Month: November 2017

Well if I was lacking on media for dressage and stadium, you’re about to get more than you ever wanted from XC. Buckle up!

I kept waiting for the nerves to kick in about XC, but they never came. It was a beefy course. All the brush fences were boob-height (a very specific, scientific form of measurement), the ones that weren’t tall were WIDE, and the combos required competent riding. But I dunno, it just didn’t bother me much walking the course, and it still didn’t bother me as we got closer to Go Time. I respected the course, for freakin sure, it was the biggest “ask” we’ve been up against so far together, but I also knew my horse could do it no problem. I just had to keep him pointed between the flags, keep my leg on, and not do anything stupid. I really appreciate having a horse like that.  He might be difficult in dressage and stadium, but he is easy-peasy on cross country and therefore worth his (significant) weight in gold to me. I was really excited for XC.

Your course walk this time stars Bobby, his puppy Walker, and fellow blogger/Texas eventer Wendy (she also writes for Heels Down Magazine, of which I am a fan and subscriber!) with her two giant white fluffs. I’m pretty sure they’re dogs but they could also be polar bears. Clearly Bobby and Wendy had been drinking and clearly the dogs are embarrassed. I felt like I was herding cats around, the course walk took so long with these two idiots, but it was kind of worth it for some of these pictures.

For as grumpy and sullen as Henry had been on Saturday for dressage and stadium, he was bright-eyed and bushy tailed as soon as I showed up on Sunday morning. He knew what phase was left, and he was jazzed AF to get going. He kept his head over his stall guard all morning, staring off into the distance. You never have to guess how Henry feels about anything, he makes it quite clear. Luckily we went pretty early so I didn’t have to sit around too much… I videoed a friend’s stadium, went over my course in my app, and then started getting ready. As soon as Henry’s boots went on and studs went in, his eyes assumed a permanently bugged out position that Bobby says was still present as we walked into the startbox. Game on, bitches. Henny came to play.

Fence 1 was a simple little log box thing to start, then across the field beside the interstate to fence 2. Some horses had been spooky here (there’s a lot going on, between warmup to the left and the road to the right) so I sat a little defensively and just let the jump come to us. Of course Henry was so locked-on that I’m pretty sure a tornado could have touched down next to us and he wouldn’t have waivered from his line. Henry is Pro at two things: resting mare face and XC.

After 2 we crossed over the little bridge and he thought it was a jolly time to try to run off with me, so he got a sharp HEY and half halt to remind him of his manners as we hung a left and then a right to get straight to the log oxer at 3.

That was no problem, and we were quickly away and up the hill to the hay table thingy at 4.

After that we were over to the first combo on course, a couple of small little rolltops that were slightly angled. It walked a 4 but as soon I jumped in I knew there was no way that was happening unless I absolutely hauled his face apart, so I just let him work it out and the 3 came up fine. A little long out, but still safe. Maybe I rode it more directly than I walked it or something. I dunno.

After that we headed to 6AB, another combo. The approach to this makes it a bit tricky, because you went down a hill, then back up again, hooking a sharp left to the small up bank, one stride to a big brush fence. Everything to this point had been pretty small and inviting, but that brush fence was legit. If you whoaed too much going down the hill, you’d have a serious momentum problem coming back up, making it more likely that you wouldn’t make it to the brush. I really needed to make sure I kept a lot of power coming up the hill. So I let him roll a bit, turned toward the bank, and really closed my leg to drive him up again. I got him a teeny bit close to the bank so that he would land a little deeper into the one, gave him a tap with the whip, and he was right there to hop over the brush easily, then through the water. Jump 7, a little house out of the water, was our only icky distance on course, I think because it was so small that I kinda stopped riding a little. Oops. Henry didn’t care either way.

After 7 we went left across the field to a corner at 8,

and looped back around to the second water. It was a big brush fence, through the water, and then another big brush fence on an angle. I was really pumped to ride this. The only thing I like more than big brush fences is jumping stuff on an angle, and Henry loves water, so I hoped it would ride well for us.

And it DID!!! So much fun. That was a blast, for real. There’s just something about flying over big jumps and charging through the water that appeals to my inner 5 year old. She was delighted.

Geez, eventing is fun, y’all. Especially on this horse. Don’t mind me, just having the friggin time of my life up here. Too bad they don’t let you loop around and do the fun parts again.

After that we were off and running to the trakehner at 10, down the hill to an open oxer, then down the skinny bank. No problems with any of that.

After the down bank, it was back up out of the basin and over the red barn at 13. Fun fact, I used to really detest this fence (y’all know how much I hate square tables) but meh, no worries when you’re on Henry. He jumped it super, right out of stride. Really hope the pro photog got this shot.

Then off to the little step jump at 14, which was little more than a speed bump by this point, to the option at 15. We could go straight and jump the world’s giantest Weldon’s Wall with a big ugly ditch in front, or we could loop around the opposite direction and jump just an open ditch. Henry is brave as hell, but he’s also only ever seen one Weldon’s Wall before, and it wasn’t nearly as robust as this one. I was 95% sure he would have jumped it, but Trainer and I decided to play it safe rather than risk him not understanding the question. We’ll jump the big one once I’ve been able to school that type of fence more thoroughly. Not interested in putting my horse in an unfair situation and hurting his confidence. He’s a fantastic XC horse, but he IS still a bit green to the level, after all. The loop around cost me a lot of time, but I was okay with that to make sure I had a confident horse.

The rest of the jumps after that came up pretty quickly one right after the other. First there was a 2 stride of wide, skinny houses that walked a bit short, so I brought him way back for that (because ain’t nobody want to leave a stride out of THAT shit… although I did see it happen…)

then a log oxer table thingy (technical term)

then the gallop to the last big brush table, the one I’ve wanted to burn to the ground since the first time I laid eyes on it. I was galloping up to it going “yeah, this thing still looks big from up here. The flowers are pretty though.”. You know you’re mentally ill when you’re galloping up to a big table, admiring the flowers. But Henry jumped the crap out of it, and it was a great last jump to end on.

We were a little over time because of our long route option (the speed was 470mpm, we’d have been right under time with the direct option), but I could not have given less of a shit. Henry felt amazing, jumped really well, and I never even felt so much as a hint of hesitation from him. He took me to everything and seemed super confident. I was so incredibly proud of him, I thought I might burst. The course didn’t seem to take much out of him either, since he strutted the whole way back to the barn.

Even though we left without a ribbon, I couldn’t have been happier even if we’d gotten a blue one. I showed up at TRHP feeling a little intimidated, and left feeling like we actually belonged. There were no big terrible mistakes, just little things that we need to keep working on. And most of all, I just plain had a ton of fun all weekend. It was relaxed, calm, I got to cheer on a lot of friends, and my horse was fantastic. It wasn’t a perfect XC run on my part, but it was a really good one, and Henry ate that course for breakfast. What more could you want from a horse show?

The full helmet cam video is here if you want to watch, and many thanks to all my friends who were able to grab pics and video clips for me. This run meant a lot to me, so it’s great to have so much media of it.

I officially CANNOT WAIT for next season!

 

Alright alright, I’m gonna try to climb down from Cloud 9, where I’ve been hanging out since XC on Sunday, to recap this show properly. Even though I don’t really want to do anything but skip straight to the XC part. Alas, there were 2 other phases (still waiting for those to become optional).

On Friday we loaded up early and headed up to Tyler with our new friends Lucy and Sophie. Lucy’s trailer is nice and big and her mare Sophie is super sweet, so Henry was in love. He had been acting a little weird earlier that morning though. He was very slow eating his breakfast, which isn’t normal, and pawed a couple of times, so I was instantly on alert. Otherwise he still wanted cookies, was pooping normally, and his vitals were all perfect. I made sure I had Banamine packed in my trunk, just in case, and decided to just see how the day unfolded. If he was feeling a bit weird, I figured the trailer ride might help anyway.

He looked normal when we got there, and peed and pooped and drank half a bucket of water. I kept an eye on him while I unpacked but kept doing the super overanalytical horse owner thing of “does he always stand like that?” and “is he napping or is he dying?”. You know how that goes. Ultimately we all decided (because by this point I had recruited more overanalytical horse owners to my cause) he looked fine, so I got on to do a quick dressage school with the rest of our group. He felt good, and gave me work pretty close to how he’s been at home, so I decided he probably wasn’t dying. Because if he was dying, he sure as hell would put up a bigger fuss about having to do dressage in his last moments.

The next morning I got on for dressage and he still felt pretty good. Tighter in his topline than usual, but there were a lot of horses going every direction in the warmup and Texas Rose has a lot of “atmosphere” so it wasn’t surprising. I have literally no media, not even a picture of my test sheet because I never went to pick it up (see earlier note about Cloud 9 after XC, who the eff thinks about picking up a dressage test after that?). I actually never even checked scores AT ALL, so I had to go look at them while I was writing this so I could say what we scored: 39.3, for 12th of 17. The lowest score was 32, so we ended up right about where we normally do if you put it on a sliding scale. I feel like that was fair, he was tense and got “stuck” a few times, especially in the right lead canter. Someday the horse I have at home will actually make it into the arena at a show. We’re getting closer… that good horse made it at least as far as the warm up this time. It was a better test than MeadowCreek, even though this judge was harsher. Work in progress. More dressage shows for you, Henny (I can hear him groaning from here)!

After dressage it was time to focus on stadium. The course was kind of weird, super twisty and tight for the first few fences, and then pretty much just outside, inside, inside, outside after that. I started off with not enough forward and by the end I let him get a bit too quick and flat, so we pulled a rail at fence 1 and then at the second to last, for two totally different reasons.

Consistency, I needs it. He’s different to ride at shows than he is at home, so I still need to figure out that middle ground. I think we’re close, we just need more miles and I need more focus. Again, it was better than MeadowCreek, just not quite up to par yet. It’s a lot harder to go clear at this height on this horse, especially since he’s not particularly careful.

Honestly though, I was just really glad to be through the first two phases and get to move on to cross country. I wasn’t there to try to win, I was there to find our feet at this level, and cross country was where we were going to find out what we were made of. I was kind of terrified that I’d end up doing something incredibly stupid in the first two phases and get myself eliminated (am I the only one that has nightmares about getting rung out of dressage?) before we got to the good part. Hence why I never even checked scores. I legit DID NOT CARE.

So, while it wasn’t a “winning” day by any means, it was definitely a learning day. I can’t get away with a lot of the little errors at this level that I used to skate by with at Novice… now we pay for them with higher dressage marks and rails down. And that’s ok. Growing pains and all that. I was still proud of my pony, and even better: WE WERE MOVING ON TO XC.

And y’all… I was so friggin excited for Sunday that I could barely sleep…

Y’all are gonna have to put up with me being a sap for a minute. Sorry not sorry.

Henry went to his first event 3 years ago, at BN. I remember walking the course and looking at the Novice fences as we went past, horrified about how huge they looked. Not really just that they looked big, but more that it seemed so… BEYOND us. Light years beyond. I️ swore we’d never go Novice.

And then at Henry’s first Novice, at Texas Rose, I remember looking at the last fence that Prelim and Training shared, sitting next to our last fence, and feeling like it too was way beyond anything we could ever do, or ever be. Training was a fantasy, something that looked – from where I️ was standing at the time – like it was a whole world away. At that point I didn’t really even know if I wanted to get there, much less whether or not we could. When it seems impossible, it’s not something that even crosses your mind. You may as well have asked me if I wanted to go to the moon.

I guess I looked at the people and horses at that level and saw something that was way better than we were. Way better than we could ever even hope to be. After all, I’m a very very average rider just trying to make it work as best I can in our less-than-ideal circumstances, and Henry is a mentally scarred, crooked legged, unassuming looking horse. We’re as “mere mortal” as it gets.

Over time he showed me that he was more than worthy and more than capable, but I’ve always struggled to find confidence in my own ability. I got so caught up in how great other people were that I forgot we all have a different journey and we all take a different path. I had to stop living and dying by how I️ thought we compared to everyone else. Somewhere along the way I perfected the art of at looking at other people and seeing all the things that me and my horse are not. I’m not a 16yo kid with balls of steel and talent to spare. I’m not in a regular program. I don’t get many lessons. My horse is not fancy.

What I so often have failed to remember is that sure, I have it worse than some, but I also have it better than a lot of others. We all have advantages and disadvantages. We all have struggles. And for the love of god, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Trying to use someone else as a template by which to measure our own success is idiotic, at best. It makes a lot more sense to focus on what we can do and what we do have.

When we finally did officially move up to Training, it was on “home turf” courses. Places we’ve been a lot, and schooled a lot, and we were pretty comfortable at. This weekend was a lot different. We haven’t been to Texas Rose in two years, and we’ve certainly never jumped any part of the Training course. It was only our second recognized Training together, and it was big. It had some serious questions. It was not a gimme by any means. This was a real test… can we actually do this? Do we really belong here? This is supposed to be the impossible for us, isn’t it? That’s what I thought a year ago.

But this horse has, time and time again, made the impossible… possible. Henry rocked right around that course, one that not too long ago seemed so far outside of our wheelhouse that it may as well have been the Olympics, and it was a walk in the park. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more proud of a horse in my entire life. Holy shit guys. He is incredible. And WE DID IT.

I never really take the time to celebrate and appreciate these milestones. I’m more of the “that was cool… except for that mistake, or that fence, or that part of the dressage test. I need to do better.” type. We can have 17 out of 18 perfect jumps, and I always end up focusing on what I did wrong at that 1 bad one. Which is fine and all, when it comes to improvement, but I think I’m missing out on the sheer joy sometimes. I have a pretty amazing horse that allows me to do some pretty amazing things. I had The Best Time jumping stuff that was friggin BIG. But Henry made it feel easy.

So for today, I’m NOT going to recap the show and tell you all the things I could have done better and all the things we still need to work on. Today I’m giving myself the luxury of just being tremendously happy with how far we’ve come, how lucky I am to have such a badass horse and awesome friends, and how much fun I had out there yesterday. The rest of it can wait.

Today we’re headed out bright and early for Texas Rose Horse Park! I haven’t been back to Texas Rose since the 2015 AEC’s, so I guess you could say we’re well overdue. To be honest I had kind of planned to avoid the place for a while longer, because the courses are beefy, but this was my last option for the year so here we are. If I don’t vomit and/or crap myself at some point over the weekend, we’ll call it a win.

I wavered about entering Training Horse or Senior Training Rider, ultimately settling on STR. Of course, that means that there are 17 in my division and only 7 in TH. Isn’t that how it always freaking goes? I’m gonna have to figure out a new 2018 goal because AEC qualifications clearly aren’t happening. The perk is that I’m one of the first out on cross country on Sunday morning, so at least we’re done early and can get home before dark.

The weather looks like it will be fantastic, too, aside from the fact that I might get rained on during XC. Warm enough to not be miserable, but cold enough for Henry to wear his Back on Track sheet at night. Perfect! I’m actually looking forward to running a Training course when it isn’t balls-hot. My horse feels so much better when he can actually breathe.

On Monday he had his electroacupuncture appointment, and then I clipped him again for like the 9000th time. Really I’ve been clipping him every couple months all year, trying to help him handle the heat better. Now that the temperature is starting to drop a bit I waffled a lot on which kind of clip to do. I much prefer a hunter clip for showing, and that’s what he’s been getting in the warmer months, but I really liked how the Irish worked out for us last year… I didn’t have to worry so much about whether he was getting blanketed appropriately. I was still on the fence until I was standing there holding the clippers, then practicality won out. He might look a little goofy at a big recognized show, but I prefer that over worrying about whether he’s cold all the time. Especially since he’s the type who swears he’s freezing to death when it’s below 60 and boiling alive when it’s above 80. Plus we’re still kind of at the point where what kind of clip he’s got is like… the least of our horse show problems.

On Tuesday the farrier came out to drill and tap Henry’s shoes. We’ve been doing that all year but I guess last time they forgot, or maybe thought the season was over. Either way, I had no holes in which to insert studs. That’s a problem. Henry feels way better studded at this level, so I had to have the farrier come back out, pull the shoes, drill and tap them, and put them back on. Yep, I’m that high-maintenance client. Don’t worry, he makes plenty of money off of me and my every-5-weeks-on-the-dot horse. I still felt kinda bad, but pony needs his cleats.

I’m hauling up and staying with a friend this time instead of taking my own rig and camping, so that’s kind of a weird change. I’ve gotten so used to the routine of packing my tent and camping supplies that I felt a little bare last night when I was looking at my pile of crap. Hopefully I didn’t forget anything important. YES I GOT MY SADDLES.

Bobby has already declared his intentions to stalk me all weekend, so I’m sure that if nothing else I’ll have some good stories come Monday. Have a good weekend everyone!

 

Do you ever have one of those moments of extreme clarity when you’re like “I really am a special kind of stupid”? That was me last night.

There’s nothing like a 40 degree temperature drop plus wind and misty rain to liven up your biweekly dressage lesson. Or test your resolve and dedication to this idiotic (and futile) pursuit of circle-trotting perfection.

Ok maybe I’m over-simplifying the objective of dressage.

And maybe I’m being dramatic about the temperature. There was no ice. Not even close. It was 48. Not pleasant, but not too terribly miserable. Granted, it was 88 a couple days ago so my thighs and butt were numb all the same.

I was a little concerned I might have a lot of airs above ground, so I got on early and walked for a while. I definitely had some forward but Henry was surprisingly not that tense or silly, aside from pretending to spook at the poles on the ground (which is kind of embarrassing when you’re on an event horse at a dressage barn).

After a short warmup we went straight to two-track work, where we quickly displayed that if it’s possible to do something, it’s also possible to OVERdo something, and we got dinged for too much angle in the shoulder-in. Look, Henry has decided he’s super good at sideways, ok?

He had a little bit of a tantrum when we got to haunches in on a circle. And by tantrum I mean he tried to root down hard against my hands and trot quickly away, like a horse’s version of clamping his hands over his ears and going LALALALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU.

Unfortunately for him I’m more stubborn than he is, so he ended up doing the exercise anyway (albeit with a lot of sasstail).

When we got to the canter work, Dressage Trainer threw out this little tidbit: “think of getting him to take longer strides with the hind legs”… which… are all of the people I ride with co-conspiring behind my back or something, because he’s literally the THIRD professional in the last month that has thrown out that exact idea.

I became even more convinced of a conspiracy when we were walking out afterwards and I joking told Dressage Trainer that I was gonna try not to die at Texas Rose this weekend. He barely even hesitated before he said “Well if you do, I’ll take Henry”. Jokes on him, because Event Trainer staked her claim a long time ago and she’s way meaner than he is so there’s no way he’d win that fight. But really though… I’m starting to get paranoid about their motives…