Month: May 2015

Yesterday while perusing the entries for Texas Rose I was delighting in the fact that there are a couple folks in my division that have been to Rolex (welcome to Novice Horse!) and it’s 2/3 professionals. This makes me super happy because of a few reasons: 1) I’ve spent all spring caring a lot about who was in my division and worrying about beating them so I could get my AEC qualifiers. Since that’s done, now I don’t have to give a single crap who I’m riding against and it’s awesomely liberating. 2) I love low expectations. I’m totally the bottom of the barrel in the group, which is 100% fine by me. 3) I get to see firsthand how the pros warm up their young horses. I’m pretty excited for that, not gonna lie. 4) I have a built-in excuse for when they all beat me. I kid, I kid. 😉

Then I started thinking about this program that they used to have back when I did cyclocross. It was a race predictor website, and before each race it would factor in each competitor’s total points and previous performances/experience to sort out how it thought everyone would finish. I have no idea how the math worked but I loved this thing, because it almost always put me at the bottom of the pack. I got a lot of joy out of trying to prove it wrong. Granted, it was right a lot of the time, but sometimes I showed it a thing or two.

Can you imagine if such a program existed for horse shows and events? Obviously we already have rider and horse rankings as far as points earned or money won, from local level all the way up through the best in the world. But there’s no such thing (at least that I’ve ever seen) as a competition predictor that sorts people out beforehand and predicts a finish order. I can’t decide if it would be the best thing ever or the most humiliating thing ever. On one hand, I see it as a challenge, and nothing sets my competitive spirit on fire quite like a good challenge. On the other hand, if it ranked me high and I totally bombed, it’d be another layer of disappointment. Plus it seems like it probably wouldn’t encourage a spirit of good sportsmanship in the show community… it’s already competitive enough as it is.

What would you think if horse sports did this? All in good fun, or total embarrassment? Coming from a horse sports background into cyclocross, it completely floored me when I found out it existed, but I have to admit it never affected me negatively. Then again I never took cyclocross nearly as personally as I take the horse competitions. My good humor might not (let’s be honest, probably would not) extend to this side of the fence.

When things start getting stressful or overwhelming in my life, riding is usually my coping mechanism. A canter truly is the cure for every evil, along with a dash of pony kisses and a pinch of barn buddy camaraderie.

So what do you do when you can’t ride?

Obvious answer #1 is shopping for horse stuff. Tack ho tendencies and all that. The sad thing about being a poor tack ho is that it’s really hard to ho tack when you ain’t got no money. Since all of my cash lately has been going to horse shows, the only things I’ve bought are cookies and fly spray. Boring. Well, I did order an Airowear Outlyne from Riding Warehouse, and although they’re amazing for special ordering navy for me (if you ever want a color/size of something that isn’t in stock, just ask!!), it’s gonna take 4-6 weeks to come in. No instant gratification. Plus the SO is buying it for me for my birthday so it could actually be AUGUST before I get to hold it in my hands, pet it, and cuddle it. That’s not helpful at all in coping with life.

Obvious answer #2 is food. I love to eat my feelings, they’re delicious. Especially when they’re hiding in the bottom of a big vat of queso or baked into something chocolate. Unfortunately this can only go on for so long before your breeches start getting tight, and lord knows I can’t afford to replace those. Delicious as you’ve been lately, feelings hidden in food, I’m afraid it’s time to back off.

I guess that leaves me with non-riding pony time, since I can’t think of anything else to do besides eating and shopping. Non-riding pony time consists of such fun activities such as hand grazing, foot picking, ointment slathering, mud dingleberry untangling, explaining the Novice dressage test to Henry, cookie stuffing, and selfies.

On the plus side, I’ve learned that Henry likes strawberry Pop-Tarts. Maybe he likes to eat his feelings too?

 

 

I think if you go by the Kubler-Ross model for the 5 stages of grief, I’m waffling back and forth between anger and depression right now. Texas is on it’s last straw with me. First was a horrible many-years-long drought, then wildfires, then rattlesnake epidemics, now floods. I don’t know why Mother Nature hates this place but I’m about done with it. It seems like all we have is 100 degrees or pouring rain. WHY is there never nice weather in this godforsaken slice of the world? Someone find me a decent horse related job somewhere else, please. But little to no snow… that’s the caveat.

Seriously though – on Friday when I changed my Texas Rose entry to Novice instead of Beginner Novice, it was actually a little invigorating. I started having all these grandiose plans and ideas. Like fitness plans with trot and canter sets.

And was excitedly perusing my new dressage test, mapping it out in my mind and taking note of things to work on before the show.

I even spent an afternoon looking at all the video I could find from Texas Rose’s Novice XC course, getting all kinds of pumped.

Needless to say, now I don’t even know if I’ll really get to ride my horse at all before Texas Rose. Luckily he’s a trooper and it worked out ok with Corona. I guess I should be counting my blessings that I got to ride 3 days in a row last week. Even if we can’t ride much before TR he should still be good to go (thank god for a thoroughbred), but man… I’m so over this. It seems like I’ve got nothing to do on this blog anymore except whine about the weather because, well, that’s all that’s been happening since November. I feel so sorry for everyone that is having to keep and care for horses and horse property in this weather. It’s become an impossible task. Especially since Henry pees constantly and his stall is a perpetual swamp no matter how hard you try to keep it clean. Any suggestions for helping keep his feet dry, since it seems they’ll be stallbound for quite a while longer? I’m starting to worry about abscesses and soft soles.

On a less whiney note, Brandy and I at least got to go out on a road hack Monday morning before the monster storms blew in.

I’m about to give up on blogging except for horse show recaps, because that’s really the only thing that ever happens anymore. There are only so many pictures you can take while walking around on the roads. I have several review posts that need to happen but I’m waiting on professional pictures… they were supposed to be here a week ago but so far nada. Anyone have any blog post or review requests?

To add insult to injury, my $550 that was stolen from my account with a fraudulent card will apparently take up to 2 weeks to be returned to my account. That’s a really great thing to have happen right before all my bills are due and we’re about to head to a show.

When it rains it pours. See what I did there? Ba-dum-tss.

Texas sucks.

At Corona HT a couple weekends ago I overheard a trainer telling one of his students that you shouldn’t move up to the next level until you’re consistently winning at your current level. I thought about that, chewed on it for a while, and decided I don’t really agree.

I think deciding when to move up is one of the hardest decisions we make, especially those with young and/or inexperienced horses. There’s always the worry that you’ll overface yourself, overface the horse, you’ll both die, and the world will explode. Oh wait, maybe that’s just me. But still, no one ever wants to feel like they’re in over their head.

In talking to other people and thinking about conversations I’ve had in the past, it seems like I’ve mostly heard three different approaches on the “when to move up” question:

1) when you’re winning at your current level

2) after X amount of time

3) when your current level feels easy

My issue with the “consistently winning at your current level” approach is that ribbons don’t really tell the whole story. In eventing, you could have a horse that just isn’t great at dressage so never finishes on a super low score, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t 100% capable of competing at the next level. In jumpers, if you’ve ever tried to show in the low children’s or low adult section you’ll understand that unless you have a really fast horse, you’ll rarely win. Again, that doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of the next level. The same can be said across pretty much all disciplines. This approach just doesn’t hold water with me.

Other people like to plan their move-ups based on a time schedule. One year at X level, the next year at Y level, etc etc. That can all be fine and good too, but sometimes things don’t go as planned (whether that’s for better or for worse). I think trying to hinge move-up decisions purely on time frame isn’t really the best way.

That brings us to – when the current level seems easy. This is the one I like. It’s that sweet spot where you’re rocking around at your current level thinking “these are so tiny!” “that was easy!” and your horse shares the sentiment. When your current level looks small and you’re looking at the next level, wishing you were doing that instead. At that point you’re probably in a good place to contemplate an upward progression. But then the next question is – how long do you stay in the “this is easy” phase before stepping up? That’s a harder one to answer.

Then again, maybe all my rambling doesn’t make any sense and I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. That could be true too.

It’s probably not hard to guess what spurred this topic for me… I switched our entry for Texas Rose from BN to Novice. My reasons, whether you agree with them or not, are as follows:

1) Henry is on a roll right now. We’ve had the benefit of doing 3 shows in a really short time frame, he’s been an absolute XC machine at all 3, and he’s felt like he really gets it. Even Corona, with a few Novice size fences, and Greenwood, with some Novice level technicality, were walks in the park. He ate them up without a second thought. We’re both pretty confident right now, and my gut says now is the time.

2) The dressage and stadium are no problem. He showed in the 3′ jumpers last year, was nonplussed in the 3′-3’3″ at his jumper show a couple weeks ago and he’s really been solid at 3’3″ at home for a while now, so 2’11” ain’t no thang for him at this point. And the N dressage is pretty much the same as BN.

3) The Texas Rose course isn’t easy per se, but it’s well designed. It asks legitimate questions for the level and has some big fences but there won’t be any unfair bogey fences waiting to eat you. Well… he’s never seen a Weldon’s Wall so we’ll see what he thinks about that, but a little bit of unknown is always part of the game in eventing. The XC is in big fields that invite a forward ride, so as long as I sit up and go forward (and isn’t that always the truth) I think it’ll be fine.

4) Nothing hinges on this. We’re already qualified for AEC at BN. I really only wanted to do this event at Texas Rose because it’s the AEC venue, and I thought getting him there once to see the sights before AEC would be an advantage. It’d be an even bigger advantage if he’d already run Novice when we show up for AEC at BN. So since we’re really only there to feel things out anyway, it’s a pretty low pressure situation. If he needs to circle, I’ll circle, if he feels like he’s losing confidence, I’ll retire. No biggie.

5) Trainer says do it. This is super important to some and less important to others, but if she says go for it I’m certainly more inclined to go for it.

That’s not to say that I’m not a tiny bit worried that it’s the wrong decision. That will always be a worry when you’re completely neurotic and overprotective about your horse’s mental state like I am. But I’m hoping that if I ride semi-well and Henry stays in his awesome groove that he’s been in all spring, it’ll be just as easy as everything else has been. Otherwise, I feel like I’ve overthought it quite enough by now, and it’s time to just put up or shut up.

So I’m curious – what are everyone else’s thoughts on knowing when to move up? How do you gauge things for yourself?

The weekend started off so promising. I got to ride my horse 3 days in a row last week, with 3 good rides. We dressaged and jumped and he was super. He even got a couple days of turnout, which is nothing short of a miracle at this point in our apparent monsoon season. When I got home from the barn on Friday and checked the mail I had my awesome new custom charm from Straight Shot Metal Smashing waiting for me. Yes it’s a Narnia quote. Yes I’m a nerd. Yes I absolutely love it. Yes it’s now living on Henry’s breastplate.

I even got Indian food for dinner on Friday. Indian is my favorite, and it was delicious and all was right in the world. Then Saturday happened.

I was up early on Saturday and at work at 7am. I’m super busy at work right now, plus I’m in money hoarding mode trying to save up for AEC’s, so the overtime is welcome. After putting in 4 hours I went down the street to the grocery store to stock up on a few essentials and grab some cleaning supplies (the SO’s parents were set to arrive at our place on Sunday, so my Saturday afternoon plan was a thorough scrub of our very-neglected-during-show-season house). There I am in the self checkout line – mistake number one when you have a crapton of produce – and my debit card gets declined. Try again, same thing. I look up my account on my phone and see two transactions from a Walgreens that certainly weren’t me, then I get a text from my bank that says my card has been suspended due to suspicious activity. WHILE I’M STANDING IN THE CHECKOUT AT THE GROCERY STORE. The timing is really quite impeccable. This asshole was buying things at Walgreens with my money while I was slaving away at work on a Saturday morning trying to make some extra cash.

After a lot of embarrassment and fumbling around in my purse I luckily had a checkbook on me, so I wrote a check for my groceries. I ran home, unloaded those, sat on hold with the card services folks at my bank for 10 minutes, then ran to my car so I could hightail it to the bank before they closed for the day. Half an hour, a mountain of paperwork, a new debit card, and a police report later, I should hopefully get my money back at some point. To the jerkoff who charged $550 to my card at Walgreens: I hope karma is extra bitchy when she catches up to your ass.

Then I cleaned a little, it rained all night, and my level of grump went sky high. On Sunday I got up and cleaned some more then went out to the barn to douse my creature with fly and mosquito spray. I also wanted to see just how wet and muddy it was (we got another 2.5″ at the barn. I don’t even know what that brings us up to for the month… 14″? More? Whatever). The answer is: wet. Really wet.

I turned Henry out in the round pen while I cleaned his stall and he did this:

So I did this:

Seems fair.

Hopefully today I’ll have time to at least go for a road hack, if we can beat the rain. Yes it’s supposed to pour buckets. Again. Never fear, I bought myself the best shirt in the world as a “don’t be sad” present:

Happy freakin Majestic Monday.