant, which is nice. Just a little confused!

Have I mentioned how wonderful it is to be on winter break? It's wonderful. I actually really enjoyed going to work today, because I haven't been in all term. And the sleeping in part isn't too shabby either.

Also, it is COLD. Brrr.

Lesson with Devin on Thursday. I'm really excited for this one because McKinna has been doing so well on coursework, and I think it's time to start working over bigger fences. For the C-3 she needs to be comfortable and competent over a 3'3 course, so that's what we'll start working towards.

Mounted Policemen Charge into Rioting Crowd

2010-12-10T20:18:00.000-08:00

Saw this video on the COTH forums and I had to share. If you've been looking at the news at all lately, you probably know there have been massive student protests and riots in London over big tuition hikes for Universities. People even attacked the car that Prince Charles and his wife were riding in.

This link has a video of mounted policemen literally charging into a crowd to disperse the people. It's amazing, the way people just get RIGHT out of the way when a a few thousand pounds of horseflesh come cantering towards them!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11962905

It's incredible, what those horses do. They have face masks, nose guards, and protective boots. I thought it was just horrible that protesters were throwing stuff at the horses, though. Under conditions that would freak out even the most bombproof horse, these guys seem pretty cool, though to a some extent you can see some getting upset. (I would too, if people were screaming and chucking stuff at me!)

I read that none of the horses were injured, but one policeman was pulled off his horse. The saddle slipped to the side and I believe he broke his legs, possibly from the horse stepping on/kicking him as it spooked. I feel very sorry for him and hope he heals up okay.

There's pictures from the whole mess in the next link (some of them are bloody, but none of them are awful).

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/12/london_tuition_fee_protest.html

I'm not usually a "news" blog, but I had to post that video of the charge. The picture of them moving out (#19 on the second link) gave me goosebumps.

Dooooooone!

2010-12-08T21:52:00.000-08:00

Oh thank goodness. After two weeks of basically nonstop studying and assignment-ing, I am freeeee! And I think my grades are pretty solid. We'll see.

So, of course, the first thing I did was go out to the barn tonight. I haven't ridden in about a week and a half! I still didn't ride today, but I will ride tomorrow in a dressage lesson. Tonight, the wonderpony got clipped - again. You can hardly tell she has been clipped at all, which is ridiculous. I swear this horse grows enough winter coat to keep four or five thin-skinned Thoroughbreds warm all winter. As the clippers buzzed along, the spots came out again and she is so cute!

She's just got the same clip as last time - left the head, legs, and a square saddle patch. I left a strip down her belly too, but that's just because I had to wash it and it hadn't dried by the time I finished tonight, so I'll touch that up tomorrow. Thank goodness she is patient for clipping, it took about 2 hours. She was very patient, even when I was leaning over her butt from a mounting block to make the line even, and she didn't mind a bit when I clipped right up to the base of her ears. I think she would let me clip them with no problem, but she lives outside, and I don't want her poor ears getting cold!

Busy horse stuff coming up. Lesson tomorrow, clinic Saturday, thinking about hauling myself over to the Horse Center on Sunday to practice their crazy Mountain Trail course. (Seriously, they basically turn the indoor arena into a trail. Giant ditches dug into the dirt, big huge hills and mounds and log piles, and a bridge, and huge ponds, etc. I've been before and it's a blast to just walk around and check everything out.

Okay, I'm off...I have a very important appointment between my head and my pillow. We haven't spent nearly enough time together lately!

End of Term....No Love.

2010-11-30T18:40:00.000-08:00

Ah, so we come to another piece of that lovely cyclical posting pattern shaped by the school year: finals.

Blargh.

It's dead week. I'm still making it out to ride (and it is wonderful!) but not nearly as much as I would like to. I have three finals (one hard, one moderate, one easy) and a creative portfolio (very hard) between me and three glorious weeks of relaxation. I am not feeling too sorry for myself yet, but ask me again this weekend...

Most of our work lately has been on the dressage front, and I am okay with that. As you may have guessed from the overload of happy squealing lately, McKinna and I have been having lots of fun working in the sand box! She seems to be really enjoying our rides, and she comes out ready and willing to get to work every time - always a good indicator for her, as she's usually pretty reluctant to come work if she is bored or needs a rest.

This week makes two weeks since I have ridden in a dressage lesson, but next week after finals are over I'll be back. In the meantime, I work on things at home, mostly at the walk and trot. We work on keeping an active walk but not too rushed, which involves light kick-kicks or taps of the whip when she gets lazy but not so much that she feels she has to fling herself forward into a fast walk. Lots of figure-8s and changing of the bend, working her into that outside rein, constantly asking myself, "Am I soft enough in my arm muscles? Am I relaxed and following with my elbows? I'm not bracing with my hips again, am I? Dang it, I am!"

It's the little, finicky, quiet work that sometimes gives me the most pleasure. I re-schooled a trot transition a few times on Sunday because she wanted to put her head up into the air or shuffle into it. I realized I was kind of tightening my thighs and hips to push her up into it, so the next time, I kept those soft as I gave the rest of the cue. Voila! Lovely transition. We got to play over some ground poles that day, and I think that kept things interesting for McKinna.

Another exciting thing about that ride was that I really began to feel some moments of good, stretchy walk and trot. All this work on being truly supple and soft with contact has improved our connection, so whether we're walking or trotting I can let the reins feed out and McKinna will actually take them down. Even better, she's starting to develop the ability to keep her back up while she does it. Cool feeling, when she's stretching into a long contact and lifting herself. Huzzah!

Ah, well. I enjoy the rides I have and she doesn't mind her time off. That is one thing McKinna is great about - time off just makes her even better! We do have a Pony Club clinic coming up soon, where I am hoping to get some solid feedback for what I need to work on in terms of jumping 3'3 courses - the required height for my next rating. Haven't had much of that yet.

Over winter break I plan to take a jumping lesson or two with Devin, which will be fun too. She is always very good at pushing us to a new level in a positive way, and she is totally willing to let me test out our limits a little bit. This will be good when working towards the C-3 rating! Fingers crossed that all the dressage work we have done this fall pays off when we get to those lessons. All indications point to yes, since at both the rating prep clinic and the clinic a couple weeks ago McKinna was awesome about her coursework, but I haven't had the chance to do any real height, so there's the test. If McKinna can comfortably and confidently clock around a solid 3' - 3'3 course, I will be feeling pretty good about our progress.

Even though I haven't been commenting much lately, I promise I have been reading. After next week I'll be my usual talkative self.

Snow

2010-11-23T23:08:00.000-08:00

I am stuck finishing projects that are due tomorrow. Talk about miles to go before I sleep...bah. I guess you have to pull an all-nighter at least once a term, right? Haven't been out to the barn since Sunday, probably won't go out till Thursday.

Crazy cold weather here in the PNW. All schools in the district had a snow day today - not the UO, of course, because they haven't actually closed due to weather since some ridiculously long time ago, I think 1954. Apparently my dog was outside running around our backyard like an idiot at about 3 AM playing in the snow. Silly kid. Every once in awhile today he'd go outside, run around for awhile, and then come back inside all excited and proud of himself. The cat, who is much smarter, spent almost the entire day inside curled up on my lap or on whatever convenient soft surface I stuck him on when I needed to get up.

My barn owner put this picture up today on Facebook:

I know. I know. It's like half an inch of snow. It's just that we don't really get snow here, so even an inch or two and a little ice and basically the whole city shuts down. There was more in town, though, and roads are supposed to be pretty icy tomorrow because tonight is going to get very cold.

But. Look at McKinna! She is so cute. Look at those fuzzy little ears all pricked forward and excited to go outside. And the puppy running alongside. Can't wait to go out and ride later this week.

Sigh. Back to the grind. Project is due in almost exactly 12 hours.

Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Sitting Trot!

2010-11-19T18:35:00.000-08:00

Another dressage lesson last night, another fantabulous ride. We spent most of the 45-minute ride in sitting trot, and it didn't feel difficult at all! It's amazing how much easier it is to ride the sitting trot when the horse is properly carrying itself and lifting its back. I felt like I was able to ride normally and focus on things like McKinna's quality of trot and suppleness, rather than "Must stay in saddle, ow, my abs, ow ow ow my thighs!"

McKinna's level of fitness is really impressing me. Her ability to go through a solid workout, maintaining her roundness and power, has drastically improved. She felt as strong at the end of our ride as she did at the beginning. She's also started developing some new gears - at the trot, she was really reaching out and pushing from her hind end at times. Whenever I rode a line, she stayed straight between my reins, stretched over her topline and reached into the bit, and just motored herself right along. Such a beautiful feeling.

The silly girl was actually quite hot last night - for her. Meaning that she actually spooked! It was ridiculous. She saw the dogs in the corner and proceeded to go sideways for several steps and cut the corner. That was about it, but still funny considering how quiet she usually is. The hotness came through in our canter work too. It was fast a lot of the time, but a different kind of fast than the unbalanced must-rush style she used to have. It felt more forward in the right way, with more step underneath herself.

Leslie had me really focusing on the soften AFTER my half-halts and reminded me to relax my arms and relax my core. It made a big difference. I have a tendency to ask McKinna to supple and then keep asking until she gives all the way - I want immediate results. This ends up with me kind of hanging on her face, and her either bracing against me or ducking to get away. If I ask (firmly, if necessary) and then SOFTEN, I allow her the space to come to me. This, Leslie says, will need to happen pretty regularly but what we're doing is teaching her to carry herself. Over time, I get to stay soft for longer stretches while McKinna carries herself and holds a light contact with me.

It was awesome. Really. I'm sure you guys get sick of me gushing about dressage, but hot damn, this stuff is great! I was having so much fun that after the lesson ended, I had to go trot around a little more and do one more canter just to absorb the wonderful feeling.

I kind of wanted to go out tonight just to say hi and love on her, but I have a lot of schoolwork to do - just finished week 8, so finals are in 2 weeks - and we'll be busy all day tomorrow at the clinic, so my homework time this weekend is going to be limited. So, I'm at home working on busting out assignments. I'm sure McKinna enjoyed her day of hanging out in the pasture in her cozy blanket and stuffing her face with nice hay. Tomorrow, we work! Gridwork is the theme of the clinic, and it should be a good fun experience for both of us.

Hope everyone else is having a good week with their ponies, and McKinna says to tell you that a few sugar cubes go a LONG way!

Ditch Practice = Fail!

2010-11-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

First, here's a couple videos from the assessment.

From flatwork in the morning - you can see she's quite a bit more tense than usual, but not doing too badly as it was towards the end of the ride.

From the switch ride! He was SO. BIG. Such a nice horse to ride.

So, last night, I decided to mess around in our jumping tack. We've been hitting the dressage pretty hard lately, and while it's fun, I figured it would be good for McKinna to just have a relaxed play-around-with-fences day at home.

There's several ways to practice XC ditches when you don't have one. Here's the usual suspects:

- Put two ground poles a little distance apart. Fill the intervening space with sawdust/bark/dirt that's very different from the color of the arena dirt
- Put two ground poles a little distance apart. Fill the intervening space with a dark-colored cooler, tarp, etc.
- Put two ground poles a little distance apart. Put another ground pole diagonally across them (so it's clear that the thing is not supposed to be trot poles).

McKinna, of all horses, needs NO practice schooling ditches. She has casually loped over every single ditch I've pointed her at, anyway. But, hey, it's not like I wanted to fix any problems, I just wanted to have some fun. So why not bring a little XC to the indoor?

I used a combination of methods 1 and 2, scattering some bright orange sawdust on the dark arena floor between two poles and then putting a diagonal pole across the two of them. It looked reasonably like a ditch, sort of.

So I got on, warmed up, trotted her to it. I'm pretty sure she managed to put her feet down in between the poles. Okay...so I canter it. And she doesn't do anything differently. She doesn't put her feet in it, but I don't think her canter stride over it was any different than any other canter stride.

Which is great, and all. I mean sure, that's how you WANT your horse to jump a ditch. But it kind of spoils the fun of practicing it inside when they don't even try to jump a little bit!

Okay, so no ditch. I moved the poles so they were just canter poles, proceeded to have quite the argument with McKinna about cantering in our indoor and over the ground poles, and gave up. She's never liked cantering in there - I think it's just too small. I figured, now that she's got a Real Canter, it would be better. To be fair, it is better in general - she can canter a lot more quietly and capably than before, but she still practically rockets down the long side and she just gets very tense through her back and neck. Blah. So we basically drilled until we got through the canter poles nicely twice in a row, then I gave up. We did a long series of trot - canter for a few strides - trot for a few strides - canter, etc, in hopes of getting her a little more relaxed.

It did work a little, and she settled down and gave me some pretty quiet and prompt transitions. Then I just went to the walk and trot and worked on our regular, contact-y dressage stuff, which got her calm and happy. Then Mom got on and had a nice ride working on dressage stuff too.

Oh well. The rides can't all be perfect. Funny how I had a much better ride when I worked on dressage than when I worked on jumping! I guess I'll just have to relegate my jumping to the outdoor. It's bigger out there, but the footing's a little deep right now...hopefully over the winter it settles a little and we can do some jumping out there. It can get frustrating not being able to practice much at home.

But at least my horse doesn't need any ditch practice!

My SmartPak order gets here today. I bought a jumping girth for her, because the one we have now is a bit long, and I really really like the Lettia Coolmax dressage girth we have so I wanted one of their jumping girths. I ended up buying a SmartPak girth that looks a lot like the Coolmax one, because the Coolmax girth had this kinda bright orange as the brown part and the SmartPak one was a more subtle darker brown.

Also got a tub of Sore No More poultice, so I can put it on and feel good about myself after gallops and the like. AND, I bought a super-duper awesome present for my mom, but she doesn't get to see it till the holidays.

Clinic on gridwork this weekend! Should be fun and exciting and really good for us.

Prep Clinic!

2010-11-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

The prep clinic last weekend was a pretty good experience for the two of us. I'm not sure that I took home as much new riding ideas as I usually do from a good clinic, but I did learn a lot more about what's going to be expected of me at the C-3 rating, which is very useful.

We dragged along a non-horsey friend of mine who needed to get out of the house. I think he had a reasonably good time - I did warn him to bring a book, though!

Things started out a little tense. The problem is, I don't take her to shows that often, and she's almost never high-strung at our lessons...so I forget. I forget that when she's really actually tense (and not just a little distracted or unfocused, which is easy to deal with) I can't just put her to work and expect her to come out of it. She needs me to relax first. I learned this at Inavale: when schooling our dressage on Thursday, I couldn't get a decent step out of McKinna until I physically relaxed my hips and abs. It's not that I was nervous or anxious myself, not really; it's just that I tighten things up in response to her, and I forget to let go.

So, the first bit of the clinic was a little frustrating. Once the clinician essentially reminded me what I'd learned from Devin (that is: let go! Relax your hips! Relax your abs!), things got a little better. She wanted us to really follow with a relaxed seat and "feel" the rhythm of the next gait up (or down) with your seat before asking for a transition. This worked fairly well with McKinna. For the first while, we were just on a big circle doing lots of transitions. Unfortunately this is not the kind of work that settles McKinna down - it's just the kind of work that would have calmed my OTTB in the past, but once McKinna's got a modicum of relaxation, she needs to do some more complicated stuff because transitions just don't cut it.

Finally, after working on some exercises to open up my hips (all I can say about that: OW OW OW, and, I really need to start up with some yoga again), the clinician began working with the other rider and left me to my own devices. At last! I started trotting big figure-8s like we practiced in our last lesson, really focusing on using the inside bend to break up resistance in McKinna's neck and pushing her ribcage up and over with my inside leg. At first she wanted to really fall around the turns, schoolbus-style, not willing to change her bend smoothly and push into my new outside rein, but after a few repetitions she really blossomed into her normal, supple, gorgeous self.

Then we went back to the big circle and did some more transitions, way more lovely this time, throwing in a few figure-8s whenever things started to get shaky. It was beautiful! The clinician was very happy with how we were doing, and I explained that this is how she USUALLY is all the time, which is why it's so hard for me to deal with it when she freaks out. The clinician pointed out that this is exactly why I'm doing these prep clinics!

Then we did some canter work, which I was very pleased with. I had to work a little harder than usual to keep it from 4-beating, but as long as I concentrated on following with my hips and RELEASING the tension in my abs after I half-halted, it went pretty well. I got one really lovely transition to the right, too.

And that was about it. I came away with two big notes: if McKinna is actually nervous, shut up and relax yourself before expecting her to go to work; and, keep in mind the warm up that works for US is not the same as the one that works for everyone else, so we should stick to what works.

After a lunch break of delicious soup and sandwiches (this is why my dad is the best horse dad ever), it was time to head back into the ring for jumping. And man, were we solid. Just one of those times where you get on and as soon as you start trotting it just feels right - she was really forward but not quite over the edge of being too fast, I felt like I was just locked and loaded in the saddle, and we were really in sync. The feeling carried straight over into jumping.

We began by trotting a small X and halting. This clinician is pretty big on halting after fences, because it keeps your horse on your aids and prevents him from really getting on a roll and becoming harder and harder to control as you go. McKinna was ace at this, naturally. As long as I half-halt before the fence to let her know what's coming, she almost always comes to a really nice round halt.

Then we jumped a course. I was REALLY pleased with how it went. I basically just chilled out in my two-point, encouraged with leg where necessary to develop a bigger stride and sat up to half-halt where necessary to balance for the turns, and we got to every fence pretty much perfectly. They were around 2'6 to 3'. The only comment I got from the clinician was that I need to be able to adjust my position if necessary - the point being that I'd basically not deviated from a simple two-point, and at some time I might need to gallop forward or sit into the horse. She said it wasn't that I had needed to do that on course...just that I needed to be able to do so. It's good to know, but I also know that I AM capable of changing my position if I need to. It's just that most of the time I don't have to, with McKinna!

And, unfortunately, that was pretty much the extent of it with McKinna. That was the only course we jumped. I was hoping to get a lot more coursework in, as well as jump some stuff up to rating height (3'3), but it was not to be. One girl was having a lot of trouble with her horse, and the clinician spent a lot of time with her while another rider and I swapped horses to practice the switch ride. Her horse is this huge, slow-moving Warmblood. Huuuuuuuuge. I felt like I was posting in slow motion! He was very polite and easy to jump, though of course we had a few small errors in communication that were my fault, as this is really the first time I've done a switch ride over fences. His rider had him in a pelham, but took off the second rein for me since I'd never ridden in one before. So that's good to know - I need to practice riding with two sets of reins in case that happens at my rating.

McKinna was pretty quick with the other girl, not as relaxed as usual but still pretty good. She got one really nice simple change out of McKinna, barely a bump to trot and then the other canter lead, so I'll be trying that out next time we jump!

So, overall, it was a pretty good experience. I took away some good, solid things to work on: relaxing myself, practicing stressful situations, LOTS of switch riding (especially on horses very unlike McKinna). The next prep clinic is in January with a lady who I've heard really, really good things about.

In between then, lots of Pony Club lessons and lessons with Leslie. Things are coming along, slowly but surely.

I've got some video of our flatwork at the clinic and of me on the big WB. I'll get that up tomorrow.

Mud. And mud. And more mud!

2010-11-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

There are times I really, really wish I had a bay horse.

Sigh.

Really. Even though she's very cute and furry like a teddy bear.

O HAI

These are the things we had tonight:

1. A very, very, very, VERY muddy McKinna. Second-muddiest I've ever seen her, which is pretty muddy. It's all caked on like cement. In her mane, over her eyes, down her back, both sides, everywhere. In her tail. Especially in her tail.

Yup, other side's just as dirty.

2. A broken hot water wash rack, in which the hose won't stay in the clamp thingy.

3. A limited supply of hot water in the hot water tank.

4. A clinic tomorrow.

*facepalm*

We got the job done. But she's definitely not the cleanest she's ever been. Hopefully the sleazy, sheet, tail bag, and neck cover will keep her relatively clean overnight.

5:00 wakeup time to be on the road by 7. I'm off to bed.

Should be a fun day though! Besides, if being grey with an affinity for mud is her worst flaw, I think I can live with it...

Sleeeeeeeepyyyyyy

2010-11-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

I've been more sleep deprived this last week and a half than I prefer to ever want to be. Finished the first wave of midterms with admirable grades and now I'm halfway through the second. After that it's all easy until finals week...right? Right??

Luckily, I'm still having a blast working on dressage with McKinna. This Monday's lesson night started like this:

1. We arrive at the barn and, as we drive past McKinna in the pasture, notice how admirably clean she kept herself despite being turned out without a sheet because it was so warm.
2. Park up at the barn. Change into barn clothes. Look up and notice McKinna rolling in the thick, thick mud just outside the nice dry layer of gravel by the turnout gate.
3. Walk down to turnout and grab her halter. Walk out to get her. Watch as she tosses her head (uh oh), then leads the other two mares on a merry gallop down to the other end of the pasture.
4. Walk halfway down the pasture. Watch as McKinna instigates a gallop back to the other end of the pasture.
5. Repeat step 4 a few times.
6. When McKinna has decided she's done, snag her with a lead rope while she's at the water trough.

We had plenty of time and she was obviously feeling good, so I was more entertained than frustrated by her self-designed workout. She looked great galloping across the field, too.

Then a very quick full bath, to deal with the mud from step 2.

At the lesson, Leslie had us start on some new techniques to get and maintain the topline lift and release in the base of McKinna's neck. I'm still a little hazy on the new stuff, but here's my best approximation of what I did understand:

So far, we've taught her how to release her jaw and not brace in her neck and chest in response to a fairly exaggerated lowering and widening of the hands. This has been useful and necessary in teaching her to let go, lift her back, and carry herself, but obviously we can't go around riding like that all the time. It also tends to make your arms stiff (since they're extended down and out) and pull on the bars of the mouth. With McKinna, it seems to lead to softness but not connection.

So now we're working on lateral suppling. (I think.) It involves keeping my hands much softer and more following with a bend in the elbow, going around a circle at the walk or trot, and insisting that she soften her jaw and neck to the inside. It's not overbending, though. Outside leg to keep her standing up, inside leg to keep her out on the circle, outside rein for connection and half-halts.

We did a lot of figure-8s with this, changing the bend, which was a really good measure of how she was doing. I've noticed in the past that when we change directions across the diagonal or in a figure-8, and I ask her to bend in the new directions, we'll often get sort of a straight fall-around-the-corner for a few strides until I can establish the new bend. With the new work we're doing, I don't feel that loss of control and bend when we change directions; instead, there's a smooth, easy change of bend through her body. (If I do it right.)

Leslie also had us do a shallow canter serpentine. Let's just say, uh, it'll be awhile until we can do a nice counter canter ;) I'm sure we'll keep working on it and manage to do the second part of the shallow serpentine without practically falling over.

Last night we went to a really interesting seminar on the 'new' deworming method, held at a local vet's practice. I took lots of notes and I'll write a post about it. Lots of good information, definitely with some questions still.

I am really excited for this weekend's Upper Level Assessment. I'm riding on Sunday, which means a bath for McKinna tomorrow! She is getting so fuzzy again...it's like we never clipped her at all, except you can see how dang long the fur is under the saddle and on her legs where we DIDN'T clip her. I swear, she grows enough of a coat for three horses. I haven't decided yet when, but she'll definitely be getting another clip...probably once she starts getting too sweaty in our lessons again.

Blargh. Off to take notes in the Bio classes. I'll check in with a clinic report on Monday!

Teeth!

2010-10-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

Well, turns out McKinna was just about due for her teeth to be done. Our vet said that if she was just in light work she could probably go another 6 months or so, but since we're doing hard dressage work and asking her to really be on the bit, they needed to be done now. She was just starting to develop some points on the outsides of her molars.

So it was a pretty quick job, maybe half an hour. Poor thing, they always look so pathetic when they're sedated. I brought my laptop and sat in her stall on her big salt block doing homework until she came awake enough to go back outside. She also got her fall 5-way vaccination. (Which has influenza, rhino, EEE, WEE, and tetanus, says the Pony Clubber in me.) Hooray!

Unfortunately, the Mud is officially upon us. I have to hose McKinna's legs off when I bring her in to ride, now. The ground near the gates in the turnouts is beginning to turn to mush. Grumble, grumble, sigh. I hate mud.

I'm giving Mom a lesson on McKinna tonight, so that should be fun. I don't think we'll be out tomorrow because I have a big Evolution exam on Friday, so I'll probably hop on for a little while too, though I was also thinking about riding the big grey TB who boards out at our barn. He's a handsome and sweet guy.

PS, I won't be writing about it much until I've accomplished most of the research - which won't be until next year - but I've found a way to make my Honors College senior thesis have to do with horses. Oh yes. I think it will make the process so much more engaging for me.

Dressage Lessons = Love

2010-10-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

As we pulled out of the barn's driveway yesterday evening, trailer and pony in tow, my mom joked that I would have a hard time topping last week's lesson simply because it was so good.

Well, to make a long story short, it DOES get even better!

It's getting to the point these days where the horse I have while warming up gives me big clues about how the lesson is going to go. Last night she felt free, loose, swinging, like the motion that started in her hind end could travel all the way through her spine and up her neck to her poll. Before, it felt like everything stopped at her shoulders. (Funny how you don't realize how much something is restricting your horse until you fix it.) The saddle is staying put and as a result she's willing to reach out with those shoulders and stretch her neck out to meet my contact.

So when Leslie walked in I told her that McKinna was generally being amazing. And, for the entire lesson, she kept it up.

There's several new things we have begun working on. One of them is a slight shoulder-fore in the trot when I head down a long side: outside rein squeeze asks the shoulders to come in off the track, inside leg keeps the bend, outside leg keeps the body straight. Inside rein asks for her to remain soft and supple, and outside rein again supports so she doesn't overbend.

It's difficult and I have to laugh sometimes as I watch us in the mirror and we look quite drunk. I lose the bend and fix it, but then we drift inside so I add more inside leg, but then I lose the haunches and they swing out. Sometimes, when I get it just right, it feels great! It's a very steady, powerful connection that I get when this happens. McKinna is a bit bemused by the whole thing, but pretty willing to go around doing strange things if I ask.

We've also begun working on sitting trot, which mostly involves working on my riding of course. Here I saw a huge improvement even over last week's ride-- last week when I began sitting McKinna seemed a bit put-out, would slow down or speed up and hollow out. Some of it was me not getting my balance right, but I think some of it was just a little confusion as I rarely sit the trot. This week, that was all gone: as long as I was balanced I could keep her coming up into a soft, steady contact, and she was really stepping out.

Leslie had me go back to posting for a moment whenever I got too discombobulated with myself. This gave me a chance to rebalance, reassured McKinna, and then allowed me to go back to sitting with a better trot. It's amazing to me that I can do this. It seems like just a short time ago that we were working, working, working just to get a soft and supple and forward trot - now, it's working to get a better sitting trot, and as soon as I post she snaps back to perfect!

This sitting trot business is allowing us to school much better canter transitions, as well. If I talk too much about her canter I am going to explode into a gooey mass of happiness, so I'll spare you, but basically it is well within real-canter territory at this point. I'm talking soft, quiet, three beats, a definite rolling rhythm, not fast, and beginning to straighten up instead of lean. I even have a half halt most times, and I'm beginning to set some weight to the outside to help her straighten out even more. SO COOL. I make noises of glee frequently in my lessons now.

Anyway, when we canter from the sitting trot I can coordinate my aids much better. If I remember to keep my left arm flexible instead of rigid, and I give her a firm request to supple as I hug with my inside leg and brush my outside leg just a little, I can get this lovely flowing transition. At this point, we're working on consistently getting that softness. Same with the downward transitions: I actually got one last night where, from canter to trot, the connection never wavered and she stretched into my hands immediately at the sitting trot. Hooray!

Finally, we have also kept at the whole trot-lengthening business. We tried some at the end of the lesson last night, and wow is that stuff fun. I can't get it totally right yet, but when we do, it feels amazing. I can actually feel McKinna lifting her withers, stretching her neck forward into a supple steady contact, and powering from behind into these bigger, longer steps.

I think Leslie keeps expecting me to get bored with all the subtler, more finicky stuff we've been working on. Far from it! It's practically the highlight of my week ;)

Teeth check and vaccinations for the wonderpony today. Then we have quite a bit of Pony Club stuff coming up this month: an upper level assessment clinic on Sunday the 7th, with a national PC examiner working with you to identify where you're at in terms of the standards of your next rating; a bandaging/wrap clinic with an upper-level PCer the following Saturday; and then on Saturday the 20th, our club is bringing Anna Carkin down for a flat and jumping clinic.

Lots of fun stuff to look forward to!

Lucky.

2010-10-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I got a rare chance to just skip out to the barn for a quick ride on my own. No lessons, no Pony Club, no agenda, just wanted to go ride.

Everything was calm and quiet out there, the horses settled into their dinners, nobody there but me. McKinna is used to the routine and just kept eating her hay as I groomed her and tacked her up. I didn't want anything fancy-- I had a long week and I just wanted to go for one of those rides. You know the kind. A ride that doesn't have any point or any goal other than to enjoy your time with your horse, a ride where you remind yourself how wonderful it is to be able to do this.

So that's what I did. We walked, trotted, and cantered around the outdoor arena as the sunset faded from brilliant orange to a softer pink and then the cool grey-blue of night. No agenda, no goals. I asked for roundness because it's more comfortable and better for both of us, but relatively round and supple is generally McKinna's default state now, so it didn't take much effort or thought. All I heard was the sound of McKinna's hooves going lightly over the sand and our breathing. She seemed to pick up on my mood and just offered a calm, steady pace.

As I was riding these effortless gaits and then putting her away, I kept thinking, "I am so damn lucky." How amazing is it that I get this chance? This mare, this animal that's born to be spooky and skittish and flighty, will happily carry me around the arena, going along in harmony with me without so much as a wayward glance. She'll leap over obstacles, gallop when I ask, halt when I say, tie to anything. Through everything, the training struggles and progress, the stress of school and ratings and everything else, this is the best you can get. Just you and the horse and a quiet, perfect evening...it doesn't get any luckier than this.

Definitely Better.

2010-10-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Methinks I have my wonderpony back! We had a dressage lesson with Leslie on Monday night and, despite being in a seriously raging heat, McKinna was awesome.

I mean really. Raging. As in, suddenly desperately attached to a gelding that she's not even turned out with and calling for him when they get separated. As in, squatting and peeing at everything in sight. As in, snuggling up to the fence next to a different gelding and cheerfully letting him bite her crest.

Ho.

But, despite her apparent wild distraction and inability to hold still, she was a star for the lesson. I was concerned I wouldn't be able to get very good work, since she tends to be very tight and resistant when she's in heat or a few days before - I've always suspected she gets a little sore or something. But nope! She settled right down to work as usual.

These lessons have been so much fun lately. We're slowly but steadily nudging our way into 1st level territory, increasing the connection, asking her to trot in shoulder-fore to strengthen and straighten her, leg yields, fun stuff. Our canter work was *amazing!* I actually said 'woohoo' several times through the lesson. And had several intelligent epiphanies. Sample: "Wow! When she's leaning at the canter, if I ride her from both legs into both reins, she straightens out!"

Regular genius, right here. Yup.

It's a good thing Leslie and I are so perfectly matched. I say stupid things, she says stupid things, sometimes I laugh so hard I run the risk of falling off my horse. Every dressage lesson is kind of like a party with some really good training thrown in.

I tried out a 'new' dressage saddle for the lesson, too. It's 'new' because we've had it for quite some time - I got a screaming deal online, we tried it on her and it appeared to fit her very well, then we sat in it and went "WTF these stirrup bars are WAY too far forward to put you in a decent position" and decided we'd sell it. So I hadn't ridden in it at all, really.

Well, we hadn't got around to selling it yet, so we tried it again and actually rode in it a little. Surprise surprise - the stirrup bar looks super far forward, but it actually doesn't put you in a chair seat. It's an Albion Original Comfort, for the curious. And it appears to work great! Leslie checked out the fit and was really happy with how it works for McKinna - no tightness up front, sits nicely behind, and best of all IT DOESN'T SLIDE FORWARD onto her shoulders while I ride! Hooray.

The saddle also puts me in a pretty good position, ironically. I think my posture was more upright and my hip angle more open, because my hip flexors were feeling awfully stretched-out by the end of the ride - just like when you drop your stirrups and stretch your heel down and do sitting trot and canter for awhile. So, that's good. Once I adjust to the different position it should be good as gold. And Leslie says my leg was stable.

I haven't had a chance to ride since then, as school is kind of kicking my butt and I've been teaching lessons to a couple ladies out at our barn. (Which is really really fun, by the way, and super rewarding to see how they and their horses keep improving every time!) Tonight I'm helping with a Pony Club fundraiser, but I'm thinking about driving out to the barn afterward so I can get a schooling ride in.

So yes. I'm happy to have my happy horse back. She is just so dang much fun to ride, it shouldn't be allowed! There's nothing better than sitting up there and feeling like you and your horse are so much in sync that you could ask for anything and get a happy, willing answer. This is why I love dressage. I'd be bored out of my mind if that's all we ever did, but when you mix it in with the jumping it's so satisfying. I guess that's why I'm an eventer :)

All Better?

2010-10-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure that a good gallop is a cure for any evil, just so you know. Per chiropractor's orders, I saddled up on Wednesday and headed for the hay field. McKinna was all kinds of wound up-- head in the air, scooting at movements in the underbrush, general silliness. I had to trot a good three laps around the field before she settled and stretched into my hands a little bit.

So, finally, I let her pick up a canter. We cruised down one side of the field, a good soft hand gallop, nothing exciting, maybe a slow N pace. Balanced around the turn because the grass is getting longer and I was worried it could be a bit slippery. Then we turned onto the straightaway up the long gradual hill and I really let her fly. We were hauling some serious butt! I don't have a perfect feel for pace (times like these I'm jealous of Stacey's supercool heart-rate monitor tech) but I am somewhat experienced with testing out different gears, and I'm pretty sure we were going on at least a very fast Training, or maybe a slow Prelim, pace.

I haven't gone that fast in quite awhile! It was awesome. She didn't even lose any power when the hill got a little steeper, just dug in and blasted up. Definitely NOT the mysterious lack of power I was experiencing a couple weeks ago. Then we came back to a walk, walked down the steep part of the hill, and picked up our right lead. I let her go down the long side again, came up the backside of the hill, and decided to let her canter down the front face of the hill too. I've actually never done that before - it's not STEEP as in unsafe, it's just a pretty good incline and I've never felt like she's been balanced enough to canter it. But she felt great, so I just settled into a light seat and supported with my leg. She cruised down with no problem.

McKinna was a happy camper after that gallop. Warm and a bit sweaty, but ready to go another twenty rounds it felt like. Hosed and scraped her a little, put her in her stall with her hay, and that was that!

She then got Thursday off.

Yesterday was a Pony Club jumping lesson with Devin, which went very well. It was so cool to have other people jumping the same heights as me! One of the girls did lower stuff, but she AND her horse just started jumping a couple months ago and they are already cantering short courses in quiet, steady fashion. Certainly better than I ever started out...

McKinna was a little strung out in her canter during the flat warmup, and Devin had me sit in a little more to get her to step under herself and slow, but it wasn't happening much. I just gave McKinna the benefit of the doubt - she just got adjusted and her only work since then has been a gallop, so it's understandable that she might have a bit of difficulty collecting. As long as she went along politely, I just let her be.

Luckily, once the jumping started I felt like we had a better canter. Devin set up a monster of a course, lots of possibilities for crazy rollbacks and bending lines and regular lines, so it was pretty fun. McKinna was basically her rock star self. Easy to ride, pretty straightforward. Not a 100% canter but still a pretty darn good one, and it got better as the evening went on. By the end we jumped an 11-fence course with several jumps set on 20m turns, with at least half the course bending or straight lines on related distances, set at 2'9 to 3'ish. Including a line from a swedish oxer to a 3' parallel oxer on an angle. Pretty sweet.

The last round I really focused on building a bigger canter and riding the jumps a little more aggressively, aiming for a slightly longer-than-usual spot because she tends to want the deep ones. It worked out beautifully! She had this wonderful, flowing jump over pretty much all the fences and we absolutely nailed all the tricky lines. We did have a couple bobbles, almost entirely my fault. About halfway through the course, on a turn to a single fence, I started second-guessing the longer-spot strategy and picked to the fence and we got a super deep spot without enough power. Sigh. I went back to my original plan and the next fences rode great.

She also had a weird hesitation at the last fence, I think because I didn't show her soon enough that we were headed for it. What impressed me was two things: first, when she jumped, I stayed mostly in the middle of her and got a bit left behind. That means I'm not jumping ahead pretty much ever anymore! Yay. Second, she hesitated, but then when she took off it was a good clean powerful jump and she cleared the fence with no trouble. That tells me that over the course of the evening we successfully developed that power and confidence in her, to the point that she still had a lovely jump after a quick pause. I just circled around and jumped it again and it was as beautiful as all the rest. Goooood pony.

So I'm very pleased with McKinna right now and feeling optimistic that the chiro work has done some magic. I definitely haven't felt that level of easy strength off the ground from her in awhile. Next test will be the dressage lesson on Monday. This weekend we'll just have some fun, wash her tail, and go for some light rides.

At the end of the lesson, one of the two brothers who just joined our club (seriously! boys! in Pony Club!) said, "Is that your horse?"

"Yes she is," I said. "Well...technically she's my mom's horse."

And that's just how it works.

Return of the Chiropractor

2010-10-10T09:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I was going to play some Twilight Princess for awhile on this rainy Sunday morning before settling into my pile of schoolwork for the day, but my Wii remotes are being finicky. So I figured I would write a blog post instead. Lucky you!

I'm about to start Week 3 of classes. So far everything has been on the edge of manageable - I'm not quite ahead, but I'm not quite behind either. Bit of an uncomfortable place to be at in the first few weeks, since it invariably gets worse (Week 4 is when everyone usually starts to get nervous, and by Week 6 the majority of people I talk to in a day declare that they are having the worst week ever). So I'm spending quite a bit of time on my reading and homework and notes and such. Good thing I have no social life!

Gene, the chiropractor, finally came out to work on McKinna yesterday and I am sure glad he did! She had four major issues going on, all directly related to things we have noticed lately: first, a torque back near where the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae meet, complimented by a pelvic rotation. That's where our mysterious loss of "it" was coming from out on the XC course. Her hind end was just way out behind her, and there was no way for her to get up under herself. He said the tweak in the back is pretty common among horses being asked to come up to the next level of collection and lateral work, since there's quite a bit of flexing in that area. Hmm...lately we've been working on more 1st level stuff....

She also had some tight muscles in her hind end from dealing with the skeletal kinks.

Then, she had quite a bit going on in her ribcage, which was the main cause of all her wither grumpiness lately. He worked quite a bit on her withers and ribs from both sides, doing things to have her really stretch out the muscles on each side and something with the ribs to get her to release. She was NOT pleased about the rib adjustment and gave him a really nasty look, which I had to laugh at. She's very guarded about the chiro work, but she's very expressive in her face. It's clear when she hasn't quite released whatever he's working on, because she has this very unimpressed rude look on her face. When it does finally let go, she licks and chews and turns her head towards him. If he's in the middle of an adjustment she doesn't like, she'll turn her head around to him and poke him lightly with her nose. Funny horse.

The last major issue, the biggest one, was in the middle of her neck on the left side. He said he actually had to use manual manipulation on that one, which he only has to use maybe twelve times a year. Usually he uses stretches and holds to get the horse into a position, relaxing the muscles until he releases and when they recoil they make the adjustment themselves. On this one he had to actually do the release himself. Gene said that pretty much the only time he has to do manual manipulation is if he's working on a horse after a severe crash, or if it's a really really old problem. He said this in McKinna's neck felt like an old thing, something she's probably had as long as we've had her.

That, he said, is a big part of why I can never get her to soften and bend as well to the left in her jaw and neck - she wants to tilt her head instead of just turning her face and neck.

She had some small other stuff in her atlas/axis area and lower neck, but those were the major four. It must be because we've begun stepping up the level of work so much, because normally it's just a few pretty minor adjustments and she's on her way. By the end of the session, McKinna was a pretty happy, relaxed girl. Gene actually got a few big yawns and eye-rolls out of her after one adjustment on her neck.

He even said to give her three or four pretty light days, which I've never had him suggest before. He said she needs time to get that hind end all sorted out before we start asking her to collect again with the dressage work or jumping. I asked if a gallop in a few days would help, thinking that it's sort of the exact opposite of collection, and he said that would be ideal. So we're going to go for a little gallop on Tuesday or Wednesday :) Doctor's orders!

So I am glad we finally managed to coordinate our schedules for the appointment. It sure appears that McKinna needed it. We'll give her the prescribed easy few days, go for a gallop on Wednesday, and then ride in a Pony Club jumping lesson on Friday. I'm curious to see what differences I notice when we take work up again.

Alright, that's all for now. I need to go spend some good quality time with physics, ecology, evolution, and creative writing...

Recalibration!

2010-10-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

Weeell, so much for all my super-duper hopes about skipping around all the Training fences at Inavale on Saturday. McKinna just wasn't on her game like usual - it was actually a really similar feeling to the jumping lesson we had a few days before. Nothing major, but when I asked her to power up the energy just wasn't there. She'd gallop when I sent her forward and half-halt when I asked, but "it" just wasn't there. You know, "it". Her usual bold, controlled attack of the fences, that feeling that I can just wind up all that power and let it launch us over any fence.

I know it's not her feet, because at one point we were cantering through an empty water complex (= gravel footing) to jump up a bank, and she was 100% fine. Yay for rock-crunching barefoot feet!

And it's not like she was jumping terribly. She was her usual fantastic self up and down banks, through the water, and over the smaller stuff, jumping everything out of stride as usual. It's just...the bigger stuff she wouldn't give me the strength, didn't want to attack the fence, and wanted to hesitate just a tiny bit on takeoff. We still schooled some rolltops and one Training-level log pile, and it all went fine. To anyone who doesn't know her, nothing would seem out of the ordinary. But I know her really well, and I know that she just wasn't quite on.

So, no big deal. We still had a good, positive schooling session. As for now, I'm guessing she's just feeling a little overworked and maybe a bit sore. I sure felt like hell after a week of trying to adjust to four hard classes while throwing in a dressage, jumping, and XC lesson all two days apart from each other. McKinna confirmed this suspicion by spending Sunday and Monday turning around and walking out into her run every time I came into her stall ;) Sometimes she does that just because, but a lot of times she does it when she's getting worn out.

So this week is a light week. Sunday we finished up her clip and she is officially only hairy on face, legs, and a saddle patch on her back. She's very cute and you can see her little paint spots very clearly! Then Monday was another relaxed day involving a thorough washing of her tail and that's it. Tuesday was another day off, and today Mom and I each took a turn taking a nice relaxed ride. There's a derby coming up that I'm debating going to, and after that just some Pony Club lessons and clinics.

I know that her general stickiness over bigger fences *could* be her hocks, so don't think that we are ignoring that possibility. It seems unlikely given past indications, but we're thinking of doing radiographs of her hocks before I get thoroughly into next eventing season - not because we think there's anything wrong, but because it would be very nice to get a baseline on this super-sound 16something year old mare! Then we can know if Adequan might be a good idea, etc. My money's on her just being tired after a long week, though. The chiro is coming on Saturday, so I'm expecting that after an easy week and an adjustment she'll be good as new.

In other news, my stirrup pads, Nathe bit, and big bodyclipping blade arrived Monday (just in time for me to be done with bodyclipping round 1, of course). Can't wait to put those stirrup pads on my jumping saddle! I tried out the bit tonight. Nothing too conclusive as we were just moseying around, but she certainly didn't object. I'll have to try a dressage lesson in it to see what kind of connection we're going to get - I'm suspecting that the connection will be good but the lateral clarity might suffer a little since it's a straight bar mouthpiece? We'll see.

I hope you all are enjoying the last vestiges of warmish weather. Tonight was lovely at the barn and it was a perfect evening to just relax and enjoy the company of a great horse. It's nice to know that despite all our big competition goals, the constant minutiae of improving dressage and the hours of jumping, one of the best things to do is just go out there on a beautiful evening and spend time with a horse you love. It doesn't get much better than that.

Goals Check-In

2010-10-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

The jumping lesson last night was a very interesting mix of good and bad. I've got video of a couple rounds, so I'll be sure to put that up soon. For one, it was HOT and MUGGY - McKinna was warm and almost damp when I unloaded her from the trailer, let alone started working. By the time we were done she actually had tracks down her legs where the sweat had run down. Gross.

She was just a bit sluggish, I think because of the heat, and I could tell she just didn't have as much gas in the tank as usual. So we skipped the usual flatwork, just w/t/c both directions and then straight into jumping, and we didn't jump as long as usual. We started by being completely unable to find a good distance. I couldn't get her to give me a good canter; it was too quick but not powerful, or too slow and still not powerful.

Eventually we got things figured out, I'm not sure how, and McKinna gave me a little more energy to work with. We did some coursework over fences that were pretty much all 3'+, including one vertical that was at least 3'3 and two portable XC fences Devin moved into her arena. I'm pleased to say that we got some beautiful work, including many more perfect distances than in the past. Even our not-so-perfect distances were better, thanks to me slowly learning how to ride properly! I think the lesson would have been even better if it wasn't so dang hot, but you work with what you have, and I was really pleased with McKinna for digging deep and giving me the energy and power we needed even though she was a bit tired. The entire lesson lasted maybe 40 minutes, but it was a good one. Afterward I hosed her down with cool water and she perked right up at the sight of a few sugar cubes.

I think I may make her clip a little bigger tonight to prepare for XC schooling tomorrow. It's supposed to be in the 70s. I think I'll take it higher on her neck and maybe zip most of the long hair off her butt too. The other nice thing is that we're starting around 10 tomorrow, and it's been quite cool in the mornings before heating up in the afternoon - so hopefully we'll avoid the worst of the heat.

On another note, considering it's, um, October, and we're only three months away from the new year...what do you say we check in on the goals?

For your reviewing pleasure, here they are:

1. Pass C-2 rating in Pony Club
2. Master Novice-level eventing
2b. Begin to school some Training-level eventing
3. Clean tack consistently
4. Get a dressage saddle that fits Pandora and me
5. Kill the Judge Stand Monster for Pandora
6. Stick to a fitness schedule for myself
7. Take monthly progress reports

So - number one is ACHIEVED. I passed my C-2 back in May. The Horse Management stuff was a breeze, and McKinna cheerfully skipped around a light XC course despite the fact that she hadn't done any XC since the previous year. Good pony. The take-away message: we need to be able to establish relaxation, free forward movement, and connection more consistently for the next rating. Gridwork was great.

Second: master Novice-level eventing. In hindsight, 'master' isn't the best word, but it's the best I could think of. What I meant was, "feel like we can go out and ride a tough Novice event successfully, with a solid performance in each round that I can feel good about." You can see that 'master' fits a lot better in a list! Ultimately, I think we've achieved this goal. It's not about the scores, though we were doing great at Inavale until our untimely demise by piano. It's about feeling like we could go out and tackle any Novice event and have a good, solid performance in all three phases. The fences, combinations, and questions look friendly and easy to me. The dressage test is completely within our current abilities.

So, I'm calling that one passed.

Goal 2b, begin to school some Training stuff, is definitely in progress. I'm not going to call it finished yet, though. In our dressage lessons, we have slowly but steadily begun to work on leg yield, shoulders-in, more connection at all gaits, and other elements that will come into play at Training level. In my jumping lessons we've begun to push the height, so that now the majority of the fences are set at 3' and we're starting to work with some stuff in the 3'3 range. I haven't had a chance to school very much Training-level XC, but I did a few Training fences and the coffin complex at Inavale at the camp in May, and tomorrow I plan to school a lot of Training questions. So it's safe to say that this goal is well under way.

Goal 3 - fail! I have not been cleaning my tack with any sort of consistency, unless you count really good cleaning right before rallies or shows (which I don't count). So, to get back on track, I'm going to bring a sponge out to the barn. If I can just wipe my stuff off with a damp sponge after every ride with the occasional deeper cleaning and conditioning, I'll be willing to declare victory.

Goal 4 - was achieved! Somewhere along the line I found a Thornhill Pro Trainer dressage saddle that fit her beautifully. It was a pleasure to set that saddle on her back every day. Actually, my TOTD jumping saddle fit her spectacularly too. I sold both of the saddles with her. I was sad to see them go - I like those saddles! But I'd rather she has stuff that fits her.

Goal 5 is not really applicable anymore, since I sold Pandora in early May. I don't think I fully accomplished it by the time I sold her, but I never really had a chance to test it! I will say that her dressage progressed by leaps and bounds, and I think I had enough improvement in my control that the JSM would have been greatly reduced. So, I guess the jury's out on this goal.

Goal 6, stick to a fitness schedule for myself: another spectacular fail. I really haven't done anything. I'm fairly fit because I walk around a lot and I work hard in my lessons, but come on. So, I've weaseled workouts into my regular routine this term and I'm determined to get something done at least 3 days a week. Tuesdays I'll do strength training at home; Wednesday, Thursday, and/or Friday are all days I plan to get to the UO's rec center and play with some cardio machines. And the rock wall. I'll let you know how this one goes...I tend to have so much going on in my life that I let this one slip, but I'd really like to do SOMETHING. If I can consistently work out twice a week, I'm willing to call this goal accomplished.

Goal 7, take monthly progress reports - well. Considering this is the first goals check-in, I think that one is also a fail ;) However, I've been keeping you guys updated on our training progress, so it's not entirely an unmet goal. I don't know if I like this goal anymore, so I may not try to accomplish it between now and January.

So there you have it - an updated goals list! Trust me, my little brain is already chipping away at my goal list for next year. It'll be a good one...

Good Times

2010-09-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

Seriously. Look at that tail. It's insane and I love it. That's after a QUICK washing.

I've been having so much fun at the barn lately. Now that I've recovered from my crazy summer, I've found that it's really nice to go out to the barn to ride or take lessons or just hang out with McKinna.

Last night she got a nice trace clip. It's been really, oddly warm here lately, and she already had grown about as much winter coat as a normal horse does over an entire winter. I mean, if I left her alone, by December she'd be ready for winter in North Dakota or something. She's been sweating quite a bit when worked hard lately, she had some dried sweatmarks on her shoulders today (I'm guessing from taking a little gallop around the pasture), and we're going XC schooling at Inavale on Saturday when it' supposed to be almost 80 (!!!), so it was time for a clip.

I ordered one of those nifty T-80 bodyclipping blades to use, but it's not here yet, so I just used our regular clippers. I read on the COTH forums that it makes clipping really easy if you wash your horse, put some glugs of baby oil in a bucket of warm water, sponge your horse off with that, scrape, then let dry and clip. I tried it, except we used that concentrated pink Healthy Haircare stuff that the Arab people use (love it as a conditioning spray, esp on sweat marks or tails).

It worked REALLY well. The fur came off soooo easily. Of course, we're also clipping earlier this year and I have my super-awesome Andis Star clippers. But the clipped fur underneath was so soft, not all dry and flaky!

Hello little speckles, I've missed you :)

This weekend I will probably expand the clip to a hunter clip - just leave the legs, a small saddle patch, and I'm not sure yet about the face hair. Do you usually clip the face? Half the face? I want to take a lot off early while it's still pretty warm. The idea is to clip while it's still early so she grows some coat back by winter....then I will probably do another trace clip. Sigh. She does go out every day, so even though she gets blanketed she needs to have some protection. That's why I'm leaving the hair on her legs.

In other news, I ordered some goodies from SmartPak!

First, I finally gave in and ordered myself a Nathe:

Nathes and Herm Sprenger Duos are basically the only bits like this on the market. They are SOFT rubber, not hard plastic like a Happy Mouth or Korsteel Flexi. (McKinna is in a HM right now and quite likes it.) They're also thin, with a little curve for the tongue; if your horse likes thick bits, you could always get one of those super thick black rubber ones. Luckily, the black rubber type is cheap.

Nathes will run you about $60 from SmartPak or Bit of Britain, but they are extremely soft, gentle bits. As I mentioned before, I'm curious to see if this step along the progression (metal-- Happy Mouth -- Nathe) encourages her to take even more contact and connection, since switching from metal to Happy Mouth did so.

The other thing is that from what I've read about them they are excellent bits to have around for young horses, restarting OTTBs, or anything that's sensitive.

I also ordered a pair of Super Comfort Stirrup Pads:

Devin has these on her jumping saddle and I really like them. Super grippy = good for XC! I've also heard that they are very comfortable because of the slightly wider surface.

I've got a dressage lesson today, a jumping lesson on Thursday, and then Devin's trying to put together a group to go schooling at Inavale on Saturday before they close for the year. I know I keep saying I'm winding down, but stuff keeps coming up! I am actually really excited for this. McKinna has been kicking so much ass on cross-country and I haven't had a chance to school above our level since the camp in May. If it goes the way I think it will, I'm pretty sure McKinna and I will get to school a lot of Training questions - I can't WAIT to try that Training-level trakehner!

I'm teaching a couple lessons on Wednesday night to boarders at our barn, so that should be fun. They are going to an open show at the Oregon Horse Center next month and they're getting ready! Then the chiropractor is coming out to do McKinna on Friday. I don't think she's got anything major wrong, but she's been working hard and lately she has been kinda twitchy and grumpy about her wither area, and she also really appears to hate having the top of her crest rubbed (like when we give her a bath).

What else? Pony Club is kind of kicking into gear in terms of mounted lessons right now, which is great. Devin's going to come teach a lesson in October and we've also got Robin, who is a local instructor and friend of ours. She's a schoolteacher - no wonder she's so great with the kids! I'm also working on scheduling a couple clinics in November/December with some Pony Club examiners.

Classes started for me yesterday. It will be an interesting term. I think my favorite classes are going to be Physics, which has an engaging and very organized professor, and the Kidd Tutorial, which is this big long intense creative writing course. My other two classes are Ecology and Evolution. On the plus side, the Evolution professor is into horses, so we might be able to connect there. On the minus side, I'm not too sure about the organization level and lecture-interest level for those two classes, so we'll see.

It should be a manageable term as long as I don't let the work and reading get ahead of me. And as long as I don't spend every lecture daydreaming about what I'm going to work on in my next ride!

Eventing Rally Report Part II

2010-09-26T09:48:00.000-07:00

The Eventing Rally Report continues...

So here I am, sitting on my normally quite calm horse as she jigs around warmup and dances sideways around some perfectly innocuous piles of brush. As far as I know I am still in third place, because the rider ahead of me jumped clean and I didn't see the rider after me, while I took a rail.

The rider ahead of me is walking around the start box, almost ready to go in. McKinna's head is up, her ears are swiveling, and she's pretty much tuning me out.

Great way to start a cross-country ride, don't you think?

So I decide to revise my warmup plan. Instead of walking around on a loose rein until it is my turn, I ask a nearby coach to watch me as I trot McKinna over a big crossrail made of logs.

This is a Pony Club thing - at rallies, you can warm up on the flat by yourself, but you have to have a coach (any coach, not just your team's) watching you whenever you jump. I think it's a pretty smart safety measure, actually, when you think about how many kids are out there on sometimes not-too-controllable ponies, and emotions are often running high.

Anyway, the coach agrees and comes over to watch. McKinna settles down a little as I point her at the fence, takes a big leap over. I bring her back to the trot and come again and we have a brief but firm discussion about the fact that the outside rein does, in fact, mean she can't drift way out with that right shoulder. After she quits fussing and agrees, we pop over the fence again.

Now she's calmer, cantering quietly away from the fence instead of head-up and choppy. We canter the fence a few times and she takes me to it in her normal aggressive XC style, but without getting tense and rushy. I bring her back to a walk and call it good.

"She looks like she really calms down when she has a job to do," remarks the coach who had been watching us.

Wise words!

So now, with the first rider setting out on course, we walk over (on a loose rein!) to the start box. I take deep breaths and walk circles through the start box, front to back. I glance at my watch and remember I have to start it during the countdown.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.

I flick through my minute markers - just after the tiger trap, by the bridge along the creek, and before the last fence - reminding myself that I ended up wheeling the course much tighter than they indicated and that I should aim to be a little behind on all my markers.

Five. Four. Three.

I start my watch and stop in the box, facing forward to the course. I shorten my reins.

Two. One. Have a great ride!

A little cheer goes up as I get up in two-point and send McKinna forward. She's cantering well, a little unfocused, but the first two fences are not long after the start box and they're simple. We pop over the first, no problem. By the second, McKinna is jumping out of stride and I stop worrying, knowing that she's settled into the job.

We sail over three, the big downed tree - did I ever think that thing was big and imposing? - and make a tight left to four, the tiger trap in the woods. Then a short gallop to five, the first Real Fence, a pretty big and newly-stained rolltop. McKinna nails the perfect spot and jumps neatly over the rolltop.

We land and I look up ahead to the bank, where we will canter up straight and make a pretty hard right turn to jump the down bank. As we canter up, I say hi to a friend who is jump judging there. (Sometimes you get weird moments of slowwww clarity on course. Hey, I was relaxed!) We make the right-hand turn, McKinna does her characteristic easy canter stride down the bank, and we take a hard left to aim for fence seven, a nice wide fence with a little pine tree growing in front of the center. It is appropriately named the squeeze.

We jump the right side, hugging the tree, and then drift over to get a straight line to a moderately-sized rock oxer. No problems-- we're on our game now and all I need to do is enjoy the ride. We hop over the next few fences: a fairly big log brush in the trees, a rollback to a skinny-ish coop, a tight turn to trot through a set of mandatory flags.

Now we are on the home stretch, a looong gallop around the last corner of the field with four more fences to go. They all go smoothly, even the big new rolltop at the very corner - later, the matching BN fence over there will elicit a lot of stops - and, perfectly on time, we clear the last fence and head for the finish.

I stop at the vet box and dismount, quietly telling McKinna she is the best pony EVER while trying to make her quit dancing sideways away from the vet's stethoscope. After a bit they get a reading on her pulse and respiration and send me to cool out for five minutes. I think coming in her pulse was 100 and her resp was 80, but I have no idea if that's right.

I loosen girth and noseband and walk her in big circles, patting her neck every two seconds or so and telling her how amazing and wonderful she is. At some point my Stable Manager manages to make it over, and she grabs my saddle and pads to take back to the barn. (Stable managers had a hard job this weekend with the one-day rally...too many places to be at once. But mine did an awesome job!) Shortly after that they call me in, check her pulse and respiration (which has dropped I think to 80 and 60? Clearly this is something I need to study a bit...TPR at work and good recovery rates) and tell me she's recovering well. So off I go, practically skipping with joy, to take her back to the stable area and finish cooling her out. It's drizzling, but I don't care. My horse rocks!

I hear over the radio on the way back that the rider after me had a stop on XC, so that moves me up to second place. Back at the stable area, I strip the rest of McKinna's tack and her boots, then proceed to sponge and scrape (despite much protesting on her part) until she's pretty cool. The cooler goes on, she gets a bunch of carrots, and after I deal with a brief post-adrenaline-rush stomachache, I change into warm(!) and dry (!!) clothes. I'm done for the day and it feels awesome - all I have to do now is take care of my rockstar pony and start packing up and organizing my stuff.

Somewhere along the way, the coach who helped me in warmup stops me and compliments me on how nice the two of us looked out there. She says that McKinna seems to really settle into a comfortable, smooth gallop once she's out there on course.

This kind of thing means a lot to me to hear. I know that McKinna is an amazing horse and I have always known it, but I don't think it has always been clear to bystanders. It's really nice to hear unprompted outside validation every once in awhile, and it is the frosting on the cake of our awesome ride.

So, how did rockstar pony and I do? Well...

It turns out, the first place person - the rider who went ahead of me all day on a very sweet-looking QH/Shire mare - had a slew of time penalties in stadium and XC. (Stadium is understandable - McKinna and I actually had a time penalty. Seriously? We had a time penalty. At Novice. They must have wheeled that course TIGHT!) Ultimately, with my double-clear XC round, it was enough to move me and McKinna up to first place! Barely. By less than a point. But still! McKinna! Me! Winning!

I was extreeeeeemely excited.

To make a long story short, the scoring was all kinds of crazy, there were a lot of inconsistencies, and though my score and the other girl's score did not change over the course of the inquiry process, there was a mistake in the final (handwritten) scores. Her score did not change but mine somehow jumped up a few points, enough to put me in second place.

I was bummed.

I checked with them afterward, because I'd added up my score (dressage score of 36 plus 4 faults plus 1 time penalty does NOT equal 44!). They couldn't do anything then as our TD had left, but the next day an email got sent out with corrected scores. I guess there had been a little confusion amongst other divisions too.

Anyway, in the correction email, it listed me as first place. And so I was happy.

I know winning isn't everything, but dang, every once in awhile I like to get recognition for me and my pony and the hard work we've put in! So I was satisfied, and McKinna is amazing and super fun on XC as always, and other than the scoring mistakes it was a really well-run rally.

By the end of the day I was wiped out, but I was warm and dry and I had plenty of time to pack up all my stuff before awards. My teammates also did awesome, and overall our team ended up with 3rd place in Horse Management and 3rd place riding. Go team!

Eventing Rally - Dressage and Stadium Videos

2010-09-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

Before I finish up the story, a video recap!

Dressage:

You can see that the first part of the test is pretty reasonable, the second fairly tense (especially after the canters). I think the biggest culprit is our lack of good connection. It's something that we're just beginning to develop consistently in our lessons, so I know that a better connection and thus a better test will come with time.

I also noticed (and the judge commented on) how she tilts her head to the side, especially in the trot. Seems to be an evasion, and it's another symptom of no connection. If I don't have a steady contact, I can't ride her through the crookedness to be straight between my reins and legs.

But it's a work in progress and I was pleased with her. And we got an 8 on our halt! And her canters look kind of like normal horse canters now, instead of crazy shuffle-y pony who has never cantered before ever! And we're starting to develop an actual noticeable stretch in the free walk!

(PS, the random whistling you hear throughout is birds, not the judge ;)

Stadium:

Pretty much as I described it. A little hairy while we got each other figured out, rail on fence 2 that was my fault, then it went pretty smoothly and she was jumping well.

The rest will be up tonight - I need to transfer the videos to my mom's laptop so I can cut the XC videos into one piece. It will be worth the wait to see the wonderpony go dashing across your screen on lovely green fields, I promise!

Eventing Rally Report Part I

2010-09-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

On Friday, we gave McKinna a Pony-Club-Quality-Bath (tm), loaded her up onto the trailer, stopped by a nearby barn to pick up her trailer pooling buddy, and set off on our way to Turner for the eventing rally.

We rolled in at 3PM or so and set to work: Bed the corrals. Hang the water buckets. Re-hang the one that fell to the ground and soaked my teammate when the twine broke. Label halters. Hang stall cards. Empty trailer. Re-pack trailer with 4 riders' worth of rally kits, saddles, bridles, helmets, grooming boxes, clothes, hay bales, and grain. Abandon hope of fitting everything inside and decide to leave rally kits out in the rain, since they are packed in plastic tubs. Hang our club banner. Bridle up and remove tail wraps for jogouts. Jog. Re-tail wrap. Put horses in sheets to guard against the never-ending drizzle. Walk the XC course. Go to rally briefing. Scarf down some pizza and corn bread.

Then I go to bed at 9:00 - and by 'bed' I mean 'a sleeping bag and pillow in the back seat of the truck' - because I know my unwelcome alarm will cheerfully ring at 5:45, just in time for me to get dressed and drag myself over to the corrals to feed at the required time of 6:00.

Yuck. Have I ever told you guys that I hate mornings?

Still, tossing breakfast to McKinna always wakes me up pretty quickly. While she contentedly munches on her grain and hay, happily ignoring the constant light rain, I immediately set to work scrubbing at her legs. She managed to get them dirty overnight. I'm thrilled that she's comfortable enough to lay down to sleep, but really. I washed those socks less than 24 hours ago.

That done, it's time for a quick breakfast (hard-boiled eggs fresh from a club member's farm, cinnamon toast crunch cereal, and a few stolen sips of my teammate's hot chocolate) and then time to go get the pony ready for our 8:07 Turnout Inspection. I am the second rider of the day, so my teammates all help me get McKinna ready. This is wonderful, because getting ready for a Turnout involves lots of grooming and wiping and oops you missed a purple spot there and the like, and it's a much lower-stress job when you have several friends helping you out.

Perfectly on time and all tacked up for dressage, I head over to the Inspection area. All of our hard work gets rewarded by a series of glowing comments from the Chief Horse Management Judge, a row of 'Exceeds Standards' on my turnout sheet, and no dropped points. Yes! Go Team!

Then it's off to dressage, where I have a nice long warmup in a small grass field next to the ring. It's less than ideal, the grass being quite wet from the rain, but we make do. She warms up well but the inconsistency of the footing means that she is a bit less willing to give me as much relaxed connection as usual. Still, our test turns out to be fairly willing and steady despite general tension and lack of strong connection. We end up with a 36, which puts us third (in the field of three, ha) but only 4 points or so behind first. Overall I am happy with the test as we're still showing steady improvement.

I grab second breakfast when my dad makes me two eggs and some bacon on the grill over at Parent HQ. Score! Then it's off to wheel my XC course in the warm rain. Not as fun as it sounds, because the warmth precludes wearing a rain jacket for very long so I get pretty damp. But it's worth it, because I get to solidify the course in my mind, get a general feel for my minute markers, and double-check the location of a tricky mandatory crossing that they put in place after removing the water crossing from the course.

It's a pretty straightforward course. A few maxed-out fences, and the only things I plan to ride even a little defensively are two big newly-stained table-type fences. Everything else looks friendly, fun, and not terribly challenging but not too easy. The course has lots of room for long gallops, which should be fun.

Then it's time to walk the stadium course, which is quite balanced. Mostly line-diagonal-line, but a rollback turn after fence 1 and a tight two-stride to four regular strides in one triple line offer a little spice. It's easy to remember, at least! I like the diagonal line best: it's an easy 6 strides and the first fence has a solid wall beneath it. McKinna jumps solid fences really well.

After a general blur of lunchtime, helping with teammate's horses, and doing various tidying-up chores around the stable area, it's time to get tacked up for jumping. Because the rally is crammed into one day, they set up the scheduling so you ride stadium and head immediately over to XC. I like it, because I don't have to save our most challenging phase for last, and stadium functions as a nice thorough warmup for XC.

So, all geared up in XC attire, McKinna and I head over to stadium warmup. This is also on grass, which again makes warmup a little problematic. The area is a bit too narrow to really turn, so most fences involve trotting around the turn and picking up your canter on the approach. McKinna, unsurprisingly, is jumping very forward and bold at the warmup fences, offering to leave long rather than add up when we get a funny distance. Well, we're wearing XC gear and jumping outside on grass, what do you expect?

Despite the forwardness, I discuss with our coach and decide to mostly stick to my plan in the ring, which is: ride quiet, keep her balanced and go for the close spot if necessary, and aim for 2+4 instead of 1+4 in the tight line.

In the ring, McKinna carries her boldness with her. This leads to a bit of discombobulation between the two of us for the first few fences, where I'm expecting her usual quiet, conservative self and she's giving me a bit more of an aggressive style. After we take a rail on the second fence because I try to suggest that she add and she hesitates because she didn't want to, I (wisely) decide to ride the horse I have. The rest of the course is pretty smooth as I go with her, encouraging her to open up her stride and power off the ground from a bit of a longer spot than usual, and we don't take any more rails.

Good pony. Weird pony. I guess we just really need to practice stadium, again and again, at home and at shows. What this is telling me is that we don't have enough experience together at 3' to be totally consistent, and since she's changed so much in the past 9 months in terms of her balance and gait and coordination, we're just not fully in tune. Definitely something to work on this winter, especially since I want to move up next year.

Anyway, I'm quite pleased with my ride. First place jumped clean, didn't see second place go, so as far as I know we're still in third. We head across the creek to the cross-country warmup area, where McKinna gets a bit of a bee in her bonnet and starts jigging around, spooking a bit, and generally preferring to not listen to me. This is fairly uncharacteristic, and I sit up there and hope this is not how our next phase is going to go...

To be continued!

Schooling Show Success (with video!)

2010-09-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, we loaded up McKinna and headed about 15 minutes down the road to Triple Crown for a Hunter/Jumper schooling show. (This is one of the reasons our barn is awesome. 12 minutes from one trainer, 15 from the other, 15 from our Pony Club's home base barn, and 15 from this barn. Central location!)

I figured it would be a good check-in before the Eventing Rally next weekend, especially since jumping was our, uh, problem phase at the Horse Trials. Remember the horse-eating piano? Yeah. I'm convinced that little fiasco was a product of McKinna being stuck in a stall for 5 days and her brain just being completely fried. But I digress.

We arrived and got to watch some crossrail and 2' hunters, which is always cute. Love the little kids on saintly ponies who just truck around knowing their job. McKinna just hung out at the trailer, steadily devouring all the hay in her hay bag and generally settling in like she owned the place. This laid-back attitude pretty much continued for the entire show.

The lower-level hunters kind of all cleared out en masse, leaving virtually nobody in the 2'6+ hunters or the jumpers. I, signed up for the 2'6, 2'9, and 3' jumpers, tacked up and wandered over to the nearly empty arena, where McKinna proceeded to stand with a hind leg cocked and relax while I memorized my courses. (I hate doing Course A for one course, then doing Course B for the next, and then having to go back to Course A.)

By the time I actually got on to warm up, there was one other person riding in all my classes with me. Talk about low-pressure show environment!

Our flat warmup was gorgeous. Relaxed. Swingy. Beautiful transitions. I mean, it's the kind of warmup I'd be thrilled to have before a dressage test. And when we started jumping warmup fences, I'm pretty sure angels started singing. Soft, round, beautiful canter. Perfectly steady rhythm to the fence, which she jumped quietly and neatly from a perfect distance, and cantered away just as nicely. That happened TWICE! Then I decided I was done with my warmup and went back out of the ring to wait for the start of the classes.

Our rounds weren't *as* perfect, but they were still pretty darn good. Probably the best courses we've ever had at a show. We obviously retained a lot of the canter work we did in our last jumping lesson, because our canter during the course was much better than it's been in the past. I think it could have been a little bolder, because we took a lot of short spots, but she also volunteered to take the long spot where appropriate, which impressed me. That means we're moving in the right direction, because she won't take the long spot unless we've got a good canter and she's feeling confident.

In the lower classes, our distances were more accurate. I wonder if this is just a matter of adjusting our collective eye to 3'ish heights? Probably it will improve with practice. The best part is that no matter what distance we got, McKinna calmly jumped out of it. We didn't have any rails at all, though she did get one or two rubs. When she's calmly jumping from any spot, I know we can continue working on jumping at that height over courses and grids until we adjust our eye.

Here is our 3' class:

You can see we ended up chipping in at several fences, and taking a bit of a longer spot on some. I think I need a bit more of a rolling canter - but it's always a work in progress. We've improved the canter to where she can jump out of a weird spot, so now we just need to improve the canter (and experience) to where she can hit a perfect spot almost every time.

Another cool thing? The 3' course all looked easy, even small! This is good news. I don't think we'll push things over the fall, but as we come back into hard work in the late winter and spring, I bet we'll be able to start working up to 3'3 successfully.

We ended up with two firsts and a second - impressive in a class of 2, I know! Still, she jumped clean, and she would have gone plenty fast in the jumpoffs if I cared to ask her. We did pull off one neat little inside turn in the 3' jumpoff, which she handled very well.

Here's the 3' jumpoff, where again we get some funny distances but the last three fences were great:

I couldn't be happier with my rides this Sunday. McKinna had a great attitude and was jumping out of a really nice, balanced canter. The whole thing made me feel a lot better about the upcoming Eventing Rally, where we'll be going Novice. I'll have much more competition there...this time, there will be TWO other riders in my division ;-)

More Clicker Work!

2010-09-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

After our last clicker session, I spent some time thinking. I wasn't sure McKinna fully understood what the click meant, since all we'd done was targeting on a handheld object. After all, I could probably produce the same results by just feeding her treats after she touched the the thing, skipping the clicker entirely.

So I came up with a plan! I decided I'd have her target on a stationary object. I could then move away from it, forcing her to walk away from me to touch the thing to get the click, then return to me upon hearing the click to receive her reward. In my head, I decided this would clarify in her mind (and make it clear to ME when the lightbulb went off for HER) that the click means "Yes, that's right, now you can have your treat."

After a bit of searching, I decided on a convenient wooden stool to use as our target today. She knocked it down first thing, so I left it on the ground like that. About a minute of work showed me that McKinna understood she was supposed to try behaviors on the stool, but that she didn't understand how the clicker both marks and ends the behavior. That is, I'd click and she would continue with what she was doing, not turn to me for a treat.

So I improvised. After I clicked, I stuck a "Good giiiirl!" in there. THAT got her attention, and she swung around for her treat. Success! For the rest of the training session, I used that verbal marker in addition to the clicker. Click, verbal marker. This was because I couldn't decide if I should just use the verbal marker on its own or if I should use it just until she understood that the click was a marker as well.

Anyway, here she is about three minutes into our work today. She's showing a very clear understanding of the marker signal, which you can see when she swings around and returns to me. After her first reward, you can watch as she loses a little focus, but eventually performs the behavior accurately and again shows a clear understanding of the marker.

Shortly after this, we took a quick break and I stuck her in the cross-ties to chill for a bit so she wouldn't totally get bored. When we returned, her focus came back. This is why you do shorter training sessions!

Another step forward in our clicker training. I want to get clicker work involved in our biggest training issues (read: quiet, balanced canter!) as soon as possible, so I'm developing a training plan in my head to get there. My favorite thing about clicker training (or any training at all, really) is how you can plan out your steps to train a behavior and then test it. Today, it worked almost exactly as planned. Such a cool feeling.

Comment issue?

2010-09-08T19:02:00.000-07:00

My mother is telling me that my posts are looking a little funky to her. No timestamp, no link to the comments, though it looks normal if she clicks on the post title to go to the individual page of the post.

Is this happening to any of you guys? I'll go muck around in my settings, if so. If it IS happening to you, you should be able to get to the comments and let me know by clicking on the post title. Or you could shoot me an email - my address is on my profile.

Thanks!

Awesome Lesson is Awesome

2010-09-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

After the pony received an entire bath on Friday just so she would be presentable, McKinna I headed over to Devin's place for a jumping lesson yesterday. This was our first jumping lesson in..well...awhile. I was hoping wonder-pony and myself hadn't forgotten how to jump!

We began with some really nice flat work. Even though we hadn't jumped for awhile, our schooling in the dressage department is clearly paying off. Devin seemed pleased with the degree to which McKinna was willing to give me a nice, light contact. We worked on my riding: not rotating my wrists to the inside was first. All along I thought she'd meant something totally different - I thought she meant I was bending my wrists so that my knuckles were facing each other too much, but what I was actually doing was rotating in a weird way so my first-finger knuckle was kind of pointing down. Anyway, we got that straightened out.

Then Devin instructed me to really keep a steady contact, shortening my reins so that my hands weren't in my lap. "She wants the consistency," said Devin. "Don't let that 'bounce' in the contact happen. I don't want you to cram her into a frame, I want you to keep a steady contact and encourage her to stretch forward on her own." It's the same stuff I was talking about in my last post, just having an elastic feel and not fighting her down but letting her realize that it's easiest to just work with me. After a few minutes schooling this with Devin, I was rewarded by a beautiful, steady, workmanlike horse. No bobbing around in the contact, no poking the head up every three strides, no stickiness in the trot followed by wanting to dive on the forehand. Just steadiness, a new swing in her step, and a willingness to stretch forward into my hands when I added a little leg and asked for it.

Very nice. This is another one of those rides where most of the time I'm just going around grinning like an idiot, just thrilled to pieces with how fun my horse is to ride.

McKinna's canter work also impressed Devin (and, quite frankly, me and my mother too!). Again, our work in the lesson kind of paralleled the things I'd done out in the field over the past few days. Devin had me cantering on a circle, schooling the half-halt: don't force her head into a frame, don't brace against her, just half-halt and release, half-halt and release. "Get your point across, then soften."

I rediscovered the weirdness of our half-halt: I close leg/hand/core, then I do this strange thing where I kind of soften my abs - stop holding with them? - but don't relax my whole core, and focus on following the motion without being too loose in my hips. It's very hard to explain, but it's this feeling that I know. When I do this thing after I half halt, THAT is the moment McKinna relaxes, balances, carries herself, and gets this wonderful light-feeling canter.

Don't ask me why it works, or how it works, or even what 'it' is. I just know that I half halt then do the release-thingy and it works. As we school it more and more, she rebalances herself when I kind of tighten my core and then relax it. Very cool.

Then Devin took me through the same process in a light 3-point seat, just to show me that I don't need to be sitting deep to do an effective half-halt. (Good news, since we ride jumping courses without sitting deep!) By the time we finished, all I had to do was lift my shoulders and close my ring finger on each hand to get a rebalancing lift. It was awesome. THEN, we worked on using half-halt and leg to create a longer step that was still lifted in front and balanced. This is relatively new territory for us.

Developing that adjustability of stride without losing balance is going to make us worlds better on course. McKinna already has a remarkable ability to compress herself and add in a stride (or two) to the horse distance if she wants or the situation calls for it. She can get the horse striding if we're really rolling and it's not a long line, but it's still a stretch. Eventually, she should be able to lengthen and compress easily, thus lending more versatility to the ride.

Anyway. The canter work was great, that's my point.

Then we started jumping, and McKinna was great! She was ready go to from the first warmup fence and brought the same great attitude to the fences as she had to the flat work. Devin talked about keeping my upper body tall, remembering to really use my half-halt, and looking into my landing track as we come over the fence.

Our main issue right now is getting the right canter. Like I mentioned, McKinna can usually add a stride in a horse line, but she can also make the horse striding...which means that sometimes we end up right in between, which is never good. McKinna prefers to add up if she has to, and I need to remember that - but she also needs to get more confident about leaving the ground from a slightly long spot instead of hesitating. And I need to be able to think fast to make a decision about how to ride her!

Through perfect distances and less-perfect ones, McKinna was willing and cheerful, willing to save our collective bacon if the spot got ugly and jumping with textbook-perfect form over everything else. We were able to get 6 or 7 in the 6-stride, 2 or 3 in the 2-stride, and 4 or 5 in the 5-stride without too much effort - though the 2 in the 2-stride required a very forward, confident ride! I am really pleased with McKinna's growing ability to open up her stride without ending up running on her forehand. She still gets to spinning her wheels a little bit on landing, but not nearly as bad.

Unfortunately, a little technological malfunction means I don't have video of our last round, which was practically perfect and included a big, solid 3' hogsback XC-type fence that came in from Devin's field. In that last round, I was really able to apply the lessons I learned about revving up McKinna's stride without losing the balance, but still recognizing her desire (and ability) to take the short spot if we come in on a half-stride.

But, I do have video of the round before. You get to see the ugly shuffle-step into the 2-stride line (where we get 3), and the big long spot in the 4-stride line - a result of a reasonable jump in, but me not realizing I needed to make a decision about changing the stride length in order to add or come forward for the 4. Remember how I said she saved our collective bacon? If you look, you can see me petting her neck after that ugly one, going "Thanks for bailing us out!" You then get to see us come all the way around and jump it again, this time with me adding a little leg to get a better distance.

So, overall, I am pleased as punch with the little grey mare. We're really coming along and I think she's glad to be back to jumping after a bit of a break. I'm not worried about the distances, especially since we had a practically foot-perfect last round where I rode on a bit of a larger step the whole way around. I know it's just the next step in our education. I could tell through the whole lesson that McKinna was happy and willing, and that's really all I need!

Such a good girl.

Out Riding in the Field

2010-09-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

I am starting to feel the slow pull of fall, even though the weather's still mostly summer-like. The regular routine of classes and weekends begins to sound appealing, after a summer spent running around like crazy. The idea of constant lessons, schooling shows, and shows makes me want to go crawl in bed and take a nap. It's not that I'm getting tired of riding - not at all! It's just, well, it's been a long summer.

I have a schooling H/J show next Sunday and then a Pony Club eventing rally the following Friday and Saturday. After that, I think we'll be pretty much set for the season. Then we'll follow the usual pattern: light riding and lessons through the fall, kick it up again after winter break, maybe a few schooling shows, and be ready to swing into full work by spring. It works for me.

So, because of my growing desire to slip into autumn, I have had three great low-key rides this week out in the big hay field. McKinna had some pretty intense dressage training rides while I was gone in Taipei (they went quite well!), and it seemed to me that she was asking for some chill-time. The weather has been just gorgeous in the evenings - cool but with a warm breeze, quiet, lovely sunsets. So we headed out for some calm hack-type rides, just wandering on a loose rein, maybe trotting or cantering up the long hill a couple times, then ending with work on a big circle asking for a relaxed but proper working trot. A little canter work, still asking her to just chill out, relax, no big deal.

Last night I used the jumping tack and we did a little more fitness work, trotting up the long hill twice and then cantering twice in each direction. Mixed that in with good doses of easy long-rein walk. One funny little spook-bolt where she actually took off with her head in the air for three or four strides...silly mare. I still have no idea what she spooked at. She settled back down, though. Then we ended the ride with some more work on the big circle. It took a little more finesse last night to get her to settle down into a quiet working trot, but she eventually gave it to me.

I find that lately, when it's time to get the working trot, I end up looking at myself rather than her to figure out what I should change to get the relaxation. Usually if I am less busy with my aids, a little more patient to give her time to come to me, a little steadier and more elastic in my contact rather than working against her, she comes to it much easier.

Bath day today for her. She is ridiculously dirty. Also, is anyone else's horse already shedding summer coat to reveal the longer, fuzzier beginnings of winter fur? This is not okay with me! Eurgh!

Jumping lesson with Devin tomorrow, our first in quite awhile. I'll ask her to take it easy on us. I have a call in to the chiro, because McKinna's been a little grouchy about the saddle and when you adjust the saddle pad lately, so I'm thinking it may be time for another adjustment. She made weird faces at me when I poked around in the area (not literally - I was using the heels of my hands). One rude face as if it hurt, but then she made happy faces and leaned into me when I pressed and massaged one area, so I'm not sure what she was trying to tell me. We'll see.

Hope everyone else is having a lovely end-of-summer.

Jet Lag,

2010-08-28T23:49:00.000-07:00

Whew. After 27 hours of traveling, I got home last night at about 9. The time difference between here and Taipei is 15 hours, so I am all kinds of tired. My mom finally managed to drag me out of bed at about 10, after much grumbling and complaining on my part.

Then she dragged me out to the barn to visit McKinna, saying how it would wake me up and be good for me. Ha! As if walking around out at the barn could really wake me up when it was supposed to be about 4 in the morning.

She was right, of course. I know, it's shocking.

We had a nice visit with McKinna, who quite thoroughly let us know that she'd rather not be ridden today. (She does this thing where she stands in her stall and turns and walks out into her run whenever you approach...) Lucky for her, I didn't feel like riding either! So we just hung out. And I held the target in her run from outside, just to see if she remembered - she looked at me for a second, then walked up and stuck her nose right on it. She got a click and a sugar cube for that one.

I think I'll play around with some clicker work tomorrow. I was working on the bow before I left, but it just wasn't quite connecting with her, so I've decided to try a different exercise to help her realize that it's the click that marks the action, AND that she doesn't get it just by hanging around me. I'm going to set a cone several feet away from me (we'll start targeting it closer), so that when she touches it and I click, she has to turn and walk to me to receive her treat. Then she'll have to turn and walk back to the cone to touch it to trigger another click.

I'm hoping this will help clear up the process for both of us, and then we can move on to more complex work.

For the rest of the week, it's just light riding. I think I'll go for some nice hacks out in the big hay field. Then I head up to Aspen Farms to groom for Devin at the event. It's my last grooming event of the year! I learned an awful lot about care and keeping of event horses while working for Devin, so I'm really glad I did it. Still, by the time school rolls around I think it will be a nice break from my hectic summer!

I've got the eventing rally coming up in a few weeks, which is sort of the last hurrah of our summer. Hopefully I can get some jumping lessons in between now and then! I'll wind things down during fall term (which is, inevitably, what always happens - then I feel guilty for not riding as much), then come back into work during the winter with some serious dressage training as well as start up again with jumping.

Anyway - thought I'd let you guys know that I'm back and posting should return to more frequent levels now!

Fun with Clickers

2010-08-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

Let me explain a large chunk of my personal training philosophy:

'Good enough' is never good enough.

I don't mean this in terms of the work my horse gives me. I mean it in terms of how I train, the methods and equipment I use. Example: I used a loose ring double-jointed bit with a lozenge-shaped center piece, and it was good enough. But she could have been a little quieter in the mouth, so I switched her to a loose ring happy mouth french link. Now she is much happier, quieter in the mouth, and more willing to take contact. (Even now, I wonder if this is Good Enough: I've long contemplated trying a Nathe with her, which is a soft flexible rubber rather than harder plastic). I'm the same way with saddle fit - it could always be better, right? This drives my mother crazy, by the way.

So, clicker training as a training technique is always lurking in the back of my mind. I've used it to great success with my smart, friendly, highly toy-motivated dog whenever I have some spare time. (Also known as: it takes me about 15 minutes to teach a simple new trick when I come up with one, and a few 5-minute sessions had him almost skateboarding). So - why not try it with my smart, friendly, highly food-motivated mare? I knew it would work. Once, when I was tired of her not letting me wash her face, we used treats and within about two minutes she was happily letting us wash her face.

Anyway, it's always something I've wanted to play with in addition to my regular training. I'm not about to renounce tack and only ride bareback with a neck rope or only do groundwork or anything, but I think in the right circumstances clicker training is a useful tool to have in the box, and I'm surprised I don't hear of more people using it to supplement their traditional training. In this case it's perfect for me: I have a willing, cheerful, intelligent, and motivated pony.

So I busted out the old yellow clicker I got years ago with a dog-training book, grabbed a bag full of horse cookies, pulled out a long-handled bucket-scrubbing brush, and headed into the arena.

For those of you new to clicker training, it basically works like this: the clicker is a marker signal to say 'yes, that's right, now you're going to get rewarded.' It's a very specific sound that can mark the instant of a behavior with great accuracy, and the horse learns to associate the click with an impending reward. Lots of people use treats, especially with horses. If your horse is suitably motivated by scratches (works very well with babies) or verbal praise, more power to you.

Usually people start clicker training horses by teaching them to target. You hold out your target - lots of people use a cone, I used the end of the long scrubby brush - and as soon as your horse investigates with his muzzle, you click. Remove the target, give your horse a treat. Stick it out again and click/treat when your horse touches it with his muzzle. And so on and so forth.

The idea with clicker work is that you begin by rewarding the slightest effort in the direction you want. So first you could click/treat the horse even moving his muzzle slightly toward the target. As he begins to understand, you reward only when he gets closer to the target. As you progress, you then only click/treat when he actually touches it. Then you begin to require longer touches before you'll click.

Targeting is useful to start with because it's usually a completely new behavior, so horses won't have any old cues or knowledge. It is easy to introduce and it's pretty clear whether they've 'got it' or not, and will help the horse learn how the clicker works.

McKinna had targeting down in about 10 seconds on Wednesday, but we all knew she was a smart pony. Yesterday, as soon as I held out the target she pricked her ears and marched over from halfway across the arena to stick her nose on it.

Okay, so she knows how to target.

I've started working on a bow with her - not a one-knee bow, but a both-legs straight out in front bow.

Like this, but with the bent foreleg stretched out in front too. Photo: Keegan Jewell, by Larissa Allen.

I'm interested in the stretch value mostly, and to see if I can teach it to her. Call it an intellectual exercise, or a training one - I'm curious to see if I can teach a somewhat complicated behavior, one not related to anything she's learned before.

If I'm successful, I'm curious to see how I can work clicker training under saddle. It's just such an interesting tool to me, one that makes the 'yes/no' distinction clearer to the horse. The clicker means yes. Once the horse understands that, why wouldn't you want to use it under saddle? Maybe it won't work. I don't know, I've never tried it. I know that you don't really hear of competition riders using clicker training much. But if it gives me a clearer way to tell my horse when she's on the right track, and results in a much more enthusiastic effort from her (believe me, after our first day of clicker work she was ready to come in from the pasture and get into that arena!), it sure seems to me that clicker work is a good thing to add. Not to mention that it really installs a fun, "what can we do next?" feeling in both trainer and horse - never a bad thing to have when you're working.

This weekend we're camping, and on Tuesday I'm off to Taiwan for ten days. So I think the majority of the bowing will have to wait until I get back, unfortunately. I'm really, really looking forward to getting to work with McKinna more consistently once I return: our dressage work, as I discussed in my last post, is coming along wonderfully and I'm itching to feel that awesome trot lengthening again; then there's playing around with clicker work; then there's a return to over-fences work, since I'm headed to the Eventing Rally in September.

I am sure my mother will enjoy the chance to ride her horse for a couple weeks in the meantime :-)

I know a lot of people are really against using treats when training horses - I've found it's not an issue with McKinna, especially since targeting teaches her that touching something other than me gets her the treat - but if I had a pushy horse I might be more careful about the use of food rewards. I'm curious to know what you guys think of clicker training. Have you heard of it before? Have you ever tried it? Would you try it?

Good places to start reading if you're interested:
http://www.clickertraining.com/horsetraining (you'll need a login to read - you can create one free or use bugmenot as both username and password)

http://www.clickertraining.com/node/609 - a good article on introducing clicker to under-saddle work, and using a scratch instead of food reward
http://www.equineclickertraining.com/
http://www.angelfire.com/az/clickryder/home.html
http://theclickercenter.com/2004/guide/guide00.php

Books:
http://www.amazon.com/Clicker-Training-Horse-Karen-Pryor/
http://www.amazon.com/Click-That-Teaches-Step-Step/

Dressage Love

2010-08-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I question my identity as an eventer. Because - gasp, horror! - I actually like dressage work.

I know a distaste for dressage isn't universal, but it sure is part of the eventer image. Get through the boring part so you can get to the jumping! Do whatever you can to contain your exploding, hot, fit horse!

Well, yeah. Dressage and I have had our moments. But for the most part, I really actually enjoy it.

I love the process and knowing that it is built so clearly on a logical progression of increasing skill, strength, balance, suppleness, and communication. The better our dressage work gets, the better our jumping work gets. The more dressage work we do, the stronger McKinna becomes - and the stronger McKinna becomes, the better our dressage work gets!

Even though I've been gone a lot and thus riding very sporadically, things have been going quite well. Example: we had a fabulous dressage lesson last night. (Please imagine the word 'fabulous' complete with sparkles and angels singing in the background.)

I asked Leslie if we could begin doing some lateral work. We haven't spent much time on it at all, having been focusing instead on getting three quality gaits with suppleness and push from behind and all that good stuff. I've been feeling lately that she's ready, at the walk and trot at least, to begin working on some new things like leg-yield and shoulders-in. Leslie agreed, so we got to play!

Overall, McKinna was wonderful. From the moment I picked up a trot in warmup, I could tell her trot was just going to kick butt: it was soft, fluid, forward, and she was willing to be as stretchy or as compact as I wanted. Cool beans. The best part is that she is actually beginning to understand connection and contact, especially going to the right. We are still having issues accepting the right rein when it's the outside rein, especially in left-lead canter where she wants to motorcycle and it's virtually impossible to get her to stand up, but we're working on it.

Bonus: the lateral work will strengthen her and teach her more about proper connection anyway, so it's win-win.

We got some nice leg yields at the walk and trot, and some reasonable shoulder-in. Theoretically I know what a shoulder-in is, and how to ask for it, but I haven't really schooled it much, so it was good to get some guidance. McKinna can be quite noodly with her body, but I think as she learns what I want from a shoulder-in that problem will go away. Also, it really helps when I keep my outside leg firmly on. (Please don't ask me how my outside leg, behind the girth, magically keeps her shoulders in. It just does.)

Best part: Leslie had us do some trot lengthenings. One of them felt so good that I'm pretty sure I let out a 'woohoo!' as we went trotting along! McKinna took a steady contact, stayed soft, reached forward and up, and pushed from behind into longer and longer steps. Way cool.

We did some more, and I discovered that if I give her too much slack in the rein while trying to get her to stay soft, it backfires and she wants to pop up into the canter. I need to keep my contact, ask her to soften, and give her a supportive rein contact to lengthen into.

Yay dressage. Leslie is great, she really is. I enjoy my lessons, learn a lot, and McKinna is improving all the time. While I'm away, I'm going to have Leslie do a couple training rides in addition to my mom riding. She says she will continue introducing more First Level stuff - the shoulder-in, leg yield, maybe some shallow counter-canter serpentines. I think it will really help to have Leslie ride that canter, because I'm not sure if she can see from the ground just how much McKinna is avoiding the outside rein when we go to the left. When she rides, she'll be able to feel it and take steps to correct it.

Can't wait to play with the lateral stuff and lengthenings more at home.

That's all for now. Time to go do some laundry...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2010-08-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

Home from Quiz Championships in California - before that, I was teaching our Pony Club's summer camp - before that, Rebecca farm, and before that the annual band leadership camp. The best part? I am literally home for a week, then I leave for a 10-day trip to Taiwan, then I'm home for four days and I go to groom at Aspen.

This is easily the busiest summer I've ever had. Lots of fun, and a good variety, but I am ready for a break. Thankfully September is a little more laid back (and by laid back I mean I'm spending one weekend grooming, one weekend at an eventing rally, and potentially one weekend at an event derby).

Quiz was extremely fun. Western Pony Club Champs were held down at the Woodside Horse Park in California this year, which is a lovely huge horse park with approximately a zillion arenas and a big XC course with nice fences. All the grass is brown which is weird for me, but the footing looks great, nice and sandy. Unfortunately the riding parts of Champs didn't really start till after we left, so we got to watch a few Show Jumping rounds and that was it.

My team ended up with 5th out of 7 in the Senior C division, which is actually a big accomplishment. We were a "short team," which means we only had three competitors - and we were the ONLY short team, as all the rest had four. This is a major handicap because in every round of individual competition (two Classroom phases, Mega Room, Barn, Written Test), the lowest score of the four is dropped. But if you have a short team, you never get a dropped score. So, considering that, the sheer fact that we did better than two teams was impressive.

I learned a lot, as usual. Studied 90% of the B/A Pony Club manual on the drive down there. It's almost 500 pages and has some serious thickness of material, so that was entertaining. Learned the major bones in the axial and appendicular skeleton, some major muscles, all the parts of the digestive system (small intestine has weird names!), lots of Polocrosse and Tetrathlon rules, tack stuff, disease stuff, teaching stuff. Retained a lot of the things I memorized, so that'll come in handy for future studying for my next rating, the HB, which is almost all knowledge-based.

Also learned some things during the test, like: in an ABC fire extinguisher, type A puts out wood/paper fires, type B puts out flammable liquids like gasoline and oil, and type C puts out electrical fires. (D puts out chemical fires and is not included in most fire extinguishers). Why did I learn this? Because I missed a 15-point question asking what the B of an ABC fire extinguisher put out. Ugh.

Car ride was long. Glad we weren't pulling a horse trailer. Rode in a fellow clubber's motorhome, played lots of cards and drawing games and 20 questions, read a lot, tried to sleep but it's difficult at a small table. Got home at 2 or so to a very insistent cat, who also woke me up at 8 with some serious nose-in-face and claws-kneading-on-skin action.

I'm sleepy.

But I am glad we went. Learned lots. Enjoyed my team. Bought a saddle pad and a USPC sweatshirt.

Kicking around ideas: new thoughts for playing with McKinna's training, writing a letter to USPC National with suggestions to improve the quiz rally experience, I am hungry and want some breakfast, need to get kicking on some old blog post ideas that are clamoring for attention, maybe talk about the club's camp a bit.

Pictures soonish. We took some good ones out on XC at Woodside. Big fences out there.

Pandora Update!

2010-07-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

Hi there – mom here again. Manymisadventures is back from Rebecca Farm. She had a wonderful time. She got home at about 3:00 AM Monday morning and has been spending the week trying to catch up on work, riding McKinna and sleep (not necessarily in that order!) I’m sure she’ll find a minute for at least a quick post this weekend – before she heads out to Pony Club Camp and then Quiz Championships (sheesh!)

In the mean time, I wanted to give you a quick update on Panodra. I recently got an e-mail from her new owner. They had completed their first Eventing Derby that day and she was so excited! She e-mailed us right away to tell us about it. They got fourth place with NO jump penalties – that pony loves to jump! This was the first full course they’d done and she was ecstatic. The best part was she let me know where to find the official event pics and they both looked wonderful. Pandora looked bright and happy. She’s in great weight and shiny too. I can’t tell you how good it felt to see those pictures.

I think selling Pandora was even harder for me than it was for Manymisadventures in some ways. I guess I’ve read too many blog posts about how horrible people can be to horses, and witnessed too many poor neglected starved horses at auctions. We’ve sold a horse twice and both times it was very difficult. You do everything you can to make sure they’re going to a good place, but in the end you just have to go with your gut and hope you’re right. We knew from the moment her new owner came to see her that she was a perfect match, but I must say seeing those pics eased any fear I might have had, however small.

We are also going to go visit them – probably sometime in September. It will be so fun to see Pandora!

They really are perfect for each other. I’m so glad it worked out this way!

Misadventures at Rebecca Farm

2010-07-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

Hi readers! This is manymisadventures' mom. She has been so busy the last several weeks that I've agreed to fill you all in and try to entertain you (haha). She's been home a grand total of two days in the last two weeks. After a fun filled fourth of July weekend and then the pony club HB prep she had a couple of days off and then headed to Leadership camp. This is a super fun marching band camp she's been attending since high school. It's a very intense camp and they end up not sleeping much. She came home from that Saturday evening, had Sunday at home to relax, Monday to re-pack and then early Tuesday morning she she left to groom for her eventing trainer at the event at Rebecca Farm in Montana (oh and did I mention the 13 hour drive to get there?).

She's been updating me via text message mostly. The last one said "Just got to watch Buck Davidson and My Boy Bobby ride their dressage test!" For those of you not into eventing - Buck Davidson is one of best in the sport and My Boy Bobby is one of the best horses. In 2009 Buck was the highest placed US rider in the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** (aka "Rolex"), riding Bobby. He's just on of the many top level riders competing in Montana, yes Montana, this weekend! Pretty much everybody who is anybody in eventing is there.

McKinna and I, however, are NOT there. Although, I've had great fun having my pony all to myself for the past couple of weeks (more on that later), I do wish we were there. I love watching Misadventures and McKinna do their thing, especially on the cross country course!

Strap One On!

2010-07-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick reminder, for those of you who have forgotten (or managed to not yet see), that today is National Helmet Awareness Day.

Please, wear a helmet when you ride. It doesn't matter if your horse is well-trained and calm and absolutely bombproof. Accidents HAPPEN, horses stumble, horses get stung by bees, horses slip, people lose their balance. Wearing a helmet can mean the difference between walking away from your injury, and never walking again. It doesn't matter how good you are or how good your horse is - be safe and wear a helmet.

Dover has their helmets 15% off.

Equestrian Collections has a bunch of helmets 20% off.

SmartPak is offering 15% off their helmets.

You can check here to see a nationwide list of stores offering discounts today, too. In Oregon alone (not exactly a mecca of tack stores), there's one store in Corvallis and one store near Portland participating.

Riders4Helmets also have these awesome t-shirts in an e-Bay store, with 100% of the proceeds going to Courtney King-Dye and the Equestrian Aid Foundation.

Seriously, who wouldn't want a kickass shirt like this??

If you didn't hear, Courtney (who is an OLYMPIC level rider) had a bad fall from a young horse who just got his legs tangled while cantering on the flat. He went down with her; she was not wearing a helmet, hit her head very hard, and was in a coma for a long time. She's still on a very long road to recovery.

I've done my part today by harassing my barn owner to buy a helmet for her daughter, and just ask my fellow boarders who tend to ride bareheaded - they get bothered by me all the time! :-) So go out there, replace an old helmet if you've had a fall in it or it's more than four years old, buy a new helmet if you don't wear one, or talk a friend into buying a helmet if she doesn't use one.

Every time, every ride!

Quick Breath...

2010-07-06T22:44:00.000-07:00

Whew. Back from a long weekend (emphasis on LONG), with a moment or two to breathe before I plunge headlong into life again. XC lesson tomorrow, work Thursday, then on Sunday I head off for a week of the leadership camp I go to every year, then a few days back and off to groom for Devin at Rebecca Farm for almost a week...

But who am I kidding, complaining about it? If I didn't have this much to do I'd be bored. Though I wouldn't say no to some boredom at some point this summer. Maybe in September.

I spent all day today at an HB prep, which basically means a group of C-2 Pony Clubbers spent the day learning from a National Examiner about the kinds of things we'll need for our HB rating. We covered diseases, conditioning, anatomy (complete with real horse legs! Actually they were the same ones we used at the ABC retreat...), conformation, teeth, tack, nutrition, and a lot more side subjects on the way. I had a great time because I am a shameless horse nerd, but that on top of a long and tiring weekend trip means that I'm just wiped out now.

I know I owe you an Inavale report. I feel like such a slacker for still not having it up more than a week later! But I'll do my best to get it up soon. For now, it's definitely bedtime.

PS. You know what's amazing? While I was gone, not only did my mother ride McKinna in a lesson, she packed up all my stuff I need for tomorrow AND she washed McKinna's tail. My mom is awesome.

Pictures from the Event!

2010-06-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a few pictures of the weekend. Haven't taken a look at the event photographer's site yet, I'm sure he'll have stuff up soon.

My cute little dressage horse! Look how much more relaxed she is. We're getting there.

I was happy with my ride. Can you tell?

Over the first one in the 8a-b combo. We got a weird spot to this one, but rode out just fine.

Making our way through the field toward the water complex.

Kicking ass over our first trakehner. McKinna is becoming quite the XC rockstar!

Rinsing out her mouth with water before bridling up for stadium. Keeps green slime off your bit and their lips.

Lovely first fence on the stadium course. She looks so relaxed. (She wasn't.)

The fateful fence #4. This was the second of our three stops...apparently she has a thing against pianos.

I'll see what other photos I can round up - these are all from my grandpa's camera. I think my dad got some, and my mom got some video, and then there's the official photographer...and of course the full report is yet to come!

McKinna's getting a well-deserved day off today. I'm not even going out to see her, and I trust she's thoroughly enjoying a day out in the field stuffing her face with grass. Tomorrow we'll head out to say hi and check her over, but I don't think I'll be back in the saddle till Wednesday or Thursday.

Horse Trials!!

2010-06-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

Guys, I had so much fun this weekend. It was awesome.

Here's the quick rundown: we got a very respectable 35.2 in dressage - 6s and 7s mostly, one 5 and one 8 - which left us tied for 8th. A kickass double clear cross country round (one of only two!) bumped us up to 2nd. My 8th-place-partner also went double clear but I got closer to optimum. Then I got eliminated at fence 4 in stadium for three stops. Terrible, right?

I think she needs more miles. We schooled the course at the end of the day and Devin helped me very systematically work McKinna through it to show her what her job is.

I promise I'll explain more thoroughly. I'm disappointed, but I'm not horribly upset. XC was absolutely amazing. It was the best five minutes I've ever spent on a horse. Maybe even the best five minutes ever.

The course was pretty tough for novice. It even had a little trakehner! I was ecstatic because I've wanted to jump a trakehner forever, but it took out a huge chunk of my division. Almost half the riders were eliminated on XC. There was some other really fun stuff, like a big brush fence in the woods that McKinna jumped all the way over. She was just on the whole time. Forward, calm, steady, really in-tune with me. I rode the first three fences hard to make sure she knew her job, and after that she just settled in and took care of business.

We got a perfect spot to nearly every fence, except the last one, a vertical with brush on top. Funny because Devin is ALL about having a nice last fence and jumping from a nice balanced canter. We came on a half-stride, she thought about adding, and then changed her mind....pretty ugly, she whacked her back legs. But we got over fine, she was fine (yay for cannon guards on the hind boots!) and she cooled out very well. I was actually impressed with how easy it seemed for her, especially since the course had lots of hills.

Anyway, I have lots more to share and hopefully my crew got some good pictures, but I thought I'd give the overall update. Even though we ended up eliminated, I'm so proud of my wonderpony. She was a very good girl this weekend and I can't wait to keep working on everything.

Inavale Camp

2010-06-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

Grooming for Devin at Aspen was a fun and exhausting experience. It really didn't help that I came down with a cold over the weekend! She brought two horses, Batey who is her competition horse and Landish who is a client horse. Batey was going Prelim and is moving up to Intermediate at Inavale next weekend, and Landish is going Novice. She had me hack both of them before her rides, which was lots of fun! Except I didn't bring breeches, so I rode in jeans. I used to ride in jeans ALL the time, but somewhere along the line I got used to riding in breeches and now it's extremely uncomfortable to wear jeans.

I learned a lot- how to stud, how to poultice, how to rubber-band braid, and so on. Devin also took me on her course walks and explained the courses, what questions the fences were asking, and how she planned to ride them. Educational for the Novice course, very educational for the Prelim course!

Next weekend is the Inavale event. I'm excited and nervous and (this is terrible) I'm looking forward to resting a little afterward! It's just this big huge goal that I've had for forever, and McKinna and I have made SO much progress in the last six months, and after it we can wind down a little. But only a little. My summer is jam-packed with trips and camps and various horse and non-horse events.

Here's some stuff from the first Inavale camp day. No pictures from AM show jumping...but I do have stuff from XC! I'll stick some videos up as soon as I get the from my mom's laptop.

Day 1 SJ with Kelsey focused on gridwork and position...something I'm quite familiar with, as a Pony Clubber. She didn't have much to say about my position, which I took as a good thing. I actually didn't have the best ride, probably for several reasons but I'm guessing a big chunk was the grid itself. Unfortunately the grid was set for a solid horse stride and designed to get a bit longer through the fences, so - especially in the beginning when they were just ground poles and not fences - McKinna had to really lengthen her stride to get through. It's not something she normally has to do in grids. Now, I'm all for teaching the pony to lengthen her stride, because it's something she needs to learn how to do...but I don't think this was the time or place to do so, nor was that what the grid's intention was. Instead, she just got fired up through the grid and by the time we were finished, she was really blocking me with the base of her neck and just not wanting to listen to half-halts.

Then we did a four-stride line. The first time I did it in a polite five, which I knew I would get, because I know my horse. Kelsey wanted four, so I discussed the difference in McKinna's striding and how I don't mind asking for four, but since I'm low on the half-halt spectrum today I wanted to intersperse it with getting the additional stride. She agreed with me, so I got another nice five, then the next time pushed for a forward but nice four. The rest of the lesson was so-so. I feel like we had some reasonable rides, but she just wasn't as adjustable as I'd prefer.

Later that day, we headed out to XC with Devin. We started out with galloping position and adjustability, followed by course work. Since I ride with Devin regularly, I knew the position/adjustability drill, but it was the first time I've had a chance to test it out with McKinna. What a great way to reinstall my temporarily lost half-halt! After a few big loops of "fold angles to go faster, open angles to balance and slow," we were really in tune and I could easily adjust our speed and canter shape with my body. I exaggerated the differences between 'go' and 'balance' to really get the point across to her. Devin remarked that during our 'forward' phases we were "on course at Training and making the time," which made me laugh, but hey - at least McKinna was understanding the difference! It's an awesome feeling to be able to control her with my body. No head-tossing, no strong rein aids, just a supporting half-halt and my body telling her what to do. Very cool feeling to have a horse who's game but not too strong on XC.

What a good pony.

Coursework was wonderful and confidence-building, and generally consisted of: get your canter/gallop, get your line, then chill out and support as needed while your horse jumps the fence. McKinna was a rock star and jumped everything with a laid-back attitude, though she was still focused about them. Not lazy, but not attacking the fences either. Probably for an upper-level horse you want more attack, but she is just perfect for me where I'm at. She's bold, but I don't have to waste energy controlling her. In fact, it all felt very in-sync.

Over the big table (with shiny acorn shells on top!)

We ended with a few interesting accuracy questions (jump this rolltop at a 45 degree angle; jump directly over the far left quarter of this rolltop) that rode very well for all in my Novice group. In fact, that last question was my favorite picture of all time, which I put up a post or two ago. It's definitely getting made into a new header for the blog. Another rider and I got to hop over one very inviting Training fence, a three-log pile. It felt very easy to ride and McKinna just soared over it with no problems. Man, I love the feeling of extra air-time.

Towards the end, McKinna tended to want to add in a short stride and jump pretty deep rather than take off a little bit long. I think she was getting tired, and her default response is to add. That's great, but she needs to be able to do both, and sometimes it made for a bit of an ugly fence. So at the end I asked for more move-up and leap, and she responded by taking the longer (but still reasonable) spot for me. It's a skill we'll need to work on.

Love this mare.

Overall it was a wonderful first day! The other people in my group were great fun and I think we were a really well-matched group. There was a lady on a Paint mare who'd been a rescue - they were so much fun, just a great big tank of a mare who was game for anything out there on course. Then a very handsome dapple grey Selle Francais gelding, who was very green on XC but quite willing and a quick study about all the terrain and new questions like banks. Rounding out the group was a handsome dark bay Quarter Horse, though I'm pretty sure something jumped the fence somewhere and his dam was sleeping around with the warmblood next door, because he's the least QH-like Quarter Horse I've ever seen. Tall, elegant, very nice horse with a great attitude.

Rest of the report later :-)

Hanging out at the Training log pile we jumped

Inavale Derby Report

2010-06-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

Hi all - I know you're still waiting for the camp report, but you will have to wait just a bit longer. I want to do it justice with good pictures and video, so it takes larger chunks of time to put the whole thing together. I promise you that by the end of the week you will see material about camp.

In the meantime, let me tell you about the derby at Inavale this weekend!

Going into it, I basically had no idea what kind of horse I was going to have in the ring. Sure, we've been to Inavale and ridden there quite a bit, and I took McKinna to the show jumping rally a couple months ago - but really I haven't done any showing with her in several years, and she's a completely different horse now. Would we see fire-breathing monsters in every corner, or at every dressage letter? Would she be quite displeased with the bright stadium jumps out in the XC field like she was last time? So mostly, I was glad to have this chance to get a better idea of what McKinna's going to act like at bigger shows (i.e., the horse trials).

So on Saturday morning, I tacked up my (sparklingly clean, gorgeous, wonderful) horse for dressage and headed out to the warmup area. I got lucky and the dressage ring I rode in was the one out on grass. It was a little soft from the rain, but good practice for the horse trials since they hold dressage on grass there. Plus, there was plenty of room to warm up, which was a very good thing for my warmup policy.

See, at my dressage lesson on Wednesday, Leslie showed me how to longe McKinna in side reins. I'd never tried it before, but it didn't take long to learn how I could use the side reins and longe line to ask her to soften and supple at the base of her neck just like I do from the saddle. So I headed out to the faaaaaaar corner of the great big grass field, let her warm up a bit at all gaits with her nose poked out as usual, and then stuck the side reins on. I had practiced a few times, so she knew the drill.

I'd say the side reins definitely did their job. McKinna was a little 'up' and wanted to go faster than I really preferred, but better too much forward than not enough. I alternated short periods of side reins on, asking her to round and carry herself, then giving her a break by unhooking them for a bit. It's still pretty hard for her to canter with her back up and the base of her neck soft, but she's getting there. I just asked for a little bit at a time.

Then I hopped on and alternated trotting around with walking on a loose rein, and a few canters here and there to check my transitions without getting her too worked up. It seemed to work. At times she wanted to just power through me at warp-speed trot, but I concentrated on keeping my elbows soft and bent and half-halting with my body, and she responded well.

I hung out and chatted with the arena steward for a moment, a very nice lady, and watched the test a few horses before me to make sure I hadn't memorized anything wrong in the test. Then I went up for one last bit of trotting, where McKinna started off wanting to run through my aids but then came back for some lovely, connected, polite work. Then it was my turn to trot around the ring!

I said hello to the judge and trotted several laps. I admit that on my first one I rode close to every letter, saying, "Look - this is A, it's a friendly letter. And this is F, this is also a friendly letter. And this one is B, also very friendly. Here's M, a nice letter...oh look, here are the judges, they're very friendly!"

I did say these things QUIETLY, at least. And besides, I think it worked.

Then the bell rang and we headed in! My first centerline was a little crooked. But, lo and behold, McKinna's head did NOT shoot straight up in the air as soon as we entered the ring! "Breathe," I kept reminding myself (silently) as we headed down the line. Left turn, where McKinna locked on to the little fence and kind of wanted to jump it. It made for a little bit of an abrupt turn and we walked for a step before picking it up. Okay, so I know better for the next centerline. Trot circle, then up the centerline again, this time much better (we got an 8 on that one!), turn right, and though she wanted to lock on to the fence again it wasn't as bad.

Anyway, we went through the rest of our test and all things considered it was pretty darn good. The canter work was a little "hectic," as the judge put it, but for a horse who could barely put together a decent canter a few months ago, I will take it. At least it had three beats! I was surprised that I had a hard time getting her to come back to me in the canter-trot transitions. Normally she's only too happy to come back, but in this case she got so worked up about the canter that she had kind of tuned me out. So both our downward transitions were pretty abrupt and she threw her head up. Good thing to know: next time, really work for the softness in the last quarter of the canter circle so my aids go through instead of stopping at a braced neck.

Overall I was really pleased with dressage. It's the first time the horse I have INSIDE the ring is actually similar to the horse I had OUTSIDE the ring! And when I was able to soften and relax, like on the long centerlines, she responded very well. I think if we can continue improving the canter and her relaxation, we'll do pretty well. We scored a 38, and hey, I'm happy to break into the 30s.

Jumping was awesome, except when it wasn't. Let me explain.

The course was holding up well but pretty soft in places. Water was actually running through the ditches, if that tells you anything.

McKinna was awesome over the first fence, a black-and-white stadium vertical. Last time I did a derby, she was fine with the XC fences but really spooky about the stadium fences - not this time. Bold and confident. Sweet. Then a turn to a big rolltop, which was fine, and another stadium fence snuggled up perpendicular to the Training trakehner, which proved to be spooky for some horses. McKinna ignored the trakehner and jumped the stadium fence just fine. Then through the extreeemely deep water, which we trotted, and canter forward off a big down bank, McKinna's forte. Then another stadium fence and a turn to...the evil fences.

It was a one-stride combination with the first element set in the ditch like a mini-trakehner. Well, that's no issue for us, but remember how I said there was water in the ditch? The ground around the ditch had a lot of that water in it too. The footing right in front of it was pretty chewed up. McKinna stopped at the first element and slid at least a foot with her forelegs. Not good. Turned around, re-presented, got her over it, but then (I'm not entirely sure what happened) she landed already stopping and moved a bit to the side, where I popped off. I landed fine, had to untangle my leg from the fence but didn't knock anything down and didn't hurt myself.

I remounted and they allowed me to finish the course. I skipped the evil combination and the rest of it rode brilliantly - a big house on top of the hill, long downhill to a big quarter round, then over the Novice ditch and one last stadium fence. McKinna was confident and easy to control, which also makes me think the combination problems were because she was just uncomfortable with the footing. The mud was thick enough that even horses with studs all around were sliding and having refusals.

So, overall, I was very happy with my rides. I still have a brave, honest horse, just one that's not quite used to jumping in mud! And it was a great way to scope out what McKinna might be like at the horse trials.

I just finished my last final this morning. Tomorrow morning I'm headed up to Washington with my boyfriend's parents to help him move out for the summer. I'll stay the night, we'll go out to breakfast, and then boyfriend will drop me off in Yelm on the way home, where I'll stay for the rest of the weekend grooming for my trainer Devin at Aspen Horse Trials. I'm really looking forward to it. Then it's headlong into summer!

My Favorite Picture

2010-05-31T22:47:00.000-07:00

Have spent all night writing a report on a serial killer (it's for Gothic Lit - I told you my classes are interesting), but I thought I'd show you guys my absolute favorite picture from the weekend before I head to bed.

I love her relaxed but tidy jump over this fence, and her characteristic wild mane. It's like she's saying "Don't worry, I got this." You can't see from the picture, but to make an "accuracy" question the instructor told me to jump directly over the far left quarter of the fence and we nailed it.

Mmm. So much fun.

Back Home

2010-05-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

As I sit here after returning home from the Inavale camp, sunburnt and exhausted and HUNGRY (don't worry, there's a microwave dinner cooking as I type. Parmesan crusted fish with penne pasta and veggies in tomato sauce. Delicious.), I am still as pleased as punch (just how pleased IS punch, anyway?) with how the weekend went. Can you tell I'm tired? When I'm tired I give in to all those little tangential asides that pop into my head as I write, which you now get to see as an excess of parenthetical digressions. Lucky you. I apologize in advance.

Anyway.

This weekend, for the uninitiated, involves two 1.5 hour lessons each day, one XC and one Stadium, for two days. Plus an optional lesson on the third day, which I always decline because by the third day my horse and I are exhausted. It's held at Inavale (they've recently redone their site and it looks lovely!), where the scenery is gorgeous and the people are great. That nice fellow in the picture on the main page - the man, not the baby! - is Luigi, one of the owners of the property and organizers of the recognized event. With his tractor, he helped us get our truck and trailer un-stuck from a squishy part of the parking pasture today. (It's okay, other people got stuck too. Also, this fish is really good. How is it that frozen dinners taste so good?)

Right, so, Inavale. I love it there and it's wonderful. The horses get to stay in open-air corrals or nice temporary stalls, whichever you prefer, and of course we prefer the open-air corral because our horses really like to be out. McKinna gets upset when her vision is really restricted by a fully closed-in stall. Open corral? Totally her cup of tea. We even scored one of the best ones, right underneath a giant tree which protects from sun AND rain.

I am much too tired to try to write up a whole report tonight. It also wouldn't make sense, because all of the (copious amounts of) pictures and video are still on the camera, and what's an eventing camp report without pictures and video? A lame one, that's what it is.

So instead, here's a miscellaneous collection of thoughts to tide you over. Also I apologize for the haphazard nature of this post. Did I mention that I'm tired?

- McKinna rocks. Hardcore. She's amazing. I think she is well on her way to "XC Machine" status, if she's not there already. Everyone thinks she is adorable. She tries her heart out for me, she's as honest as the day is long (here we go with the idioms again), she's fiery but not uncontrollable, she's intelligent and patient with me when I do things like get a horrible half-stride three times in a row to a big Swedish oxer, and in general she's wonderful.

- When getting horrible half distances to a 3' Swedish oxer three times in a row on the second day of intense work when your horse is tired and doesn't have quite enough energy to give 110% like she usually does, consider changing your line. Because, you know, that fixes it and you will get a perfect distance.

- White XC boots are probably not a good idea. I mean, it's fine. But really. Definitely a lack of long-term planning in that one.

- I think I'm too hard on myself sometimes. I forget that McKinna and I have only been in serious schooling since January. I need to remember that even though we've improved quickly we will sometimes hit speed bumps, and that it's okay. It's not that I had a total meltdown or anything, I just get discouraged sometimes over little things. And I feel guilty when I mess up, like when getting those horrible half distances to a 3' oxer etc.

- Almost comparable to the pleasure of a kickass XC ride is the pleasure of a really hot shower after a long weekend of horse camping. Ask me how I know.

- Speaking of horse camping, we know how to do it. Burgers on the grill for lunch, plenty of Kettle chips and cheesy popcorn (so. good.), pork chops and grilled vegetables for dinner, banana boats for dessert....mm. The best part is sharing with fellow campers, because it's fun to get everyone together and hang out.

- Banana boats: slice open the top of a banana peel. Pull the peel out to the sides. Shove in chocolate chips and mini marshmallows. Wrap in foil and stick on grill until all melty and gooey and delicious.

- The look on McKinna's face when you go to tack her up for the fourth time in two days is PRICELESS. "You? AGAIN?"

- My trainer is awesome. Devin was one of the instructors at camp, I had great rides with her as always, and everyone I talked to really liked her.

- Sunscreen good. Sunburns bad.

- I think we have more clothing for McKinna than any other horse people I've met. This weekend alone we rotated through a blanket with neck cover, a sheet, and a fly sheet with neck cover. We also brought with us but did not use a second sheet and a cooler or two. These are among the perils of owning a grey horse, only offset slightly by the fact that when she's sparkling white everyone oohs and aahs over her.

- Have I mentioned that McKinna is a rock star? Especially on cross-country?

Okay, that's enough from me for the night. I promise tomorrow or the next day you'll get posts stuffed full of pictures, video, and silly commentary from me. I'm going to bed.

Whew.

2010-05-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

Today I turned in THREE final papers for a combined total of 35 pages. If you're curious, I wrote: a short story in the Gothic terror style of Anne Radcliffe (plus critical preface), an original-idea scientific paper that proposed a line of research to determine the proximate physiological cause(s) of post-herd-takeover abortion in feral mares, and a primary-source based history paper on idolatry and saints in seventeenth-century New Spain.

So, you can see why I haven't posted for the last week or so.

I will do my very best to get you a quick post before I head off tomorrow, because this weekend is the camp at Inavale! This is probably my favorite horse thing of the year. Well, I haven't gone to the HT yet, but for now, the camp is my favorite. Unfortunately it has been raining all week - it is supposed to be nice this weekend, but fingers crossed for good footing and good weather.

Anyway. I'm off to take a nap, because I did not do very much sleeping last night.

Another Thought

2010-05-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

As I was washing McKinna's legs before my jumping lesson on Monday, I noticed she was in heat. I think this may have something to do with her extraordinarily tense behavior on Saturday. The wonderpony has a history of being really, really cranky/tense/uncooperative for one ride and then being in heat a day or two later. Maybe she gets some sort of cramps or something related to the onset of estrus. I should have thought of that...it's always a retrospective thing when this happens. I think that last summer, as the season went on, she wasn't as bad. Maybe I can just keep a hot pad with me, and if I ever get on and she's really tense, hop off and toss the hot pad on her back to help her relax, since it seems to be her back muscles that are tight? Makes sense...I get kinda cranky when I have cramps too.

Anyway, I'm still looking at everything else. I just bought an Albion Legend jumping saddle off of eBay (what?? I'm a tack junkie, I swear) and will try that on her when it arrives. Even though it isn't a high-end saddle, it's a bit of a step up from the Thornhill so if she likes it I will be quite happy. If she doesn't, oh well, back on eBay it goes. Next on the list to try is a Happy Mouth, which I mentioned in the last post.

The jumping lesson on Monday was (of course) lovely. Our flatwork is still improving by proverbial leaps and bounds. Devin still had me getting her to work by pushing her into a steady outside rein, then closing rein and leg when she tries to hollow and softening and stretching once she complies. I have to say, it does work - the more I can catch her hollowing attempts as they happen, the less frequently she tries to hollow in the first place. In the end I had a quiet, pretty supple, forward horse with a nice positive connection in the outside rein. Looking at the video, she was still more compact in the neck than I would like, though. This should go away as she keeps learning to reach for the bit.

Our canter work was absolutely delicious. We are approaching the ability to quietly, and in balance, transition upward. And the gait itself is SO much better. I was going around my canter circles grinning like an idiot because she was on a soft contact and I could half-halt with my abs. This is groundbreaking territory here, people!

The jumping was also quite nice. My position gets work as always - it's hard because, as Devin has explained, McKinna is short and I have a fairly long torso for my height. But the pony was good. Lots of work on quietly jumping, which we really got towards the end. We are also developing the first glimmerings of true adjustability! Two lines, both set for a 12' stride (McKinna usually gets about a 10 - 11' stride), were set for three and one strides. We aimed for a quiet four in the three, which we got, and a longer step to make the one-stride, which we also got. And she is learning to sit up and balance herself when I sit up and touch my seat down. Awesome feeling.

We ended by jumping the barrel on its side (2' high, 3' across the face). As per usual, the first time trotting in was a bit of a disaster, even with a guiding rail on one side. I feel bad as I know Devin uses this as an accuracy question and after last time (when McKinna clearly didn't understand the question) I decided I would school barrels at home until McKinna understood. But, I didn't. Sigh. Second time I sat down and she jumped, third time (still trotting) she started to rush so I tried to slow her down but I pulled and ruined it so we got another stop. After that we got our act together and I think she started to understand the question, because we cantered it and she didn't try to skitter sideways. She focused on it and jumped it dead center like a real fence - it was pretty nice, actually!

So I do feel bad about that, just because it is my fault for not schooling that question at home even though I knew it would come up again in a lesson. At least she understood after a few tries, which is better than the first time - that time, she would go over if I rode her perfectly but I still don't think she fully understood. But it's also silly that I feel so guilty, because it is a LESSON and that is where we teach things to our horses! I will be sure to practice barrels at home, though. I want to have no problems next time.

Also, we are working on little video to show you some video of McKinna when she's tense and McKinna when she's quiet and relaxed. I will put it up soon. Just watching the clips has given me some ideas, mostly about my position. I love my mother for all the videoing she does while I ride her horse :-) I have footage of almost every lesson, which is an awesome tool.

Softness, Part II

2010-05-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

After posting about softness and reading all your wonderful comments (thank you - what a lot of good information was in there!), I went to a dressage lesson on Wednesday where I had the best lesson ever. I kid you not. It was glorious. Then, yesterday, I rode in a jumping clinic where she was quite horribly tense for pretty much the entire ride. So.

In the dressage lesson, I could tell from the moment I picked her up to start riding that we were going to be good. McKinna didn't pop her head up as soon as I picked up the reins (this comes in later). She was willing to work with me as I warmed up at the trot and did some ring figures. Then down to the big circle with Leslie, which is were we do most of our work - on a maybe 25m circle. Like I said, it was glorious. Leslie had me keep my hands where they should be, with a slightly longer rein, and continually ask McKinna to come down/out to me, not me shortening to meet her. It worked wonderfully.

We had a soft and swinging back, longer and slower steps, and a horse willing to take contact while lifting and carrying herself, moving in a light bend from my inside leg. Even at the canter, I was able to get softness and stretch and a quiet, reasonably-paced gait.

Very exciting.

Basically everything I was doing was this cycle: ask her to soften, ask her to lift that inside ribcage over, half-halt with the outside, a little more forward, ask her to soften and reach forward...

This was I think the best dressage ride I've ever had on McKinna.

Then we come to yesterday, which was a Standards and Ratings clinic for Pony Club. I had high hopes, because she hung out in her stall all day munching on hay as quiet as can be, was nice and relaxed while I tacked her up, and was easygoing while I walked around on a long rein waiting for the last group to finish up.

But seriously. As soon as I picked up my reins, up pops the head and away we go. She was tense. She was rushing or sticky by turns. She was counterflexing. For a bit, when I tried what Leslie was having me do - that is, keep my hands where they should be and ask her to reach out to me - it seemed to help, but I couldn't get any consistency with lengthened reins as she'd usually just keep her head up and start rushing. Every time I tried to pick up a light contact, she hollowed out. Eventually I was able to get some semblance of a working trot, but she was not feeling cooperative.

Then we headed through gridwork (this was a very short ride, as it was more of a demo for the clinician to explain to auditors what the standards are). She was fine, if still tense. Trot poles to X to vertical, two strides to the oxer. The oxer was set on a long stride for us, and I was pleased with how well McKinna opened up her stride to jump it, but then it took me the whole arena to get her to come back. I just didn't have soft half halts - they weren't going through. No matter how I tried to do them, with body, with hands, carrying my hands, hands lower, with elbows or shoulders or mostly the outside rein or whatever - I mostly met up against a wall.

Then I rode a short course. I trotted a circle before going through the grid, asking her to stretch down, which she sort of did but not really, and it did make for a more relaxed ride through the grid. Still no half-halt when I needed to trot to change my lead. The other fences rode decently, not really rushed but definitely not calm and relaxed. After I landed from the last fence, I trotted a circle and really gave her the reins. She did stretch down for most of the circle, though she wasn't thrilled about it. I discussed my performance with the audience, then went away to trot some figures down at the end of the arena to get her to calm down.

Worked on trot figure-8s, resisting the urge to shorten my reins, just continually asking her to soften and come to me. (I have gotten better at staying soft and relaxed in my body when she tightens up. Thank you trainers. It did sort of work, and I think if I'd been super tense it would have made things worse.) I got a little response out of her, though not much. I asked her to do one canter and got my half-halt going through a little more, then did the course again.

It went better. The gridwork was pretty soft and quiet, I was able to bring her back to me quietly in order to change leads, and the rest of the course rode pretty well.

So there is a lot to think about. One is the almost reflexive way she throws her head up when I touch the reins to shorten them. She just had her teeth floated in the fall; our vet checked her only a few weeks ago and said she was looking just fine. Still, maybe I will take a look in there and see if I can find anything going wrong. Perhaps it is the bit? I am going to buy a french-link loose-ring Happy Mouth from the local tack store as soon as it is in stock. Perhaps she will prefer the lighter, softer bit. I also have a heavy eggbutt french link, heavier than the lozenge-style loose ring she's in right now, so perhaps she would prefer a heavier, more solid bit.

Maybe it's saddle fit. This one is nagging at me. Both my saddles appear to fit well to my not-highly-trained but still fairly picky eye. I don't know if it's one or the other or both that's bothering her - last week, my jumping lesson was great and my dressage lesson was tense. This week, my dressage lesson was great and my jumping lesson was tense. I am in the process of scoping out saddle fitters in the region who are NOT affiliated with a particular brand, and seeing how much this will cost. Her back does not appear to be sore to palpation, but she does sometimes make rude faces when putting the saddle pad on or adjusting a blanket in the wither area. I think this may have something to do with it...but then why would I get such lovely work sometimes?

So I guess this is the plan. Check out saddle fit ASAP, try out different bits to see if there's a difference, and just keep taking consistent lessons to see if it is merely a resistance-to-work thing.

I admit I'm feeling a bit discouraged after yesterday's ride. She can be so damn good when she's working right, but it seems like every time I take her somewhere she just can't get past her own tension. And you can't force relaxation, obviously. But really? This was a clinic in the arena we take lessons in weekly. The fences were easy. The work wasn't hard. It seems like something is bothering her, but what, and why so inconsistently? And why does firmly pushing her into softness work one day, and quietly asking her to come to softness work the next time, and neither works the time after that?

Grumble, mutter, etc. Despite all my frustration, I am still happy with McKinna. She's come a long way in just four months of lessons, and she's a good horse. We will work through this stuff, it's just another rough patch - like the canter, which I thought would never be fixed, which is now pretty reliably three-beat and not at the speed of Mach 5. We'll get down to the bottom of whatever is causing all this resistance, whether it's physical or mental. I'm thinking of, just for the heck of it, riding her with just a neck rope for a little while, doing some flatwork out in the field or something. It would be just like her to calm down with less aids. But then, she never gets all tense at home, so I don't know how much good it would do.

Anyway. One way or another, we'll figure out the softness thing until we can be pretty consistently relaxed and focused. Eventually.

Softness

2010-05-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

This is a concept I chew over constantly, like a dog with a particularly tasty bone. It's a tough issue with any horse, but with McKinna especially.

Pandora was pretty straightforward - she really didn't evade intentionally, only out of lack of strength or understanding. (This is one thing, by the way, that her new owner loves. She actually called her 'push-button.') So, softness was easy: you ride correctly, continually asking her to come to you and soften and carry herself. When she does, you soften back and ride on happily with your steady contact. She maintains correct work as long as she can, then loses it and you come back to asking.

With McKinna, it's a little different. She is a compact little coiled spring of a horse, but she's a vroooooOOOM kind of sports car next to Pandora's nice, steady Honda Civic. Lots of power, but a lot more sensitive and takes a much more tactful ride. Now add a mind of her own to that feather-light steering and horsepower, and you get the picture...

As I've mentioned before, with McKinna it's a delicate balance between bullying and being gentle. If you are always following and softening with her, you won't get consistent work - she bobs around the contact, drops her outside shoulder, pops her head up every few strides, and takes faster instead of longer steps. You need some firmness to get her to take a connection and quit trying to evade. But if you bully too much, she coils that spring up super-tight, hollows out, and tucks her nose to get away from you.

The problem is, after you're firm and she gives to a nice elastic connection, you have to soften. When she pops above the bit, Devin has me anchor my outside rein and add calf to push her forward...but when she gives, I have to give too, without relinquishing connection. But all this can happen in just seconds. McKinna relaxes into the outside rein and I relax my elbows, but a half second later she's thinking about putting her head straight up and I have to correct it, as well as keep that outside shoulder from drifting out.

I struggle with the idea because I don't like being too firm with McKinna. This is a complex issue for me, stemming from a lot of different directions. Not least of these is that I just don't like the idea of forcing something with the bit. What I don't know about dressage could fill a lot of libraries, but I know that ideally you shouldn't be forcing anything, especially with your hands. McKinna also tends to feel very irritated and trapped when you get overbearing with your aids, which sends everything in a downward spiral. So I am reluctant to do this "fixing" of the outside rein, where I strongly resist her when she inverts. What if I'm forcing her into a frame? What if I'm building bad habits? What if she doesn't like the bit, and that's why she's resistant?

And the first few minutes Devin had me doing this, it felt like I had to anchor my hand every three seconds to keep her from sticking her head and neck up high. But I kept going, because I tend to believe that if you're riding with a trainer who knows you and as long as she isn't asking you to do anything unsafe, you should just shut up and do what she says. You're paying your trainers because they know more than you, right? Right.

So I shut up and I did what she said. After a few minutes, McKinna was steady in my outside rein, I only had to close my outside hand firmly a few times around the ring to keep her from popping up, and after establishing that firmness I was able to ride with very quiet, allowing hands. Apparently following Devin's instructions was the correct thing to do, though I am still wondering about the bit and as soon as the local tack shop gets it in stock I'm trying a Happy Mouth french link.

We are also approaching Real Canter territory faster and faster. I don't canter much at home at this point, because the arena's slightly smaller than a 20m circle and McKinna isn't quite ready to canter that small of a circle right off the bat - she gets anxious and rushes. But in lessons, we are starting to get a discernible 3-beat, rhythmic gait. I know it sounds silly, but this is so exciting. We are breaking through a really important issue here! I can get a soft connection and I can (sort of) influence her with a half-halt to get her to shift her weight back and slow down. The half-halt isn't totally there yet. Both of us are a little tentative about the newfound cantering ability, I think! She's less responsive than I would like, but she is learning to respond which is the important part.

I loved the jumping we did in the lesson last night. The fences set up were a very simple, low course that Devin moved up to about 2'3, maybe 2'6 at the absolute most. So we focused on being quiet, soft, and calm - all good things for McKinna to be while jumping! First we trotted a small cross-rail on a dead straight line and came to a quiet halt a few strides away, in order to establish the "this is no big deal" attitude. We finished with three fences on a large circle, focusing three strides ahead (so thinking about landing 'in your track,' not about the fence) and not changing anything about position since they were such low fences. It worked wonders, especially when I really thought about landing in my track. McKinna was soft, quiet, and she figured out the distances on her own while I just cruised along up there. Very cool. It was a nice confirmation that we're on the right track, no pun intended.

Anyone else run into these training issues? I think I tend to err on the side of being too soft and giving with my body and hands. Leslie is always telling me that I need to ride correctly with my body, not changing to follow the horse. They both always tell me not to give away the connection as soon as I get it.

Oh well - it is about the journey, after all, not the destination. This stuff is the fun part!

Rating Report

2010-05-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

Here's my full report from last weekend's rating. Pictures, ahoy! I had a good time, though it was stressful and a lot of hard work. I think I'm good on the rating game for awhile, now. On the plus side, with only one horse to focus on (!!) everything gets easier.

The day started off with a formal inspection, where you come tacked up with the appropriate wraps on your horse's legs (at C-2, you have to do a stable wrap and a shipping wrap). This is always the most stressful part of the day for me. Getting and keeping a white horse clean is difficult, plus you're worrying about any little speck of dust that may have settled on your tack since the night before, and - in my case - your horse is dancing around, her legs are slippery because they're so clean, and your wraps just will. not. go. right.

I had to redo both my wraps after lunch. The horse and I were much more calm, and after one retry on the stable and two on the shipping I passed. Obviously something to practice for the next rating! I need to keep my shipping wrap tighter down by the heels. Also, the examiner suggested I add quite a bit more padding to my shipping wrap as it wasn't thick enough.

After formals came flatwork, which was my next most stressful section. McKinna settled a little once we got moving, but she was still fairly tense. It's a delicate juggling game in ratings, because Pony Club wants you to demonstrate that you can have a perfect basic balanced position, i.e., straight vertical line from shoulder to hip, straight line elbow to bit, etc...but in order to get McKinna to soften and stretch down, I often need to ride with my hands wide and low. I compromised by doing what I needed to do in my 15-minute self-guided warmup, but did my best to bring them closer together and where they're technically supposed to be for the rest of my ride.

The flatwork went pretty well, and I was happy with McKinna and my position. The examiners liked my position, noted that I rode tactfully on a tense horse (a consistent message!), and told me I need to remember to keep my hands a little closer together (also a consistent message). I need to work for a longer, freer stride with a stronger inside leg to outside rein connection. This makes sense, as McKinna was pretty light in my hands. They also really liked my hand gallop to canter transition, and said I should practice smoother transitions from posting to sitting trot when riding without stirrups as she tends to hollow out when I do that.

Then we had my favorite part, the oral examinations. I studied well and knew my stuff, so it was pretty low-stress for me. In the comments, they did suggest that I add more nutrition information to my conditioning chart in my record book. I left it pretty simple since McKinna is an easy keeper and her grain doesn't change much when she's getting fit for Novice, but I think they want to see an awareness of the increases in energy requirements that come with conditioning.

After lunch and rebandaging came the fun part, jumping and XC! McKinna was foot-perfect through the grid and it felt nice, though I did feel myself propping onto my toes a bit over the 3' oxer. This is definitely something to work on with Devin in lessons.

So easy that she just overjumps instead of bothering to pick her legs up.

The course they assigned us was pretty difficult: open with an offset line, around to a short diagonal four-stride, around a short corner to a very tight bending with an almost 90 degree angle, then all the way around to a longish one-stride. It was tough to ride and our first round just didn't have the rhythm we needed, so we got in awkwardly to a lot of the fences. I discussed the issues with the examiners and re-rode the course, making sure to maintain a more powerful canter and counting to myself to keep a steady rhythm.

Round 1: McKinna is displeased with my poor riding on the tight bending line.

Round 2: McKinna appreciates that her rider figured out how to steer.

Examiner's comments: good position, hands a bit too wide again, and also that my knee/ankles looked stiff in the beginning (same thing I noticed when stiffening over the oxer) so I should make sure to address that in my own warmup.

Then out to XC, which we haven't done since July (and before that hadn't done for a year). I know, bad me. I just didn't have time to get out and school. Lucky for me, my horse is awesome, and she was excellent about the whole thing. First, we cantered in a "group:"

Wheee!

Then, we did our course:

Over the little fence in the woods. As an aside, I'm seriously leaning in this picture. Bad me.

We did only five fences but they were on a long, gallopy track, and McKinna was great. She got a little anxious while galloping, and on one uphill every time I tried to soften my reins and cruise she surged forward and was breathing heavily. Thankfully it was a long hill, so I had time to stroke her neck and talk to her and get her calmed down before we made the turn to our last two fences. She settled, we finished off the course, and she came right back to a calm walk. She jumped all the fences just fine. Hesitated a bit at one question that went from light into dark and had a natural fence in a clump of trees, but she went and I don't blame her for being a bit hesitant. After we finished she was barely blowing and had only sweated a little bit.

Cooling out after the course

After that we wrapped up with some longeing (she was a bit nervous so less push-button than usual, but no big deal), trailer loading, and TPR checking. When longeing I need to be careful to keep the whip pointed straight at her hocks instead of letting it trail out behind.

Then we were done and got to head home!

I learned some useful things about my riding, and now I know that before I attempt my next rating I need to be able to establish a soft, relaxed, connected ride with McKinna with my hands closer together. I also really need to figure out my form over fences. We've made some progress, but I tend to get too stiff even when all my body parts are in the right place, and this knee-pinching leading to the toe-propping or whatever it is has got to go. So, lots of work to do, but I'm not in a rush and this summer we should be getting plenty of good instruction.

I will put some videos up soon, too.

Mom got in a couple nice rides on McKinna this weekend while I was out of town. Poor pony doesn't know what she's in for, being the only horse again ;-)

It's Official!

2010-05-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

I didn't want to post anything until everything was official-- but now it is, so I can tell you!

Pandora sold this weekend, and as I type this she is on her trailer-ride up to her new home in Washington. An extremely nice lady came down to look at her on Sunday and absolutely loved her. They had a great test ride, and she decided right there that it was a done deal!

I am a bit sad, but Pandora is going to fit her new owner perfectly. She has her own beautiful place where she keeps her horses, and Pandora will get to live out in a big paddock with a run-in shed. Pandora's neighbor will be an old Appy gelding who looks very handsome, in the big beefy Appaloosa sort of way. Her new owner has ridden dressage and such for years, she's learning to event, and she loves to go on trail rides over fences and at the beach. After she told me she was just dying for a horse with lots of "go" but who still had a good brain and who she just wants to have a lot of fun with, I was pretty sure they would work out great!

So today she went off with both saddles, a couple bales of hay, and a small collection of blankets. Her new owner can't wait to start riding and I am very happy for both of them.

Of course it is bittersweet for me. I've had Pandora for just less than two years, and in that time I have been able to watch her grow up so much. She has gained a ton of confidence, built up all this gorgeous muscling, and learned a lot under saddle. On Sunday evening after we were winding down, I went for one last ride: bareback in a halter, of course. We hacked down the road and back up, nice and quiet, basking in the evening sun. Then I nudged her over into the grass beside the road, went for a gorgeous smooth canter up the hill, and called it good.

Look at those perked ears and that awesome canter.

She is the sweetest horse I've ever met, and probably has the best attitude of any horse I've ever met too. I will definitely miss that, and her sweet face poking out through the stall window every day.

But at the same time, I have a great sense of accomplishment about this. I feel like I can dust my hands off and say, "My work here is done." I took a sweet but slightly unsure young mare (she was only 6!), one with a LOT of physical tension, and turned her into a soft, supple, confident partner. I took her out schooling XC this year and had a beautifully responsive ride and a horse who cheerfully handled every single fence. In dressage lessons, I actually heard Leslie say that we were Working Correctly. Pandora is now on the road to a long, happy life enjoying her work with someone who adores her for her sensibility and her athleticism.

And I need this time. Keeping up two horses for the last four full months has been very tiring - on me AND my checkbook! - and I am ready for a break. Further, the horse trials at Inavale are in just two short months and I will really need to use this time to prepare myself and McKinna. This summer I'll be doing some working-student type work for Devin, my eventing trainer, and I think I'll be really glad I only have one horse. And, as I keep reminding myself, there are SO MANY HORSES OUT THERE. So I try not to get too hung up on "giving up" something truly special-- because I know she is, but I also know that she will be very special to her new owner now and there are always more special ones out there waiting.

It's all been a bit of a blur these past few days, magnified by a particularly busy week at school. I'm sure I will have more to say on this once the dust settles a little, but suffice to say that I am so pleased with everything Pandora and I have accomplished together and I can't wait to see the wonderful time her new owner has with her.

Rating report up in a few days. Off to write another paper...

Pass!

2010-05-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

I passed the rating :) I am now officially a C-2! It was a long day, but fun. Lots of good feedback, too - I will post pictures, videos, and the report soon. But for now, here's a happy me and McKinna after XC.

Lesson Video

2010-04-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys, I've been hideously busy trying to get ready for my rating (tomorrow!!) and keep up with my midterms. There are some post ideas kicking around in my head, but I just haven't had time to write them down. I really do feel bad when I don't post often.

Everything is going pretty well. I've had two fantastic lessons on McKinna this week, one jumping and one dressage, and I feel like we're back on the right track. For awhile there I was ready to despair-- I think the main culprit was not going to dressage lessons regularly, because as soon as we went back everything seemed to click again.

Anyway.

To tide you over until I get just a bit more free time, here's a video from our jumping lesson on Monday. I can see now watching the video that it looks like we're positively crawling along. Trying hard to find the balance, I guess! I think I was overcompensating for our trip before the one shown on the video, which was much too forward/strung-out and included her rushing through my hands during a simple change. I had her much more soft and listening this time, which is good - this was my last round, and I think if I did another I would have asked for more forward.

We got in underneath the second vertical (which was 3'3!!) but got out okay and the other two rode fine. Please note that I intentionally drifted out to avoid jumping the oxer the second time! I got such a nice fence...and wanted to land straight instead of turning away...but then I didn't want to jump the oxer...so I was indecisive and just kind of slooooowly drifted out of the line. McKinna is not much of the run-out type so I don't think I gave her any horrible habits.

I was very glad to have such a positive jumping lesson. This makes two in a row. I think we are back on track with McKinna - not to mention that I *finally* discovered how to actually half-halt McKinna at the canter. I have to add a LOT of calf, mostly to convince her that she can keep going even though my body's asking her to slow down and shift her weight back. I was able to get a few steps, here and there, of a really good canter without her getting all anxious and wound up (the important part). After this realization, our upwards canter transitions are magically better. Soft, forward, she powers up into them. Awesome. We are nowhere near there yet, but we're definitely on the right track.

See you guys soon, hopefully with news of a successful rating!

Further Rally Reports, etc

2010-04-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

First off: just so you know, I was quite pleased with Pandora at the rally. Her rider only got the chance to hop on her ONCE before the rally! They had a great schooling session at our barn, hopped over many fences, and in general looked really good. In the competition ring things weren't quite as perfect - rider nerves feed into Pandora nerves which feed into rider nerves! - but then again, neither were McKinna and me, so there you have it. Still, by the final round they were pretty in-tune with each other and had some very positive rides.

I'm very proud of both of them :) Catch-riding a horse is no easy thing, especially when it is a completely different type and size than you're used to. To adjust to a completely different feel, and be able to give a horse a completely different ride than the one you're used to, takes some skill and confidence. For Pandora's part - well, a year and a half ago she got anxious and tense when an unfamiliar rider even sat on her to walk and trot around, and last week she calmly and happily jumped with an unfamiliar rider. I am thrilled.

In other 'Pandora really rocks' news, I had the BEST XC SCHOOL EVER on her the Wednesday before the rally. It was the first XC ride of the season and we went to Make Your Mark Stables. After a couple weeks of torrential rain and cold weather, it was beautiful and sunny and warm out there.

The footing out there is AWESOME. Seriously. It rained all the way up through Tuesday, and there was just one little area where the footing was a LITTLE squishy. Impressive. I would also like to add that even when we cruised through the mushy area, and even when we took a fence for the first time and discovered that the landing area was a bit soft, Pandora kept herself completely together and didn't care. This is Pandora! The mare who hates even walking through mud in a pasture! I was pleasantly surprised .

Anyway, here's the rundown: Pandora was a rock star. We even got used as an example of good galloping form, going forward and collecting back up. I had such a great time and couldn't help feeling like my girl is all grown up! Part of it is the new bit that I talked about here, which gives me just a tad more weight to my opinions; I think the biggest part is all the hard work we've done over the last few months to build strength and enable her to carry herself properly. She finds it much easier now to stay off the forehand, so her gallop is more balanced and it's easier for her to jump from a forward canter.

We started off on a big, loose warm up circle. Devin (my regular jumping trainer, who gave the clinic) told us that when she starts off warming up for XC, it's not much different than her warmup for dressage: she still wants the horse balanced, moving properly back to front, responsive to the leg and seat, and so on. Only after she establishes nice flatwork will she go to open up the stride and gallop a bit. She said this really helps show the horse that just because you're out in a big field doesn't mean you get to ignore the aids and just go for a big gallop.

Then we worked on galloping, which felt wonderful (product of our newfound balance!) and was super fun. Pandora has learned to cruise. I just hang out in my two-point, knuckles on her crest. If I want to go faster, I close my angles, which means I fold closer in my hips and knees. If I want to slow down, I just sit up more. Very cool feeling.

When heading for fences, Devin had us hang out with hands still gently set, but add leg to drive the horse's butt underneath them. I am still learning that even on a forward horse, you STILL have to add leg. I know this logically, but it's hard when most of the time I have all the forward I could ever want!

Overall she was just great. We had one catastrophe going through a one-to-one triple combination of SJ fences out there in the field - I got confused about the distances, Pandora got wiggly, and we oozed over the last fence at the last minute to take it out. I had to really ride her forward to get her through it again because she was quite apprehensive after that! But, even though the screwup was totally my fault, she went through it for me and was a very good girl.

All the XC fences rode wonderfully. She cantered over a ditch beautifully, jumped a skinny log, and was just generally awesome. The only times she didn't go well were when I didn't ride well. You can't ask for better than that! I ride right, she goes right.

It was so much fun.

Speaking of fun, I don't think I mentioned the competition we had at the rally....while we were waiting for scores to be posted, the Chief Horse Management Judge had people bring out quiet/reliable horses of all sizes, from teeny pony to a big 18h guy who I'm pretty sure was a Percheron/TB cross. Then we had a vault-onto-the-horse-bareback competition!

I had issues at first because I was trying to run, jump, land on my belly, and squirm up like everyone else. I couldn't even get on the 13h horse! Then the Chief showed us how to do it (the way I usually had done it in the past, actually!): stand at horse's left shoulder facing the haunches, reach up to grab mane, then just kick up and over with your right leg and get on.

So after that, every try was successful for me. I worked my way from the 13h pony all the way to the 18h guy, where my arms were almost completely extended above me just to hold onto his mane. What a fun thing to do. He was a very sweet horse too, very tolerant of all the leaping and squirming. Nice jumper as well, he was in the 3'3 or the 3'6 class I believe. Not always super careful about the rails, but a kind and willing type it seemed.

Finally, I went to a mock rating with McKinna yesterday for my C-2 and had a great time. I will try to write a full report on that soon because I felt like it was a really valuable experience. Basically, it was wonderful to have a less formal interaction with the examiners, get the chance to ask very specific questions, and I'm feeling a lot more relaxed about my real rating in 2 weeks.

Back Home

2010-04-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

The show jumping rally this weekend was as fun as it was exhausting. Friday morning we bathed the horses, packed the equipment and tack, and headed out to meet our trailerpooling buddies at another barn.

I don't think I mentioned this, but another girl in our club borrowed Pandora for her 2'3 division this weekend because her mare was a little bit off. So we took stuff for TWO horses. Lots more to get ready, but it is nice to be able to help out and it was great for Pandora to get the show experience. On the downside, she was essentially catch-riding because she only got to ride Pandora once before the weekend!

The big problem with bringing pasture-buddies to a rally, where the stalls are big and solid with no head-poking-out or views of neighbors, is that they are obsessed about each other. As in, really obnoxious. As in, McKinna whinnied (loudly) about every 30 seconds for all of Friday evening and a good part of Saturday morning. Pandora was quite a bit calmer, but she still got upset when I took McKinna away for my rounds.

So, irritating herdboundedness aside, everything went pretty well. The first round on Saturday was...questionable. At my formal inspection before my ride, McKinna was so incredibly awful that I was apologizing to the judge every few seconds. She refused to hold still, called frequently, and in general had horrible manners. In warmup, she exhibited the most classic stereotype of crazy Ayrab I've ever seen (please note that I don't necessarily believe in this stereotype). Interestingly enough, she settled a bit once we started jumping - I think it gave her something to focus on.

Anyway, we headed into the ring. We took out the rail on our first fence, which I guess got my head in the game, because our team coach told me that after we knocked the rail I visibly relaxed and my riding got way better. McKinna WAY overjumped the second one, a 3' oxer, and my highly accurate air-time estimation makes me think that we cleared more like 3'6. The rest of the course rode pretty well and I was pleased with her, considering how distracted and unfocused she was. She still listened okay, moving up when I asked her to so we could make the distance in the one-stride and the like.

I should mention that my ride on Thursday before the rally was horrible - she was grabbing the bit, running at the fences with neck braced, and generally awful. So at the rally I took off the figure-8 and used a plain caveson, and also changed to a double-jointed Myler with a very slight gag action. Not that I recommend changing things at the last minute, and not that I know if those changes did anything, but at the rally I did have my half-halts back and I really appreciated it.

In our second round, everything felt MUCH better. Our collective eye is starting to get much better. It feels like I don't tell her what distances to pick, but I don't make her decide on her own...we just kind of arrive at the same conclusion, with me offering a little input or support if I think she needs it. Very cool. We hit the rail on the second-to-last fence, and it fell as I looked over my shoulder at it, taking out the panel with it. Bummer. In slow motion, as we jumped clear over the last fence, the panel took out the two standards and the crowd laughed as the whole thing toppled down. Oh well. If you're going to get 4 faults, you might as well take out the whole fence, right?

Our final round, where you design your own course, was very weird. They were running early, and I was a bit rushed through warmup. I jumped maybe five fences and they felt great - we moved up to gallop over a vertical and then collected to a rollback to jump an oxer, which was an element of my chosen course, and it rode beautifully. I wasn't carrying a crop, which I didn't think anything of because I don't always ride with one and I never use it.

So what does she do at the first fence on course? She stops.

I mean, REALLY. This horse NEVER stops! We didn't get a weird distance or anything. So I kick her forward as we circle, stuff her over the fence, we jump the second fence fine, and she stops at a perfect distance to the third fence. At this point I stop giving her the benefit of the doubt: I circle back, come at the fence riding hard in a defensive seat, and she jumps it just fine. Same with the next three fences, all fairly small turns, and again she's fine (with me in definite XC position). Here is what the center cluster of fences looked like, with all of them pretty close together:

\ /
---
/ \

For my last two fences, I jumped straight across the two angled fences on top, so my line for each was at about a 45 degree angle, and it was a two stride. Very tricky line. It rode beautifully.

I don't know what her deal was. Was it the lack of crop? Was she tired, or sore? This is a horse who I basically never have to ride defensively, and I gave her a pretty solid ride to them. I'm just chalking it up to a freak thing and not worrying about it, especially because this is the first real show she has been to in a very long time. In any case, the chiropractor is coming out tomorrow because they've both been in hard work for 3-4 months since the last appointment.

So even though we didn't have perfect rounds, I was very pleased with her.

That's all for now - I've got homework to catch up on! Coming soon: report from my XC clinic earlier last week and a bit more Pandora discussion, including rally et ceterae. (Does it make etc a noun if you add an e at the end? Because I just did.)

Edit: Here are a couple pictures taken by one of the PC moms. She is not being super tight with her knees in these...but I think it's because she thinks they're too easy ;) Look at her ears! She's so cute!

This is us over that angled diagonal I just talked about - I'm grinning because she's handling it perfectly.

Looking ahead to the next fence.

Pandora's up!

2010-04-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have video from the Wednesday dressage lesson with Pandora. I can't believe how much she has improved! It was a great feeling. It's especially effective if you go watch the dressage lesson video from February, which you can find here.

Video from Wednesday:

Also, Pandora is officially up on Dreamhorse! For anyone in my general vicinity or if you're just curious, this is her ad. The photo's not fully up yet (you can click on the temporary pic) but it should be soon.

Derby clinic got canceled today because of all the rain, so I am hanging out at home doing homework. Makes for a nice, laid-back day. On the plus side, to make up for it I will be riding in a XC lesson later this week - which means I get to take Pandora out on XC for the first time this year! I'm very excited to see where things stand.

In other news, I jump crewed for the Pony Club lesson last night and had a great time. We had one of those kid sandbox things in the shape of a turtle (very scary) that we stuck next to standards, we had a big table on its side (with a bright poster taped onto it) as a wing, we had blankets and coolers over fences, a little floral-pattern suitcase that was quite hairy-eyeball-inducing, and even just a big square of tissue paper taped to the front rail of an oxer that REALLY caused some looking. I didn't ride because I was supposed to ride in the clinic today, darn it!

The nice thing is that the course will stay up until my jumping lesson with McKinna on Monday, so we will have a chance to practice over all the cool stuff. I think this will be the most prepared we've ever been: two lessons in a row to practice really spooky stuff, take your own line, and more aggressive angles/tight turns. I feel like we're going in with some experience at all the stuff I will be asking her to do. Not that I don't ever prepare, I just think it's a lot more thorough this time. I can't wait! Getting McKinna clean is going to be a pain in the butt, of course. I try not to think about that part.

Pandora Update

2010-04-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

Well, on Wednesday I had basically the best dressage ride I have ever had on Pandora - you would already know this if you follow me on Twitter (also see the nifty little sidebar on the right!).

I could tell pretty much from the moment we loaded her on the trailer. She was calm, laid back, but ready to go. I think she has been wanting more consistent work. If she gets more than a day or two off, she seems to be begging to come out and get exercised. She got longed on Tuesday and seemed to really relish the work. I didn't let her just plunk around, either: she really had to step under herself and get good gaits going.

So I was warming her up in Leslie's big, NICE arena before my lesson. Pandora was forward, relaxed, and actually quite supple. My riding is getting better and her gaits are getting better, which is a wonderful combination! Actually, I have learned something about sitting up from schooling my barn owner's daughter's western pleasure horse while they were gone on vacation. She goes best, and roundest, when you really just sit up straight and tall and still. I applied this to Pandora, and it really helps at the canter. I am in a much better position to keep pushing those hind legs further under her, asking her to lift her back.

When Leslie arrived for the lesson, I told her how great Pandora was tonight. Then we spent the first 10 minutes of the lesson not so spectacularly, of course! I think it is to be expected, though. Leslie pushes me and Pandora a lot harder than I push on my own in warm up. She immediately asks me to do more suppling, a slightly firmer contact, and more forward to get Pandora to step under herself even more. So of course we have a bit of resistance at first, especially laterally because that is hard for Pandora.

But THEN.

Then, we broke through all that resistance. Her trot was the best it's ever been. Her canter was the best it's ever been. Her walk has always been pretty good, but it was very nice too. She was light and steady in the contact and even between both reins. She was pushing from behind and bending her body on the arc of the circle. She lifted the base of her neck and her back. Her canter was rolling forward but controlled and not heavy in my hands. We still had to work a lot (especially to the right) on a bit of straightness and not leaning on my inside leg, but man.

It was cool. I actually have, on video, Leslie telling me that if she were judging me in a dressage test, this would be a very correct trot, moving properly and evenly from the hind end. Woohoo!

We did some leg yields at the trot and canter. I thought the canter leg yields were quite fun. So did Pandora, so next time we need to be more careful about catching all that momentum with the outside rein instead of leaping over to the rail, heehee.

Suffice to say that I am thoroughly pleased with my girl, and Leslie was too. After the lesson we chatted with her for awhile and Pandora just rested her chin on the railing and appeared to take a nap. Such a sweetie.

Okay, so, other updates!

Jumping lessons have been going very well with Pandora too. We jumped a tarp-liverpool at Devin's a few weeks ago with no issues. A couple skinnies went very well too (and I mean, like, 3' face skinnies. They were NARROW). One thing we did try is a new bit, which I am borrowing from Devin, but I will order my own soon. It is this, which I have heard called a Wonder Bit frequently. From what I understand it is basically a quite mild gag. I'm going to order it in this form, which is just double-jointed instead of single-jointed. I think the slight gag effect is enough without the nutcracker action of a single-jointed mouthpiece.

We tried this because while jumping outside, Pandora was getting a bit silly. Nothing major, but when she tried to rush badly and I corrected her hard, it kind of frustrated her. But I had to, because it was just a very gentle french-link snaffle. So far, the new bit appears to do its job. It definitely doesn't back her off because it's fairly mild, but if I half-halt, she listens and I don't have to get very firm with my hands. It works better for both of us.

To tell the truth, I'm not all that concerned about stadium jumping - it's XC that I think this bit will make a huge difference with. I haven't had a chance to take her out yet this year (I REALLY need to!) but I suspect the bit, combined with the huge improvements we've made since last year, will make her quite easy to ride on XC.

At our last jumping lesson we did some fun jumps off of serpentine-type loops, AND a fun accuracy question where you offset three fences in a line. To get over all three in a straight line, you have to jump the left side of the first one, the right side of the second, and the left side of the third.

Instead of | | |, shift the first and third up half a space. See?

So anyway, it's like jumping a series of skinnies. The first time through was a bit wonky, but the second time we held a dead-straight line and it jumped beautifully.

Other updates: we have had several interested people contact us about Pandora after just posting her on some Pony Club websites, but nothing definitive. One lady was going to come look at her for her daughter this weekend, but upon more discussion we came to the conclusion that it wasn't quite a good match. The plan is to put her up on Dreamhorse this weekend. I will certainly let you guys know and link you to the ad so that if you happen to know of anyone within driving distance of Oregon, you can let them know ;-)

If you're curious, here is the website we've set up to show pictures and video. This way we can link to it from our ads and provide more in-depth information. I think the dressage video from Wednesday is going to go up there as soon as we can put it together, and believe me the moment I can get her out schooling XC there's going to be some new video too.

So, in the short-term, we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. Unfortunately I am not taking Pandora to the show-jumping rally, which would be a great place to advertise her, because I'm going for my C-2 rating on McKinna on May 1 and the two of us really need to add some miles at 3' before then. Pandora's still improving by leaps and bounds in lessons, so she'll obviously keep going to those. I will just keep juggling two horses until we get her sold, I guess!

I have a couple free-ish weekends later this month, so perhaps I can make it out to school cross-country soon. I think Pandora is in a fairly unique niche because she's kind, easygoing, young-ish, and capable of doing very well at lower-level stuff (up to 3' for sure), she is nicely between dead-lazy and TB-hot, and she's in a pretty low price range ($5000), and she has the best attitude ever. Hopefully someone looking for a horse in that niche will come across her sooner rather than later.

Alright, off to do some homework. I will put up the video from Wednesday ASAP.

Why Horses?

2010-03-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

I was thinking the other day, as I spent the evening hanging out at the barn with my dad, about how much this "horse thing" means to me. It was really beautiful out there, warm and sunny and quiet. I took McKinna out for a hack down the road and up over the hill, where we met a Horse Eating Tree Stump of Death (hilarious because she rarely spooks - I actually had to lead her past it), then a few lovely relaxed canters up the hill.

This is good for me in so many ways. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like if I gave it up. If I had every evening free - no more 4:30 to 8 being taken up on weeknights, no more weekends swallowed by clinics, no more 90% of my paycheck going toward the horses.

Personally, I'd be bored to death. I wish I'd had the foresight to develop a cheaper obsession when I was, oh, two years old or whenever it was that I decided I loved horses...but since I didn't, I'm stuck with it.

I love it.

Going to the barn is like walking into a cloud of not-worry. Well, restricted worries: my thoughts revolve around the horses, what we're doing and what I am working on in training and new ideas. But it seems like it is physically impossible for me to be stressed about ordinary life while I'm out there. A couple years ago, a boyfriend broke up with me and I was completely miserable--but not at the barn. It was like I physically couldn't think about how sad I was.

We had good times when we were at that barn. I think my favorite memory of that place was the barbecue we had one summer: the barn owners, their kids, and all the boarders got together at the barn. We set up a bunch of picnic tables. The owners slaughtered one of the pigs their kids had raised for 4-H, dug a big pit in the outdoor dirt arena, and slow-cooked the entire pig in the pit. I think that was also the first time I ever tried apple pie with extra-sharp cheddar cheese, yum.

Another time, a group of us - actually, many of the same people who boarded at that barn and went to the barbecue - went schooling at Inavale. We all went and rode the cross-country fences, had a great time splashing through the water complex, and came back to the trailers to hang out. That day we were the only visitors parked in the pasture they use for parking, so we just closed the pasture and let the horses loose to graze while we had a picnic in the shade of a huge oak tree. Brie cheese and soft bread with a perfectly crunchy crust, big juicy cheeseburgers on the grill, chocolate-dipped strawberries, dripping slices of watermelon. I think we arrived at 10 or so and didn't leave until evening feeding, it was so beautiful out there. The barn owners came and chatted with us for awhile on their feeding rounds. (This is one of the reasons I love Inavale: the people there are wonderful.)

Community is one of the best parts of the horse world. Don't get me wrong, I love the individual challenge and concentration of riding and training. But off the horse, it doesn't get any better than hanging out with friends. The eventing community (well, and Pony Club) is what I know and love best. Everyone is always ready to have a party at a competition or camp - someone has a barbecue, someone has wine, everyone has lots of great food and stories. Most times a couple people have guitars, too.

Pony Club is a blast because I get to hang out with horse kids. I grew up reading the Saddle Club and the Thoroughbred series, so now I get to belatedly live out my childhood dreams! The younger kids are a really good group, and they're a lot of fun at rallies. I think it's very cool that all these girls are growing up learning not just how to ride, but about veterinary care, how to manage a stable, and how to teach lessons. When I go to activities like the ABC Retreat or Quiz Rally, I get to meet and spend time with girls my own age, which I don't always get to do. (Not to mention how incredibly much Pony Club has helped me improve my riding over the last year and a half.)

It's just...I love horses, you know? That's what it comes down to and why I don't think I'll ever quit. I am always daydreaming about my next long hack, what I'm going to work on in my next dressage school, how it's going to feel when McKinna and I come out of the start box at our first recognized event ever this summer. I look at my calendar for the spring term and see only two open weekends, and I know this spring and summer is going to be crazy busy - but I wouldn't have it any other way.

PS: I just re-discovered this picture of McKinna. It was taken the day after we got her, and OMG she was a porker! Look at that neck! And her TAIL!

Contrast that tail with THIS one, which is pretty much how her tail always is...

All we do is stick it in a tail bag and wash it whenever we're about to go somewhere. Wish her mane would grow a little thicker, though.

That's all for today!

Do The Shuffle!

2010-03-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned that McKinna's just kickass to ride? Because she's pretty kickass to ride.

I went to a jumping clinic on Sunday with a trainer I haven't ridden with before. Our club put on the clinic to help prepare for the show jumping rally, which is coming up in a couple weeks.

I got to ride with the Big Girls - the C-2s in our club - in the 3' group. McKinna was the only horse there who wasn't a dark bay, but at least she wasn't the only little horse. One of the other mares in my group is around McKinna's height and tends to be pretty similar: fiery, quick, and killer form over the fences.

The ride went great. I have lots of video thanks to my awesome parents, so I will put together a clip and stick it up here. The course included a four-stride, a five-stride, a two-stride, a single end fence, a single (BIG) swedish oxer, and a single skinny low brick wall on a turn. McKinna didn't blink at anything, including these really cool white vinyl herringbone fillers, an astroturf-covered brush box, and bright panels. In fact, the only issue we had was the first time we approached a fence directly on the rail: the ring is fenced and covered but open on the sides, and McKinna was so busy looking outside that she didn't realize there was a fence there!

So she stopped, said "Well why didn't you tell me there was a fence there?" and jumped foot-perfect the rest of the time.

On the other hand, it's now confirmed: McKinna has The Shuffle.

Both at my lesson with my regular instructor on Saturday last week and at the clinic, I heard some variation of, "It's impressive that she jumps so well and makes it look so easy when her canter is that bad!"

Sigh.

She does have rhythm, I know she does. McKinna is perfectly capable of picking herself up in a rolling, three-beat, balanced canter. But when she's nervous, or tired, or the footing is deep, she wants to just shuffle along with her legs flailing and her back not moving much. Then she pulls a textbook, beautiful jump out of that, then comes straight back to the shuffle.

(It's actually kind of comical to listen to the audio from the clinic. Almost every time I jumped, the trainer commented on how amazing it was that McKinna could be so effortless over the fences with THAT canter.)

But I know it's in there, so that's what we will be working on. At my dressage lesson with Leslie last week, we agreed that she needs more stretching and softening since she gets high in the front end and compact so easily. Lots of walking and trotting on a slightly longer rein, asking her to stretch down a little more - not peanut-rolling, but fully releasing through the base of the neck and her back. As for canter work, where she seems bent on charging into the canter if you ask for suppleness or else she just sticks her neck up, Leslie said to not worry too much about the transition for now. That will come with strength and relaxation in the canter.

So don't worry about the transition, just ask quietly. Do short periods of canter work, asking her to really supple and stretch down and lift her back, then back to trot to stretch and relax for as long as necessary. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I think that will work better than bullying her through the transition. Sometimes, a firm shove is what McKinna really needs because she's just being silly. But with this I think it is genuinely difficult for her, and when you force it she just gets anxious and flail-shuffles even more.

I did get a beautiful canter outside the other day. There is a three-feet-wide strip of grass that runs along the road to the outside of the hayfield fence, and it was mown the other day. It is on a mild uphill. So, on a hunch, I asked McKinna quietly for the canter. We cantered all the way up in rhythm, and she really stretched down and lifted her back. I think the incline helps balance and slow her, so she doesn't have to worry about it as much. Will definitely continue to try this.

I am also going to work in some canter cavaletti. My plan is: dressage work, especially up the hill, to work on softening/relaxing/stretching at the canter, not worrying as much about rhythm or picking up the feet. Jumping work over canter poles and canter cavaletti to work on rhythm and picking up the feet, not worrying so much about stretching and softening. I think asking for all of it at once is too much right now, but my hope is that by building up the pieces separately, I can eventually put them together. Part of it is a strength thing so this will come too.

The other confounding issue is saddle fit, grumble, mutter. Her jumping saddle fits quite well I think and tends to stay where it should be. Her dressage saddle, while it fits her wonderfully, wants to ride forward. Her girth groove is pretty far forward and tends to just suck the saddle up onto the back of her shoulders, which of course would irritate her when she's trying to use her range of motion to canter. So I am experimenting a bit. Dressage saddle with my Thinline half pad and regular square pad tends to slide. Dressage saddle with regular square pad and sheepskin half pad I borrowed from Leslie tends to slide. Next to try: Dressage saddle naked, dressage saddle with just square pad (haven't done that in awhile and can't remember if it works), dressage saddle with just sheepskin half pad, dressage saddle with square pad and some sort of non-stick something. Maybe those grippy rubber things you use under bathroom mats? Thin, likely to not affect saddle fit, might help.

Anyway.

The shuffle aside, McKinna has been just so fun. She's so easygoing about jumping now. I don't know where or when it happened, but she is steady to fences. All I do is sit there, get a decent canter, and chill out while she finds her distance, doing the occasional half-halt or adding impulsion down a line. I love it.

Pandora has also been doing well, though she's had quiet a few days off due to finals and such. Lesson last night went very well, and we have had some interest in her from the ads we've put up. Update for her soon - I will be back on a regular posting track now that last term is over! I pulled straight A's for the term and now that I'm done with OChem I have a huge weight off my shoulders. Next term: no class on Fridays. Awww yeah.

Dressage lesson with McKinna tomorrow, then Thursday I'm hauling her over to another Pony Clubber's place (the one in my group with the other little mare), where we are going to work on canter poles together since our horses need it!

I know, I know...

2010-03-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty much MIA for a bit, and I'm sorry. I am in the midst of some serious cramming for my OChem exam tomorrow (LAST ONE EVER, YAY!). Basically all I do is study, eat, sleep, and go out to the barn for a break.

The good news is, my lessons have still been great. Here is a video from my jumping lesson on Saturday with McKinna. Once I'm done with my exam, I will tell you all about the lesson and my lesson on Monday with Pandora. Deal? Deal.

This is McKinna jumping a 2'9 to 3' course, including some seriously skinny skinnies, a big wide oxer, and a fake liverpool. Basically, my instructor says she's awesome, and she jumps incredibly well for how badly unbalanced her canter is right now (heehee), and once she actually gets a strong balanced canter she'll be even more kickass.

She's so fun to ride over fences. Super smooth over the jump, she just skips over and it feels like nothing. It's a blast. Okay, I need to stop writing and go back to studying. I promise I will give you the play-by-play of the lesson soon!

Updates

2010-03-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

Oh goodness. Lately I have been doing too much horse stuff to have any time to write about it! Which is a good thing, I suppose. Lessons twice a week, out at the barn pretty much every evening, Pony Club stuff most Fridays. I'm getting worn out, though, and I'm definitely ready to sell Pandora so I can focus my time on McKinna.

In no particular order, here's a bunch of updates.

Lesson updates: Pandora and McKinna

Both of the girls are making so much progress. I ride in a jumping lesson on Mondays and a dressage lesson on Wednesdays, alternating horses. Pandora is learning to soften and carry herself, which can be difficult for her. It can be frustrating for me sometimes, especially since that aspect of dressage is so easy for McKinna. But a few nights ago I watched video from our first dressage lesson and then from our most recent one, and the difference is huge already.

Jumping lessons are so much fun. I and another girl ride with a local eventing trainer, and she's great. She makes up good courses and isn't shy about throwing in bending lines or more difficult questions, which is a great challenge that so far both of the horses have enjoyed. This week we did some trotting and cantering over a crossrail without stirrups - "I guarantee you will not lean forward!" is what she said. Ha.

Really, though, she was right. Trotting the fence felt great and gave me a really good feel for the perfect place for my body. Cantering was a little different. The jump itself was fine but I kept slamming my crotch into the saddle on landing, and I couldn't figure out why. After watching me, trainer explained: apparently my back is nice and flat over the jump, but when I land I want to rock my hips forward and round my back, thus slamming myself into the saddle...so we worked on that a little.

McKinna is starting to develop a Real Canter, which is so exciting for me. She's never really had one before, just glimpses. It's not that she doesn't canter...it's just that her canter is fast, and strung out, and kinda hollow-backed. We are getting to the point in our dressage lessons where, for a few strides at a time, I can relax my leg pressure and just follow the motion. When she softens her jaw and uses her hind end, I can feel her back come up beneath me. She can only hold it for a little bit, but we're getting there.

Speaking of trainers, riding with only one trainer (or in my case two, one for dressage and one for jumping) has been incredibly interesting. What a HUGE difference it makes to ride regularly, in private or semiprivate lessons, with the same trainer. I feel like my riding and my horses have improved by leaps and bounds in the last two months, and it's a great feeling.

Selling Pandora Update:

I'm ready for it. I love her dearly, and she's a great horse. It's just that mentally, I've already made the transition: McKinna is my main horse, she is who I am setting goals for, she will be my primary partner for the next two and a half years. I will be sad to see Pandora go - especially because we've made so much progress and she's such a sweet girl - but I am ready to have the time and money to focus on one horse.

We have a website set up with some pictures and video, and we're ready to send it out to the Pony Club mailing lists now. We'll see if we can sell her to a PC family by word of mouth first, but if not, we'll put her up on Dreamhorse and the like. Here's hoping that we find a perfect match in short order!

Eventing:

I am getting really excited for this year. I am for sure going to ride at the Inavale recognized HT this year - I'm planning on going Novice with McKinna. If I can afford it, I'd love to make it to another event sometime in August or September. I feel so limited because my only experience at HTs is at Inavale! It's a great facility, but I want to see more.

On that note, I've talked to my eventing trainer and hopefully I will be tagging along with her to several events this spring/summer/fall to groom for her. What better way to learn to do all of it than to help out with someone who really knows what she's doing?

Health Notes (warning, poop talk!):

The girls have been pretty healthy. McKinna has had this weird off-and-on thing where something in her digestive system gets irritated. She doesn't get loose stool, but she will have gas accompanied by some manure-liquid, then a bit later some normal droppings. It doesn't seem to bother her, for the most part. We gave them a PowerPak a few weeks ago and started her on some ulcer-healing supplements, and all seemed to be going well, but she's been a bit runny the past few days.

On the other hand, in the past few days we've asked the barn owner to begin turning them out with separate groups so we can weaken their bond a bit in preparation for Pandora leaving. So the stress of that might be what's upsetting her system again.

Either way, we're planning to buy some tubes of GastroGard and administer it to her in the days surrounding Pandora's exit, just in case.

Coming Up Soon:

We are just getting into the busy season for horse stuff. This month is fairly laid-back with a jumping clinic and then an eventing derby clinic. In April, I'm taking McKinna to the Show Jumping Rally - it is going to be held at DevonWood Equestrian Center, which from what I hear is an incredibly nice facility. We'll be doing the 2'9 - 3' division.

Then on May 1st is the tentative date for my C-2 rating - woohoo! Later in May comes a Standards and Ratings clinic, which is put on so the clinician can explain the Standards and Ratings of Pony Club to the observers. Our club is hosting, so we get to be the guinea pigs. It's not a lesson per se, but the clinician discusses how your riding relates to the Standards. Then the first weekend in June is an event derby at Inavale, then the Horse Trials at the end of the month. Championships for Quiz are in August.

Plus I'm sure more will pop up as we go along!

At any rate, it is shaping up to be a fun and exciting season.

Whew, big update. Finals are next week and after that I should be back to posting regularly.

Quiz!

2010-02-27T19:37:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! Everything with the horses has been going very well, and I will post a full update soon. I've been riding the girls in a weekly lesson each, and it's going very well. Plus we're heading toward the end of the term for school, so I'm trying my hardest to stay on top of all my assignments and studying. I have an OChem exam on Wednesday, then a final two weeks after that! Plus final projects due in two other classes. Still, I'm in a position to finish out the term strong.

I went to Quiz Rally today, and - well - you know how I roll ;) Our team got 2nd out of 3, but I got high point for my division! I had an awesome time, learned a lot, and got a chance to show off my knowledge, which you guys know I always enjoy. I also qualified for Championships, which will be held in California this year. So over the summer I get to go to Quiz Champs, which is like Quiz Rally on steroids.

Anyway, off to go do some paper editing. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Schooling Show

2010-02-17T10:00:00.000-08:00

It was a BEAUTIFUL day yesterday and I did not go out to the barn. Trying to bring two horses along at the same time means hauling twice (sometimes three times) a week and being out at the barn pretty much every day. On top of school, it's been getting to be a bit too much and I am feeling a little bit of burnout.

So, yesterday we agreed that the horses can live with an extra day off. They get turned out every day anyway, so it's not like they're stuck in stalls. I came home early, enjoyed the lovely weather, and got some extra homework done. I get an amazing mental lift when I get home at 3:30 instead of 8pm - it's just so different.

Luckily, the weather will be nice for the next several days, so I didn't waste a gorgeous warm day on staying home.

Our Pony Club hosted a benefit schooling H/J show this Sunday. I took Pandora to hop around a few courses, and she was awesome. Remember last year? This was the first 'real' show I ever took her to, and I wasn't expecting much. We jumped a couple 2'3 courses and I was super proud of her.

Well, this year I am happy to say we've shown some serious improvement. We began with a warmup 2'6 jumper class, where she was a bit rushy and unfocused. Never tries to stop at a jump, though - she was just nervous at being in the ring all by her lonesome in the show atmosphere. First show in quite awhile, you know. But she jumped everything just fine.

Next we bumped up a little to a 2'9 hunter class. It felt a little better, perhaps because of the smoother course pattern, but I also rode better and she was settling down already. I have to remember to ask her to soften, but keep the forward. Then a 2'9 jumper class, where I was going to call it good for the day. She did very well in that class. Everything felt smooth, and I remembered to keep the extra forward through most of the course. (Hey, old habits die hard.) Even the rollbacks, which were pretty tight, rode nicely.

She was so good that I pondered going into a 3' class....and decided oh, what the heck - it's a schooling show, isn't it? Let's do it!

Here is the video of our very first 3' course:

For contrast, if you'd like, the schooling show video from a year ago is in this post.

As you can see, it wasn't 100% smooth. The outside lines both rode a little oddly because we got in short and I had to push for the four. The good news is that she did all of it calmly and obediently! I also have a few things to work on, but for the most part I rode pretty well.

I was very, very pleased with her. When I pushed down the lines, she answered by going forward and she never got fussy or upset.She didn't even blink at the larger fences - I swear, the bigger they get, the better she jumps. Everything felt so smooth and effortless, even when we got a pretty long spot to that oxer on the far line. It all just felt very "together," I guess. Especially since we've really only been in full work for a month and a half.

(Also please notice our AWESOME bright red saddle pad. It was a Valentine's day show.)

I think she did an awesome job, and I am so happy that a 3' course feels just as easy as a 2'6 course on her. I think the fences could have been even 3'3 and she wouldn't have had a problem. We definitely have some practicing to do, but I'm very proud of Pandora and how far we've come.

After-College Plans

2010-02-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

Let's talk about what I'm going to do after I graduate from college. It's horse-related, I promise.

I think about the future a lot. As you may have noticed by now, I'm a pretty goal-oriented person. I love the process, I love hanging out with my horses, and I love doing what I'm doing, but I always have an eye to where I'm going next. I want to know where this is leading. I want to know what I'll be working on next week, next month, next year.

You can imagine that college is extremely frustrating to this "need-to-know-what-the-plan-is" part of me.

Because, frankly, I don't really know what I want to do after I graduate. I think that's pretty common in students my age.

A few weeks ago, I ended up in an interesting discussion during office hours with a professor who asked me what I was thinking of doing with my degree in Biology. Part of my problem is that I really do like a lot of things. Science is great and I find a lot of my Bio classes really interesting (Organic Chemistry is another story). But I really enjoy the "fuzzy" sciences (history, literature, etc), and some of my Honors College humanities classes have been amazing. But I also love writing--hence blog, and the writing classes I have been taking, and the application I'm working on now to get into a yearlong creative writing class for next year. And I really don't want to launch straight out of college into graduate school and then find out when I'm 30 that I don't want to be a scientist.

So I have a lot going on. Anyway-- professor told me about his life immediately after college. He thought he wanted to go to grad school, but wasn't 100% sure. So he headed out into the world, spent years in New York City, worked for all kinds of different people in all kinds of different places. After several years, he found that he really did want to go to grad school. So he went and found that his level of focus and commitment was way above most other grad students', because he'd spent time living out in the world and he KNEW that this was what he wanted to do.

All of this is basically a long way of saying, Don't decide yet; go out and live a little first. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and discussing it with my parents, trying to figure out ways to go explore what I want to do and what I don't want to do.

So.

I've decided to spend some time as a working student at an eventing barn after I graduate.

I have two and a half years until I graduate, which should be plenty of time to do some research on the programs I'm interested in, apply early, and save up some money. Basically I need a program that provides a good place to live for me and full board for a horse, plus the obvious coaching/riding/etc. I should be able to save up enough money to feed myself for a year or so - hopefully - but there's no way I'll be able to pay to work on top of that!

It's still pretty up in the air. When you add up food for yourself, any entry fees, any tack or blankets or anything you need, insurance...AND you factor in the zero-income factor...it gets a little sketchy for me. This is part of why I want to sell Pandora: with only one horse between the two of us, I can put a lot more of my money into savings.

The other factor will be the money from Pandora's purchase price. I have no idea what I will be asking at this point, so we'll figure that out closer to the time we actually list her. I could use that money to live off of, but there's another part of my plan to be a WS. I would really like to acquire a young, talented, and hopefully inexpensive TB or TB-cross prospect once I am settled in at my WS location. I would be able to use the high volume of really good instruction to bring along the horse without making too many mistakes, which would be quite nice. Now, you can get pretty nice off-the-track Thoroughbreds for pretty cheap, but it would still probably take a few thousand depending on where I ended up.

It is not the only option I'm considering for post-college plans, but it is one of the options I am most excited about. Right now I am researching lots of different programs. There's a fairly local one that I'm checking out-- I'm actually going to speak with the trainer this weekend when she brings some students to our schooling show. The big advantage to this is that she's close enough that trial lessons, riding interviews, etc would only require a bit of a drive, rather than an expensive plane ticket. I could also visit home occasionally, which would be nice! But I'm also looking at plenty of other places.

I'm working on a list of programs that I will call and ask for more information about, especially because many places don't post all the details of their programs on their website (such as oh, by the way, you have to pay $200 a month to be a WS here). West coast is great, but I'm looking at a lot of east coast places too, because HOW COOL would it be to get over there in the heart of eventing country? Very cool.

So that's the plan. Please, please let me know if any of you guys have any ideas or experiences! You're also welcome to send me an email if you'd prefer - my address is on my profile page.

PS: the jumping lessons are still going wonderfully. Update on that/dressage/McKinna/etc in the next post.

Also Returning Is....

2010-02-06T22:01:00.000-08:00

McKinna The Wonder-Pony!

(Horse. Technically. But who's counting?)

Last night was McKinna's first jumping lesson since July (which had been her first jumping lesson since the previous August). She reminded me why she's so fun to ride. I wasn't expecting very much, since her canter is still largely a work in progress - we've got way more softness and balance than before, but we still have a ways to go, especially in terms of sloooowing the legs down. You'll see that in the video!

McKinna did very well for herself, though, and I was pleased. We started with a four-leaf clover exercise, where you ride down the quarter lines and do an outside turn in each corner (so you ride down the quarter line tracking left, turn right when you hit the rail and do most of a circle, then go straight across the short side, turn right again, and come off the rail so you're on the other quarter line). It was a very good exercise for suppling and the instructor commented on how much softer McKinna is now. Those dressage lessons have really paid off.

Mom took a video of our last round, which was the first one in which I cantered all the fences. A few bobbles here and there, especially on the second fence in the line, but she figured things out and recovered nicely. The oxer was probably our best fence.

I think it was a very good reintroduction to jumping for her. As for myself - with regular lessons my position is slowly returning to where it used to be. I still end up popping onto my toes over the top of the fence sometimes, and I need to be careful not to jump ahead on McKinna...but we're getting there.

And having fun doing it, which is the important part anyway!