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.

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.

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!

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.

Various Updates

Hello all! Just found this old picture of McKinna after a summer bath. Fly sheet, fly neck cover, fly mask, barely-visible-pink-tailbag....It takes a lot to keep a wet white horse clean!


I've got some various updates for you today.

New Saddle
I got a new saddle! We ordered it from Tack of the Day. I don't know if you are familiar with it, but basically they sell quality items at very discounted prices. Previously they sold a jumping saddle whose maker they did not disclose. According to reports, the saddle was pretty nice but the leather sucked. Well they just sold another round, and this time they had it made specifically for them and of higher quality leather. From reports on the COTH forums, it is made on a Collegiate pattern, but not actually by Collegiate.

I like it a lot! It is very soft. A big change from the jumping saddles I'm used to, which are pancake-flat old ones. It's got a soft padded knee roll, it's softer all around, and it has removable knee and thigh blocks which I may or may not remove. It's very comfy to jump in, fits McKinna very well (*almost* perfectly -- it's just a tiny bit snug up by her withers, but it's definitely not pinching). Does not fit Pandora in the slightest, which makes sense since they require two very different types of saddles.

McKinna needs a wide tree saddle that's rather flat in the back; she has a wide, flat, short back with decent withers but a body that narrows pretty quickly as it gets to her girth area. Combined, this makes saddles want to slide forward onto her shoulders.

Pandora is built like an A-frame house right now, haha! She definitely needs some more weight and muscling on her topline. But in any case, her shape is very different. Typical TB back: Pretty curved compared to McKinna's, fairly narrow, shark withers, needs a saddle that fits closely up front but curves enough in the back to hug her body. My older jumping saddles fit her damn near perfectly, minus the fact that they touch her withers when I'm in the saddle :( This I think will be easily fixed as she continues to build weight and muscle.

Friday Lesson
I trailered out to the Friday lesson again this week and had a blast. This time there were two other riders there. McKinna was very well behaved! During warmup she was extremely soft and relaxed for me. Then she started fussing at my right leg and not wanting to bend to the right, so I grabbed a dressage whip for the rest of flatwork and that seemed to fix it.

Her canter work was WAY better. Still quick, still a little out-of-balance, but slower than last time and way more under control. Circles were easier without her totally dropping her inside shoulder.

Then we did some jumping and McKinna was still quite awesome! We put together a course after awhile. After one fairly sloppy course where I couldn't seem to stay in the right place in the tack and she couldn't seem to find decent distances (coincidence? Think not.), we pulled it back together and had an awesome trip. She is staying steady and relaxed coming up to the fences instead of rushing towards them, picking her own distances, and when I ride her correctly she even stands up through her corners!

What a lovely horse she is, even if she was rotten last weekend.

Clipping
McKinna is going to get clipped today - a modified trace clip. Normally I just clip the underside of her neck down the front of her chest and leave it at that, but she's quite furry and even with that clip she got very sweaty at last night's lesson. So I'm going to do a clip that goes down the side of her neck, across some shoulder, and some belly in basically a diagonal straight line. Shall take pictures since we finally found the camera!

Plateau and Clicker
I feel like McKinna and I have hit a bit of a plateau. We seem to be a tad bored with each other and what we're doing, though it doesn't show up quite as much at lessons. I know we've been stuck at roughly the same level for awhile, and it doesn't help that I am coming back from that pesky broken ankle so I was out of the training groove for a couple months. I know that I need to start pushing and asking for more, but it's hard.

I've decided that the remedy is lessons and trying new things. Variety is the spice of life, right? Goodness knows McKinna and I have tasted all kinds of different riding styles. Maybe it's time for us to explore other things, at least for a week or so.

I think I'll talk Mom into going on a short ride up the road sometime this week if the weather isn't too bad. There's a really nice big hill that's got packed gravel on it that we think would be nice for walking up and back down.

I'm also contemplating doing some more clicker work with her. I know some of you (cough, mugwump, cough ;) tend to be very against hand-feeding treats at all, let alone treats involved with training. Here's a few reasons why it doesn't bother me:

• I'm working with McKinna, who is not nippy and never has been. Every time we work, I reinforce that mugging for treats does not produce treats. I do this in two ways: when her muzzle is on me looking for treats, it gets some gentle insistent abuse in the form of vigorous rubbing. Also, I work on targeting, where she gets a click/treat for touching a target with her muzzle. This automatically reinforces that treats come from touching something else, not me.
• It's fun. It makes me AND my horse think in different ways about what I'm asking her to do. It's an amazing feeling when you're both working towards a goal, the trainer trying to figure out how to break it down and watching to be able to reward the slightest try (hmm, sound familiar?) and the horse thinking hard to figure out what the trainer wants. The 'lightbulb moment' is always a total rush because you realize that your horse is actually figuring out what you want all on their own, just from you rewarding a few baby steps. It's similar to regular training: reward baby steps, get the horse to understand what you want. But it makes you think about it in a way you're not used to.
  
• It makes training SOME behaviors very easy. Polite hoof-behavior, for instance. It's incredibly easy for horses to grasp the concept when you click/treat for every time they pick a hoof up, then increase demands to every time they hold it quietly for a second, then two seconds, then four seconds, then add tapping and picking or whatever. All of a sudden, there's something in it for them. After they understand, it's very easy to phase the click/treats almost entirely out, or even completely and just give them a kind word and a rub when they behave politely.
  
• It's different. It's a shift from what you normally do, and that makes you and your horse both more interested. It's a challenge for both of you. Remember, variety is the spice of life: it's why I've done everything from team penning to trail courses to makeshift steer-daubing by running round whacking my uncle with a bubble-wrapped white stick from horseback. By focusing on something different, you challenge each other and get to work on training while having fun.

The most important thing for me is that it's simply a different, fun way to try things. If you don't like it, you can leave it. But I enjoy knowing that it's something fun. When the clicker comes out, McKinna perks right up. True, it's probably because she knows that clicker = treats. But if she's going to be my more-than-willing participant in a training exercise, do I care if it's for the treats or just because she loves me? No, not really. Because I know that, as I follow the process, I can phase the clicker and treats out, and I'm left with a solidly learned behavior.

Pandora
Pandora is still doing very well. Her weight-gain has kind of stalled a bit -- grr -- but I think it's because the barn owner ran out of orchard grass and switched to (not the nicest) grass hay. It's a constant battle - that horse could probably put down 3x as much hay as she's getting, and she's getting like 8 flakes a day. I realize the barn owner can't afford to feed her as much as she can eat, which would probably amount to a bale of hay per day. So we added some beet pulp to get some more fiber into her.

At this point I'm considering just buying some of our own hay. Unfortunately that would add up really fast. But if I have to do it, I have to do it. What would be nice is if we could arrange for her and McKinna to be in a paddock (there's a big one out front that's got jumps in it now) with round bales that we pay for, but unfortunately McKinna would probably become a big fatty on that much hay. Not to mention that I think most of the paddocked horses come in during the winter anyway.

Sigh.

I know we can put more weight on by adding more concentrates like grain, or adding alfalfa or oil. But it's very very hard for me to do that when I know that she needs more hay and would put more weight on if she had as much as she could eat.

I should figure out if it would be more cost-effective to feed her lots of beet pulp, or to just buy hay. Is beet pulp comparable to hay in terms of fiber benefits? I know a lot of people feed it as main fiber source to older horses without much in the way of teeth. I could go to hay cubes, but I imagine that would be more expensive than hay itself.

Argh. Okay, maybe I will just talk to the barn owner. I know she will suggest adding more beet pulp, but Pandora finishes her hay within a couple hours of feeding time, and that's just not good enough for me. When she was getting 3 flakes of orchard grass, they were BIG flakes and they took her a long time to work through. Plus it was super nice green stuff.



Okay, massive update over! Thanks for sticking with me through it ;)

Well, you win some...

And you lose some.

Today, overall, kind of sucked. Well, until I got home at 4:30 and got to chill in my sweatpants for the rest of the evening.

Went to a schooling show today, which meant leaving the house at 6:30 which is never fun. Add this to staying up late last night to finish the costume.

Pandora, actually, was great. I did two trot-a-pole hunter classes; placed sixth in the first one, first in the second one. The first trip was nervous, bit-chewing, counter-bending, pole-whacking nonsense, but the second trip was fairly relaxed and steady, so I was proud of her. She got to spend the rest of the day eating her hay and then proceeding to eat McKinna's hay.

McKinna, on the other hand, took issue with that arena and would. not. settle. down. For those of you who read Mugwump's stories -- you know how she describes Sonita at shows? A bundle of energy wanting to explode in any direction, so tight she feels like a rubber band about to snap, wide-eyed with nervous energy? Yup. That was McKinna in that arena trying to jump.

The first round at 2' was terrible, and I am usually pretty forgiving of slightly bad rounds. We had a refusal, ended up trotting into almost every fence, I had to haul her to a halt when she tried to take off with me...just badness. Before the 2'6" class we warmed up in the arena and she still wouldn't settle down, even just trying to get her to walk or trot in a relaxed manner. She was running sideways, head as high as it could go, refusing to walk, totally ignoring my aids. So, I told the judge I wanted to just do a schooling round. I went in, jumped a few lines (much more under control than the first round, but still thundering around like a bat outta hell), trotted for a minute, and called it good.

It was weird and extremely out of character for her. She hasn't been that crazy with me in forever! I don't know what was going on, but I just chalked it up to experience and we headed back to the trailer to decompress and get ready for the costume class.

We looked - in my humble opinion - AWESOME.

A face-armor plate, shiny silver, molded perfectly across her head. I had a mask, complete with Batman's sharp ears and frowning eyebrows. The bat symbol blazed on my chest, and below was my silver bat-belt. My cape swooshed with every step. McKinna was swathed in a silver-trimmed black sheet that covered everything but the seat of my saddle, with a giant shining bat-symbol on her haunch.

We were wicked cool.

And we tied for fourth (out of four) in the costume class.

I mean, SERIOUSLY?

We lost to the Great Wall of China (a horse in a sheet with paper plates sewn all to it with a girl dressed in a Chinese outfit -- okay, cool idea, but still) and a rather simple Headless Horseman (who I think got second because it was a little kid on leadline). Okay, really, I don't go into these things to win, I promise. But after putting all that effort into such a badass costume I get last place?


So today was a day to realize that you can't always get what you want, and sometimes everything goes to hell in a handbasket anyway. The funny part is that when I got into that arena on McKinna in her costume, she was totally fine. Completely relaxed as we walked and trotted. Completely smooth, steady, and calm as we cantered big circles to show off the way my cape billows out behind me. Clearly something about jumping was upsetting her, which is strange since she's recently jumped at home and away from home with no problems. Oh well, I've no idea what lit a fire under her tail, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Pictures will be up ASAP -- I will make a pictures-only post, I promise!


This is Mom and Kuma demonstrating how tired we all were after the schooling show today. Well, the dog didn't come to the show, but he likes to take part in any and all naps...

Ooh I'm Sore...

I hauled McKinna to take a lesson with a local trainer last night. She gives lessons for Pony Club once a week. Surprisingly I was the only one there last night, but hey, one-on-one instruction is cool! I'm pretty sore today (an hour and a half of riding is a LOT when you've only been back in the saddle for a couple weeks) but it was an awesome lesson.

Poor McKinna was pretty tired by the end, too. Trainer worked us hard!

I took home a lot of things to work on, though. We had a lot of dialogue going on during the whole lesson (thank goodness I can talk and ride at the same time!) and she just gave me a lot of information, which was awesome.

So, my things to work on at home:

1. Asking her to give me more in terms of contact and self-carriage. We are at a bit of a plateau right now where she will relax forward and move in a steady, calm rhythm, but I haven't pushed for that next step. I need to ask when things are going well, work on it for a little while, then move on to something else.

2. Cantering. A lot! It sure was illustrated how weak our canter work was last night. She had us cantering big circles and gradually smaller ones, which I knew I should work on, but I had no idea how much that could help. It really forces her to get her butt under herself, and she was having an awfully hard time holding her canter on those smaller circles. With a few weeks of work on that, I'd bet money that her canter will be astronomically different.

3. Possibly try tiny little spurs. As we jumped a small course at the end of the lesson, the trainer noticed that McKinna way dropped her shoulder to the outside when we came around a corner. She said using little spurs just might help her pick herself up. Once she locks on to the fence she's fine, but she tends to lose it before then. This one I may try, but I think that the canter-strengthening work will help, so we'll see how that works first.

The jumping part went very well. McKinna was steady, smooth, and found her own distances every time. We definitely turned a corner in that regard.

All in all it was a great lesson. It definitely made me realize that I don't work my horses hard enough. I work until we get going well, do a little work at that level, and then call it good. As the trainer pointed out, that's better than the alternative, which is to work and work and work until the horse is fried.

So I've decided to start asking for a little more in my schooling sessions. When it's going well, push for the next step before I back off. When I'm doing canter work with McKinna, do it longer and ask her to work harder before I let her take a break.

Today is a schooling ride on Pandora, but I will try the cantering circles with McKinna tomorrow.

Batman, Revisited

McKinna was awesome on Sunday. Mom rode her a little bit and after watching I decided to hop on -- it is much easier for me to explain things as I'm doing them, rather than as Mom is doing them. Also, I was jealous because McKinna was going so nicely!

It's the first time I've ridden McKinna (well, a real ride anyway) since I broke my ankle. My mom laughs at me for the way I keep telling her that she's done so well with McKinna, but it's true. McKinna stepped forward into a springy, energetic walk, and happily gave me a nice working contact on the bit.

So she'd been having some issues with rushing in her trot circles. She would be fine for the first 1/4, then drop her inside shoulder and rush the next half, then straighten up the last 1/4. To fix it, I did this:

Prepare her several strides out with a firm half-halt: gently but firmly close hands and legs and sit deep for a brief instant, all to "check" her and let her know I need her to do something. I begin turning my head to look ahead on my circle; as we near our point of departure from the arena wall, I keep the contact of my outside rein firm (as this is what defines and holds the size/shape of your circle). At the same time, I open with my inside rein and squeeze with my inside leg, while my outside leg rests passive slightly behind the girth, ready to squeeze if she wants to swing her haunches out.

Positioned like this, we go into the turn. The moment she wants to start rushing (maybe 1/8th of the way through, or halfway through the first 1/4), I half-halt again. I'm not shy about it -- if your horse has no reaction to your half-halts, then you need to make your half-halts as strong as necessary to get a reaction. Since McK's been worked so consistently at the walk and trot, it didn't take much.

Here's the key: during these half-halts, I never let her off the circle I wanted to be on. Between my outside rein and my inside leg, she simply could not avoid my path. I checked her several times, each time doing so before she fell apart and started rushing. To clarify, by 'check' I don't mean a quick bump on the reins. I mean a measured whole-body pause, where I squeeze my reins and close my legs and sit up tall and deep. It's a smooth movement, but brief.

While this gave me a bit of a lumpy tempo (steady, speed up, check back/slow down, etc) and her head was a bit raised in response to my very firm insistent outside rein, it also gave us a smooth path and made it extremely clear to McK what I wanted. She tries to deviate from the circle, I force her to stay on it with my aids. She wants to rush, I half-halt and stop her. These two go hand-in-hand, since rushing often leads to dropping the inside or outside shoulder and thus losing a smooth path.

In the last quarter of the circle, she gave me what I wanted. She relaxed her head down, accepted a contact with my hands, and started truly pushing from behind. This was a very, very tangible change; I felt it immediately as her cadence steadied, her back rose, and the "air time" between her steps felt longer. My mom saw it instantly.

When this happened, I quit messing with her. Yes, she started going a little faster as this happened, but that was because she was using her hind end to push. The increased speed still had a steady rhythm, her back was still lifted, and she was still relaxed in my hands. My very steady hands, accompanied by a steady seat and steady leg. This is key. When she gave me what I wanted, I didn't need to half-halt, to hold her on the circle with my outside rein, or to constantly remind her to bend to the inside with my leg. She held the path. She held the bend. She kept her rhythm. All I did was give her soft, supporting hands, a supporting inside leg, and a LOT of verbal praise. You'd think she just painted the Mona Lisa, the way I carried on.

The next time we circled, it only took her half the circle to give me that feeling.

It's an amazing, amazing experience, let me tell you. To feel her suddenly shift her entire body, using it correctly, and moving in perfect communication with me, like a steady quiet dialogue was going on between the reins and my seat -- that was cool.

It's happened before, but never that easily.

So after I explained all this to Mom, she got back on and was able to reproduce that same sequence of events: prepare for the circle, hold her to the path, half-halt as often as necessary, and when she responds, go with her. It was really lovely to watch.

I'm very proud of the progress McKinna has made in this. It's truly wonderful to ride that feeling.

That being said, what is with the title of this post, you may ask?

I'm so glad you asked!

There's a Halloween schooling show at a local barn this month and one of the classes is a COSTUME CLASS. I bet you can guess where this one's going...

Yes, that's right, I am going to drag the Batman outfit (see post here) out of the closet. In fact, McKinna, as the Bathorse (did he ever have a horse? Don't think so, but oh well) will get costumed as well. Here are the details we've thought of so far:

A black sheet to go over her main body (like picture below). I want to put the Batman logo on the haunches.

Black dressage saddle and bridle, obviously.

"Warhorse" armor, made out of tinfoil that is painted black. Probably much the same pieces as on this horse from Warwick Castle:

i.e., a forehead-down-the-nose plate (probably not going all the way down the cheeks and all), scallops over the crest, and possibly a shoulder guard. It all depends on how difficult it is to make all of that!

The other option, of course, is to make her a My Little Pony. She is white and cute and would look phenomenal with pink [mane, tail, hooves] and glitter all over with glittered hooves and the like. Mom wants me to go with this outfit (and I can't deny that she would be unbearably cute, especially with wavy mane/tail) but I really can't decide. To be badass, or to take the perfect excuse for getting her all girly and pink? Either way I'll figure it out soon and I am excited to get all dressed up!

Broken-Ankle Observations

Since I broke my ankle, I've been watching a lot. I watched several lessons at the Inavale camp, of course. There is also a series of clinics this weekend, given by the same trainer, that my mom and I have been going to watch.

It's at several different barns -- the nice part is that, between the people we already knew and the people we met at eventing camp, it seems that all of the people we know go to these. A lot of them are involved in Pony Club (which is why I've seen them around at clinics, which are usually hosted by PC), and the adults either have kids in PC or ride in the clinics and allow their property to be used.

Basically, I'm with the "in" crowd now. I really can't wait to start riding -- right across the street is a giant field with beautiful XC fences as well as some really nice stadium ones, perfect for practicing our gallop and jumping fences in the open -- and another person just down the road has a nice outdoor, too.

Okay, I know I've raved plenty about all my new friends. But anyway, my original subject was the clinics this weekend. Today was really cool to watch! She started with stadium fences (in a field still), then moved them on to XC. The girls I watched ride Training, so it was really wicked cool to see them really move their horses into a gallop and jump the bigger fences.


It's hard for me to watch. On one hand, it's very very good for me to watch riders who are better than me, as well as to see what the clinician's having them do. On the other hand, it's really tough, because I get so inspired (isn't that what watching better riders is supposed to do?), and full of ideas, and I get very frustrated that I can't ride. It's like waiting for a broken heart to heal, or something equally cliche -- I know it just takes time, but I want it to be over now. Sigh.

Oh, and I think I'm going to join Pony Club. Most everything is voluntary, though I'm sure I won't be able to help myself from rating up, because I am an inherently competitive person. The way I see it is, I go to so many PC-sponsored clinics anyway, I might as well join PC and get the lower rate. Further, I don't really have any riding buddies my own age, and I'd get that if I joined. I think overall it's just a really good thing for me to have. Going to the rallies would be really fun, too.


PS, I am reconsidering the project horse thing. Do I really need to add on the commitment of a second horse, as well as the commitment to work enough hours to support it, all while just starting college? I mean goodness, if I put that much daily riding time into McKinna, we'd progress really fast.

So it's something I'm going to think about. Perhaps, if it's going well, I'll start considering a project horse late winter/early spring, so I can spend the summer with it. But for now, I do somewhat need to give myself a reality check and realize that I have an amazing horse in my hands right now, and if I put as much time into her as I'm thinking I would for a project horse, I know we could start improving really quickly.

There's your post for the day. Tomorrow -- leaving your emotions at the door.

McKinna Update

Just thought I'd let you all know how McKinna is doing!

She seems to have settled in perfectly fine at the new barn. She's out in a herd of about 8 other mares, and as far as I can tell has landed quite comfortably in the middle of the pecking order. She defers to a pretty chestnut mare and an older bay, but she runs off the two grumpy little ponies and appears to be friends with both the chestnut and with the Shire cross I mentioned earlier. We bring her in once during the day for a little hay and her grass pellets/supplements, then back out she goes!

The arena appears to have lovely footing, and it's both well-maintained and quite a bit bigger than the previous indoor. I'm very excited to ride in it, because I feel that McKinna's at a point now where the bigger the arena is, the better -- it is time for some serious cantering work, and I like the way she relaxes and unwinds in bigger spaces. That means lots of riding in fields, if it's still nice enough weather by the time I'm healed up.

They have a beautiful all-weather round pen that I am itching to use for some ground work. It's the ideal place for me to work with McKinna while I'm still all laid up, so I can play with things like coming when called and such.

I've mentioned the neighbor-friends I met at the eventing camp I went to, and I can't wait to start riding with them too. The atmosphere at the new barn is friendly and responsible, they're cranking out improvements on the barn (seeing the new lovely stalls go up in place of the old broken-down ones is like magic!), and overall it just feels like a really good fit.

My mom rode McKinna the other night and said she did pretty well. That was her first time being ridden in the new arena. Mom and I also headed out last night and I gave her a lesson, which was quite fun! I really need to keep McKinna in shape, because she was just starting to get nicely fit when I broke myself. In a week or so I should be able to longe her without causing undue harm to myself, so I will start doing that.

Okay, so I confess: I rode last night.

I know, I'm terrible.

I'm not very experienced at giving lessons, and it's very hard for me to translate what I'm seeing McKinna do into what my mom is feeling and thus what she should do. It was driving me crazy. So I hopped on, no stirrups, and just walked her around a bit to get a feel for how she was going.

Pony did very well -- I'm actually really pleased by her walk. She was really willing to keep a nice contact with me, more so than she ever has before, and she moved nicely off my legs, even though it was a bit awkward on the one side with my cast. In any case, it helped me get a feel for what was going on, and the rest of the lesson went really smoothly. Mom got some really nice trotting circles out of her. Yay Mom!

Hope your riding adventures are going well in the absence of anything worthwhile on my end of the deal! I promise I won't ride much, but I just don't think I'll be able to help myself sometimes. I'll be good and not do any trotting, yet ;)

The Horse's Perspective

And now for your daily dose of crippled musing, because I have nothing better to do than sit around and think about horses (well, not really, I actually got some stuff done today!).

The horse's perspective. I mentioned this awhile ago, but here's what it comes down to for me.


When I'm training (and by training I mean any time I interact with a horse, on the ground, in the saddle, whatever), I try to refrain from only thinking about myself. What do I want? Am I riding well? What exercises am I going to do to get my desired response? Well yes, that's all well and good, but I also do my best to question how I am affecting my horse. Why does she react the way she does to this cue? If she's anxious, what is the cause of her anxiety, and what can I do to alleviate that -- does she need to be pushed through it, or do I need to change what I'm doing? Do I need to be more insistent to get what I want, or do I need to soften? Do I need to repeat this drill until she relaxes and falls into it, or is that going to frustrate her? Do I need to be moving slowly or quickly through my ride? Do I need to challenge her, or let her build up small successes?

The answers are different every day.

All those questions are basically a way of shutting up and tuning into the horse. Because I'm a creature of presumably higher intelligence, I need to think about what she's doing and respond to it thoughtfully rather than simply reacting to it.

Here's a few examples.

When a horse bucks with me (say, while picking up the canter), my first reaction is to get their head up, sit up, and boot them forward. But McKinna never bucks, ever -- so if she bucks with me, then instead of reacting, I need to respond. If she's bucking, something is probably quite wrong, and it's likely that I would ride her for a bit to see if I can get a feel for what's going on, then possibly dismount and check tack or longe. If I'm on another horse, say one known for bucking to intimidate riders, you can bet I'd be riding his sorry self forward in a major way, making him work work work.

When my horse scoots forward in part of a circle, my first reaction is to resist strongly on the reins to say knock it off. But several things could be going on: perhaps the horse dropped his outside shoulder and drifted to the outside rushing. In that case, I need to give the horse more support from my outside leg and rein. Maybe the horse is feeling pressured, and rushes forward to escape; for this, he needs less rein (but still support) to help him relax, come back down, and then gradually build up contact. Maybe he's just spooking at something in the arena; this means I need to take charge and get him working his butt off next to that scary thing until he forgets it was ever there.

Different reasons for what they do, different responses.

Along with this must come an understanding of how your aids affect the horse. I know that if I tense up, my horses tense up. So I try to stay relaxed (and hold my temper, which is usually a bit harder). If I kick because I don't get the response I want, McKinna freaks out and worries for the rest of the ride; I know that using the whip gently will get a much better response. On the other hand, on Bailey, sometimes a boot in the side was exactly what he needed to wake him up and get a point across.

When I rode Bailey, if I insisted on too much contact too soon, he'd feel claustrophobic -- so when I rode, we warmed up with loops and serpentines on a long rein, where he felt comfortable enough to bend and relax into my hands. Then I asked for contact.

It's a delicate line between understanding your horse's reactions and giving in to your horse's reactions. If my horse freaks out about a dressage whip, I am not going to refrain from riding with a whip; I'm going to get my horse used to them. But, being considerate of his state now, I would calmly and slowly introduce the whip -- not plunge him into whip use all at once. If my horse scoots forward at the slightest contact of legs, I'm not going to ride with my legs away from my horse's sides -- but I will be understanding as I ask my horse to accept contact with my legs, and when riding, I will always keep in mind that this will probably be a light-sided horse.

In short: don't get pushed around (please), but do understand why your horse is reacting the way he is, and either adapt your riding in acceptable ways (e.g. my warmup with Bailey) or calmly help him through his initial reactions (e.g. fictional whip-shy horse).


A final note on understanding your horse's perspective -- I am a little bit of a worrier. I am always inclined to blame pain for nasty behavior before I will blame a horse for just being 'that way.' I will always consider tack fit, physical condition, dental care, and so on before I believe that a behavior problem is 100% the horse's fault.

That does not mean that horses get away with being rank. As Mugwump says, it doesn't matter WHY, they just aren't allowed to (buck, rear, kick, bite, ________).

But in return for this unyielding demand for safe behavior, I have a responsibility to ensure that my horses don't have a reason to be rank. This is really important to me, so listen up. If you are going to ask your horse to always behave and never buck/kick/etc, you need to make sure they have no physical reason to do so. If this means a vet check, chiropractor check, dental exam, saddle fit check (for the umpteenth time, even), then just do it. I brought a chiropractor out to check out McKinna even though she didn't really show any signs of back pain. Why? Because she's a little stiff in her canter, but most importantly, because I wanted to be confident that when I asked her to work hard for me, she was physically capable of doing so.

I don't take crap from my horses. They need to do what I ask. In order for me to feel comfortable demanding this of my horses, I must have the peace of mind that they are not hurting anywhere. I need to listen to them. If McKinna hurts herself, and tells me in subtle ways that she is sore (head tossing, refusing to listen, reluctant to pick up a gait, or any other uncharacteristic misbehavior), then I will listen and check her out, instead of pushing through it until she resorts to more drastic behaviors to get my attention.

I know McKinna is in perfect health, so I feel no guilt when I ask her to work hard or when I push through an issue. I know her blocks involve a lack of either understanding or physical strength; both of those I can bring her through. She, in turn, trusts my judgment and does what I ask.



So there -- that's my big point. Don't let your horse get away with shit, but make sure they're pain-free so that you can be guilt-free when you get after them for something.