Month: June 2015

There are a few really big name riders/trainers coming to our area this winter for clinics, and I’ve been giving them a bit of thought. I’ve only done one clinic before, way back in 2003ish with Phyllis Dawson. To be honest, I really got nothing out of it. I don’t remember a single thing about it except for her telling me how much she hated Waterford bits (what my horse at the time was going in, because she pulled like a freight train and the Waterford was magic). That experience put me off a bit.

But now Henry and I have jumped into this eventing thing with all 6 of our feet and I have actual goals that include possibly another level beyond the one we’re at. We also don’t get super frequent instruction over fences, and almost never have XC schools with a trainer present (if we’re counting, we’ve had a supervised XC school a grand total of twice) so maybe we would actually get some useful tidbits out of a weekend clinic. Of course, my devil’s advocate side says we’d probably get just as many useful tidbits from a weekend XC school with one of our other local trainers, and I have one planned in July. There’s still something kind of fun about the idea of riding with a big name and the possibility of gleaning a little extra wisdom from their wealth of experience.

The thing I’m stuck on is – are they really worth the money? By the time you factor in the cost of the clinic, the cost to the facility, the stall, the gas money, the hotel, etc etc it would probably cost me as much as a recognized event. That’s not astronomical, but it’s not chump change either, especially when your budget isn’t exactly overflowing with extra cash.

I know that whether or not a two day clinic is really worthwhile depends a lot on who the clinician is, which has factored into my thought process as well. Of the ones that are coming down here, really only two interest me: Buck Davidson and Boyd Martin. From reading articles, clinic reviews, and watching videos, I’d probably lean more toward Buck (too bad because Boyd is dreamy AF and it’d be nice to stare at that for 3 days) but would need to look into both of them more.

I also have the possibility of clinicing with Charles de Kunffy at some point this year. Not as expensive as Buck or Boyd, but still not cheap for a 45 minute ride.

What do you think – are big name clinics worth the expense, or are you better off just using that money to take more lessons with your regular trainers?

The weekend started out with a lot of promise. We had gotten a couple rainy days last week so were unable to ride except for hacking down the road, but the sun came out towards the end of the week and we were hopeful that things would dry up. A couple of new things arrived in the mail for Henry – a new bonnet from If the Bonnet Fits, and a new-to-us Nunn Finer Piaffe dressage girth. This is now the FIFTH dressage girth I’ve bought for this horse in an attempt to find just the right one, and finally – FINALLY – I think we’ve got a winner. More on both items coming up soon.

On Saturday we hauled over to Dressage Trainer’s covered arena for lessons. Henry hadn’t really been ridden in a week, save for one road hack, and for him he was actually a little wild. There was someone else riding in the arena during our lesson and every time she smacked her very lazy horse with the whip, Henry got more and more worried that she was going to come beat him next. It was not our best lesson, he was a little tense and dragging me in the down transitions, but it had some good moments. Mostly I’m just happy we actually got to ride.

And then it rained. And rained and rained and rained some more. Sunday we had plans for a barn-wide road hack and mimosas, but it looked like we were gonna get rained out.

Still, we are alcoholics troopers, so we sat in the barn drinking our mimosas while it rained. I let Henry sniff mine and he stuck his entire tongue in to taste it (he said EW). I drank it anyway, because it’s never going to stop raining and we’re never going to ride regularly again and I need a coping mechanism whether it’s got horse slobber in it or not.

When the clouds parted we all jumped on and actually managed to have perfect timing. We fit our little road ride in and were settled back in the barn before it started raining again.

Y’all need a better picture to fully appreciate my shirt… Bobby got this for me for Texas Rose. Yes that’s a rainbow butterfly caticorn. I can think of nothing more magnificent. Bobby loves me.

Sadly we’re rained out of our riding plans for today and tomorrow but hopefully the sun will come out and start drying things up. Surely it will eventually… right?

Oh, and for those wondering how Sadie is doing – she actually regressed after I posted last week and is now holding steady in the “maybe any minute, maybe two weeks from now” stage. I really wouldn’t expect anything less from her, she’s gonna toy with us until the end.

I was pretty ridiculously ants-in-my-pants excited while waiting to get these pictures. Terrie Hatcher was the photographer and she does really beautiful work, plus Texas Rose Horse Park is such a gorgeous facility – it was the perfect storm for great pics. Not to mention the fact that it was Henry’s first Novice and I wanted as much media as possible of my superpony. I was hopeful that Terrie would get some good shots and I’m certainly not disappointed! I will probably go back and buy more but here are the first five, starting with my new absolute favorite photo of Henry ever:

Thanks Terrie for the beautiful pictures! This is why it’s so important to support our really good photographers – we need them to keep coming back to help us make the memories into treasures. Great pictures are truly irreplaceable.

 

 

As you can probably tell, I used last night’s rain as a good excuse to finally redo my blog. Aside from the cosmetic changes with color and picture, I now have my own domain name: the900facebookpony.com. You can access my blog either through that link or from the previous the900facebookpony.wordpress.com link. Both should work, although you might have to change the link if my blog is on your blog roll… not sure.

You should also no longer be seeing any WordPress generated ads on this site. I want 100% control of what businesses and products I endorse here, so they had to go. If you see one (especially if you’re on mobile, since that’s where they seemed to show up the most) let me know and I will yell obscenities at the appropriate person at WordPress.

There are a couple new things in the menu bar as well, and some updates to both my and Henry’s About Us posts. Most notably, I added a Contact page so you can email me directly if you want.

Sadly when I switched over to a new template all of my sidebar widgets re-set (thanks WordPress) so I had to start from scratch. I think I restored everything back to working order, but if you see anything broken or out of place or missing, please let me know. Also, if you don’t see something that you want to see, let me know so I can consider adding it.

Hope you like the new look and link. And if not, well.. too bad, because it took HOURS and I’m not re-doing it anytime soon. Instead enjoy this unicorn gif and lie to me and tell me you love it.

If you read this blog even semi-regularly, you know how particular I am about tack. Someone will have to pry my PS of Sweden, CWD and Devoucoux from my cold dead hands. Therefore what I have to confess to you here today might be pretty surprising… in fact, I surprised even myself.

Bobby (of Course Walks with Bobby fame) is a Wintec guy. I keep telling him that he’s the worst gay I’ve ever met, because he’s basically anti-fabulous. He has one saddle, one bridle, a white saddle pad, and a red saddle pad. That’s ALL he brings with him to events. He likes tack that he can hose off when it’s dirty, right on down to his rubber boots. I tease Bobby endlessly about his plastic and nylon and rubber ensemble, but really Wintec should be sponsoring him because he kicks everyone’s ass in his plastic tack, including mine.

So, on one of our many adventures this spring I was telling Bobby about a shop on English Tack Trader that sells Beta reins with colored rubber grips. I think he NEEDS the red ones for XC, because I will accessorize this man if it’s the last damn thing I do and no matter how much he protests. Then last week when we were out doing trot sets my Mark Todd rubber reins finally gave up the ghost and melted. Into my gloves. Like, I could open my fingers completely and my reins stayed stuck to them, that’s how melted they are. Since those reins are on my cheapie hackamore bridle that I only use for hacking and conditioning work, I really didn’t want to spend much money on reins, yet I’m pretty particular about what kind of grips I like. Enter the idea of “Well… I could just get the beta ones that I’ve been ragging on Bobby to get. They’re cheap, they have the grips I like, and no one will ever see them anyway since they’re on my ‘junker’ bridle!”. Brilliant. “And while I’m at it I should get blue, because I’m an eventer now and those kinds of ridiculous things are expected of our kind.” Double brilliant.

Off I went perusing their site to order the reins, and I stumbled across a halter made from beta. I immediately sent it to Bobby since it was his colors (red and black). He was like “OMG that’s awesome, I could just hose it off to clean it and it’ll last forever!”. Hmm… he has a point there. My nice leather halter, while I do love it, gets nastier by the day. I gave up keeping it clean a long time ago because it’s impossible. It’s perpetually dirty and the brass nameplate is tarnished and sad looking. Henry looks a little bit like a hobo horse. The Beta halters were only $40 and you could order whatever color combo you wanted. Something came over me and next thing I knew I’d ordered one of those too.

Honestly, I don’t even know what happened. I can’t explain myself. I don’t know what to say. But somehow instead of accessorizing Bobby’s plastic and rubbery tack collection, I acquired my own. And to top it all off, I’m really not even sorry.