Month: August 2015

The weekend started out with a bang. On Friday night I met Karen and our friend Stacy for happy hour at an awesome Mexican restaurant, where I stuffed my face with queso and brownie. On my way to happy hour I had stopped at Dover (it’s in the same shopping center) to pick up some dewormer and accidentally bought another jump pad. I just don’t know how this keeps happening. Well that’s a lie. It was navy, it had an awesome shape, cool features, and it was cheap. Yeah I know I’m looking for a dressage pad, not a yet another jump pad. I have a problem, leave me alone.

Saturday morning I was up and at em bright and early for a dressage lesson. And by bright and early I mean I was at the barn at 5:45 to groom Henry, pack my stuff in Bobby’s trailer, and haul the boys over to Dressage Trainer’s place for the first two lesson spots of the day.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a dressage lesson (a month? more? this summer is starting to run together) so I wasn’t sure how “on it” we’d be but Henry was pretty good. He has been VERY stretchy lately, which is nothing short a miracle on a horse who, a mere 4 months ago, wouldn’t give you a single step of stretchy anything. The king of the fake braced frame is finally starting to seek the contact and come down into it. Not all the time, but a lot more. He still has trouble with the shoulder in, more to the left than the right, but that’s getting better too.

It seems like the progress with dressage is so slow, but it’s nice to hear Dressage Trainer say that Henry looks markedly better every time he sees him. Dressage is difficult for him (and me)… he’s naturally a tense tight horse, built downhill, not a great mover, and not blessed with particularly talented rider, but we’re making baby steps. It’s gonna take a while but as long as he keeps improving a little bit at a time then we’ll call it success. There is a little video below, which I’m mostly just posting because thanks to Bobby you will never be able to un-see the last 20 seconds. I’m sorry, Internet. I’m so, so sorry.

On Saturday night we had a family get-together at my parents house to celebrate all our August birthdays. My mom, my brother, and myself all have birthdays within a couple weeks of each other so it just becomes easier to do one little party. I loaded the dogs up for their “adventure” – my parents have a big backyard – and had a little family time. We had a smorgasbord of Indian food, Chinese food, and pizza, plus a pretty awesome strawberry cake.

On Sunday I had planned on doing a small gymnastics school but Henry was not feeling it. He wasn’t bad, but my nice stretchy relaxed horse that I’ve had for the past couple weeks was gone and he was super tight, super tense, and way over-reactive to leg. No idea what that was about, but it took me almost half an hour to get any kind of stretching down into the contact. I hopped through the gymnastic a couple times and called it a day.

I’m trying to think that it’s just a coincidence he acted like that on his second day of being off the MagRestore. I’m also trying to think it’s just a coincidence that the super stretchiness started when I first put him on the MagRestore a couple weeks ago. We’ll see how he feels today. We might be going back to the magnesium permanently.

Let’s round out a big ‘ol week of boring with something 99% not horsey! I swear I have a dressage lesson tomorrow and things will go back to Henry on Monday. Until then…

Most of us work for a living, some of us in way swankier places than others. I am curious for a pictorial tour of your office or cubicle. 

I don’t have a cubicle but I’m not sure that mine qualifies as an office either. It’s more of a room. Or a closet. A sad closet with no windows. Welcome to the RMA lab.

It looks like a huge mess of crap. Mostly because it’s a huge mess of crap. I swear there’s a very specific order to it, but if you don’t know the system we have going on here then there’s no point in trying to convince you it’s not a mess. On the left (or behind me, when I’m at my computer) are all the returns and repairs waiting for quotes to be sent out, or waiting for the quotes to be approved by the customer so we can repair their equipment. Then my white board, full of more things that would take forever to explain, and then my space at/above my desk which is mostly markers and cereal and water bottles. There’s a couple horse pictures in there.

The view from my chair toward the door reveals more and more shelves and boxes and equipment. I won’t even bother trying to explain. Yes it’s claustrophobic. On the other side of my shelves is where the repair and evaluation technician sits.

All the important things like a big box of markers, peanut butter, a Painted Pony, a ribbon from some horse show at some point, a koozie, my computer, my phone, etc are on my desk. Oh hey, bonus Jezebel picture on the wall under my tools.  Also my nameplate reveals that I’ve worked here forever (or since 2005. same thing.).

There’s not a lot of personal stuff in my space, just because a) I’m not into decorating b) this is a coffin, not an office. I do have this lovely sign that a coworker made for me though. It’s good to have a reputation.

And this fortune I taped to my shelf, because it seemed appropriate. This is how I decorate, folks.

Sadly, that’s it. I think I win “saddest office space” so far. Give a sister a skylight or something, at least!

When I was watching American Pharaoh make history yet again in the Haskell on Sunday, I got the feeling that I was watching what is likely to be the best racehorse of our generation. Our Secretariat. Our “Tremendous Machine”. He’s poetic and beautiful to watch, and the love and appreciation that the people around AP have for him is palpable. That said, I’m still not sure if he’ll ever overtake Zenyatta as my sentimental favorite. I got into an actual debate with myself and Zenyatta won out. (Remember how I said I love the solitude of barn sitting? These are the kinds of pressing issues that I apparently spend a lot of time thinking about when the only time I speak to other human beings is at work. Woot, hermitism!)

Then, of course, because my mind is ever-wandering, I expanded beyond racing and into showjumping and eventing.

Joe Fargis has always been my favorite jumper rider. I saw him ride Edgar at a Grand Prix while I was working on the East Coast and he left such an impression on me in just that one day. He was so tactful, so soft, so quiet, and yet totally effective. Edgar was a little spooky at the tents when he first came into the ring, and Joe just quietly walked him past, patted him, whispered some words of comfort, smiled, picked up his reins, and proceeded to give everyone a riding lesson.

My favorite jumper would probably have to be Rhythmical. He was little, he was spicy, and he was fierce. I remember watching all the Grand Prix classes on ESPN in the late 90’s and just waiting for Rhythmical’s turn in the jump off… you always knew you were in for a wild ride. He always gave 100% and was so fun to watch. Plus how could you not love his rags to riches story?

My favorite event rider for many years now has been Buck Davidson. He has always impressed me with his compassion and genuine love for his horses, and how appreciative he’s always appeared. Considering he was born into this life it wouldn’t been really easy for him to take it all for granted. It seems like a lot of upper level riders don’t always feel much attachment to their mounts, but you can tell how much Buck loves his crew… especially Reggie. I also admire the fact that Buck was not blessed with the tall, thin physique of so many other top riders – yet he rides every bit as beautifully as they do. He’s an inspiration to us “commoners” in that way. You don’t have to fit the George Morris mold of physical perfection to ride well.

Speaking of Reggie aka Ballynoe Castle RM- he gets my favorite eventer spot too. How could you NOT love Reggie? He’s wise beyond his years, super consistent, mega talented, and obviously has a great brain. I want one of those. I think we ALL want one of those.

I haven’t watched enough dressage or other disciplines to even begin to pick favorites there.. I’ll have to get to work.

Who do you love?

 

So there I was yesterday, doing my monthly perusal of Craigslist looking at horse trailers. I’m not in the market yet but eventually some day I’ll buy a truck and then a trailer, so why not just start looking now, right? It makes sense, trust me.

I was clicking through the Dallas ads, not really even paying much attention, when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the paint job on a shitty old rust bucket of a trailer. My reaction was something like this:

It was quite honestly the most tacky, gaudy, and mesmerizingly garish paint job I have ever seen. My eyeballs were bleeding. But it was also The Best Paint Job Ever. Behold, readers, the trailer whose outside looks just like my inside:

Yes, it’s blue and yellow. Yes, it’s got unicorns on it. Yes, it’s covered in stars. You might as well go ahead and paint my name across the front and cover the whole damn thing with glitter clear coat. It is, without a doubt, the most awful and yet most amazing trailer I have ever seen. EVEN THE HUBBIES ARE YELLOW! And it has BLUE ASTROTURF in the tack compartment!

Let’s all take a moment to be extremely thankful for the fact that Henry would not fit in this tacky ass jalopy, otherwise it would probably be sitting in my driveway right now. Let’s also take a moment to appreciate that there is someone else out there just like me, who loves the same colors I do AND is super into unicorns. I don’ t know you, Julio from Dallas, but you’ve created a true work of art here. Hats off to you, sir.

She’s beautiful.

I’m not really sure what the correct term is for a group of girths but “gaggle” seems like surely it must be right… right?

Sometimes finding things that Henry and I both like is impossible difficult, and he’s enough of a delicate flower that if he doesn’t like something he isn’t shy about letting you know. I can’t totally blame everything on him though… I’m pretty picky too. That’s why I had to go through 6 dressage girths to find one that we both approved of and wasn’t stupid expensive. Yes SIX. Strap yourselves in, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

When we first started out with this eventing thing last fall and I bought the Frank Baines saddle, I didn’t want to invest much in dressage tack in case we ended up back in jumperland. So I bought the cheap little Ovation Airform girth. It served us really well for a while but once I body bodyclipped Henry he started getting weird patches of missing hair around the middle of where the girth sat. I thought this was perhaps because of the synthetic material (I’d had that problem with him before with a synthetic jump girth – his skin is super sensitive) so I decided to move on.

I tried Brandy’s really gorgeous leather Albion girth and Henry and I both loved it, but shelling out $230 for a girth was not happening no matter how much I whined to myself. Sadly, and very reluctantly, I gave Brandy her girth back. At least now I knew that he seemed to like the leather girth, so off I went a-hunting for something similar.

Somewhere in all that hunting I got sucked into the black hole of craziness that is anatomic girths, and someone offered to let me try their TSF. That thing sat really awkwardly on Henry, with a big gap at the front edge and all the pressure on the rear edge. He was so grumpy when I tightened the girth that I didn’t even bother riding in it. Some internet research told me that I wasn’t the only one with the weird gapping problem. The TSF was another “no”, which I wasn’t too upset about because for the price I didn’t like the leather very much anyway.

Once I climbed out of the black hole of anatomic girths and back into the realm of “normal” leather girths, I decided to try the Shires Blenheim girth. It was leather, it was in budget, and I liked the white stitching detail. What I failed to notice while shopping is that there was only one keeper for the billets, and it was way down low toward the middle of the girth. So low that my billets didn’t actually reach to it and flapped around all over the place. You fail, Shire’s girth. You fail hard.

After The Great Shire’s Failure I decided maybe I should give up on trying to find a nice leather girth in my price range and opt instead for fleece: enter the Ovation Dri-Tex girth. I had used a fleece jump girth with him once upon a time and it was fine, it just tended to not actually hold my jump saddle in place at all. Slight problem, but I figured that wouldn’t happen with the dressage saddle. And I was right, the saddle didn’t move around at all. But that girth sure did. I liked that it was wide and squishy, but the fleece would bunch up under the billets and shift, ending up twisted all over the place by the time I got off. Plus the elastic was so thin that it was very easy to end up overtightening the girth. Why do fleece girths suck so much? Why did I use them for so many years? What was I thinking? I hate you fleece.

After that I circled back around and got another Ovation Airform girth to hold us over until I could find a bargain that I was happy with on a nice leather girth. Or until I felt okay splurging on the fancy sheepskin lined Frank Baines with humane ends that I was heavily lusting after… whichever came first. Yes, the overtightening issue of the fleece girth sent me completely into Paranoid Nutjob Mode about a too tight girth and made me only want something with humane ends. That’s just how I work. Go with it.

Then, as if by magic, there was a Nunn Finer Piaffe for a great price. It was nice leather, it was well padded, and it had humane ends. I thought maybe this could finally be the one. When it arrived I was very happy with the leather quality and how nice and squishy the padding was. I’ve been using it now for about a month and a half and it gets the Henry seal of approval too. I’ve come to really love the humane ends, they seem to work exceptionally well with the design of the billets on my monoflap Devoucoux. No rubbing or chafing issues either, with lots of elbow clearance. The saddle stays put, the girth stays put, it looks nice, and the horse is happy. FINALLY. It only took 8 months.

Hopefully I’m done buying dressage girths for quite a while. My delicate psyche can’t take any more. But hey, if anybody needs a cast-off dressage girth I’ve got like 4 of them floating around in my house/car… a whole gaggle of ’em.