The End-of-Term Crazies....

May or may not be getting to me.

 

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

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



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

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

A week and a half to go!!

Break!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scratches Begone, and Super Awesome Jumping Lesson

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Scratches

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Made It!

Whew. That was a rough finals week.

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

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

 Mom having a very nice ride

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

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

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

Look, we can canter!

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