Month: August 2016

I think I promised this one to several of you a long time ago, but I finaaaaally just got around to it. Oops, sorry. Trying to play catch-up this month!

If you follow me on Insta you probably noticed one of the approximately 4000 pictures I posted of Henry’s butt from the jog-ups in Arizona. He sported an anchor, for our trainer’s barn, Anchor Equestrian. I love customized/unique quarter marks, outside of the standard checkerboard or sharks tooth pattern. I did, after all, put a unicorn on my horse’s butt for AEC’s last year.

 

I made the original anchor stencil very hastily the day before we left for AZ. I didn’t really have the materials I wanted, nor did I have any clue if my sizing was right, so I just made it out of thick paper. Of course, when you put a damp brush on paper, it doesn’t last long. The stencil made it through AZ, but got left behind in the trash can. I liked the anchor though, so I set out to make a more permanent, longer lasting version.

What you need:

• Some kind of thin plastic. I cut up a plastic folder that I bought for a whopping $1, but any plastic that is thick enough to hold it’s shape and thin enough to cut with a box blade/x-acto knife will work. I’ve used a broken rubbermaid bin before.
• a box blade/x-acto knife for cutting
• a printer
• a pen
• a surface on which to cut. I have a couple cutting mats (I have no idea how things like this find their way into my life) but otherwise just find a sacrificial surface. The garage floor, a bunch of newspaper, whatever. Or spend $5 and get a cutting mat, which makes things a little easier and smoother. Your call.

I have all of these things lying around except for the plastic folder, so my total investment here was $1 and about 10 minutes of my time for 2 stencils. My stencil is obviously fairly basic… the more elaborate you get with the pattern, or the more curves you have, the more complicated it gets.

My first step was cutting the folder down to a usable piece of plastic. It was simple, I just flayed the pockets off, cut the middle binders off, and ta-da – two perfect pieces.

Then I was off to Google image search to find exactly the right shape. You can do just about anything you want, even freehand (if you’re more artistic than I am). Just remember – this is going on a horse’s butt by way of a damp brush, so if you try to get super elaborate, not all of the detail will show up in the end.

I printed two – a larger anchor the same size as the prototype I’d already made, and then a smaller one.

Your method for getting the pattern onto the plastic is personal choice. Trace paper works fairly well, especially if your plastic is lighter colored. I am more of a bull-in-a-china-shop type, so I just take a pen and trace firmly around the edges of the pattern, leaving an impression in the plastic.

Next up is the fun part – cutting. I should probably have some kind of disclaimer about adult supervision, how razor blades aren’t toys, blah blah blah. Just don’t cut your damn finger off, ok? It’s pretty simple, just follow your lines. I don’t really worry about getting everything exactly symmetrical… it’s going on a horse’s butt, after all. Get it reasonably close and stop obsessing, no one will be able to tell once it’s on.

I did my two stencils slightly differently, to show you what to do if you have a non-cutout area within a larger cutout. For my bigger stencil I just made the top part of the anchor into one big circle, without an inner circle.

For the smaller stencil I left the inner circle at the top of the anchor. This isn’t rocket science… just leave a couple of little “connecting” pieces attached to the inner part. Definitely plot these out and draw them on before you start cutting so that you don’t accidentally forget one. Once the quarter mark is on the horse you can just go touch up the little lines where the connecting pieces were.

Once you’re done cutting you just pop the inner parts out and voila – you’ve got a waterproof stencil! Extra bonus: if you body clip in the winter, keep the cutout part as a template for a clipped-on quarter mark. Put some double-sticky tape on the back of it, tape it on where you want it, and clip around it. Really easy.

When you’re ready to use your stencil, brush the hindquarters with a damp brush (a shorter, stiffer one works best), then line the stencil up where you want it and brush downward over the stencil. Lift the stencil off, being careful not to drag it across your fresh quarter mark, and you should have your perfect pattern.

 

One of my favorite things about the USEA website is being able to search by horse or by rider and pull up their entire competition record. One of my least favorite things about the USEA website is how anyone can search by horse or rider and pull up my or my horse’s entire competition record. Lots of data is awesome, until there’s something you’d rather everyone not see.

I feel pretty protective of my horse’s USEA record. I’m not really sure why… he’s not a sale horse at the moment, and he’s not headed to any kind of upper level or team competition. It’s not like he has phenomenal dressage or always jumps a clear stadium, and I certainly have nothing to prove his pilot. I just love scrolling down that page and seeing 0 XC penalties. Probably really weird, but I do. Even though he’s ridden mostly by me, so any mistakes on his record would be easily chalked up to rider error.

But this isn’t quite like a USEF or USDF record where you have several classes per show, and several chances to fix mistakes. One show, one score, no redemption. Permanently. It’s why, after a few stops, a lot of people choose to retire instead of make that one last attempt and get an E. It’s why, with a young horse, a lot of pros won’t bring it to a recognized show until they feel pretty confident that it’ll get around. Leave the baby mistakes at home or at an unrecognized, ie “off the record”.

Of course, if I was shopping for a horse, being able to pull up it’s entire show history is totally fantastic. Sometimes it shows you a pattern or a weakness. Granted, it only tells you a part of the story. Sometimes the score just doesn’t reflect what really happened.

So basically, I have a love/hate relationship with our results database. Henry had a 20 at his very first event in 2014 when he just didn’t understand the question. Since then, clear. I like that, I’m proud of him for that, and I think it tells you a lot about how genuine he is, so I’m protective of it. But then again, I think… it’s been BN and N. Let’s be honest, it’s just not that hard to go clear at BN and N.

He has a clear T on his record now thanks to Trainer, but now it’s my turn. I know it’s ridiculously silly to feel even a minute amount of pressure to keep his record “clean”, and probably really unlikely. I should probably focus more on, like, not dying. Things just get harder as you go up, and it becomes more difficult for him to overcome my mistakes. Plus, if I mess up THAT badly, it’s often the safer thing for the horse to say “um no, that’s actually not safe”, and I would definitely rather he do that if it’s the right choice. But still. I like 0’s.

Am I the only one with a crazy irrational rider obsession like this, feeling some kind of overprotective quality of what goes on a horse’s public record? I’ll let it go someday…

 

You may remember last year’s edition: Ding Dong the Watch is Dead. Apparently I kill one essential piece of equipment per year? This time, unfortunately, it’s a big ticket item: my tall boots.

I’m pretty sad about this, because I like my boots. I nabbed a pair of Ariat Monacos brand new off of eBay 5 years ago for under $400, and they’ve fit me perfectly from day 1. They haven’t been very durable though, having already required various repairs 3 times. Still, they’re really flattering and pretty and fairly comfortable, so I’ve tried to baby them a bit. Sadly, apparently Arizona was the last straw.

I noticed on XC day that I managed to have a blowout (for like the one millionth time with these boots) at the left ankle, where the fabric of the zipper had come unsewn from the boot itself. I was sporting a pretty nice gap for all of Coconino. We’ll call it airflow.

Then, on the very next wear, I noticed that on the inside of the right boot the stitching had separated on a seam in two places, leaving two holes in that boot as well. Two legs, three new air vents. I also noticed that the sole is starting to separate on the edges of both boots. Well crap. At this point they’ve been repaired so many times, and the leather itself is getting really ragged and torn up, I don’t really think it’s worth it to keep trying to repair them. More blowouts seem inevitable, and I’d hate for one to happen at a really inopportune time.

I think I can coax them through the fall season since I’ve only got a couple shows planned, but I’ll need to get something new in the off season. The only question is… what do I get? I hate tall boot shopping. Luckily I’m very average sized, calf and foot and proportion-wise, but I like a boot that is a little bit too tall. Plus it’d be nice to have something that wasn’t super boring. I really want some of these bad boys:

But there’s no way custom or semi-custom boots are in the budget.

My favorite off the rack option that I’ve seen so far are the Mountain Horse Sovereign, although I’m not sure they’re as tall as I want. I haven’t really seen anything else that catches my eye so far, nor have I actually tried anything on.

So – what are your favorite options for tall boots under $400ish that have at least something a little bit fun about them (even if it’s just a damn square toe), have a tall option or run tall, are pretty, have a slim ankle, and will last? Ready, go.

Now that everything has pretty much settled back into a normal routine and my budget has (kind of) recovered, it’s time to buckle back down on taking some lessons. Most of my spring/summer lesson budget actually went toward trainer rides, getting Henry ready for his moveup. It wasn’t until Wednesday, when I was tacking up my horse before my lesson, that I realized- I haven’t actually had a show jumping lesson since like… MARCH. Good god.

I jumped Henry over a handful of very tiny fences last weekend, just to make sure his brain was plugged back in after his vacation. And to make sure I could still like, steer and stuff. You never know. Then on Wednesday, Trainer came out for lessons.

We warmed up briefly (it was approximately 9000 degrees with 4 million percent humidity) while Henry protested the fact that he is now going in a flash again, and then we started hopping over a warmup fence. It started as a crossrail, yet every time I came back around it had grown significantly, until it ended up as this:

And  while it definitely looked decent-sized, I had zero trepidation about cantering down to it, so… progress? Once I actually started using my outside aids to rebalance, turn, and straighten, everything kept coming up golden. That one fence above might have been the best I’ve ever felt him jump. Henry was leaving the ground out of a really good canter with plenty of power, and I was leaving him alone. Miraculous how that works out. Also miraculous that I’ve heard this a million times and still cannot remember to do it consistently.

We did one full course and then just broke out the one piece of it that I was having trouble with – an angled fence, bending line to a one stride. The angles made it a true test of riding off the outside aids, so it’s not a surprise that it took a few tries for me to really get it. I kept letting that outside shoulder get away from me, which really messed up the line and the balance. Once we did the exercise reasonably well a few times, we let him quit.

I’m pretty excited that Trainer lives closer now and will be able to come out on a regular basis for lessons. What a luxury it would be to have some consistency! Or at least more consistent than every 5 months…