A Tale of Two Horses, revisited

McKinna at Inavale eventing camp, summer 2009

I have been chewing over a bit of a dilemma for quite some time now.

It has simmered quietly in the back of my mind, bubbling just a little bit louder sometimes-- like when I ended up taking McKinna to the eventing camp. Or when I ended up taking McKinna to my rating. Or when I ended up taking McKinna to the first two dressage lessons . . .

You get the point.

So the simmering question is this: am I wasting my chance for riding McKinna in her best years?

I never got the chance to truly work on McKinna. I rode her for about a year, took her to her first XC schooling sessions, did high school equestrian team, and had a great time. Just after I broke my ankle, I joined Pony Club and bought Pandora. My riding has improved by leaps and bounds since I joined - but I've hardly focused on McKinna since then. I have never turned my new skills, long-term, to riding her.

When I do ride her, it's great. She kicked butt at an eventing camp with pretty much no preparation and I was able to successfully get my D-3 rating on her, also with not much preparation. (Not that she was perfect. But, she was fun.)

Both of them have sort of been booted into gear as I start conditioning again for the season. McKinna took over the first two dressage lessons since Pandora whacked her poll, and they went very very well. So well that my mother has insisted I keep schooling her, and the improvement is awesome.

This is difficult, because riding Pandora is also very fun. She's cheerful - even more cheerful than McKinna, who can be grumpy in the winter. She's incredibly sweet and friendly and always willing to come in from the pasture to say hi.

Pandora comes in for some snuggles, summer 2009

She's also sensible: last night, the trainer was working a young gelding who's been laid off from a cough for awhile. He was really full of beans and at one point got the rope under his leg, and she let him go so he didn't hurt himself. Pandora and I were at the end of the arena, and as he came galloping towards us at full speed, I just settled her into a halt on a light contact and stayed in as secure of a seat as I could. He flew by a few feet from us; Pandora snorted and jumped a bit to the side when his trailing rope nearly hit her, but other than that she was calm and quiet.

She's pretty laid-back about scary fences. Even last spring when we jumped a course of Inavale's brightly decorated fences, including one zebra-painted end fence, she hardly blinked. She's easy to get along with. Sometimes she gets upset about something, but it's so easy to bring her down just by staying calm and giving her a moment to process what's going on.

But.

If you'll recall, I never intended to keep Pandora forever. I wavered back and forth: project horse to sell, or keep for longer? And if you also recall, I decided to keep her for at least another year. I had lots more to learn from her, I decided. (And I did have more to learn, and I have learned a lot.)

At the same time, McKinna has a lot to teach me, and I feel like I should take advantage of this now. My time and effort may be better invested into McKinna: regardless whether I keep my horse for this year, I will sell Pandora before I graduate college. This is because of the way my after-college plans are looking, which I will talk at length about in my next post. I love and care about Pandora, but she is not my "forever horse" and I knew that when I bought her.

After-college plans considered, though, McKinna is my mom's horse, and she will stay with our family for the rest of her (long and happy!) life. Any training I put into her will continue to benefit us in the long run as my mom will still ride her.

There are other advantages and disadvantages, of course. Sharing one horse between us means sharing expenses - all the money I currently spend on Pandora and her upkeep could then go to more lessons, more clinics, and the ability to maybe go to MORE than one recognized event. The mind, it boggles.

On the flip side, sharing one horse means . . . sharing one horse. We did it for awhile, but it usually means less riding time for Mom, and it also means one of us is always stuck not doing much while the other person rides. I think we could handle it, but it could sometimes get frustrating. (That being said, in most cases it's not too hard to find a horse in need of an occasional ride, so riding together wouldn't necessarily be out of the question.)

Then it comes back to Pandora. I think she is an excellent lower-level eventing/PC/do whatever you want horse. She's fun, sweet, laid-back. There are a few things to work out - for example, at my rating, she was rushing quite a bit on XC, and I think I can resolve that with some quiet schooling. She's also a little volatile about trailering lately, which is a bit of a leftover from her accident, but with patience she's already begun to settle down again.

Trotting at a Karen O'Neal clinic, spring 2009

So it's not that she can't do what I want to do. She did well last year at the combined tests and event derbies and schooling shows. At Lily Glen we were schooling Novice XC with great success. I strongly believe that after a few more dressage lessons, I'll start to see a big difference in her too. Last night I was working on some concepts from the first lesson. Since I've only taken one lesson on Pandora with the dressage trainer, I wasn't entirely sure if I was on the right track - but I asked for a canter transition and it was immediate and balanced, so I'm pretty sure I was headed in the right direction.

But maybe it's time for both of us to move on.

I've put a year and a half of training and time and love into her. Consistent sessions with the chiropractor have made an incredible difference in her body and her comfort level. A switch to this barn, where she gets year-round turnout in a pasture as well as mountains of hay, has created a horse who is very happy throughout the year (instead of a head-flipping mess in the winter) and who needs very little grain to maintain good weight.

It's hard to think that anyone will ever take as good care of her as I do. I CAN'T be alone in this. Other people feel this way too, right?! But I also, logically, know that's not true. Somewhere out there is a person looking for a friendly, enjoyable horse to have fun with, someone who will feed her lots of hay and make sure she gets turnout and take excellent care of her.

So here's the general idea: I'm just not sure what to do. At this point, selling her this spring or early summer to a really good home sounds like the best idea. I'm not under time pressure, so I will have the leisure to look for a perfect match. Then I can take McKinna to the recognized HT at Inavale, my C-2 rating, and finally just get a chance to make some progress with arguably the coolest little mare ever.


Phew. That was a lot - and like I said, I have been mulling over this for a long time. It is NOT a bad dilemma to have, and I know I'm lucky to have an excess of good horses. But that's what I've been thinking, and I sure wouldn't mind some thoughts from you guys on the whole matter.

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.

Old Faithful

Last night I went out to the barn knowing just what I needed after a couple bad rides.

I needed to ride McKinna.

First, I longed Pandora, because I wanted to get her moving after yesterday's tough workout. She was fine. A little spazzy - I had two ground poles out, one on each side of a 20m circle, and the first few times she did some leaping and hopping and general silliness. On the plus side, when she jumped over the ground poles she looked nice and pretty! Ha. Anyway, she settled down, I got about 20 minutes of nice solid relaxed work, then put her away. Today I'm going to focus on having a short, positive ride.

Then I went to ride the Wonder Pony. She has a knack for dealing out what you can take - what her rider needs isn't necessarily always a quiet, calm ride, so sometimes she challenges you. But last night I needed some quiet time. It felt like from the moment I took her out of the stall, she was just taking deep breaths, relaxed and ready to calm me down. (Yes, I'm anthropomorphizing. Sue me.) She was very quiet in the cross-ties, fairly unusual for Ms. Fidget.

My whole ride was just that: quiet, calm, relaxed. I worked on some dressage with her - some baby lengthening and shortening at the trot, just holding her in with abs and seat and then relaxing and letting her surge forward. Fun stuff. I tried it at the canter, but when she's not cantered regularly under saddle she loses a lot of her canter adjustability. Still, I got a fairly good canter, considering I haven't really ridden her since my rating.

Then I tried this turn-on-the-forehand-in-motion exercise with her. Basically, it's like you're leg-yielding around a circle....so, your horse is the spoke in a wheel, and both forelegs and hind legs must move over and cross over as you rotate. A bent sidepass? A sidepass on a curved line, instead of a straight line? Yes.

Anyway, I tried that exercise with Pandora the night of my bad dressage ride, and she wasn't having any of it. I think it was very, very hard for her: she couldn't seem to coordinate the motions, no matter how big or small I had the circle. She especially struggled with crossing her forelegs over without moving forwards or backwards. (Also I think it was a tough exercise to throw at her on a day she was feeling unfocused: I'm going to break that exercise down into smaller pieces to incorporate into our normal workout, THEN try the exercise again.)

McKinna nailed the exercise, first try, easy as cake. "What are we doing now? Oh, okay, this is kinda cool, I get it." The mare is so darned supple it's ridiculous - when I had the chiropractor adjust her a long time ago, she practically folded in half on one of the stretches. When the farrier's trimming, she could hike her hind leg up to her ears and probably still stand there casually, looking around for some hay.

I should make more time to ride them both. McKinna is great fun to ride and I would really like to make some dressage progress with her, too. With her, the main issue is a strong rein connection without a super-high neck, but I have the suspicion that most lateral work would be a breeze once we established a good connection.

Oh, and for your viewing pleasure, some (fairly low-quality) pictures from the jumping lesson. You can't see all her boots but you sure can see that fly bonnet! My mom took these with her cell phone, so the timing of the jumping picture is especially impressive.

Please ignore the dorky XC-vest-over-tanktop look. It was hot.

Whooosh. Look, she CAN reach out in the trot!

Pretty good jumping - except for her hanging knee - considering she was flying through the grid. My seat and heels are up because I was bracing with my back and thighs, but at least I'm following her mouth nicely.

Thanks for all the helpful comments on that last post. I'm sure we'll get back on track today and I will go back to the quiet, constructive rides we had been having.

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.

You Go Girl!

Hi. Many Misadventure’s mom here. Misadventures is off to a leadership camp this week and she asked me to post for her about the great weekend she just had at an eventing camp. We got home from Inavale at 1:00 PM today and she left for her other camp at 3:30. Busy girl… So here’s my perspective of the weekend.

By the way, for those of you wondering, Pandora is happily resting in a large paddock with McKinna, eating a lot and getting her daily dose of bute. Fortunately she’s been mellow because the vet said “no running!”, and she would be crazy if confined to a stall. Keep your fingers crossed that she trots off sound next weekend after she goes off the bute.



Anyway… The Inavale Eventing Camp is a camp that Misadventures has had planned for months. She loves Inavale and loves the trainer that does the cross country portion. She and Pandora had just done Lily Glen and she felt their cross country had reached a new level. Needless to say, she has really been looking forward to it. Then, a little over a week ago Pandora came up head bobbing lame and was prescribed paddock rest and bute for two weeks. What a bummer in so many ways! She thought about withdrawing from the camp. She was not only disappointed, but worried about Pandora and didn’t think it would be any fun.

After it had a chance to sink in we started talking about it and decided there’s no sense skipping the camp when she has a perfectly good backup horse. Why not go, have fun and get McKinna ready to take her to her Pony Club D3 rating at the end of the month. She knew she would need to use McKinna because Pandora would only be back in work a week at the most by then and she certainly wouldn’t want to push her and hurt her. What better way to prepare for her rating than an eventing camp. Of course, she didn't want to hurt McKinna either so she told herself she wouldn’t be able to do as much with McKinna, but she’s still go and have fun. She figured she’d explain to the instructors that McKinna was out of shape so she’d take it slow and stop when McKinna was tired.

So McKinna got pulled out of the pasture and put to work. Poor pony. Let me give you a quick review – Misadventures evented with McKinna last summer, did a little bit of stadium jumping with her in November and December and then pretty much turned her back over to me full time (She’s actually my horse) because she started working with Pandora in earnest at the start of the year. I am nowhere near the rider Misadventures is so McKinna had it pretty easy. I’d even go as far as saying she was semi-retired :) Not only that, but through a series of circumstances I hadn’t ridden her at all for about a month. Add to that the fact that they’d recently been turned out into the big mare pasture 24/7 and that’s what Misadventures had to work with. Notice the belly.

They had about a week so they started slowly, worked nearly every day, and by early this last week we were very proud of that little mare. She is such a quick learner and loves to work once you get her going. You could actually see her change physically too. She lost the bloated hay belly look and started to look like her old self.

So off we went Thursday afternoon to a weekend of fun. This is what my little mare had transformed into.
I can’t tell you how proud I am of BOTH of them! Stay tuned for Day 1 of the camp!

Lily Glen: Days 3 - 4

They've started putting up some pictures from camp, and they don't have them all uploaded yet, but so far there are almost NO pictures of me. One awkward front shot from jogouts, and three of Pandora and me standing around waiting in the cold for our lesson to start. From one of our XC sessions, the photographer got at least three shots of each of my group members but somehow none of me. I really hope they have some that they can post, otherwise I'll be really disappointed!

Saturday was cold. Really cold. As in, I rode XC with several shirts and a sweatshirt and my safety vest, and didn't get hot.

Cold cold cold. And wet. That is her heavy winter blanket there.

I think I freaked out the instructors a little with how wound up Pandora was at the beginning, but I assured them that with a calm purposeful warmup she'd settle. Which she did, good mare.

Pandora was rock-solid while jumping, but she picked up this obnoxious habit: she simply WOULD NOT stand still. She was champing at the bit and every few seconds would want to move. If I made her stop, she'd flip her head and get pissed off and threaten to pop wheelies. She didn't let up at all. Constantly walking was getting really old. After about an hour of this, I finally figured out that I can just gently pull her head around to the side. She'd walk in a tiny circle until she got tired of it, then she'd stop and I'd let go. The instant she tried to move again, I'd do it again. It was an easy, non-confrontational way to get her to knock it the hell off and it seemed to work.

Jumping was, like I said, amazing. She has started seeing distances and going for them with so much confidence. At the end, because I was wavering between choosing BN or N for the derby, I schooled a whole bunch of N-level fences, several of the maxed out. She was fantastic! Including the freakiest one (for me), a maxed-out vertical of narrow logs with fairly short face. Of course, I just kept my eyes up and pretended it didn't freak me out and she jumped it like any other fence. Bending lines, light-into-dark questions, nothing fazed her.

Here is the skinny-ish fence, AKA "linkin log fence," with me and the (big) dog for scale.

Dressage was so-so. It was still absolutely freezing outside. On XC, at least you're moving around a lot - out there, we stood still for most of it, because we were doing individual work on riding our tests. I don't really have a lot to say for it, I guess. Pandora was so-so, we worked for only ten minutes or so, and the instructor focused on riding the test, not riding the horse. It was a very very good thing for me to learn, because nobody's spent much time on test-riding strategy with me before, but not too conclusive for training. Still, she was well behaved.

I actually put her heavy blanket on her for the night, and as I slept curled up in my sleeping bag, wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, underneath a horse cooler and down blanket, and was still cold, I was very glad I'd put it on her.

I'd finally decided to run Novice at the derby the last morning. I figured, our dressage is going to suck because of her tension either way, and not a huge difference in the tests if you're only schooling. And what better place to test out the gears of a higher level than a low-key camp where you can take time to school or drop down if things don't go well? All evening, though, I struggled with whether or not to scratch. The constant drizzle hadn't let up. I was tense, the way your muscles never seem to fully relax when you're cold and tired and slightly miserable. Pandora was tense, probably also from the cold but a lot just from being there. To be perfectly honest, I'd have traded the derby to be home and dry!

Cold, wet, and grumpy! (Maybe she's grumpy because I don't have her halter adjusted right)

By the next morning, Sunday, I was fully decided to scratch. Not only were we both pretty tired and a little stressed, a mass of fog rolled in and the rain still hadn't stopped. The footing out on the course was good when dry, but the mud turned hard and slick when wet. To me, it just wasn't worth risking our newfound confidence, and I knew she'd want to go fast.

Turned out it didn't matter - they canceled the derby for all the reasons I mentioned. I was glad I'd made the right decision anyway, and I certainly wasn't heartbroken that it meant I got to pack up and head home earlier than I'd expected. My parents came to pick us up, so I was a little disappointed that they didn't get to watch me ride, but they've seen me before and they'll see me again. I'm probably anthropomorphizing, but Pandora sure seemed glad to get on the trailer later that morning.

Before we left, my buddy and I took my parents and my dog on a course walk. It is quite the hike, but it was worth it. The dog had the time of his life. I don't know if I've mentioned him before, but Kuma is a 2 year old Rottweiler/Chocolate Lab mix we got from the humane society last year, and he is a big 100-pound ball of affection and energy. He ran all over the place, fell in the creek, chased sticks and his ball through grass twice as tall as him, and in general had an awesome time. He bounds like a deer when he runs through the tall grass, so cute. Someday I'll post the video I have of me and him playing fetch with a blade of grass - yes, he's that focused on playing fetch.

So, after that we loaded everything up and headed home. It got warmer as we went, which was nice - I'd been wearing a tank top, t-shirt, long-sleeved riding shirt, turtleneck sweater, crew-neck sweatshirt, hooded sweatshirt, AND rain jacket. Might have been a little overkill, but I hate being cold. That's why I'm so puffy in the blue rainjacket picture!

McKinna hollered awfully loud when she saw Pandora, poor thing. I think she thought we took her away forever! Anyway, they had their joyful reunion, Pandora got several days of well-deserved rest, and then you know what has happened with the injury and lameness nonsense.


So, Lily Glen was a really good experience. I'm pondering whether to go back next year - it is a long drive, and horse camping is plain exhausting, especially when no parents are there to help out! I had some really good lessons, but I also had some that weren't all that useful. The first two horse-management lessons taught things that I already knew, though the third was very interesting. It was cold, and tends to be cold on a regular basis.

On the other hand, I did have a good time. I enjoy any opportunity to really get to know kids from other Pony Clubs, since we don't get the chance all that often. The course is beautiful, and I would love to ride it as they continue to make progress rebuilding. (I've heard they're looking for old course maps to help rebuild the course, so on the off chance that any of you rode there in the past, let me know!) It's also only $200 for many days of lessons and activities and food, though you do have to factor in gas and travel time.

Anyway, it's not something I'm decided about now, and who knows what my summer plans next year will be. Overall I had a very good time, learned a lot, and I'm glad I went.

A Fine and Pleasant Misery*: Part II

Here's a continuation of the Event Derby story. Sorry it's taken me so long, finals and packing and working has sucked up my time. The good news is, I'm OFFICIALLY done with my first year of college. Yeehaw!

I haven't ridden much lately for pretty much the same reasons I haven't been posting. Pandora has been acting on-edge a lot - not as bad as when she was in raging heat, but I free-longed her last night to blow off some steam and she was just going for it. Fingers crossed she settles down for Lily Glen.

Anyway, without further ado:

---

Ah, morning. A quarter to 8, to be precise. Birds chirping, horses nickering, grass waiting wetly outside to be tromped through. Which I do, promptly, to feed and water my horse, who has managed to drain two hay bags and two buckets of water overnight. Sigh.

It is satisfying when she nickers at the sight of me, though. I choose to ignore the fact that she nickered only the second time I approached, which was when I brought her hay.

I head out to the barn, correctly suspecting that our instructor won't quite be ready for the guided course walk at 8AM sharp. My pants are wet wet wet by the time I even get down to the barn, so I know the course walk is going to be hopeless. Thankfully I borrowed my mom's very waterproof boots, so my socks at least are dry. But everything else is, as usual, wet.

Our instructor is perky. This is because she has a cup of coffee in her hand, and also waterproof boots that are tall enough to keep her legs dry. The course walk, despite its sogginess, actually goes well. The course looks nice, though there are some rather tight turns for Beginner Novice. Then again, this is a hybrid between SJ and XC, so I suppose I should be glad there aren't any SJ-tight turns.

The course looks like this: the first three fences are a serpentine, two stadium fences and one rolltop. Then a right turn to a double stadium, hang a right to a fake trakehner (it was a little stadium vertical set down inside a shallow ditch), then up a longish hill to a little barn. Over the barn, pretty tight left-hand turn and down the hill to hop over a little ditch. Then an almost 90-degree left turn and a few strides to a little table with a pretty straight line to another bigger table. Loop awkwardly way left and then tight right to go through the water complex, then turn around the judge's mound for a turquoise stadium fence and another tight left to jump the Fence-3 rolltop in the other direction for the final fence.

It looks like a nice mix of fences, and I'll actually have some room in places to let Pandora move out a little. Some of the turns suck, but most of it should ride nicely.

My only concern is the footing. I'm not sure if you picked up on this, but everything out there is pretty darn soggy. Before my division goes, the turf has to withstand divisions of Prelim, Training, and Novice, most of them with studs. I can't stud because Pandora's not shod on hind, and you don't want to have more traction in front than in back. Barefoot should be okay, I just don't want her to slip and get anxious in the mud.

Anyway.

I make the long slow return to the tent and again change into breeches and half chaps to save my poor wet legs. Isn't it summer yet? Thankfully, breakfast is equally good as dinner: leftover pork chop in scrambled eggs. Yummmm. Delicious.

Then we need to scurry, because Prelim XC is from 10 - 10:15 and we want to see the big jumps! As expected, it's exciting and fun to watch. There are only three of them, and one accidentally jumps the (bigger) Intermediate trakehner instead of the Prelim one. The big E for her after she jumps her next fence, but cool to see.

So we head back, take care of some chores, check on the horse, and the like. My dressage ride time is at 1:12 and now, at last, I get to take a nap. Once again the sleeping bag is very comfortingly dry.

I wake up to the most welcome voices I have ever heard. My father has arrived in his shining white armor - okay, maybe more like a white t-shirt - with, praise the lords of Eventing, dry sweatpants and my rubber boots. And food, more food. I am thrilled beyond words. I am now warm, dry, and immune from the ever-present tall wet grass. My day has suddenly become several orders of magnitude better.

Just in time for me to tack up, of course, but it's the peace of mind that counts.

Pandora dislikes being tied to the trailer away from all other horses. She commences dancing around like an idiot, eyes wide and rolling, ears flicking all over the place, ignoring her hay bag. I get that familiar feeling that sits somewhere in the belly and goes "Oh, well, this ride is going to be fun." I tack up anyway, of course. After taking a moment to admire the vast expanse of white that is my brand-new dressage saddle pad, I mount up and head off to the [soggy, squishy, grass] warm-up area.

Happily, Pandora mellows out once I'm in the saddle. (Highly preferable to the opposite situation.) Our warm-up is, one might venture to say, nice. She relaxes and stretches into my hands. We have bend, we have transitions, we have obedience even in the slippery grass. How exciting.

Naturally, this all goes out the window once we get to the actual dressage court. Our test is tense. The 20-meter circle at A has been thoroughly pounded by all previous divisions and is not squishy but hard mud and therefore very slick. Pandora, who is paying more attention to the judge and letters than me or where she's putting her feet, has several minor slips until she's so nervous about the footing that her canter is short-strided and incredibly tense. We survive the test without any major mishaps and exit.

Oh well. At least the warm-up was good.

I never check my dressage score, but if I had, it would have been a 46.2 and we are in 6th place out of 9 or 10.

So we put the horse away, settle down for some food, etc. It has now progressed past cold and wet, through warm and wet, and everything is growing decidedly drier. It's a pleasant idea.

Anyway, I trudge out to the course like a good little Pony Clubber to walk the course one more time. Much to my surprise, it's dried out. A lot. Still a little questionable in places, but for the most part, it reasonably resembles solid ground. This is a good thing and it makes me a lot more comfortable about my impending round.

So I go get tacked up and hack out to the course.

(This was actually taken on the way BACK from the course, but oh well)

Now, Pandora likes short jumping warm-ups. As in, walk around for three or four minutes, trot for a minute, canter a bit, jump three or four jumps, and go in. Grand total 10 minutes or so. Therefore, I check in as soon as I'm in the warm-up area.

Obviously this would be a good time for someone to fall off and hold the course for 40 minutes.

She was okay, or I wouldn't complain. But still. I end up hopping off, because Pandora hates being sat on for that long and I hate sitting on her for that long. I mount up with a few minutes to go, walk a lap, pick up a canter, jump an oxer, make a neat tight turn around to a vertical, and call it good.

We head out to the course.

She wavers before the first fence, a big red and white vertical with a lot of stuff going on near it (water complexes, big hill with permanent fences, judge's area, spectators). I growl just a little and we get over nicely. Left turn to the second stadium vertical which rides really nicely. We loop around to our first XC fence, a tiny rolltop, which rides well.

I pick too much to the purple stadium combination so it's a bit ugly, but we get through okay. I give her a strong ride to the fake trakehner, convinced she's going to want to put her nose down in that ditch, but to my surprise it rides super smoothly. A bit more aggressive on the uphill, push the speed a little, then over a barn and a tight left turn to go downhill. She slipped a little on that turn, the only place on course - probably my fault for turning too tight, but she let it go quickly. Back to a trot down the hill - my downhill horse, who wants to stick her nose in every ditch and pull me onto her neck, is probably not the best horse to canter downhill to a ditch - and over the little ditch with no problems.

Then a tight turn to the line of tables, which she nails with no problem. Awkward long loop to the water complex, and after a bit of drop-the-outside-shoulder-skitter-sideways, we plunge through. Around left past the judge again and over a turquoise vertical, which was super ugly because we just got a weird distance and I stopped riding, then a tight left turn to the first rolltop again. That one rode super nicely.

And we're done, clear, and according to my father the announcer called it 2:30, which was one second under optimum time. Go us!

Everyone packs up, heads out, and we load everything up. I decide to head over to check on my score. And, to make a long story short, they'd given me 7 time penalties which I knew was incorrect. After yet another trek to the XC course, all is straightened out, my time penalties are removed to make me one of two clear rounds, and in the end I move up 5 places to take 2nd place.

Victory (or close to it) is so sweet.

*Again, I shamelessly stole this post title from a book by Patrick McManus of the same name. He is an outdoorsman and hilarious. I don't hunt or fish or much of anything, but I am still in awe of his humor. Horse camping, much like hunting and fishing and regular camping, is indeed a fine and pleasant misery.

A Fine And Pleasant Misery*: Part I

Hey all: I'm going to post the story from the derby in a couple parts. Last time I posted something in two parts was the Inavale camp, and the second part was the story of my broken ankle. I promise nothing bad happens in the second part of the story this time :)

---

Today is Friday evening, clinic day. We are camping in a tent at Inavale, and true to horse-camping form, everything has been a complete SNAFU. Except the food, but I'll get to that in a bit.

After going to my 10 - 11 Biology lecture like a good student, Mom and I had to rush around like maniacs trying to get together all the things we didn't get together earlier. The original plan was to arrive at Inavale a couple hours before my 3:00 clinic, set up the tent, unpack things, and the like. Now the plan was to actually get to Inavale with at least 10 minutes to tack up for the clinic.

We made it. Barely. I tacked up very quickly (after a momentary tangle when we accidentally switched reins onto the wrong bridle -- McKinna's bridle -- and had Pandora's lips pulled up to her ears) and headed out to the course.

Did I mention that it's been raining?

The course is wet. It is wet and squishy, and without the grace of fantastically maintained footing my horse and I would go slip-sliding away. I am in a clinic with four other people. I know one of them - good sign. Her horse is a bit wild but she's moving up to Novice and he's still looking pretty good. One going-crazy black horse with a too-tight martingale, the removal of which fixes one problem but leads to a bit of another. One slightly less-crazy black horse. One buckskin who was probably the nicest-behaved of the group. And me.

Pandora is relatively nice. I take a moment, in our long warmup, to rejoice in the fact that my horse now has a canter. Do you remember when she could barely canter? Because I can. She could barely hold it for a few strides, and even then her nose was practically on her feet if I didn't hold her up. No longer!

Jumping is reasonable. I smugly note that Pandora is the only one who will calmly trot over the placing pole and jump the little cross-rail we're using for warmup. We add a little table on a bending line. Pandora does not approve of going smoothly and calmly forth, especially when the foooting is wet and squishy and did I mention it rained earlier? Also, by now it is getting warm and muggy and even less pleasant. But I digress.

After many exhortations to KEEP YOUR SHOULDERS UP AND BACK, DON'T LET HER PULL YOU DOWN, we achieve some semblance of pretty jumping and move on to more fun things. Little courses, even.

I discover happily that if I remind myself that I do have abs, and if I pull my shoulder blades back so far they practically touch (I might exaggerate a little), I can actually keep her nose UP when we jump over ditches! And she'll actually jump over them, instead of pulling me down onto her neck and sort of oozing over! How exciting. Also, it helps if I don't look at the ditch. Eyes always up. Didn't I learn that in marching band somewhere?

Splashing through the water is plenty fun. She's quite willing, though she really prefers that we have a bit of momentum coming in. Canter up and through? No problem. Walking is a little more iffy but she'll do it if I insist.

We have a moment at the end of the XC course where we jump a bending line of two stadium verticals. Pandora is not pleased with the idea of going slow (my God, you idiot rider, we're on cross country, what the hell do you want me to slow down for??) and charges through, though she does politely leave the rails up. The instructor has me school her for a moment. Trot-halt. Walk, trot, halt. Trot, canter, halt, reinback. This makes Pandora more amenable to behaving, though I worry a bit about teaching her to back right after I halt. Bad habit in dressage. [I did test this on Saturday and have not installed a bad habit. Whew.]

So, tired and sweaty and mildly pleased with the whole experience, we head back.

NOW we get to set up the tent. And the canopy. And unload all our stuff. And set up the horse's corral. And feed the horse. And cook dinner. And go to the course walk at 7...and it is very wet. Also, the grass in the big field we are camping in in is about knee-height. Argh.

So we set up the corral, and set up the tent, and unload a little, and then it's time to go walk the course. Only to find - hooray - they haven't finished setting it up yet! So, we spend the next hour and a half dragging around standards and flags and numbers and getting our pants soaked halfway up to the knees. Which is all fine and good in the wonderful help everyone out attitude of eventing, but wasn't exactly what we were looking for since we haven't stopped to take a breath since early this morning.

Anyway.

Course walk is rescheduled for 8AM tomorrow. Awesome, since I hoped to sleep in till 8:30 or so, my ride time not being until afternoon. Oh well. Course walks are worth it.

So now we get back and have to figure out how to cook. My pants, both jeans and sweats, are soaked and therefore my attire of choice is breeches. With half chaps to keep my legs dry. We now discover that the nice big canopy, which we borrowed and planned to cook and hang out under, is conspicuously lacking in a rather important rainproof department: the roof.

So what do we do? The obvious answer: we move our camp chairs, portable table, lantern, and propane stove into the back of the trailer! The trailer now becomes our kitchen. Which is super convenient, because the trailer has a light, and one of our propane bottles is empty, so of the propane stove and propane lantern, we can only run one at a time.

But our 10PM dinner is very good. Pork chops and carrots and sweet potato. Mmm.

It is raining. Again. I am sure that by now I've mentioned that my current existence is very wet. Pandora is happily sheet-covered in her little corral, munching on her hay whilst getting rained on. She is wet too. She is a sea-horse, and I am her soggy rider.

Now a retreat to the tent, where the sleeping bag is dry and we have chocolate and horse magazines. We forgot the extra blanket to keep us warm, but Pandora's (clean and laundered, thank you) heavy blanket was in the trailer and serves as a nice replacement.

As I said...this is horse camping at its finest.

Next up: Saturday, the slightly less-wet day.


*I shamelessly stole this post title from a book by Patrick McManus of the same name. He is an outdoorsman and hilarious. I don't hunt or fish or much of anything, but I am still in awe of his humor. Horse camping, much like hunting and fishing and regular camping, is indeed a fine and pleasant misery.

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 ;)

Event Derby

Phew.

So you guys know there's a reason I love eventing, right?

Well Cross Country is it.

Don't get me wrong. I love Dressage - I love gymnastically developing my horse, deepening the connection and communication between us, and gradually learning to influence all parts of her while she's in motion. I love Stadium - the tight turns, the bright fences, the relative low risk.

Our dressage test was mediocre at best. Clearly I have been putting a little too much focus on our jumping work. She was a little nervous and looky, didn't really want to focus. She wasn't trying to take off, and she completed all movements, but was very stiff to the left and in general just kind of unresponsive. Time for more schooling.

But I love XC. I don't think I will ever find anything else that rivals the rush of galloping in an open field, coming up to (big) solid obstacles that I fully trust my horse to get us over. It's fantastic. I was grinning like an idiot the whole time. Mmmmmmmmmm it was amazing.

Pandora, for the record, was awesome. I've no idea how much actual XC experience she has. She was boarded at Inavale by a girl who evented her (they have a record for 1 recognized event), so I'm assuming she got plenty of schooling.

But still. It was my first time going XC with her. And she was fantastic.

Since it was an eventing derby, XC and Stadium were combined in a big field. The first several fences were stadium fences, and most of the rest were solid XC fences. She was not too sure about the stadium fences at first! But she went over, and by the time we hit the first big log, we were rockin' and rollin'. We weren't really galloping, but we had a big, forward canter. She figured out all the striding on her own. Sometimes it was a little tight, but oh well.

Her 'diving' tendency came back quite a bit- on the takeoff and landing side she had her head and forehand down as if looking at the fence. She used to do this a lot doing regular jumping in the ring, and it's gone away with miles and fitness, so I'm not too worried. Riding that course was definitely a challenge to her fitness, and we did it twice. We've simply never had the space to canter/gallop for long distances before. I am hoping to work more of it into our schedule if possible, and our long road hacks (once the weather lets up a little!) should help as well.

We had one stop. My first round, the second-to-last fence was a maxed-out coop. So it was 2'7 (I swear it was taller), probably 3' in depth, and it wasn't a super wide fence either. On an uphill. I could have forced her over it, but for some stupid reason I decided to wear gloves (because everyone else does??) and I couldn't get a good enough grip on my right rein to keep her straight. No big deal - circle around and we jumped it fine. The second round we were more confident and cruised over everything, though she was getting a little tired.

One of the fences was about 3', too -- hay bales. There was a lower option, because I think the taller option was for the level above us, but oh well. It rode really smoothly.

I was so proud of my girl. I'm going to a clinic next weekend at the same location - we'll spend the first half on dressage and the second on jumping, so I'm excited to get some good schooling done (for both of us). Now that I've got a baseline established and I know what she's like going around a course, I want a pair of eyes on me to make sure I'm not doing anything stupid with my position whilst caught up in the adrenaline rush.

I even sponged her legs, back, and chest down with a little liniment-water afterwards. She probably didn't need it. And it probably didn't really do anything. But dang, it made me feel good! And the spearmint smell is wonderful.


....you didn't think I'd leave you without a little video, did you?

Here you go. Hope your weekend was as awesome as mine!

Edit: the video was looking really weird and grainy, so I took it down for the moment. I'll get it back up tonight when I get home.


Here's a few things I see. I'm doing a pretty good job of not jumping ahead, though I still did it a little. This is the first habit I regress to when nervous or trying new things, so it's understandable.
I need to allow her to have a more forward pace in order to hit the fences in a good rhythm. This means I need to practice riding at speed more so I can get A. more comfortable and B. more aware of what speed is appropriate.
Steady, steady, steady is what we need. I think we can get it if we can just get some time riding outside somewhere.
I'm also going to install some lead changes sometime, or at least start asking her for them more over fences. I didn't want to fuss with her and make her do an interrupted (through the trot) change, so I either let her do a flying change on her own (which she did) or just go around on the wrong lead, which we also did. It got irritating though. So I think I'll start asking for leads over the fence or even asking for the change -- if I don't get it, no worries, but maybe I'll get some.

In a couple days, expect some more in-depth training posts. I've been thinking a lot lately. And when I think a lot, you get thoughtful posts ;)

Picture Time!

So my boyfriend is home for spring break...and he brought out his pretty camera to the barn today.

We're prepping for rally, so we spent four hours out there labeling and organizing and packing up all our equipment, longeing the horses, bathing the horses...it was a long day. And I have lots of pictures to prove it!

This is what I think of people taking pictures of me.



My pretty girl.


They gallop in unison! They'd make a perfect two-girl drill team.



She is looking so good lately. Shiny and muscle-y - and that was before her bath.


A rare shot with all three of us.



YOU CAN'T TELL ME THIS ISN'T THE MOST ADORABLE THING EVER.



She never poses like this for our camera. Tricksy little mare - she knows when the good pictures are coming.

After we got them all sweaty, we let them both have some really good rolling sessions....cause this is the dirtiest they'll be allowed to be for quite awhile. McKinna took full advantage of this.


...and then she had to get clean. And it took a whole herd of us to do it.


Hope you enjoyed.

Finals!

Phew. I am done with all my finals now, but it's been pretty hectic. I just haven't had the time or energy to put anything together!

Post coming up soon on Communicable Diseases. In the meantime, here's some pictures from last week and a nice video of our gridwork from the Friday lesson.




Notice the nasty face McKinna is making. This is a habit of theirs when they get to run loose in the arena...run like banshees and look really mean!


The girls doing their best impression of "Mommmmmmmm, quit taking pictures of me!"


Aww, aren't they cute?

Huh, Pandora looks a little skinny from the front - her hips poke out a little. It's just from not-much muscling back there, I promise. See?
I'd like to see more muscling on the topline, of course, but that comes with time.


Here's the video from the lesson. We had a grid set up almost straight down the center line - one-strides set a bit short to help our horses understand the need to rock back, with placing poles in between to really keep them together and thinking.

It was a very good exercise for Pandora, who likes to get a bit strung-out. Between the second and third fence, you can see her check herself as she realizes that she needs to back off to make it over the third fence - woohoo! That's exactly what these are supposed to do :-) I'm going to set up a slightly tamer version of this at home, using just cavaletti, but I hope to do a similar exercise with larger fences soon. I know it's important to get the basics down over lower fences, but when she gets bored and lazy over the little stuff, I think it's time to make them bigger. Yes? Yes.

Nevertheless, a very constructive exercise.

Slow Going

Hey guys - it's been a busy couple of weeks just dealing with life, hence lack of posts. But I've been riding and making some really good progress with Pandora!

I love, love, *love* how our transitions are going. We have smooth, relaxed halt-from-trot, and if at any time we get out of control or out of balance, I have instant access to a quiet transition down and back up to rebalance ourselves. Very cool.

I've got a few hours of calculus homework plus an outline for a 5-page history paper to do, so you will have to make do for now with a short post. To tide you over, here's a video of the 2'3" class from the schooling show we went to on Saturday.



She was great! Didn't even try to peek at the fences, just jumped them around as if she was saying "Finally, we get to do some slightly challenging stuff!" We did two 2'3 classes and were also entered in a 2'6 class, but by that time I'd been tacked up for several hours and I just felt like I was too tired to give her a decent ride. So, we schooled some of the 2'6 fences and she was totally fine, then we called it a day!

It was a beautiful day for the show and many people showed up - turned out to be a great fundraiser for our Pony Club.





Next week will be a little mellower in terms of workload for me, so expect some regular posts again.

Clinic Report, Part I

I took Pandora to a Pony Club clinic yesterday. I had a fantastic time and made some excellent progress with Pandora. To give you an idea of how happy I was at the end of the day (while Pandora was less than impressed with how much work she'd had to do), here is a visual aid:


Here's the way the day went (and it was a long day: thus, a long post).

Two riders in each session. One flatwork session before lunch, one over-fences session after lunch. About an hour for each ride. More than Pandora's used to in one day, but with a long several-hour break for hay, water, and relaxing in between, she was fine.

First off - I really, really liked the clinician. She clicked with me, and from what I could tell, a lot of other riders too. She listened to what I told her about what I was working on, combined it with what she saw, and put us to doing exercises that would help.

Key: she fixed me before she expected me to fix my horse.

She was big into body awareness, and she helped me fix the consistent problems I have - without me having to tell her what they are. I tend to lean forward, especially over fences; when I try to keep my chest up, I round my shoulders and roach my back, but when I try to keep my back flat, I duck my whole upper body down. I also ride without enough bend in my elbows. She fixed all of this at once by using one of those time-honored pony club 'punishments': the good old crop-behind-the-back exercise.

We didn't get any good pictures, but basically the crop goes between your back and your elbows. Your arms are thus pulled quite a ways back, forcing a bend in your elbows (and making me grateful I had long reins, cause damn, it was hard to reach the reins from there!). It's pretty easy to remember to sit up when you're contorted like that.

It didn't hurt, but it sure made me aware of how much I tend to slouch forward when I ride. Here's a picture of the middle of the crop-riding process (notice she also had us riding without stirrups - the horror!):


You can see in this picture that I'm still a little forward and rounded with my shoulders. It doesn't feel like it looks, and that's the problem: when I was riding like this, it sure felt like I had my shoulders opened and back. Not until I increased the motion until it felt ridiculous did she tell me that I was, in fact, correct. This is why eyes on the ground are important.

She later used the single best mental image I've ever heard to help me fix the derivatives of this problem over fences. Gotta save it for later, though.

Throughout all of this, we stayed on a large circle doing lots and lots of transitions while working on our body position. And you know what? When I sit up and keep my leg on, Pandora's transitions get a lot better. She leans on her forehand. A lot. So this is important, because her transitions usually involve diving to the forehand, not pushing with her hind end. The instructor used "forward into the walk" (from a trot) to help us retain the feeling of forward movement even in a downward transition.

Very cool. By the end, I was getting much better trot-canter transitions than usual, and our walk/trot and trot/walk transitions were just awesome.

Oh, and she also had us do the "bicycle exercise" to get the feel of the sitting trot, which I won't explain to you until I can show you. I never thought a riding exercise could take more careful balance and coordination than the sitting trot...but boy, was I wrong. I was laughing so hard (at myself) during this exercise that I could hardly breathe. I felt absolutely ridiculous. Unfortunately none of it was captured on video, but I promise that the next time I ride, I'll have my mom film some trot-bicycle-exercise for your enjoyment.



Then, break for lunch and other lessons and so on. Pandora got to hang out in a nice comfortable stall with plenty of hay and water.

She looked pretty sleepy.


Then it was time to tack up for round 2. She was not particularly enthusiastic about being tacked up again ;-) But she tolerates me and my Unreasonable Demands.

I'd like to get this up tonight, but I just don't have time to go over the second half of the day - so you can have this part now, and I'll post the second bit (including video of our awesome last fences) in a day or two!

Pictures!

Here's some pictures from the show -- and by some, I mean a lot. In no particular order:



Pandora's attitude for the whole day. Relaxed and chilled out.



Hooray blue ribbon!



Not much in the way of action shots, sorry guys!



She's cute when she's not being a terror.



Since I know you all wanted to see it, here's the costume! And McKinna is being very patient as we assemble it.




The finished product. I know, we're pretty awesome.




Pandora's pretty green ribbon.



I'm not pointing at myself, I'm memorizing my course :)




And this pretty much sums up McKinna's attitude for the entire day.


She was nice and calm...during warmup.

Oh McKinna, the things you put up with.



So there you have it!