Month: December 2014

Wednesday words of wisdom: 3 spin classes and 3 rides in 4 days make for a tired body.

I’m not saying PS of Sweden has a few awesome sales going on, buuuuut I’m just gonna drop this here… http://www.psofsweden.com/en/offers/. I know a few of you were talking about buying one, so get yourself a nice Christmas present. I mean really, look it in the eyes and tell it you don’t love it.

Also, this is your last reminder to get those entries in for the logo contest! You have until December 31. In addition to the awesome prize pack offered to the winner, I’m offering a gift certificate for a custom Firefly bonnet to the runner-up (an $80 value) and an Ogilvy baby pad (a $40 value) to the second runner-up. Don’t forget to title your submissions CONTEST ENTRY and email them to charliebrowntb (at) hotmail (dot) com. Note that if you have several files, it’s probably best to only send 2-3 at a time so hotmail doesn’t reject them.

Everyone enjoy your holiday! From the $900 Facebook Pony – Happy Holidays!!!

Henry is wild so very rarely that it’s nothing but hilarious to me when he gets to feeling frisky. Mostly because his frisky is a lot of head twisting, and maybe the tiniest most pathetic crow hop you’ve ever seen. But he’s trying really hard and he’s REALLY impressed with his naughtiness, which only makes it even more hilarious.

My standard “I think he might be wild” approach to a ride is to put my sidepull hackamore on him and let him canter around the field. He gets to hop and play and toss his head for a few  minutes and think he’s fantastic, and I get to just sit there and giggle and let him get it out of his system. Alas the field was still a bit wet so I headed into the ring instead.

We trotted around a bit, with Henry at what is his Mach 10 (so a normal horse being forward) and wanting to canter canter canter! Trainer asked if I wanted to join in the lesson and first I said no but then I figured what the hell, this should be entertaining if nothing else. There was a gymnastic set up – two crossrails that were a canter in one stride, and then 3 options for jumps afterward. A bending two strides left to a vertical, a bending two strides right to a vertical, or just go straight and jump out over a vertical in 4 strides.

After a bit of warm-up the first course went like this:

It was actually a really good exercise to do with his hackamore on. The first couple times through he wanted to drag me and mini crow hop through the corners, and of course I had pretty much no control over that. But his lack of focus resulted in him burying himself, which in turn ended up being a good self correction. After that he came back pretty well from my seat and decided that plowing through and yeehawing around the corners was perhaps not a great idea (commence Henry pouting because once again I took all the fun out of everything).

The second course got a lot more complicated/tight/twisty, but again – great to do with the hackamore. Precision was key, so I was forced to use mostly leg and seat to steer instead of relying more on my reins.

He was being good by this point, he figured out that everything came up really quickly so he settled and listened and looked for the jumps. Nothing earth shattering happened, but I love a good gymnastics lesson with low jumps that really drill on basic concepts. I really had to sit up and ride accurately, and he really had to pay attention.

Today the vet comes for his coggins and shots, but hopefully I can squeeze in a quick jump school first.

 

The serious part came on Saturday morning, but let’s start with something a little more exciting.

As I mentioned last week, Henry’s new PS of Sweden Flying Change bridle came on Thursday (it shipped on Monday from Sweden -beat that) so I spent Friday night getting to know it a little better and conditioning it. I also used that as an opportunity to try out my new Higher Standards leather balm, one of my awesome Xmas gifts from my barn buddy Brandy (aka Auf der Autobahn). It worked pretty well, I just rubbed in one liberal coat with my hands and it softened right up. God I love this bridle. It’s freakin gorgeous, and that’s saying something because I generally hate black tack. And as has proven typical – really impressed with the design/functionality from the PS of Sweden guys. We’ll explore that more in a later post, but here’s another gorgeous picture of it.

On Saturday morning Brandy and I met up at Gold’s Gym for a spin class. We’ve been talking about getting a membership and hitting the gym together but we wanted to check it out first. I used to do spin all the time when I did triathlon, and honestly I LOVE it. You could not pay me enough to do any other type of group class, especially Zumba, but spin = awesome. Toward the end of the last set of high resistance jumps I was pretty sure my heart was going to explode out of my ear. Sounds awesome right? They were running a special for membership, so after class we joined the gym. Now we’re committed! When they were taking our information they asked who to notify in case we dropped dead, and we informed them that we always wear bracelets with our medical information because we ride horses. They seemed a little perplexed by that for some reason. Then Brandy and I texted back and forth all afternoon about which body parts hurt the most (basically my entire skeleton and all of my muscles, so no big deal)… this is the beginning of something great. Horribly painful, but great. It’s far past time to get serious about getting back into better shape – all this dressage nonsense is going to kill me otherwise. Plus I really owe it to my pony to not flop around like a big fat sack of potatoes, my riding is questionable enough as it is. We’re spinning again tonight and tomorrow.

Then it was a quick trip to the barn to graze the boys (still a little too muddy to ride), who are ridiculous

then more Xmas shopping and present wrapping, with a helper.

Saturday night we did Christmas with my family, since my brother was in town with his wife and son. We ate, we opened presents, we took pictures, and then we headed off downtown for an x-mas themed Master Pancake comedy show. Everything they do is hilariously inappropriate, and that show was no exception.

Sunday I crawled out of bed with fairly tolerable aches and pains. I hauled my butt out to the barn in the afternoon, hopped into an unplanned lesson, and rode my pony for the first time since Tuesday. The light week was partly intentional and partly because of the weather, and then I realized it’s only 3 weeks until our next show. Oops, better get ourselves together. We’ll talk about the lesson tomorrow.

One and half more days of work and then I’m off til the 29th! Can’t wait, I need a break.

Just a little update/announcement about the logo contest. Thanks to everyone who has submitted something so far… I’ve gotten almost forty logos already! Really excited about the level of participation and the quality of the submissions I’ve gotten so far. Making a final decision is going to be really tough. Because of that I’ve decided to add a second and third place prize both to sweeten the pot and to extend as many thanks as possible. I wish I could give something to everyone!

The runner up will be getting a gift certificate for a custom Firefly bonnet.

The second runner up will be getting an Ogilvy baby pad from Luxe EQ.

If you haven’t gotten those logos in yet – you’ve got until December 31st!

Now, on to December’s 10 questions from Viva Carlos:

1. What size horse do you prefer to ride? Whatever takes up my leg nicely. I prefer something that isn’t too slab sided but isn’t super wide either… height-wise I don’t really care. I’ve owned everything from a medium pony to 17.2h, but my favorite height in general is 15.3 to 16.2 – IME that’s the best height for max athleticism but less soundness issues.

 

2. Do you school in tall boots or half chaps and paddock boots? Tall boots.

3. What do you do with your ribbons after shows? usually I chunk them in my car or the closet or a tack trunk and they’re not seen again for many months. Eventually they meet the trash can. Henry’s latest one is actually hanging on his stall though (collecting dust).

4. Do you ride/board at a large show barn or a small private barn?  It’s a pretty decent sized barn, with 3 different trainers – two h/j and one eventing.

5. Have you ever seen a horse give birth? Many. Side effect of working at a breeding farm. 😉 You haven’t lived until you’ve been elbows deep in horse placenta.

6. What is your favorite breed? TBs and warmbloods – mostly the Holsteiner lines, more specifically the C lines (both, but anything Cassini in particular – which should be no surprise since he’s one C line crossed with the other).

7. Favorite tack brand? PS of Sweden and CWD

8. Would you ever buy used tack? I love buying used, you get great deals that way. I would be hard pressed to ever buy a new saddle unless I needed something super custom.

9. Ever been on a carriage ride? Once or twice.

10. How often do you go to the tack store? Probably a couple times a month, usually just for things like treats and salt blocks, plus mobiles at shows. I can’t resist a mobile.