Also Returning Is....

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!

Guess Who's Back?

My kickass jumping horse, that's who's back.

I took Pandora to a jumping lesson this afternoon with a trainer I've never ridden with. I've seen her around at events, and a fellow Pony Clubber rides with her and really likes her, so I decided to give it a shot. If you take a look at one of the sidebars on the right, it shows you that my goals for this year include mastering Novice and beginning to school some Training. To take steps toward accomplishing that, I have decided to focus on taking consistent private lessons with the same trainers over a long period of time.

I feel like this will help me make big improvements. Group lessons and clinics have their place--I learned a TON from them last year--but now is the time to hunker down and get some serious work done. I started bi-weekly dressage lessons with Leslie and I am already seeing huge improvements in both horses (McKinna has gone twice, Pandora once). After a few months of lessons with Leslie and a consistent jumping trainer, I really think we will have made some serious progress.

This applies to both Pandora and McKinna. At this point I am focusing on bringing them both along, since right now the plan is to sell Pandora and compete McKinna. Both of those require more training!

For some reason, after every lesson my mom and I wait to talk about it until after we've loaded up the horse and gotten into the truck. Maybe it's because gossip travels fast in the horse world and it's best to keep your opinions quiet? Anyway, after the lesson we loaded up Pandora (which is going very well lately, by the way) and got in the truck. As soon as the doors were closed, I turned to Mom and said, "That was awesome!"

Which it was!

We did some flatwork to get to know each other and she had me doing much of the same things that Leslie is having us do: supple until she softens and carries herself, ask for more forward, half-halt, supple, forward.... which is good. Congruity between trainers is always a good thing. We did some spiral-in and spiral-out on a circle at the trot, which went well other than a quite dramatic loss of forward momentum. I was wishing for a dressage whip instead of a crop, let me tell you.

Then came the canter work, where Devin (the trainer) laid down the idea that served as the foundation for the rest of the lesson: get some more forward in there! Please!

Here's our dilemma. Pandora, like any sane horse that's not built like a superstar, would really rather prefer to plod around on the forehand. If she can't be on her forehand, she would like to go slow. If she has to reach under herself with her hind end, she would prefer to lean on me. And so on.

So at the canter I have spent much time seeking balance. Carry yourself, dammit. Carry yourself. Over time, she has made vast improvements and she can carry herself quite nicely at a slow pace. This IS a valuable skill, and it's one that we needed to put in the time to learn. But now we need to get the engine going a little bit too.

Devin asked me to really send her forward by asking strongly once, not nagging. Forward is hard to balance, remember, so Pandora immediately said "Oh, well I'll just lean on your hands, thank you," to which Devin told me to politely say "Nope, hold yourself up please" by bumping her gently off the bit. (No, really, Pandora is so willing and cooperative that I swear a real conversation would go like this.)

This was really, really effective. Forward, no don't lean on me please, then leave her alone. The idea was to be firm enough in generating the forward motion that I didn't need to ask all the time for more impulsion after I half-halted. It worked very well. Pandora was a little fussy at first, which is to be expected, because carrying herself is very hard and she doesn't want to do things that require hard work. Then again, Pandora's version of "fussy" is a few small head tosses, so there you have it.

At one point, Devin commented on my very loose caveson. I explained that I leave it that loose because she's normally so calm and quiet in the mouth (she chews enough to make foam, but she's very steady) that I really want to know if something's going on enough to make her open her mouth or cross her jaw. Might not work with all horses, but it works very well for us, and Devin was fine with it since Pandora was so quiet.

So we went on to apply our newfound FORWARD and reasonably BALANCED canter to jumping. And, wonder of wonders, it worked! It felt wonderful. Counterintuitively, pushing her into a much more forward canter actually fixed a lot of the rushing. Devin explained that this was probably because she now had enough power to jump easily and make the striding, whereas before she was kind of puttering along and may have felt that she needed to run at the fences to get over them. Whatever Pandora's thought process was, I liked it.

It was actually a very interesting feeling: we nailed almost every distance. When things didn't go right, it was usually because I hadn't generated enough power before the half-halt. Coincidentally (or not), this is the same concept Brian Sabo had us working on at the clinic back in May. Anyway, Pandora felt great: confident, independent, and totally capable of making her own decisions about the distances. When she needed to hold steady the last few strides or even shorten a little, she did. When she needed to lengthen, she saw that from about three strides out and did so.

The interesting part is the control/lack of control I had. When I bumped the reins to remind her not to lean on me and get flat, she listened; but I had the distinct sense that if I had offered my input on the way to a fence, such as asking her to compress her stride a little, she may have totally tuned me out. This wasn't an issue, because she was making all the right decisions on her own, but it was an interesting feeling.

I discussed this with Devin and we agreed that it makes sense for where we're at right now. We just introduced Pandora to this new, more powerful canter; it's bound to take some time for her (and me!) to get used to it. In the meantime, we've given Pandora an excellent new tool that will no doubt increase her confidence. Devin said she likes to do a lot of adjustability exercises, lengthening and compressing, so we will definitely get to that in due time. I can see that as we progress, Pandora will be able to hold that powerful canter without so much effort or input from me, and at that point I will be able to ask her to expand or compress the stride.

In all, it was a great lesson and I really enjoyed myself. The plan is to take Pandora every other week.

Last but not least - a video! It's from my mother's cell phone and not the best quality. I swear one of these days we'll remember the camera. The video is from our last round. It's not perfect, but considering that this is (a) the second jumping session we've had since my rating four months ago and (b) the very last round at the end of the lesson when Pandora was pretty wiped, I think it went quite well. Hope it's at least somewhat visible...

Brian Sabo Clinic Report - Sunday

Much like the previous day, my Sunday wake-up time was a cheerful 6:00. I'd resigned myself to this fact, though, and got up without grumbling too much about internal clocks. I wandered over to say hi to Pandora, toss her some more hay, and refill her water buckets.

I must note that I didn't have to muck her stall all weekend - I guess the stabling fee covered mucking. Score.

We rolled out at about 9:00, much earlier than yesterday, but we wanted to watch everyone else's XC rounds.

Several times over the course of the weekend, if someone was having trouble with leads, Brian said this: "A flying change or a change through the trot does not school them to land on the correct lead, because it's not much more difficult to do. To school for the correct lead, you must bring them to a walk on a straight line, get your correct bend then pick up the canter from the walk." Alternatively, you could walk-halt-reinback-walk-canter, or walk, pirouette away from the inside leg of your desired lead, and then canter. Works remarkably well, from what I saw.

Another common theme was to concentrate on keeping the hind legs moving, not telling the horse to jump. "If you keep the hind legs moving, the horse will figure out when to jump. But if you're telling the horse 'JUMP' whenever you want him to take off, then you can never ever be wrong, because you're not allowing him to learn to figure it out for himself." As long as the hind legs keep pushing, you'll get over the fence eventually.

For this same reason, he prefers several clucks or kisses (to encourage continued forward motion) rather than one big cluck or kiss, or worse yet, a 'HUP!' (which cues the jump). In fact, HUP! is apparently an acronym of a french word that means "I'm a freaking idiot who can't ride."

Did I mention he has a sense of humor? ;-)

While watching the Training-level group, I heard a lot about the 95% rule: if you're jumping a post-and-rail fence followed by a ditch, water, wall, or bank, 95% of the time the horse will come in close to the fence. This affected how you should ride, i.e., don't push your horse for the long spot.

Brian consistently told riders NOT to kick their horse back up into the canter if it drops into a trot on the approach. The legs should say 'keep going,' but you don't want to transition upward. It's part of the whole "maintain" section of the approach that he spoke about before and I explained yesterday. If you keep the trot, you can encourage the hind legs to keep moving in a nice carrying gait - but if you kick them into a canter for the last few strides, they'll be taking long, forehandy strides and it's not a good way to jump a fence.

He also said that he will not move a horse from Training to Prelim until it can canter down a line to a 3'3 square oxer, transition to a trot three strides away, and maintain a perfectly balanced steady trot to and over the fence.

Every time a horse rubbed the fence in front, Brian noted that 85% of front rubs are the rider's fault. (Sometimes I think he made up percentages!) They're caused by riders leaning forward and weighting the front end, thus preventing him from getting his forelegs up in time.


Okay. As for my lesson - it was very good!

From the moment I mounted up, I could tell Pandora had remembered the lessons from the day before. Her canter had a hint of "I want to run away," but not nearly as much as before, and my half-halt was still there. We cantered a big loop around the stadium field, practicing our extension and compression, and she was right there with me. I also worked a bit on my walk-canters on a small circle. It's very hard to get the lightness, but she was trying for me.

Brian began by setting us on a very large circle around the field. First at the trot, then at the canter, he had us practice lengthening and shortening the stride. One lady had been sitting deep in her saddle when trying to compress the canter; he brought us all in to explain why this is a bad idea.

To collect the stride, you need to soften. When jockeys want to slow down at the end of the race, they stand straight up - in other words, a very nearly dressage position, legs straight beneath the body. Sitting deep like that is driving them forward, not lightening.

He then sent us at a small coop for our first fence. He noted that because we weren't practicing over something simple like a cross-rail, this first fence was going to bring out every horse's nature. The carriers would likely drop to a trot, and Pandora would probably want to rush.

Everyone had trouble. Pandora ducked out twice. The first time, I used my crop on the shoulder she ducked out on. Brian promptly informed me that the refusal was my fault for tipping forward, not Pandora's, and he wouldn't let me go on until I used the crop on myself instead!

So, with a few hard taps on my thigh, we came around to try again. I focused very hard on maintaining a tight core, looking up, and keeping my shoulders back. But she ducked out again. It sure didn't seem like it was all my fault - I didn't tip until she pulled me to the side - but I suppose if I would have ridden it perfectly solidly, she wouldn't have been able to duck.

The last time, I rode as firm and strong in my position as I could, and she jumped over it just fine.

We moved on to jumping the "pimple hill" - a little hill with a log at the top. He had us jump a cross-rail about a stride away from the base of the hill, then head up the hill and over. Here, he very strongly emphasized the importance of a solid position. He didn't want us to tip forward at all over the top. As long as we maintained a steady position with supporting leg and did not lean forward, everything would work itself out.

Wonder of wonders, he was right!

It's hard, though. The first time, I concentrated on almost nothing but being strong in my core and keeping my shoulders back.

I still got pulled forward.

After that I must have been extra-sure not to lean, because I didn't end up tipping anymore. I think, to be fair, it's a combination of me and my horse. She tends to pull me forward, even when I am trying my hardest to stay up. That doesn't mean I'm allowed to tip forward - obviously I need to work on it until I never tip. And I will, because it really did make for better fences.

Anyway, she jumped the pimple hill very nicely.

We went on to work on some water stuff and simple logs. We jumped up and down a bank into water, a first for us, but Pandora did it all smooth as butter. Again and again, I found that if I tipped forward, we got a slightly weird jump; if I didn't tip, everything tended to work itself out.

I had started the weekend wanting to jump 'up,' as in more max-sized Novice fences, because I'm tired of jumping tiny stuff. I didn't get that desire at all - most of what we jumped was simple and probably in the 2'3 - 2'9 range, but I realized that it wasn't a big deal. Brian spoke to us a little at the very end, and essentially voiced the same thoughts I was having: "I know some of you wanted to jump big and complicated stuff, and so you might be feeling like you didn't quite get to do what you wanted this weekend. But I promise you that if you take the techniques and things I taught you here and you work on them and apply them to all your riding, it WILL be worth it."

Which is essentially what I came away thinking. No, I didn't get to challenge myself and my horse by jumping big stuff, or trying a big drop into water, or practicing ditches. But I learned how to ride every fence well and was shown again and again how much of a difference it made; I learned how to ride an approach to fences that helps me teach not only come to it in a good stride, but teach my horse how to figure things out; I learned how to school my problems and turn them into strengths.

I would ride with Brian Sabo again in a heartbeat. In fact, I tried to talk him into taking me on as a short-term working student (I was thinking next summer), but unfortunately he doesn't have a permanent barn location - he travels giving clinics. Bummer. Apparently I was about 20 years too late, because once he had a great working student program! Ah, well.

He has a fantastic sense of humor and is extremely educational. He's blunt about it when you screw up, but he's just as quick to praise you when you get something right. He (probably correctly) blames the rider for most of the problems, but if a horse is really acting stupid despite a good ride, he recognizes it immediately.

Overall it was a wonderful weekend, and we told the organizer to give us a call if she has him back again!

I'll make one last post about this with some of my favorite quotes from the clinic.

And, I'm not sure if I mentioned - a friend of the friend I went with brought her video camera and taped our rides. As in, all of them, plus clinician comments, plus interesting moments from other people's rides. I should be getting the video sometime soon, and I am SO excited for it. Of course I will write about all the new insights I get from it!

Brian Sabo Clinic Report - Friday and Saturday

Our trip up to Sisters on Friday afternoon was uneventful. The horses would stay at a barn here, and each day we would haul about 30 minutes to the clinic site, which was over in Redmond.

Stabling was very nice - covered outdoor stalls that open out to big circular runs, maybe 24x24 if they were squares. The footing was sand. Both horses settled in nicely - Pandora looked around for maybe 10 seconds, then promptly drank about half a bucket of water and shoved her face in her hay.

Have I mentioned how much I love her eating and drinking habits? Always steady, always prodigious. I never have to worry about her getting enough water.

We watched Brian giving some dressage lessons. Unfortunately, with intermittent chatting amongst the viewers and the occasional interruption from a phone call or something, it was a bit hard to get the gist of what he was saying. He had a girl working on walk-canters with her Training-level gelding - that's eventing Training, not dressage Training - to help him carry himself more lightly. My glorious moment of the day was to stand in as a traffic cone in one of her corners so she would either quit cutting the corner or run me over. Thankfully, she chose the former.

We got to go check out the clinic site that evening, because Brian needed to watch a local instructor teach for part of maintaining her ICP certification. It was fun. I was a little disappointed because I'd wanted to take the horses for a hack that evening to make up for them standing in a trailer all day, but oh well. At least they had runs to walk around in, and when we returned Pandora sure seemed cheerful.

I tried to sleep in Saturday, I really did. Except, we went to bed at about 9:00, so I ended up waking up against my will at about 6. Sigh.

We got ready slowly, fed the horses, ate some breakfast, then headed over to the clinic.

Pandora was, um, "exuberant." Which in a way is good - she was channeling exactly the kind of attitude that had caused such a terrible jumping lesson about a month ago, which meant I could learn how to fix it. It wasn't quite that she was trying to bolt when we trotted or cantered . . . just that she wanted to go fast, and she really didn't want to listen to my suggestions. Not panicked or rebellious, but anxious - it wasn't a "screw you" sort of attitude, not that I could tell anyway.

The facility was beautiful, by the way. A quite long, wide field with very thoughtfully maintained and constructed XC fences, a dressage arena, and a big wide open grassy area at the very end where the stadium fences were set up.

We all introduced ourselves to the clinician and began by trotting a big circle. On the far side of the circle was four trot poles to a cross-rail. Upon landing, Pandora wanted to scoot. Not majorly, but obviously enough that Brian had a pretty quick idea of what she was like.

The second time I went through, he explained something that - as far as I can tell - effectively showed me how to eliminate her rushing on the landing side of fences. Or at least school it.

"You don't want to tell them that you're afraid of going fast," he said. "You never want to say 'NO' to that, because at some point, you do want them to gallop. What you want to say is, 'Yes I like that, but not right now.'"

So he had me go ahead and bring her back to a good working canter after the fence. THEN I asked her to open up her stride. Then I asked her to come back. Then we extended and compressed again. (He also told everyone to pay attention, because "Sooner or later every horse is going to try this and think this is a good answer, even the ones that want to go slow now.")

I swear I had a totally different horse after that. It was as if whatever anxiety had been causing the rushing just went away. "Okay, boss, you got it." A nice feeling, let me tell you. I mean, she still wanted to "push" at the fences, especially the last few strides, but everything between the fences was much more in-tune.

Also, as we jumped a fence from the trot, turned, transitioned back down to trot, and jumped another fence, he made the very dry observation that when I had a perfectly steady solid leg, a soft following hand, a still upper body and a perfect eye (not for striding, but focused forward and up), she jumped without rushing.

Gee, so if I can just be perfect all the time...



Brian characterized horses two ways: pushers and carriers. Pandora was the only pusher in our group - that is, she has a tendency to want to lengthen and flatten her stride, pushing herself at the fence. A carrier, by contrast, tends to want to shorten and slow the stride, often manifested in a transition to the trot in the last few strides of the fence. A horse's tendency will come out much more strongly when he or she is given something new or challenging, and their tendencies can change over time. Neither is inherently good or bad - you just have to be aware of it, and develop their ability at the opposite end of the spectrum so they're more balanced.

So for Pandora, she needs to be more willing to sit back and flex more in the joints of her hind end. At one point, he had me doing walk-canter-walk-canter transitions on a pretty small circle, and I was amazed at how light she could make the upward transitions. These, along with halting on the approach, turning on the forehand or reinbacking, then trotting forward, really reinstalled my half-halts. He emphasized that the purpose of the halt-correction was NOT to stop a horse from rushing, but to school the half-halt.

One of his biggest things was how you handled your approach to fences. You would come around the turn, expand the stride to generate more forward energy, then half-halt and compress to take however much of that energy you need and transform it into carrying energy. A half halt, as he defined it, takes forward and turns it into carry. How much 'carry' you need varies depending on the nature of the fence - you need more carry for a tall vertical, more push for a fence with a lot of spread like an ascending oxer.

The most important part was that after you half-halt, you must maintain exactly what you have for the last few strides before a fence. If the horse rushes, you don't fight, and you don't say "Okay you're right, let's go!" You resist with your body and hands, saying, "I disagree," but you cannot force the horse to come to the correct conclusion. Only time and a consistent experience going "Hey, I buried myself to that fence, that kind of sucked" will work.

Pandora was very good. I think I have a lot of work to do in terms of maintaining the pace those last few strides, because she wants very much to lengthen. But I have good tools, now.

It was a very long lesson, 2.5 hours in the middle of the HOT day. I definitely did not drink enough water and afterward I was a bit of a shaky grumpy mess until I drank a bunch of watered-down gatorade and ate a sandwich. After that, I was fine.

Pandora and my friend's horse got to just chill out at the trailer. As usual, Pandora drank about a bucket and a half of water, then settled down to munch on her haybag.

It was a very good day. I walked away feeling like Pandora and I were even better partners, more tuned in to each other and what we needed. Brian focused a lot on what I needed to be doing with her - expand, compress, HOLD, HOLD, and he got after me for allowing her to drop her head down after our last fence and sort of fall into a walk. Bad habit. So I started to make her still use herself, canter a circle, and transition nicely downward. She argued at first but gave in, and I admit it felt much nicer.

Only one ride, and already I had learned so much. XC would be the next day, Sunday, and I couldn't wait to see what was in store.

Rally Report! (Plus extra training thoughts)

Well, I have a little less than a month to go before the Mega-Rating where I'll take my C-1. It shouldn't be too terribly challenging, but it's more of a challenge than my D-3. The real question will come if I decide to take my C-2 next spring, because the level of riding and knowledge expected for it is more than what I have right now. But, you know me, I love a good challenge.

I really had to DRAG myself out to the barn yesterday. I was very tired from the rally. But, I did it, and I had a great ride. Pandora was on her best behavior and we rode in the outdoor - it was the absolute PERFECT temperature for riding, and there was a beautiful sunset too.

With all the hard work we've put in, Pandora has become much more responsive to lateral work. We still are just not getting that left bend at the trot - she tilts her face to the outside and leans in over her inside shoulder while swinging her haunches out. I have also noticed that in halt and reinback, she tends to blow her haunches out through my right leg/rein. So it's all symptoms of the same problem, and I just need to figure out what the problem is. Strength in her hind end, I'm guessing - the right leg since it's the one she ignores, or the left leg since that's the one she swings out to unload? Don't know.
Either way, the more lateral strengthening work we do, the better it will get, I'm sure. In fact, I think general strengthening will be a big help. I'm hoping to make it over to Elijah Bristow, a state park with horse trails about 10 minutes from our barn, to do some riding and conditioning. Event horses need to go over terrain, after all, and there's nothing for building strength like riding over hill and dale.

On the plus side, she can hold the correct bend at the walk. So we do a lot of walk-trot transitions on the 20-m circle, trying to hold her in the bend as I transition up. I can actually feel her lean into my inside leg as she makes the upward transition. It gets worse as she gets tired, but I'm thinking that maybe if I do this, I will be able to hold her in the correct bend for a few strides, so both of us can at least understand what it feels like to do it right.

She gets excited about the canter transitions too. But, I got some good ones. I am trying everything I can think of to keep her engaged and working hard off her hind end, like a 20-m circle with transitions from trot-canter-trot-canter-trot-walk-canter-trot-canter-walk...etc. It gets her a little riled up, but she carries herself better. Walk-canters are hard, but Brian had us doing them at the clinic I went to last weekend, and it really helped my half-halts and Pandora carrying herself. I struggle with that, because we're not near good enough to do proper dressage walk-canters, but even our attempts are helping with strength and carrying...chicken-and-egg, I suppose.

Anyway, lots to work on. There's a nearby dressage trainer I want to try taking lessons with. A friend's ridden with her before. If all goes well, I'm hoping to take a lesson every other week for several months throughout fall and winter, if I can swing it. We are just at the point in dressage where I don't know what to do next, as I've mentioned several times before.

Then, I was thinking about maybe trailering to Inavale for stadium and XC lessons with Brooke as we move from winter to spring, because I could certainly use some of those, and I click really well with Brooke no matter which horse I'm riding. Brooke is $40/hour for a private lesson, and the dressage lady is $35 for a private lesson (don't know how long it is). I think I can do it, it's only an extra $70-80 per month if I don't overlap too much with the two kinds of lessons.


I'm funny about lessons. I take a bunch and learn a lot, but if I go on too long, I develop this overpowering need to go home and work on things on my own. I need time to take what I've learned and digest it by myself, working through the exercises and awareness that I've taken away. I did that for most of the summer - I took a LOT of lessons early summer and then I really needed to go home and figure some things out for myself. It's been good for me, because focusing so hard on how to fix this left bend has made me incredibly more aware of what Pandora does with her body and why.
But, now I'm at the stage where I want and need another round of lessons. I'm at the limits of my experience, so I need a pair of educated eyes to help take us to the next level. I think with some quality, one-on-one instruction this year (I've found consistent, individual lessons seem to help much more than group lessons with rotating instructors, at least for what I want right now), I should be able to easily meet my goal of competing Novice next year and maybe taking my C-2.


ANYWAY.


The rally was wonderful. We got 8th place riding-wise (an E for one of our riders on XC really hurt us, plus a few stops and time penalties here and there), but we got 3rd place in Horse Management! I was extremely proud of our team because that's certainly the best we've done since I've been a member. I told everyone on the team that I wanted to do really well in HM, and they all got psyched about it - everyone chipped in to help keep our tack room clean and organized, stalls picked, etc. As the weekend went on I think we all got tired and let some things slip, which may have cost us a higher placing, but oh well!
It was my first time as Stable Manager, so now I know a lot more. I learned that it's easy to drop a lot of needless points on safety checks, as they will dock a point for a not-quite-tight-enough girth, a crooked noseband, a strap not through its keeper, and the like.

Still, I had a great time. The facility was gorgeous - it is the same place where the Mega Ratings are held. She has 78 acres there, wow. Lots if it is in a big open field with BN through T sized fences, and I really hope we get to go in THAT field for the rating next month instead of the little field we did the rating in last time!

I was glad I wasn't riding, because it was much easier to take care of all the riders than to deal with my own horse and equipment, but I admit I was itching to get out there on XC. There were some Training-level fences that looked like a blast to jump, including a section of trunk on a huge fallen tree. Next year, maybe!

Okay, enough for the day. I am writing the clinic report (probably even as you read this!) and it'll be posted tomorrow.

Quick Update

Hi guys - I am busily getting ready for this weekend. I leave with a friend on Friday at about noon for the Brian Sabo clinic in Redmond, which I am VERY excited for. But it's a lot to get ready for, even just a two-day jaunt. Pack the clothes, empty the horse trailer, repack the horse trailer, make sure everything's clean, buy and pack food, grab food for the horse, evict those little bitty bee/wasp/buzzy-thing nests from the trailer tack room . . .

Everything has been going well at the new barn. It's still lovely and quiet and have I mentioned the hay?

I've had some pretty good schooling sessions with Pandora. I still feel stuck a lot of times on dressage, but a lot of that is my problem not hers - it's just a lack of practical experience. We'll keep working our way forward until I take some lessons anyway, I don't think we're doing anything wrong; we're just slowly stepping along, working things out for ourselves.

I've done a few nice gallops out in the field. Yesterday I was reminded why I ride. After a long morning helping out at a Pony Club mock rally, my boyfriend Jon and I drove out to the barn. We were talking about friends I think, and not getting along with people, or some similarly deep topic. A few moments of silence passed, and then he asked what I was thinking. "Oh," I said, "I'm just trying to figure out if I should go through the grid today or just do flatwork, or maybe change the grid up . . ."

Yup. Give me five seconds and my mind's back on the horses.

"Don't you ever get tired of it?"
Now this I had to actually think about.
"Yeah. All the time, actually. I get discouraged, or bored, or just tired. I don't want to go out, I don't want to ride. Most of the time, I just do it anyway, because in the long term it's what I want and need to do. Sure, if I miss a ride here or there, it's not a big deal...but if I didn't make that choice every day, I'd never get anywhere."
I thought some more.
"Like today. I don't feel like riding right now. I'm tired, and I'd really like to just come out here and longe her for 15 minutes and leave. But I'm going to ride, because I need to."

So I hopped on. We spent 10 minutes on flatwork in the arena. She was good, quite good - mellow, responsive, relaxed. So we headed out to the field, where I did some trotting, cantering, and galloping. Pandora was excellent out there too! Big, ground-covering trot. Easy, relaxed canter, just plunking along at a calm speed until I asked her to open up, and then coming right back to me. (McKinna was hollering for her off and on for the whole ride, by the way. Pandora ignored her for the most part.) Jon got some really cool pictures, which I will steal from him and put up on the blog ASAP. Since she was so good for that, I decided to hop her through the grid once or twice in the outdoor arena, then call it done for the day.

She was perfect going through the grid. Mellow but forward, relaxed, not trying to rush at all. Jon took video. I went through twice and hopped off.

The whole ride lasted about 20 minutes, but we worked pretty hard for most of it. It was a good workout.

By the end, I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. As I untacked, I enthused to my patient boyfriend about how good the ride was, how rateable she was outside, how much better she went through the grid now than at that bad lesson a couple weeks ago, etc. At last I concluded - "So that's why I ride every day. Because even if I'm tired of it, most of the time I come out of it glad I decided to get up there."

I went from being in a tired, crappy mood to being tired but cheerful and really pleased with my horse. It was a good day. Not only was she good for me in general, it was also the first day I'd taken her up to the main barn (maybe 1/5 mile away from the pasture) without taking McKinna up too. Pandora and McKinna both handled themselves quite well.

So that's how things are going. My ride today was pretty good too, just a half hour before the farrier came out. It's been lots of checkups lately - the vet came out on Friday to check teeth and do vaccinations while she was out. Pandora was actually in perfect shape, even though it's been a year since her teeth have been done, so I scored a lower vet bill. McKinna needed done. Poor thing, she always looks so pathetic when she's sedated. I also bought a tube of banamine to have on hand.

Very, very excited for the clinic this weekend. Fingers crossed it's worth the money!

Speaking of money - dang, internet shopping is dangerous. I got a pair of Dublin Aristocrats for $37 on sale at Bit of Britain. SERIOUSLY. Tall boots. For less than $40. I also got a polo for my mom and me to share. And a few weeks ago, I got a pair of Ariat Icebergs - a winter boot, but a tall boot, so I can ride in them. I am SO excited. They're all fleecy and warm and insulated. I have had cold toes every winter, because my Ariat work boots aren't insulated or super waterproof, and my rubber boots are definitely not insulated. For the first time, I'll have warm toes!

Anyway. I've put a bit of a moratorium on internet shopping for myself, as the return to school means a drop in work hours. The money inflow comes down, but the board payment does not. Sigh.

Hope all is well, and I'll check back in a day or two with some pictures before I head off to the clinic. Then I will hopefully return with a successful, happy clinic report!



PS, here is a video of us lolloping through Grid Therapy v. 1.2. Very calm and relaxed, no? I need to shorten my stirrups for jumping, but the fences were so low it didn't really matter.




Look at that stretch down at the end. "I'm TIRED, are we done yet?" Like I really worked her that hard. 20 minutes, give me a break.

Picture Time!

The new barn is still as wonderful as ever. The barn owner dragged and watered the outdoor - which apparently nobody else ever uses, but it's RIGHT next to our separate little barn where the two girls are - AND she says I can set up fences and leave them up out there. Score!

Since Pandora apparently has some lingering "OMGGOFAST" grid issues, I have decided to carefully and methodically do some Grid Therapy, much like the Dressage Judge therapy I do every once in awhile. Last night I set up the beginnings of the grid - just four trot poles to an X with a landing pole. We went through it twice at the end of the ride, nice and easy, and she was completely relaxed. This I expected, because honestly that simple of a grid she should be able to do in her sleep.

Each day I'm going to add one more level of complexity to the grid until she's calmly jumping trot-poles to X, one stride to a vertical, two strides to an oxer (if I can fit all that in the arena). I'm also going to set up the grid outside in the big field. If she can calmly go forth in that situation, the rating will be a piece of cake.

Speaking of the big field, I went to check it out last night. A boarder said to watch out for the holes out there, and indeed there are some holes in the field, but highly visible ones with piles of dirt, and most of them are clustered in one area so quite easy to avoid. I did some trotting, cantering, and galloping out there, and it went well. I had to remind her with a modified pulley rein (set outside hand on tight rein, gentle tugs up and in with the inside rein instead of the short sharp yanks you use in an emergency) to stay OFF of her left shoulder. Other than that, we still have all the gears, though I didn't go super fast.

I'm looking forward to being able to practice a little galloping, as well as doing some trot sets. Not that she really NEEDS trot sets to go novice, but, you know, eventually. In the future.

And without further ado, pictures!

Here are their two stalls. Both horses are actually in the stalls, you just can't see them because they have their heads more or less permanently shoved into their piles of excellent hay.

Here they are venturing forth from the pasture. Without fail, when they see us, they come to the gate. There are benefits to having spent the entire summer feeding your horses their grain only when you bring them in from the pasture.

McKinna after her post-ride rinse. No warm water, but apparently that is in the works. At any rate, it is SO NICE to have a designated wash area complete with mats, drainage, and a tie post!

Grid Therapy, version 1.0. Easy peasy.

We painted all of that stuff ourselves! You can hardly see the last trot pole, it is a very nice greenish-grey color striped with beige. It's nice to have brightly colored poles now instead of plain wooden ones, and they are much nicer on the hands to carry.

I have a video of us plunking through the grid, but we're having uploading issues. I'll try to get it up later.

Difficulties

Horses work in funny ways.

Usually if I'm in a good mood, I have a good ride. Or maybe it's just that I pretty much always have good rides on Pandora, so I'm always in a good mood when I go to ride. Something I fully appreciate, let me tell you - a 'bad' ride on Pandora probably would have qualified as an 'okay' ride on Bailey.

Anyway.

With all the thinking I've been doing lately (see my last post, whose great length and slight disorganization characterize my mind), one would assume I'd be having extraordinary rides. New ideas, new exercises, new perspectives! Well, yes, I did have one fantastic ride and a few pretty darn good ones.

Then, probably just to remind me that you can't always win, I had two pretty bad rides in a row. The first was Tuesday. There wasn't really any reason for it - I was in a good mood, I was full of new ideas, etc. Pandora just wasn't focused on me, and for whatever reason we just kept getting into small arguments with each other. Most of the blame lies with me, of course - the horse can't argue if you don't agree to argue. I was getting frustrated in a way that I haven't for a long time, either because I've gotten a lot better at being patient or just because my horse is awesome. I like to think it's mostly the former, but in reality it's probably mostly the latter. Anyway, I only meant to ride for a half hour but it ended up being an hour, and I just could not find a good note to end on, where I felt like she was really tuned in to me and listening.

Very frustrating.

Then last night, I set up a jumping lesson with one of the ladies who lives across the street from the boarding barn. Her hay field is all hayed and nice and she's got lots of jumps set up, so I wanted to take advantage of it while I still could. (We move to the new barn in two days!)

So, yay, jumping lesson. I have to say, Pandora looks amazingly cute when she's all suited up. Front boots, back boots, bell boots, FLY BONNET. Yes. I don't usually boot up that much for just plain old stadium jumping, but I figured since it was outside, I should err on the side of caution.

Our warmup on the flat went just fine. Then we started some gridwork. I warned my instructor that she was probably going to get strong, and the instructor said to just not worry about it and let her make her own mistakes. Well, she did get strong, and I did let her make her own mistakes as we continued to build up each element of the grid from ground pole to cross-rail, until I finally said, "Okay - I need to do some schooling in the middle of this grid, because she is just acting downright dangerous." She goes too fast and she completely took out a fence. Argh.

So I schooled her hard. Walk halt. Trot halt. Walk trot halt back. Trot halt back. Canter halt back. Walk trot canter halt. And so on. I was not polite about it: I want a stop and I want it when I say I want it.

So then we tried the grid again, and I gave her a very strong half-halt after the first fence. Definitely got through to her. So, we never quite got the gridwork perfect, but at least she wasn't charging through like an idiot, and she actually added the stride at the very end instead of launching herself.

Then we moved on to coursework, where she proceeded to try to run like a bat out of hell. Approaching fences wasn't too bad, but on the landing side she was just ridiculous. Completely ignoring half-halts. It wasn't like she was trying to bolt - she was just, I don't know, either excited or anxious or something, and she was completely tuning me out. I hate that.

So I did some serious schooling there, too. We trotted all the fences. Instructor had me exhale and give her the reins a few strides before the fence, which did help on the approach - she definitely likes room to breathe. But then on the landing side she'd still launch and ignore polite or strong half-halts, so I'd fight her back. I'd ask for a halt from the canter and she'd completely tune me out, so I would have to seesaw on her face, which I absolutely hate doing. I can't even tell you how much I hate doing that - it makes me sick to think about it. She throws her head up, and I can see her tongue stick out the side of her mouth. But there was really nothing else for me to do at that point other than get the point across.

We made some progress on that before we decided to call it quits for the day, as it'd been a pretty long lesson.




So it got me thinking about this sort of thing. After all, I've been thinking so much lately my head's about to explode, so what should I do but think more?

I get so easily discouraged with Pandora. Probably, again, because she's so good-natured that 99% of the time I have a pretty good ride on her. So when things really do go south, I start running through all those familiar self-doubt thought patterns. I try to break it, and usually I succeed, because logically I know that this is not the end of our training success. But it's difficult to avoid thinking that. I mentioned this in the Lily Glen post - one admittedly disastrous stadium lesson, and I was frantically rethinking every aspect of my riding with her. A couple hours later, I had a lovely dressage lesson and my fears were assuaged.

Speaking of dressage...

For some reason, Dressage is just this big ol' mysterious THING to me. It's a vast discipline with lots of history and everyone thinks they're right and there's shortcuts and all kinds of ways to do it wrong, and all I want to do is just do it right. Hard to do without an instructor, but then there's plenty of people who hang up a shingle as a dressage instructor but teach their students to just use a headset.

It should be a methodical, step-by-step process. You build the base, and you go up from there. I am getting it, slowly. Like I said, all of this minor freaking out is probably just from my bad rides the past few days. I'll have a good ride this weekend and quit worrying.

I am making progress, though. She's super nicely forward in all gaits. If I remember to back my leg up with the whip if necessary when I ask for a canter, she's liable to surge forward in a beautiful transition. I'm starting to make progress, or at least develop an understanding, with her current evasions. I know that she swings those haunches to the right when we track left, therefore avoiding loading up that left hind leg. I know I need to work systematically to supple her shoulders and hips and strengthen that left hind. I have the tools and the exercises. I even have the eyes on the ground, sometimes, because if I ask nicely my mom will watch me to tell me if Pandora is crossing over correctly or maybe even take a video.

I read a lot. I have lots of ideas swimming around in my head, tools to gymnastically develop her and sharpen her mental focus. Leg-yields around a circle, something that proved extremely challenging and frustrating for both of us last night. "Ping-pong" exercises, sending her back and forth between the sides. Shoulders-in, leg yields down the wall, trot poles, spiraling circles, transitions, turns on the forehand.

I have a plan, too. There's a lady in the area who gives dressage lessons occasionally to the Pony Club. She refuses to take payment but, from what I understand, she is also not interested in becoming a paid trainer at all, mainly (I think) because she doesn't want the time commitment. In my head I am working on a perfect speech where I will ask her to please make an exception for me, just give me weekly or twice-monthly lessons for a few months this winter and I will pay you or clean your stalls or make you dinner or what-have-you. I am hoping this will work, because some focused regular instruction for a short period of time should make a big difference.

I have a plan for the jumping difficulties as well. I am going to break that down further, too. I could just say, "She's running through my hands when we're outside so I need a stronger bit." It's tempting, and I admit the thought crossed my mind several times last night. And I'm not completely against bitting up, sometime, if it becomes clear that even with careful training she ignores her snaffle. But I don't think that's the issue here, so I plan to fix it a different way.

There's a grassy area at the new barn outside where I plan on schooling in full jumping tack. First we'll just do flatwork, nice and calm, including crisp downward transitions and immediate half-halts. Then I'll add some ground poles and work through them while expecting calmness and the same responses to aids. Then I'll add a little cross-rail or two. Etc. Until we can go through a several-fence grid out there or jump a few fences in a row without losing the brain. Most importantly to me, I can do all of this work calmly and gently, taking things gradually, so I never have to fight hard with her or hurt her or damage her trust in me by getting rough with the reins.

This is the way I prefer to train. That horrendous ride last night showed me where the big training hole exists; now, on my own, I get to take things calmly and quietly and build each piece so that we don't have to have any huge fights about it. I'll start where she can already do what I ask, i.e., flatwork outside calmly. Then I'll slowly build things up and establish the comfort level along the way.

So, you see, I face difficulties. Most of them are in my head. But I know that, and I'm working hard to get through them, and despite my frustration there is also a very dangerous sort of joy I take in working these things out for myself. Because as we resolve these challenges, I get to say to myself -- see? I worked that out. I put in the time, and the studying, and the effort, and the understanding, and together my horse and I overcame this obstacle on our own.

Just so you know, it is my goal to come out blazing at Novice level next spring. To do this I will work very hard but I am really looking forward to some serious, thoughtful, quiet dressage work this winter. It will be between me and my horse, and with a little luck occasionally with that trainer. It will be careful and methodical. I just know that if I break this down into piece by little piece, I will be able to stack them all together and come into Spring with a capability to perform something that looks curiously like real-for-real dressage.


Whew, another long post. I'll get back to you sometime soon with something a little more bite-sized. Just feeling stressed about the bad rides and I'm anxious to start working on our challenges so we can establish our positive relationship again. Planning on giving her a light day today and just longeing her, but I'll ride tomorrow and make darn sure it's a short and sweet one!

The Energizer Bunny - Inavale Eventing Camp Day 2

On day two we actually got to sleep until just after seven because camp was much quieter. I think everyone was pretty tired from the day before! Misadventures fed McKinna and we lazed around a bit. When it was time to get tacked up I offered to go get her out of her corral. I got there to find her laying down. She saw me, got up, squatted to pee and then walked up to the gate. She was ready to go.

They had a nice stadium lesson. After warmup she put them through some more technical courses and raised the jumps some also. One of the other horses, a big bay appendix was pretty tired and wanted to be pokey. He’s only four and just learning to jump. He actually did great, all things considered, but his rider told me a couple of times she’d love it if McKinna would share some of her energy with him. She was definitely the energizer bunny. The main thing the trainer had Misadventures work on was slowing McKinna down with a definite half halt/release, half halt/release. It worked great and she got some nice canter work out of her at times.


Back to camp for lunch, a nap, hay and beet pulp and then it was time for round two of XC. I’d seen the trainer earlier and she said “How’s the pony doing?” I assured her the pony was peppy and ready to go.

They warmed up and then started with a repeat of the course they’d done the day before, but she asked Misadventures if she wanted to try something a little harder and she said yes so she directed her over a few novice fences too. Of the three other horses, two were young and one was ten, but had the brain of a four year old (his owner’s words) so Misadventures and McKinna looked like old pros and got to do the harder stuff.

In the they end did a course which included several novice fences.

They jumped logs,

they jumped barns,

they galloped,

they went up and down banks,

they jumped the novice ditch,

and they cruised through water.

They had one not so good fence where McKinna took off long and the fence was pretty wide (hopefully Misadventures won’t kill me for posting this, but I love the look on her face!) – it’s wasn’t pretty, but she just clipped it a tiny bit with her back hooves.

Other than that it was beautiful, so at the end of their course they re-did that fence and nailed it. Misadventures told the instructor she’d like to call it good with that and she agreed. While the others did just a bit more, Misadventures got off and let McKinna graze. Good Pony!!

We went back to camp and had a great dinner. We ended up with about thirteen people in our campsite including the eventing trainer and a few of her friends. One of the ladies owns a winery and brought some wonderful wine to share. Eventers are so cool.

Misadventures had chosen to do stadium for her lesson on Sunday morning, figuring it would do her the most good to prepare for her Pony Club rating coming up. She got up and decided since she was exhausted McKinna probably was too and there was no reason to push it. She went over to tell the instructor who told her she remembered her saying she wanted to work on her position, but she thought it was rock solid. That made her very happy – she’s been worrying about it some because she’s been hearing horror stories about how hard Mega Ratings are and how they are sticklers on position. So we packed up and headed out, as did several other campers. All the way home, she kept saying “McKinna was so good!” I’m really proud of both of them. McKinna is a great little mare and Misadventures worked so hard to prepare her for this in a short amount of time.

We all had a great time!

Inavale Eventing Camp Day 1

The format of the camp is two 1 ½ hour lessons (one stadium jumping, one XC) on Friday and Saturday, a 1 hour lesson on Sunday morning (your choice, stadium or XC) and a flat lesson if you want one on Sunday afternoon. All the lessons are semi-private with no more than four riders per group. You can either camp onsite or stay in a motel nearby and the horses stay in pole corrals. They provided straw for bedding and McKinna thought she’d died and gone to heaven because we were bedding her corral with food!! She ate the straw at first, but soon figured out the hay was much better. We were mixing her beet pulp to soak next to her corral. She likes her beet pulp.

More beet pulp please!!

You also provide your own horse and people food. It’s a great deal though at $180 for 5-6 lessons. I went last year with Misadventures because she didn’t know anyone and I figured it might be fun to tag along. It was so much fun that I decided to do it again even though she had a huge group of friends to go with. I’ll probably go again next year too. I really enjoy it!

We arrived at Inavale Thursday late afternoon, with camp scheduled to start on Friday. We met some friends there, got McKinna settled in and our tent set up. Setting up the tent is always an adventure. We’ve done this several times in the last couple of months though, so it went up pretty easily. It’s designed with a mesh section on the roof so you can see the stars and it comes with a rain fly that you can put over the tent if you need it. The rain fly requires more assembly, poles and stakes so I let Misadventures talk me into not using it since there was no rain forecast. I’m sure you can tell where this is going.

Early in the evening everyone decided to go for a little “trail ride” out on the course. There was an extra horse because the husband of one of our friends was coming to ride in the camp, but was arriving late that night. They offered to let me borrow the horse and I got to go too. We had a nice relaxing ride, cruising around at a walk checking out all the prelim and intermediate jumps on the course. Since I don’t event, it was great fun for me to see the course from horseback.

After the trail ride we cooked some hamburgers, visited and then turned in early. We were a bit tired. Packing for a long weekend of horse camping and bathing a grey (read white!) horse before heading out tends to have that affect on you.

We were planning to sleep in until about 7:00, but we woke up at 5:40 am to, you guessed it, a light rain coming into our tent through the mesh ceiling. So we hopped up, attached the rain fly, and went ahead and checked on and fed McKinna. We decided to go back to bed to try to sleep a bit more. Of course, by that time it was after 6:00 and those riders with an 8:00 ride time were up and not so quietly getting ready.

Misadventures was scheduled for stadium at 9:30 and XC at 3:00. You pretty much couldn’t ask for better ride times. Not too early for stadium, then lunch and maybe a little nap before XC. So we got up and Misadventures got herself and McKinna ready while I tried to boil water on our little bbq for coffee. One of our friends had a nicer bbq with an actual burner so she offered me a cup. Yea! Then they were off to their lesson.

The instructor, who was awesome, spent a few minutes getting to know each of them, asking them what their goals for the weekend were. Misadventures let her know McKinna was her backup horse and had been in work a total of one week and that she really wanted to make sure her own position was solid because of her pony club rating was coming up. She told Misadventures to take a break whenever she needed to. After a general warmup they did some trot poles and grid work.


Then they put a couple of small courses together. The fences were set pretty much at Beginner Novice level the first day (2’6” and under). McKinna was a rock star. I think Misadventures stopped for a walk break once during a round of grids, but other than that McKinna was peppy and willing. She didn’t even come close to refusing a fence and I don’t think she knocked down one rail all weekend. Her biggest problem was that she would tend to get strung out and rushy at the canter, but all in all she did great. Misadventures came out of the lesson with a big smile on her face.


After the lunch and nap I mentioned earlier, it was time for XC. We wondered what poor McKinna would think when being tacked up for the second time IN ONE DAY, and after JUMPING no less. She was cheerful, go figure.

The instructor for XC is someone Misadventures has cliniced with before and she is absolutely wonderful. So she knows Pandora and was bummed for Misadventures that she couldn’t come, but she also remembered McKinna from last year‘s camp. They warmed up and proceeded to tackle a few beginner novice XC fences. All I can say is WOW. McKinna was great and Misadventures was riding so well! Her position was rock solid and their only refusal was caused by this little guy jumping out of the brush.

They jumped a log and a table and put a little course together.

Then they wandered over to try a ditch. You can’t quite see the chestnut behind McKinna. He’s about to say ‘NO FREAKING WAY AM I GETTING NEAR THAT HORSE EATING DITCH”
And he continued to say that for about fifteen minutes. As you can see, McKinna said, “Ditch? What ditch?” The instructor even tried to use her to calm the upset guy, having Misadventures walk her back and forth over it and then just stand on the other side. They jumped the ditch at a slightly wider spot with a log in it and then moved on to doing another little course with slightly bigger jumps.

To finish the lesson the instructor had them jump up and then down a pretty good sized (I’d say three foot) bank. Here’s McKinna launching herself off of it.

The instructor kept saying “She’s doing great. She looks like she’s having fun!”
She wasn’t the only one having fun. The picture may be too small to see the smile, but it was huge.

Tomorrow – Day 2. Will McKinna decide enough is enough? Or will we need to rename her The Energizer Bunny? Plus the pictures on day 2 were taken by Misadventures’s boyfriend, who is a much better photographer than I am, and has a really nice camera. Stay Tuned.

Lily Glen: Days 1 - 2

By Tuesday night, everything was loaded in the trailer tack room. As in, we fit all the equipment for five days of horse camping for two girls and two horses, including three MONSTROUS bales of hay plus one smaller one, inside a normal trailer-sized tack room. It was a triumph of engineering, let me tell you.

Anyway, after a fairly long and uneventful drive, we pulled into the campground. Lily Glen is an absolutely beautiful place.


It's kind of a sad story, actually. Lily Glen is actually public land, donated awhile ago by someone. From what I understand, Lily Glen used to be the premier recognized event in Oregon - for a time, the ONLY recognized event. The course went up to Intermediate. A few years of terrible flooding essentially ruined it, destroyed the footing and the courses. A big old barn, kind of a landmark, burned down - lots of people donated their time and money to rebuild and restore it, and the new one burned down too.

Noble Riders Pony Club is working very hard to build up the course again. They've added several new cross-country fences each year, and right now the course goes up to Novice. I hope someday it can be a recognized event again, but we'll see. It's so sad to walk by the broken-down ruins of these old, huge fences, big hanging logs, skinnies, water complexes.

But, I was there to ride and have fun at camp.

Over the course of the whole week, Pandora was just not very settled. Don't think she was a big fan of the whole openness. She didn't eat her grain very well, though she ate probably 80% of it, and didn't plow through hay like she normally does. On the other hand, she drank lots of water and didn't seem unhappy, just a bit on the tense side.

We of course breezed through the jogout on Wednesday night. Pandora was a bit nervous because of all the stuff going on, and I swear she grows about a hand when she's a tad spooky - she puffs up and it's very pretty to watch, though a little disconcerting to try to steer. Anyway, I got a compliment from the judge/inspector about my "lovely mare." Why yes, she is quite lovely!

First lesson on Thursday morning was XC. Pandora was hot to trot and OMG she looked adorable in her brand new red fly bonnet. I hope someone got pictures. It wasn't even a silly purchase, because she inherited typical sensitive TB skin and absolutely hates flies. Anyway.

Our warmup was just perfect for her. The whole group rode on a big circle, walking awhile, trotting for five minutes or so, then a little cantering. I'm learning that she just wants to get out there and move when we're in jumping mode, no stupid standing around or quiet walking or expecting her to trot slowly right off the bat. She just wants to get a forward, no-nonsense trot going, then I can start asking her to adjust or transition.

She jumped marvelously that day. She is developing a rather forward-but-not-rushing attitude to the fences, which I really enjoy. It's a blast to ride and she was jumping like a rockstar. The only times we get into trouble are when I think the instructors want something slower, so I pick, and she either fusses or chips the fence or both, so I just need to stop second-guessing and always ride nicely forward.

The instructor had a really nice tip, too, for horses who warm up pretty tense and stiff at the walk. She said to just put toe pressure on each stirrup, like you're pushing down a brake pedal, as each shoulder comes forward. Left, right, left, right. I'm not sure how exactly it works - I'm guessing the way it sort of imposes a gentle rocking on the horse's back - but it really seems to help them slow, relax, and stretch down, at least a little bit. I tried it a little at the trot and met with some moderate success there, too.

Our second lesson of the day was pacing. I expected, I don't know, marked-off sections of 100m each and tips on how to get and maintain your ideal pace, but we ended up going on a strange little trail ride for about 40 minutes, then she took us to a big loop and essentially told us how long it should take us to complete it at a certain speed. So, not particularly useful I guess, especially since I got lost the first time. The second time I wanted to aim for 350 meters per minute, a solid BN pace, so I asked and she said it should take 3:50. I held a steady canter through the woods, had to drop back to a trot for some tight switchbacks, and had to really hold her back on the open stretch at the end because she just wanted to FLY through it.

I still came in closer to 400mpm.

So, well, I know the dang horse can go fast. But I'll have to be careful not to gather speed faults on my BN courses, though I'm planning to ride Novice at the rec. HT next year if all goes well.

And thus concluded the first night.

My buddy and I went for a bareback hack, which was fun - we played in the water crossing, which Pandora was not a huge fan of (she hates deep mud, can't say I blame her) and cantered around a little. I almost fell off, because her canter got really bouncy at one point on a turn, but I just grabbed mane and hauled myself back on. Later in the week, we were headed down a mown path back towards camp when my buddy on her little QH mare picked up a canter. Well heaven forbid we walk when they're cantering, and trotting bareback is no fun, so I had to canter too.

Pandora has a much faster canter than my friend's mare, so we rather quickly passed them up, Pandora took a little leap over a shallow ditch, and we did a bit of an accidental bareback gallop towards camp. She pulled up pretty easily with a circle, and it was fun. Staying on is easy in a straight line!

The second day was, um, a little bit less spectacular. We started off with grids. Most of our problems, I'm pretty sure, came from a woefully not-ideal-for-Pandora warmup. The instructor had us get in a line and pick up a trot, then adjust our speed forward and back without breaking rank. Except, well, I was behind the my friend's mare - who has a nice trot and is capable of slooooowwwwwwwwwww when the instructor asks for slow - and so I had to be up in Pandora's face pretty much constantly - even in the forward trots - to keep from breaking rank or running up the pony's butt. Then she had us go straight into trotting grids.

Nope. Pandora was not having any of that. Definitely not a good warmup for her and by this point she was all wound up.

So then the instructor sets up a pole in front of a cross-rail, says we should be putting in two trot steps before the x-rail. So, because she said so, I tried to half-halt really strong to get the two steps, since I knew Pandora was really hot and would just want to leap the whole thing. Which was a bad idea, because she flipped her head and whacked me in the nose with her poll.

Which hurt, a lot.

Ugh. Basically, the rest of the lesson sucked and I had to work hard just to get her to trot calmly through some trot poles. She lost a lot of trust in me in the beginning because I fought with her so much and she had a crappy warmup, and I just couldn't get her back. Lesson learned, I guess, and I did carry away some ideas about how to control her with more seat than hand. And also the knowledge that even if I think an instructor wants a certain thing, I need to be careful not to compromise what I know simply will not work with my horse.

I was dreading our second lesson of the day, dressage. She's been a nutcase so far, so now I'm gonna ask her to be calm and quiet??

Much to my relief, and again with a much more suitable warmup, I had my horse back for this ride. She was pretty forward, but not ignoring me, and when we did some one-on-one instruction I got some reeeally nice work with a spiraling trot circle. The inside of the spiral was very difficult for her but it produced some very nice gaits, so I know that's something I need to practice.

It was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster of a day, to be honest. I am so used to everything always being calm and right with Pandora that when I have an awful lesson like our grids session, I start second-guessing practically everything. Is she right for me? Does she hate my bit? Is she feeling okay? Am I ever going to get her to relax? Is she developing bad habits that she's going to have forever? Is she getting hotter and hotter the longer I own her? And I just go round and round. I'm glad I had such a good dressage lesson about an hour later - it helped knock some sense into me and make me remember that it's not the end of the world if I have a bad ride. More on that later, I think, it's something I need to spend some time talking about.

Lots more to write about. I learned a lot and I don't think I can get it all down in just one or two posts! I keep remembering more to go back and add. Next I'll write about the last two days of camp, then talk about the horse management lessons we had while we were at camp.


PS, tomorrow I'm going to watch the upper-level XC at Inavale's recognized HT. I am SUPER excited!

Combined Test

Phew, what a great day I had at that Combined Test. Not only did I have a fantastic day, I knocked out practically all of my May goals in one fell swoop.

A Combined Test is sort of quasi-eventing, I guess. It's a schooling show with an eventing dressage test and then a stadium course. So, eventing minus the fun part ;)

Our dressage test was mediocre. In warmup, Pandora was beautiful - relaxed, stretching into my contact, bending nicely, transitioning nicely, completely ignoring all other horses and the very colorful jumps set up in the outdoor arena we were riding in. Once we got to the indoor arena to perform our test, it wasn't quite as good. She is not a big fan of the judge's box in any way shape or form, which is unfortunate since it's the first thing you ride straight towards! This tells me we need practice riding straight towards scary things and ignoring them.

She was distracted so we lost more 'forward' than I was expecting, at two times actually breaking gait for a step (though the judge only caught one of them). Distraction aside, it's still the best test I've ever had, the previous two horses preferring giraffe and motorcycle impressions. We ended with a 40.5 (eventing dressage - it's like golf, not bowling), tied for 5th place.

We had a few hours until my stadium ride, so we camped out at the trailer in style. Pandora had a big ol' haybag and a bucket of water, and we were in the shade about 15 feet away. Dad brought a little propane BBQ so we had cheeseburgers. Yum! We also brought our young dog, who behaved wonderfully. He hung out at the trailer with us, respected the horses, and played fetch with blades of grass when he got bored. No, seriously. I actually threw pieces of grass and he would bring them back. We have it on video.

I got on a bit too early to warm up for stadium. Well, if they had been running on time it would have been fine, but they were about a half-hour behind schedule. Pandora, I've discovered, loves about a 5 - 10 minute warmup for jumping. Get in, w/t/c, jump a couple fences, and call it good. When you do it that way, she's light and soft and springy and fantastic. Unfortunately I was on her a little longer than she would prefer, but once I dismounted and stood with her, she stood patiently. I hopped back on just before my round and it worked fine.

Our jumping round was awesome! The fences at Inavale are both beautiful and spooky, so I was worried we'd have some 'forward' issues. Not a chance. She didn't hesitate at a single fence! None of our distances turned out particularly well, which is my fault - I have only practiced jumping once in the last month and a half, so I think I've just lost a bit of feel for pace. I could tell that I needed to have her moving with a little bit bigger steps so we made better distances, but overall we had a smooth pace and a good clean round. I was very pleased with her - she was soft, controllable, easy to steer, and honest about the fences.

We ended up with 4th place. Hooray!

Then we got to the fun part!!

I headed out to school some XC. I can tell we need more practice at rating in general on a cross-country course, but we definitely have a good baseline. I hopped over some low fences, then came to the water complex expecting to have to patiently insist for the next 40 minutes that she really could take a step into the water.

It took about 40 seconds.

After a brief and halfhearted protest, she went straight in and splashed straight out the other side. I trotted in, she trotted through. The next time I trotted in, she picked up a canter as she stepped into the water and cantered through. This water comes almost up to her chest.

I guess I have a water horse!

After that I practiced hopping over some little tiny ditches (no problem), then put together a couple short courses for myself. By the time I finished, I'd pushed myself to go over some larger fences, like the house you see me jumping in the picture in the last post (I'm jumping the larger house in the middle, not the coop that's nearest the camera). Those fences were either maxed-out Novice or tiny tiny Training, but my money's on novice. Either way, they were pretty big, and when I finally talked myself into letting Pandora have a decent pace coming in, we stopped chipping in and got a good distance.

Seeing a pattern here? Need more pace, need a longer stride, need to let her go a little more...it's a good lesson for me to learn.

Overall it was a fantastic day and I love this girl more all the time. On Monday we're riding in a fun Hunter Pace/Foxhunt Derby, where you ride in teams around a set course but get to choose which height of fence you jump (if you jump at all). That'll be great because we can start out at our level and then pick a couple fences at Novice or small Training to jump too.

I will post this weekend with an overview of my summer horse plans. It's going to be an awesome summer!

A Good Day

I'm too tired to write a real post.

But, I was at a Combined Test (dressage and stadium) at Inavale today. We ended up with 4th place out of 10ish, then I got to go school XC.

It was a good day.

Here's a preview.

A Constructive Mindset

Trotting at Karen O'Neal clinic, 4/19/09

I've been thinking a little bit about what you can do when you ride with a constructive mindset.

Tuesday evening, it was raining hard. In the arena, it sounds loud, no matter how lightly the rain is falling. Pandora had some extra 'go.'

Normally my warmup is pretty relaxed. Walk a little, trot a little, bend a little. This time I decided I needed something to focus on. We started walking serpentines. On the straightaway, I insisted on, well, straightness. Even weight in both reins, even feel between the legs: straight.

It was harder than it sounds.

It felt like she was a pinball going back and forth, almost bouncing between the reins. After a few loops, she understood, and settled in nicely straight. I requested a forward, marching walk -- come on, girl, let's act like we have somewhere to be!

When we picked up the trot, she was feeling the Thoroughbred half of her breeding. That is, she was Forward. More so than she usually is, and more so than I'm usually comfortable riding. I tend to be a little bit of a control freak, because I had so little in the way of half-halts and speed control on my first horse. With Pandora, simply because I can control her momentum with half-halts, I do it too much.

But this time I decided to work with what she gave me. I took that energy and said, "Okay -- let's go." I asked for a big, powerful trot, then asked her to come back to me and compress her stride. I insisted on correct bend. I would push her forward through the corner, accelerate, then come back. We did some leg yields. When we picked up the canter to the good direction, she powered right into it. To the left was still a bit unbalanced, but I'll take what I can get.

The most important part of this was that I came into the ride with a constructive mindset. Sure, she was a little hot, and maybe she wasn't too focused when I mounted up. But I took what I had and I decided I would do something with it -- so we had a really nice ride.

It's important to me to take some benefit out of every ride, no matter how many things didn't go as planned.



I applied the same concept to a clinic I rode in this weekend.

We ended up spending two and a half hours in the saddle - probably an hour and a half in the arena, then another hour on cross country. The arena is beach sand. Lovely and soft, sure. But have you ever gone running on sand? It's hard work.

So I was already stressed about the demands on Pandora's fitness. I know, I worry too much, she's half TB anyway. But that made me a little tense to start with.

Then we rode forever and ever and ever. The clinician was great and had some really good advice, but sometimes it was unclear when we could give our horses a break and when we should keep going.

THEN we went outside. Between struggling to keep a tired Pandora up off her forehand, fighting with her about adequate brakes, and a little confusion about what exercise we were doing, I got pretty frustrated. I did keep my mouth shut and do what I was told, because the way I see it, you go to a clinic to learn, not to argue. ESPECIALLY not to complain that you're tired and so is your horse.

So I kept at it. And you know what? I got some really valuable lessons out of it. Towards the middle of the XC session, I finally understood what she was trying to get me to do with my hands and seat at the base of the fence (I was dropping Pandora, again, sigh). When I started riding right, Pandora started going very very well, as usual.

I found that, even after 2 hours of hard riding in the heat, when I was exhausted and my horse was pretty tired, I could still get around a course of obstacles without Pandora falling on her forehand -- provided I rode correctly.

That is GOOD knowledge to have. That means that when we've been riding for an hour, I know better than to think 'Oh, she's so tired, it'll be impossible to jump without falling on the forehand!'

Nuh uh. I need to start asking more of her. This is a big weakness of mine. I just don't push hard enough.



Anyway, I just wanted to get that out there. There's always a valuable lesson out there, even if you're hot and sweaty and grumpy and tired ;)