Making Lemonade

Well, I couldn't take Pandora to my scheduled dressage lesson on Wednesday because I am letting her poll get all healed up. So where do I turn? To my ever-faithful backup horse, of course!

McKinna was not too thrilled about her pre-lesson bath. Not that I was either. Winter-bathing a white horse with no hot water wash rack is not so much fun. But we got her moderately clean. Presentable for a lesson, at least.

The arena at Leslie's is beautiful. The footing is soft and spongy but not irritatingly deep. It's a very nice size. There's mirrors down one short side, perfect for watching your lateral work as you come down the rail.

I showed up with my mostly-clean grey wooly mammoth QH/Arab mare and a jumping saddle, feeling just the slightest bit like a heathen who just stumbled into a dressage arena from the eventing world. (As you'll recall, we sold our dressage saddle last month, so jumping saddle it was.) But I made sure to dress nicely to make up for it!

Of course it wasn't a big deal at all. Leslie is extremely nice and very funny.

I had a great lesson. Leslie had me working on getting McKinna to soften to the bit and carry herself on her own instead of leaning on my hands with her nose poked out. We spent the whole time on a circle. She had me ride with my hands low and wide, keep her turning off that outside shoulder so she didn't bulge out but also reminding her to bend her body with my inside leg, and then ask her to soften by squeezing one rein. At first I had to be pretty firm to get her to give a little, but McKinna is pretty quick on the uptake, so it wasn't long before she understood what was going on.

We did this at walk and trot both directions. I warned Leslie before too long that McKinna's canter is not particularly fit and she tends to rush, hind legs trailing out behind. So after we go for awhile, she asked me to pick up the canter while keeping my hands low and wide to remind her to stay soft and on a light contact.

I picked up the canter.

"Oh my," said Leslie. "I think that is the fastest little canter I have ever seen."

Well. At least I warned her :-)

That being said, using the same strategy as I had at the walk and trot, I was able to get McKinna to actually soften at the canter. As a result, she starts to stretch over her topline and brings her butt under her. She goes 'Um, that's really hard work,' and slows down. Happens at all three gaits, but quite noticeable at the canter. The softening is a very cool feeling and I'm really looking forward to schooling this on both of the horses.

I wish my mom got some video! Next time. She was super excited, by the way, to watch McKinna working her way back to that cute little dressage horse we know is in there. Next thing you know she'll be wanting me to take McKinna every other week too!

I'm looking forward to taking Pandora for a lesson, hopefully next week - she's a lot less headshy but still seems a bit tender in the poll area, so I'm not sure how constructive bridling would be. We'll see this weekend.

In other news, today we are rich in dressage saddles. My mom ordered a used Kieffer, which arrived after we got home from the lesson. It almost fits McKinna and fits Pandora almost perfectly. It is a beautiful saddle. We didn't ride in it, just tried it on, so the test ride for both of them will come tomorrow. I bought a used Thornhill which just arrived today, so that will also get tested out tomorrow. Maybe the Thornhill will fit McKinna perfectly and I can steal the Kieffer. A girl can hope.

Tonight I'm headed to stand in the center and listen while a Pony Club lesson is being taught. Then in two weeks I'm riding in a Friday jumping lesson and then riding in our club's benefit show on Sunday. I will keep it really low key, probably just 2'6, since I didn't get to ride in the jumping clinic last weekend. Thankfully we have a second show in mid-February and I can push the height a little bit there.

I'm looking forward to what's ahead. As soon as I can bridle my horse, that is.

Quitting While You're Behind

Well. Today kind of sucked.

Let me explain.

We got out to the barn at about 11:30 to load up for the clinic and the weather was perfect. Nice and sunny, actually warm. We brought the girls in from the pasture, loaded my tack into the trailer, and cleaned some mud off of Pandora. She was a little "up," but nothing major, and I tend to get stressed out before clinics anyway, which she picks up on very quickly.

Stuck her in the trailer in our usual configuration: front divider closed, then we tied her in the second spot and left the second divider open. She doesn't fit very well in the dividers, so this is how we usually trailer her - it's like using the last space in a multiple-horse slant, except with a little more space behind her. I clipped her to the quick-release trailer tie and took her lead rope to the tack room as always so it didn't get stepped on.

When we arrived at the clinic site, I opened the back door and went to unclip her and unload. Then I realized I'd forgotten to grab the lead rope, so I stood with a hand on her haunches and asked my dad to bring the lead rope. It took him a minute to find it.

As he walked around the corner to hand it to me, Pandora decided it was time to back out. She ignored me pushing on her haunches and telling her to stop, hit the end of the trailer tie, and promptly freaked out. She pushed me up against the trailer wall in her flailing, but luckily she didn't squish me or step on me. After a few seconds - it felt like longer - the leather breakaway strap on her halter did exactly what it was supposed to and broke, and she went flying backwards out of the trailer. (Thankfully she did not flip over.)

After shooting out backwards, she trotted off, obviously very upset. My dad and I caught her without too much difficulty and re-haltered her with the spare halter we keep in the tack room of the trailer. It's not leather breakaway, but it has a plastic tab attached by velcro that unhooks under pressure. I checked her legs out and everything was fine. She did have a cut on her poll but it looked pretty shallow. I got a wet washcloth and swabbed at it as much as she would let me, which wasn't very much.

I pushed it too much and she pulled back, undoing the velcro tab which doesn't have nearly as much hold as a leather strap. For the second time in about as many minutes, we had to go catch her. I brought her back, clipped the halter to the non-breakaway part, and just looped her lead rope through the tie ring instead of tying it. For one last attempt, I asked my dad to hold the end as I wiped at her poll, but (wisely, it turns out) told him he should go grab a glove.

Well. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

By this point, Pandora was really objecting to me wiping, but I really wanted to get it clean. This time she pulled really hard, pulled the lead rope through my dad's gloved hand, got away AGAIN, and was caught again. At this point I just held her lead rope and tried to get her to relax while I rubbed the washcloth high on her neck.

She settled down a little bit and I just let it go. I'd gotten the cut pretty clean, it looked shallow and wasn't bleeding much, and I obviously wasn't going to get very far by fighting with her.

So now we brought her back to the trailer, hung on to the lead rope looped through the tie ring, and just let her eat from her hay bag. As long as we weren't trying to mess with her poll, she was fine. I decided to try tacking her up - provided I could bridle her - and see how she felt under saddle. If she felt off at all, we'd call it a day and just go home.

While brushing and hoof-picking and saddling, she was fine. We decided to take her into the cross ties in the barn to bridle her, since hopefully that would put her in a calm, working frame of mind. She was calm in the cross ties but was NOT interested in being bridled, even when I undid it and tried to put it on that way.

The clinician, Betsy, who I've ridden with several times before, came out to see what was going on. After hearing the story and taking a look at Pandora, she turned to me and said, "Well...probably best to quit while you're behind."

I agreed. Pandora never has any bridling issues, so if she's sore enough to protest that vehemently, she's obviously sore enough that it's stupid to try to ride. I was disappointed, because Betsy doesn't come over to the Valley more than a few times a year, and it would have been a perfect reintroduction to jumping. But horses are horses, and sometimes things happen.

We put Pandora in a stall with her hay to chill for a couple hours while I watched the clinic. My parents made a quick trip back to our barn to bring back some bute, which from now on will be kept in the trailer. We only have the powdered stuff but when dumped in a clean syringe with some applesauce it goes down pretty easily!

At the end of the day she loaded back up fairly promptly, though she was a little nervous. (We shut the divider this time. A tight fit is better than another episode.) We couldn't get her blanket back on since it was a closed-front, but when we got back to the home barn we put on her other blanket, which unbuckles at the chest. Unloading was also nervous but went off without a hitch.

In all, she seemed to be doing well. Her cut bled a little but not much, she walked and jogged out fine on the road, and I didn't find much if any swelling anywhere. She was bright-eyed and cheerfully dove into her dinner, nickering for her grain as usual. I could touch her pretty much anywhere but her poll and the area just behind her ears. Haltering is a little sketchy - you have to flip the strap over her neck very far back, then slide it forward gently to buckle - but possible.

Tomorrow morning I'm heading out at 9 to administer some more bute and turn the girls out. I'd rather that I'm the only one who handles her tomorrow, since she's pretty headshy and haltering needs to be delicate. I'm betting that by Tuesday she'll be much improved.

I'm not too worried about her remaining headshy. She's a smart, calm horse, and as soon as she's not hurting I'll do any work I need to, but I don't think she'll have any issues.


Needless to say, there are about a million ways I could have prevented the accident today. I don't see much point in listing them all here, because trust me, I've been thinking about them all day.

The fact is that I fell into something I think we all tend to do: I got complacent. We had a routine. Everything went smoothly every time. Pandora was well-behaved and pretty calm about trailering - so I got lax. No matter what, there is no way I should have left that door open with her still clipped to the trailer tie.

With Bailey, that was never an issue because he was so bad at trailering! Every time I loaded him up to go somewhere it was a carefully orchestrated operation, designed to be as safe and efficient as possible, simply because the risks were so high with a horse who wasn't a big fan of riding in a trailer. With McKinna and Pandora, it's easy to let standards slide precisely because most of the time we don't need strict protocol.

Key word being 'most.'

Anyway, things could have been a lot worse, and I'm glad they weren't. I feel awful that I wasn't more careful, but I'm glad I got the reminder. From now on I'm returning to full trailer vigilance. I sketched out a design for a fairly simple device to extend the space the divider allows so we can close the divider when we trailer Pandora, and I'll be very careful to keep the door and divider closed until she's safely unclipped from the trailer tie.

Hopefully in a couple days with some rest and bute Pandora will be back to normal.

Happy 2010!

I'm looking forward to the new year and kicking the horse riding schedule back into shape.

2009 was a good year for us. In late December, I was still focusing on McKinna, riding her in Pony Club lessons and mostly worrying about getting enough weight on Pandora. By early January I rode Pandora in a jumping clinic and was starting to consider that she might be a decent jumping horse ;-)

I didn't really have much in the way of specific goals for the year - I wanted to ride BN or N at Inavale's recognized HT, but that didn't happen because it was just too expensive. I also sort of wanted to sell Pandora over the summer, but see where that went!

But we still made a lot of good progress. In Pony Club, it took me just over a year (September 08 to October 09) to go from unrated to C-1, and I finally took that last rating on my own horse instead of McKinna.

At Lily Glen in May, Pandora and I schooled some solid Novice-level XC fences and it felt great. Later in the summer we ran into some rushing issues, and we still haven't fully resolved those, but I know we will. I wish I could have taken Pandora to the eventing camp at Inavale, but she wound up with a stone bruise or something so I took McKinna.

Still, we came a long way and I'm very pleased with her. I started last January just wanting to get a walk, trot, and canter that wasn't jackhammering on the forehand. We're still working on keeping off the forehand, but at a much higher level!


I'd like to have some more specific goals this year so that next year I can have more measurable standards. As time goes by I know I will add specific monthly goals, but here are some of the big things I'm aiming for this year.

1. Pass my C-2 rating this spring or summer.
I spent a lot of time climbing the beginning of the ratings ladder because it's the key to some opportunities in Pony Club - C versus D camp, the group you're set with in PC clinics, certain levels you can compete in at rallies. Now that I'm finally a C, I feel more comfortable that my rating reflects my actual level. But, I feel that I can reasonably achieve C-2 this year.
Then I'm only one step away from a national rating!

2. Master Novice-level eventing.
This is a bit of a stretch for me to think of right now. We're dealing with big rushing issues on XC and our dressage is fairly sub-par. (Notice I said master Novice, not just 'get around.') But we can make a lot of progress in a year. I think with consistent effort and more lessons, we can do it.

2b. Corollary: start schooling Training-level stuff.
The partner to mastering Novice, of course, is beginning to school Training. That means bigger and more complicated questions on XC and SJ as well as a higher level of dressage. However, I'm definitely not looking to master Training - just start thinking about it and pushing ourselves further. I'm specifically thinking that for this goal I will trailer to Inavale to take some lessons with the trainer there and tell her what I'm looking for. (Obviously this goal happens after I achieve 2, or at least in tandem.)

3. Keep my tack consistently clean.
I've already gotten started on this one by keeping a damp rag sprinkled with leather cleaner in the tack room and wiping down my tack after every ride. It's good for me, good for my tack, and means less time spent scrubbing and scrubbing before rallies or ratings.

4. Get a dressage saddle that fits.
Hopefully well on the way to this one. We sold our Stubben because the only one of us it fit was Pandora, and one out of four isn't good enough! Mom just bought a used Kieffer and will have it fitted to McKinna, and I have my eye on two different saddles, a Collegiate and a Thornhill. I love my jumping saddle and I can't wait to have a dressage saddle that I appreciate just as much.

5. Kill the Judge Stand Monster.
Pandora harbors a deathly fear of the judge's stand in dressage arenas, which is kind of annoying. I mean, she doesn't take off bolting or anything, but she's normally so calm and focused that it's frustrating to have such a tense horse in the actual dressage arena. I think through a combination of schooling creativity at home and taking her out to more shows with dressage portions, I can get rid of this.

6. Stick to a fitness schedule for myself.
If my horse is going to be fit, I need to be fit too. This really shouldn't be too hard. I already got into the habit of running at the rec center on campus a couple times a week, so I'm just going to bump it up to more times per week and add some simple strength training.

7. Take monthly progress reports.
I want to get in the habit of taking conformation shots and a monthly evaluation, on THIS blog, of our progress toward not just our little goals but the big yearlong ones too. I think this will help keep me on track and provide a visual reference for the conditioning progress we make.



To get all that done, there are all the smaller daily and weekly and monthly goals: school fences once a week, take lessons as often as possible, follow a conditioning schedule faithfully, get out to school XC, ride trails, drag myself out for a run even when I don't feel like it, read training books to stay motivated, and all that.


Tomorrow, I'm going to put up some pictures of Pandora to begin satisfying goal number 7 up there. We've got the raw material: she's got a base of fitness, she's in good weight, and we're ready to go. I'm excited to see what the year brings - and happy new year to you all!

Horse Goodies

The holidays have left me with a few new horse-related possessions. These two are my favorite, proving that it really doesn't take much to keep a horse girl happy! I love fancy gifts as much as the next person, but I will use these constantly for a very long time. It makes me happy to receive gifts like that - I feel like I can fully appreciate them. In fact, all of my horse-related gifts were functional, and I'm thrilled with all of them.


First, the Ultimate Hoof Pick. This is a beast of a hoof pick. It's practically a power tool.

It takes everything good about something like an Oster hoof pick - nice handle design, angled head, pointy - and leaves everything bad, which is mostly the thin metal that has a weird curve in it that leaves you with no leverage whatsoever. I will be surprised if this thing ever dies.

The tip is like a wide flathead screwdriver, so my only complaint is that I have to turn it a little sideways to get all the way down in the clefts on either side of the frog. I think its other values more than make up for that, though. Absolutely excellent for levering huge clods of mud out of the foot! And I imagine it would be very nice for big honking draft feet, though I don't have a horse with big honking draft feet so don't quote me.



Then there's this - Effax LederCombi, or leather cleaner. It's a liquid with a light, pleasant smell. I used it to clean my whole saddle yesterday (aren't you proud of me?) and really liked it. I put some on a wrung-out damp sponge and went to town.

It seems to clean really well. My saddle had a few jockeys (little black spots of greasy-dirt mix...look closely, you probably have some on your tack!) and it did a good job of removing them without too much scrubbing, but it doesn't feel harsh at all. It actually left my saddle with a really nice soft shine. My saddle was grippy but not tacky, clean but not stripped.

For reference, I've previously used Leather Therapy (ugh ugh ugh, sticky and filmy and residue-y and YUCK), Murphy's Oil Soap (slightly lathery, left a nice finish on the leather, but lots of scrub-work to clean any dirt), and plain glycerin saddle soap (same story). I will be sticking with this for awhile, methinks!

In addition to the Effax, people on the Chronicle forums seem to really like MOSS, Tattersall, and Supple for leather cleaners. In general, if a ton of people on COTH agree, I believe them! Maybe next year I will ask for another brand to try.

As far as conditioners go, I use neatsfoot oil to darken and Passier Lederbalsam to soften and condition. I don't need to condition every time because our climate isn't terribly dry for most of the year, so my leather tends to hold its moisture pretty well. According to COTH, a lot of people love a conditioner called Akene - perhaps I'll pick that up when my Passier runs out. I've had it for a year and a half now and it's still almost 1/4 full. I'm not sure if that speaks for the longevity of the conditioner or the infrequency of my tack cleaning...

Anyway, my mom finds it hilarious that I probably would have been satisfied with just the hoof pick. Never mind all the other stuff - that is one freakin' nice hoof pick!


I also had a really nice ride last night. I've been lining out my schedule and goals for the year, and I have my full January conditioning/training schedule printed out and stuck on the tack room wall. (Don't worry - I'm not getting off easy, I have workouts for myself too!)

We went for a quick hack up the road and back. It's a really nice mild hill, levels out, a bigger hill, and then it goes gradually down for a long ways. The uphills felt nice. Pandora walked on a loose rein and it felt like she had good push. Nothing extraordinary, but measured and strong. She was a little sticky on the downhill, so I will be looking for that to improve with conditioning. We also had one little scoot-leap forward when the neighbors fired up their four-wheeler, but thankfully it was fairly controlled. She came back easily and walked on a loose rein the rest of the way.

Then I rode for about an hour in the arena. I've been trying new things lately, namely allowing a lot more variation in where her head and neck are. More specifically, I'm letting her stretch all the way down at the trot at certain times. I'm not entirely sure where it's going, but I think it's going somewhere useful. We seem to be able to get a proper bend easier when she's stretching down, for example, so I did some big looping figure-8s while she was long and low. It's hard to control a smooth bend but I felt like we made some progress. Later in the ride I tended to ride with her neck at normal carriage, ask her to stretch down for a circle, then return to regular carriage again.

It seemed constructive and Pandora does seem to like the chance to stretch.

On a side note, I am FINALLY signed up for dressage lessons! I'll take two in a row, Wednesday the 6th and then the 13th. After that I will go to every other week. The farm is only about a 10 minute drive from our boarding barn, which is also great.

Have I mentioned how excited I am? I am very excited. We can finally get some quality instruction and make some much-needed dressage progress.

I love the end of the year. It's so productive for me! :-)

A Tale of Two Horses, + Goal Beginnings

The longer I have horses, the more I begin to notice patterns. Yearly cycles, I guess.

As January draws near, instead of making small resolutions I'll never keep, I start itching to plan out my year for riding and training. Last year in January was when I began systematically logging my rides on Pandora and mapped out a weekly training schedule as well as monthly goals. I haven't sat down to sketch those things out for this year yet, but I will do that this week.

I've been tossing goals around in my head, and I keep running up against something I kind of struggle with. It's a nice problem to have, but still.

I always have a hard time balancing my goals with each horse.

Pandora and McKinna are both very talented and fun to work with. McKinna has been my partner in misadventuring for a few years now - from cows and gaming in OHSET to a last-minute substitution for eventing camp this past summer, she's always been up for whatever I throw at her. And it's not just that she's willing - she's good at it. I took her to the eventing camp with about a week's warning, and it had been a full year since she schooled XC. (The full report is here and here, with lots of pictures, if you missed it!)

She was so much fun that week. Not perfect. A little rushy in stadium, sometimes a little unfocused on XC. But she ate up all the XC fences way more than the year before, also a product of the improvement in my riding. Our instructor had us working off a 3ft bank the first day and McKinna casually sent herself down the drop without a second glance, and we'd never schooled real drops.

You get the idea. She's just a blast, and so willing, and such a cute jumper.

But dressage is more difficult on her, and galloping would be too. She's also somewhere in her mid to late teens. I don't know if that means much, but it means something. I know horses compete into their 20s, but not every horse does. Am I wasting some of her good competing years by not actively riding her? Would I be putting the soundness of her joints in danger by introducing the additional pounding of consistent jump schooling and galloping?

Pandora is younger and generally more shaped for galloping. Not that that means much, at my level. She's level-headed and in general a fantastic horse for a learning kid like me to figure stuff out on. Not perfect, but so far I can muddle through our problems without too much suffering. I'm impressed every day by how cheerful and friendly she is - even more than McKinna, who can get act grumpy sometimes in the winter. She's bay, which is a hell of a lot easier to keep clean! In a year of schooling we've come a long way, especially given all the out-of-whack body issues we had to deal with.

So it's just hard to find time for both of them. The priority goes to Pandora, obviously, since McKinna is my mom's horse. These are just the kinds of things I worry about - I don't want to waste any talent! And I also have a huge loyalty to McKinna, who was my primary mount for a year or so and who has always been there for me when I need a partner for my next intrepid adventure. I just have to tell myself to chill out a little bit, I think. I doubt either of them particularly cares if they explore the extent of their abilities.

I guess I just needed to get that out there a little bit. Like I said, it's certainly not a bad problem to have, and I'm not trying to complain (too much). Just thinking, uh, out loud. In text?



Finally, here's a bit of brainstorming about goals I'd like to take care of this year.

I picked up Practical Eventing, by Sally O'Connor, while I was in Portland. It's a fantastic book. I'm not all the way through with it, but it lays out systematic training systems from a green horse through Preliminary three-days. It also has detailed conditioning schedules for each level.

Over the next few weeks, I'd like to do a similar map for our year, to include the usual monthly goals but also a really broken-down schedule to follow. I always think it's easier if I can look at the calendar and it tells me what I'm supposed to do today, so that might help me keep rolling. My ultimate goal is to master Novice and perhaps begin to school Training by the end of the year. I'd like to compete Novice at Inavale's June HT, but that's more a function of my summer finances than anything!

To get there, I want to take REGULAR dressage lessons, 2 - 4 a month for several months if possible. I've been talking about needing a sustained push to bring us to the next level, and that's what I'll do.

I need to school fences at home more regularly, so I'll make it a goal to do that at least three times a month. Once a week would be better, but I'll settle for an achievable goal and make it more ambitious later if I can.

Pandora has been having some rushing problems on XC lately, but it's not just fence-related. I've talked about this before - she seems very anxious, even when just cantering without jumping any fences, so I've decided the solution is to take her XC schooling a couple times on my own. We haven't had much of that, because every time we're on XC it's in a lesson format. Which is good, but I think we may have fried her little brain a bit. My goal is to take her schooling to at least two different places (probably Make Your Mark and Inavale) to calmly and quietly trot and canter over all kinds of fences until she relaxes. Knowing Pandora as I do, I really think this will solve the majority of our rushing issues and allow her to feel confident about XC.

I want to pass my C2 rating this summer. At this level, most fences are 3'. Your position is expected to be rock-solid at all times, and you should be developing an independent seat (that is, able to influence your horse independently of what he/she is doing); your courses should be very rhythmical and coordinated. You do a little longeing, and all horse management knowledge deepens as usual. I'm not at the C2 level right now, but I think getting there in six months is very achievable for me.

How about goals for myself? I've started taking rider fitness more seriously, ever since I rode in that clinic and was so exhausted from the morning ride that I couldn't hold things together on XC. (I'd also been sick that whole week, but still.) I started running twice a week this term, but next term I'd like to bump that up to working out 3 and then maybe 4 times per week - not necessarily running, but something. I have easy access to the rec center, which is nice. I also have a couple yoga and pilates workout videos, which for me is awesomely convenient.

And, finally, I want to clean my darn tack more often! I have established the habit of cleaning my bit in Pandora's water bucket after every ride, and this summer I was actually wiping down all my tack with a damp rag after I rode (until it got so freaking cold I didn't want to deal with the water). I'm going to bring a sponge out and get back in that habit. And also make it a point to bring everything home at least once a month for a more thorough cleaning.

So there's some outlines. I have other, more specific goals in mind, but this is what's on my mind for now.

Tell me what your goals are! I love hearing about goals.