Month: August 2016

In spring/early summer I had a lot of people asking me about Henry’s conditioning schedule. I wavered a lot about whether or not to share this, because I think that something like a conditioning schedule can be a pretty personalized thing and what it should look like varies a lot from horse to horse, level to level, sport to sport, or even month to month. I’m sharing it, BUT with the huge bold red letter disclaimer: This is just what we did.

This was June’s schedule, which is pretty typical of what our normal spring/fall schedule looks like these days. Rides get shorter later in the summer when it’s a million degrees, and when the ground is bad (ie too muddy or too hard/cracked) the gallops pretty much go out the window. Right now our schedule looks pretty much nothing like this, but next month things will ramp back up to more of a full “competition season” schedule.

Some notes:

• With that schedule Henry was very fit, probably over-fit for his level. I try to err on the over-fit side due to his respiratory issue, and especially in prepping him for AZ since I wasn’t sure how he’d handle the high altitude.
• Before an event there’s a bit of a ramp down in the schedule.
• Everywhere that says “walk” = forward, marching, on the aids. Not ambling around on a loose rein.
• “3 x 4” means 3 sets of 4 minutes each.
• “long trot” means no walking or breaks, just a solid chunk of trot.
• The speed of the gallop sets depends on where we are in our schedule, but usually somewhere between 400-450mpm.
• Road Hack is mostly forward walk with some trotting.
• Dressage rides are usually about 45min with very little walking.
• This is not set in stone… if something comes up things get shuffled around, or if we need to work more on one particular thing, days can be substituted (for instance, now we’re going to be doing 3 days a week of dressage, one jump day, and one or two conditioning days – so switching from a conditioning-heavy schedule to a dressage-heavy schedule). The calendar is really just a guideline to make sure we stay on track and fit everything in.

 

The day I dropped Henry off for a week of “camp” with Trainer, I almost felt a little bad. He hadn’t been ridden much in the few days beforehand, a cold front had just blown through, and he had already been a bit full of himself lately without those factors. I mean… I did warn Trainer that he might be a little frisky, so ya know, all’s fair? There was at least 1.25% feeling of guilt hidden somewhere deep down inside, but it didn’t stop me from cackling maniacally as I pulled out of the driveway.

Y’all already heard about the first update on day 1: “I didn’t die today, but… it was touch and go for a few minutes.”. Sounds about right.

I think he must have realized his situation, because the next day he came in missing a shoe and a bell boot. Jokes on him, the ground out there is so soft and sandy that missing a shoe was not enough to get him out of a dressage ride.

He got to do counter canter and simple changes and Trainer sat the trot and worked on the transitions. Basically a true Henry torture session.

Things continued to stay challenging and serious. Obviously he’s very stressed out being away from home.

He got his shoe put back on (ripping off another bell boot in the mean time, for good measure) then had a jump school on Saturday. So very grateful for people taking pictures for me (thanks Amy!) since I couldn’t be there. Trainer reported that he was a bit lazy and careless at first but as the jumps got bigger and he got better about jumping from the base, things improved. He has square poles and placing poles in his future.

I was originally planning on bringing him home on Sunday, but since we got so much rain I elected to leave him there for a few more days. At least there he can still get turned out and ridden… it’s going to take us a little longer to dry out here. But I did need to get up there and a) bring him more food, b) try out The Unicorn before the trial period was over, so I drove out on Sunday for a quick dressage lesson (in between rain storms) instead.

Summary – he’s trained me very well to tiptoe around his tension. Time for him to learn how to work through pressure instead of catering to him and taking the pressure off the moment he gets tense. It’ll take a while to retrain that instinct in me. He was pretty good though, and The Unicorn was PERFECT! YAY! No more saddle shopping.

She did another dressage ride yesterday…

then he’s got a jump school today and another dressage ride tomorrow before I go pick him up, followed by a jump lesson on Thursday before Trainer heads out to AECs (side note, I was feeling ever so slightly sad that I qualified at N but couldn’t go, until I saw the courses. Now I’m fine not going.). I think Henry is pretty pissed that he’s currently living at a facility with an XC course and he hasn’t gotten to school XC at all, but that’s what he gets for being so good on XC. Poor Henny.

 

 

 

Normally barnsitting is a pretty sedate gig. Small barn, out in the country, well behaved horses that are used to their routine. Not much to it. Things kinda just flow and there are rarely any hiccups or surprises. This time though… this time was just weird.

It started almost immediately, with a possum drowning in the water trough. Luckily the girl that cleans the stalls found that one, because giant rodents aren’t really my thing and EW.

Then Texas got a super weird cold front that dropped the temperature almost 30 degrees. This made the horses a little… uh… frisky. The stallion in particular, who is normally impeccably behaved and a total puppy dog, spent one entire evening thinking it was breeding season and he had business to attend to right now. If you know what I mean. It took a good hour of “discussions” to get his brain plugged back in and settle him back down. He never acts particularly studdish, so that was totally strange. He was back to his normal sedate self the next day.

 

Then another night I walked into the tack room to get cookies for the horses, and when I flipped on the light I saw a snake. A snake that was in the middle of devouring a rat. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TACK ROOM. Have you no decency sir? Not gonna lie, I screamed and leapt back out the door, just about crapping myself in the process. Then I realized I really had to make sure that the snake wasn’t poisonous. I very slowly crept back in, an inch at a time, verified that it wasn’t an extra scary snake (just a regularly scary snake), apologized to him for interrupting his dinner, turned the light back off, and shut the tack room door. I was very careful entering the tack room every time after that.

Also, why was it suddenly monsoon season in Texas? In August? We got 10″ of rain in the past week!

So then it kind of makes sense that one morning I found a frog sitting on my boot. That was the same morning that I opened the back door and a spider, a BIG spider, fell mere inches from my head. I’m glad he didn’t actually make contact, I would’ve hated to have to burn down the newly renovated house.

Another morning I was filling water buckets before I left for the day and found a rat drowning in one. Like literally he was on his tiptoes and just his little nose was sticking out. He kept trying to jump but wasn’t having any luck. I pulled the whole bucket down and tossed it out, and the poor rat (I know they’re gross rodents but still, poor drowning rat) took a little while to get moving before scampering off. As I was scrubbing the bucket all I could think was that I better not find a damn snake eating that damn rat later…

The wildlife, man. What the hell?

 

I haven’t given much update on The Saddle Quest, mostly because I was pouting. The first saddle finally arrived from Devoucoux, and while it fit Henry great…

unfortunately my concerns about the 17.5″ were legit. The seat was ok, but my knee hung over the front block in a really awkward way. Definitely too small.

Considering how Trainer’s 18″ fit (borderline roomy), I was kind of surprised at how tiny the 17.5″ both looked and felt. I checked the stamp twice to make sure I wasn’t crazy. They’re very very different for what’s only supposed to be 1/2″.

So, reluctantly, I boxed the 17.5″ back up and shipped it back to Devoucoux. It was in my possession for less than 24 hours. However, I think the universe must REALLY want me to have my Unicorn, because it just so happened that an 18″ popped up too. For $200 cheaper than the other one. And it was newer.

I had to wait for the refund to go through from the first saddle, which made me really nervous, hoping no one bought the 18″ out from under me while I waited. Pretty much the second it hit, the new one was purchased. Say hello to Unicorn 2.0…

which arrived literally 10 minutes after I dropped Henry off at Trainer’s for the week. Sigh. So now here it sits, looking beautiful and smelling amazing, until this weekend when I can finally try it. Maybe second try is the charm?