Month: June 2018

I made kind of a weird observation while watching the Upperville live feed a few weeks ago, and have continued to build on this observation since. While just about everyone patted their horses after their rounds (which made my heart happy, because #alwayspatyourpony) the particular style of patting seemed to always fall into a few certain categories. Some discreet, some aggressive, some flamboyant. So what were the main styles I noticed?

The Rubber

These people are the most subtle, generally just reaching slightly forward with one hand and rubbing the horse’s neck or withers discreetly with their knuckles or a few fingers. It was quick, it was quiet, it was to-the-point, and it didn’t require taking a hand off the reins. Usually because taking a hand off the reins might result in imminent death of the rider and/or some spectators.

The PitterPatter

One step up from The Rubber, the PitterPatter takes one hand off the reins and reach out for a nice soft little *patpat* or *rubrub*. Still quiet, still soft and sweet, but with a little less “I fear for my life right now” to it. These are the perfect people to use the Instagram Superzoom filter on. Much purple fuzz, many sparkles.

The Crossover

Along the same lines as your PitterPatter, the Crossover takes it one (crooked) step farther and reaches one hand across to pat or rub the opposite side of the neck. Sometimes they do one side first, and then the other, other times they just go straight across. This is my own particular style of patting although I can’t tell you why the heck I have to pat the left side of the neck with my right hand. There is no rhyme or reason. I think I just like being crooked.

The Monkey

The Monkey is the rider who leans forward (sometimes abandoning ship and dropping both reins, other times not) to give a hearty, usually two-handed rub or pat. Typically the pats are accompanied by such phrases as “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH” or “YOU’RE THE BEST BOY” and an ear-to-ear grin. Extreme cases of The Monkey can turn into The Hugger, taken just one step further with a full-on embrace of the neck.

The Smacker

Ok I’m gonna be sexist for a minute and say that this is most common with professional male riders who have just won some money, but you know what I’m talking about. They give one or two BIG SMACKS on the neck, usually followed by some kind of spectacular fist-pump or (my preference) a finger pointed down at the horse in credit. This one is generally more of a celebratory style, reserved for special occasions.

 

There are some variations on all of these of course, but… these are the main ones I’ve noticed. So what kind of patter are you?

While it’s true that Presto is, overwhelmingly, a really good baby horse, he’s still a baby horse. Not sure if y’all have met horses, but they’re dumb. Especially when they’re young. And when the Baby Horse does decide to be naughty, he’s generally smart, clever, contemplative, and creative about it. Ie: kid is trouble on four hooves.

He’s been a little more full of himself than usual this week. He had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to himself, when I was busy with Henry and the horse show. Usually I have my hands on him doing something at least 5 days a week, even if it’s just a quick 10 minute grooming in the crossties. Then we got some rain on Monday that meant the horses were inside all day, so by the time I got to him on Monday afternoon he was riding quite high on his own overinflated ego.

I brought him in for grooming, as usual, but he was Mr. Prancy Pants and just could not keep himself from wiggling. He wasn’t pushy about it, so I didn’t get on his case too much… I know he was a little amped from being inside, and he’s a yearling, and I was asking him to be still. So I took him for a walk out toward the back hay field, working on his “whoa” and “cluck” voice commands. Then we wandered into one of the front paddocks so I could practice his FEH stuff – standing still and then walking/trotting on a triangle. We were on our second “stand” when it started to rain.

As soon as it started coming down hard on the metal roof of the barn next to us, he thought that was a great excuse to turn into a horse kite. I, on the other hand, thought that his decision to turn into a horse kite was a great excuse to stand out in the rain and let him figure out that sometimes life just sucks and you have to deal with it anyway. Once he stood still and relaxed, I took him in.

He’s gotten a little more mouthy lately too, wanting to chew on things and pick up EVERYTHING in his mouth. I think he might have some baby teeth things going on, so I’m going to have the vet take a peek in there tomorrow when he’s here doing Henry’s health certificate, just in case. Either that or Presto has just discovered his mouth all the sudden. Could be either/or. Colts.

Yesterday morning I took him out to pony with Henry and he was ON FIRE. Normally if he’s “wild” he just kind of bounces around next to Henry a little bit but I think that being cooped up due to the weather made him extra frisky. He decided it was a prime time to play and popped up on his hind legs, trying to bite at Henry. I turned the end of my lead rope into a club and stopped that shit real quick. Being frisky in your own space, fine. Coming at Henry, even in a playful way, with hooves and teeth – NOPE. Nope right between your big fluffy donkey ears. He was dedicated enough to try it one more time, but after wallop #2 all the wind went out of his sails and he decided to just trudge along next to us, looking dejected.

The good thing about him is that he’s not at all dedicated to being naughty. One or two good reprimands and he abandons those ideas post haste. And he’s not actually scared of anything, so it’s not like he’s being spooky or something. Just… testing his boundaries a bit. I keep them very clearly defined, and if he chooses to step over the line then that’s his choice and he gets to deal with the consequences. Yeah, I’m a mean lady.

We’ll see which Presto decides to show up on Sunday for his FEH class. Hopefully it’s the sweet angelic one, but with just a touch of the naughty wild one for the trot so that he’s cute. Now that I’ve said that I’m probably going to get the opposite, aren’t I?

Alright, Day 2! Dressage was done and dusted, time to get on to the good stuff – stadium and XC. Or really, XC. That’s the actual good stuff. For once we found ourselves in very unfamiliar territory at the top of the leaderboard after dressage. Who needs that kind of pressure in their life? Not me. I’ve always been more of the “come from behind” type. Or, more often, the “stay behind” type. Okay, so maybe being at the top is nice sometimes.

Our ride times were 8:27 for stadium, with XC at 8:37. I got up at my regular time (5:30), fed Henry, cleaned his stall, got all my tack ready, went over my courses and minute markers one more time, put his studs in, and got my ring bag ready to take down to warmup. I was kind of bummed that the course hadn’t changed since we were here last September, so we’ve already run this same XC course before. Because of that I only walked it once, to get a feel for the footing and decide on studs.

Stadium and XC being only 10 minutes apart posed a potential challenge for me, seeing as how I had to do a bridle change between phases and had no one with me to assist. Because if I tried to run Henry XC in a hackamore we’d just be galloping off into the wild blue yonder never to be heard from again. But I didn’t want to SJ in his XC bit, because part of the whole point of coming to this show was trying out all of the changes we’ve been making. So I trudged down to warmup with his XC bridle, his XC boots (because I’m pretty sure if we did stadium in those we would have every freaking rail), my XC whip, and a mounting block, then hung out for a bit to watch how the schedule was flowing. It became pretty clear right off the bat that stadium would be lagging behind.

When I got on to warm up I went and asked the steward if we’d still get our 10 minutes in between, and she told me that the gap had narrowed to where now they were sending people out on XC about two minutes after they came out of stadium. Goody. Luckily I spotted a familiar face in Paulina, who runs the local CT’s here in town that we do sometimes. She and a student were total lifesavers and graciously agreed to be my pit crew between phases (they also got all the media snippets that you see here!).

I kept my warmup pretty short and sweet, knowing that he wouldn’t get much of a breather before XC. We trotted a couple laps, cantered a couple laps, jumped the vertical once and jumped the oxer once. He felt pretty good, even giving me a frisky little head toss when we picked up the canter. As soon as they put all the stadium jumps down to Training size I got a feeling of dread. They looked really small. I ride like a monkey when they look really small. I would have much rather jumped them at Prelim height. The course also started on an oxer-to-vertical line, which makes me a little grumpy.

This venue’s stadium is always wheeled super tight, so I went in knowing I’d have to try to cut off as many unnecessary strides as I could. I took that a little too far when I jumped 5 totally on an angle. Whoops. I got away with that one, though. What I didn’t get away with was when I pulled to the base of 9 and Henry had to jump out from underneath it, taking the rail with us. 110% my fault, without a doubt. I knew I needed to keep my leg on and keep coming out of that turn, but I took a pull instead. So we finished with one rail, which is fine. Not unusual for us. What was really weird is that they said we also had 4 time faults. I have no idea how, I literally cut off as much space as I could and don’t feel like I could have gone much faster without running through the distances, but… oh well. I only have video of part of the course, so I don’t have any way of knowing what our time really was.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that dropped us down to 3rd. I had to trot out of stadium, across the warmup, to my waiting pit crew that was stationed near the start box for XC. I jumped off and slapped Henry’s boots on while Paulina and her student swapped Henry’s bridle. I really have to thank them again, because I swung back aboard when the starter said “30 seconds” and hustled my way over the box with just enough time to take a deep breath and try to focus. There is NO WAY I could have made it without their help.

What I didn’t have time to remember, though, was my helmet camera. After jump 2 I was like “Oh crap, I never hit the button”. But let me tell you what I can’t do at a gallop on a very full of himself Henry. I tried to turn it on but quickly gave up. Here’s the helmet camera from last September, if you want to see the course again, or the jump pics. Nothing was different except the speed was 450mpm instead of 470mpm.

What I DID have though, was a pretty cocky horse. He jumped the snot out of 1 and 2, then thought maybe he should drag me to 3. I had to set him on his ass a bit in the turn between 3 and 4 and have a quick discussion about who was actually in charge here, and he was much more polite after that. He is 0% intimidated by anything at this level anymore, which is great, I’m glad that he’s confident, but that doesn’t mean he gets to be rude and try to take over.

I went ahead and let him gallop a bit across the big field from 5, 6ab, and 7, knowing that the second half of the course rode a lot twistier and had a couple of combinations that would eat up some time. He was full of run, ears pricked and looking for the fences. It was almost an auto-pilot type of experience. Rolltops at the mound? Check. Skinny? Check. Water? Check. Down bank to skinny rolltop? Check. Angled combo? Check. Weldon’s wall? Check. There wasn’t much more to it than that. I did learn my lesson from how the water rode last time and landed, closed my leg, and rode out more positively so the distance worked way better. That was an improvement. The Weldon’s jumped better too. I did bury him at the Trakehner though just because I rode sloppy to it. My bad, although I don’t think he noticed.

Two fences from home I looked at my watch (which I had blissfully ignored to this point) and we were a bit ahead of time, so I slowed him down to more like 350mpm and let him just coast home. He still tried to argue with me a bit about that. Not tired at all. We crossed the finish at 4:37, with OT being 4:46, for a double clear. He was puffing a bit in the heat, but was still attempting to drag me around when I got off to go collect my bridle and mounting block. I untacked, hosed him, walked him a bit, let him graze and get some water, hosed him again, and then left him parked in front of his fan in his ice boots while I went to check scores.

Making time was the name of the game on that day. Everyone else accrued quite a few time faults, except for the person who had moved into first after stadium that unfortunately had a parting of ways with her horse at the water (they were both ok), and someone else who had a stop there as well. Our double clear moved us solidly back up into first.

This show was an experiment in a lot of ways. We totally changed our approach to the dressage, it was our horse trial debut of riding stadium in the hackamore, and I wanted to get a gauge of where his fitness is at, as far as running XC in the heat, before we head to Chatt. I think we definitely got some improvement in the dressage, we’re on the right track for stadium (will I ever stop pulling? we’ll never know…), and there’s no doubt his fitness is just fine for Chatt. We will definitely be having a halt-halt reminder session during his next gallop though, since that’s something that apparently slipped Mr. Cockypants’ mind at the beginning of XC, and I will keep chanting “SHOULDERS BACK” to myself on repeat.

It was good to get back out there again, and I think we’re both feeling ready for Chatt!

Hope y’all aren’t into, like… lots of pro quality pictures and ample videos and stuff. I went to this show 100% completely alone, and the only reason I have any media at all is because of a couple of very nice friends who were in the right place at the right time. Lets all be very happy with that.

As usual I was super well prepared, in that on Friday morning I was like “I should probably look at the dressage test again. Well… actually I should probably look online and make sure of which test we’re doing.”. Upon which I realized it said Training Test B, which I have never even so much as looked at before, much less ridden or practiced. Ha. Friday was Henry’s day off though, so instead of trying to do a last minute run through the test I just texted Trainer (who sadly would not be attending) and asked her for tips.

See, our objective as of late has been to make him borderline TOO forward. He’s always had this tendency to go in at A and immediately tense up and get stuck behind my leg, to where it’s just a big yucky tight sewing machine type of test. Obedient, always, but there’s nothing relaxed and forward-flowing about it, and the connection can be a bit fake when he’s like that. So we’re hoping that if I just ride him a bit overly forward for a while, we’ll be able to get him un-stuck. I am all about making new and different mistakes instead of repeating the same ones for years on end, so I was determined to just keep my freaking leg on and keep going forward no matter what happened.

Our ride time wasn’t until 7:22pm, and they were running a bit late in my ring. I was kind of okay with that, though, because a) it was still really hot and humid, b) for some reason Henry was REALLY tense and spooky when I got on. Like, he spooked at the flags that marked the perimeter of warmup. He’s seen flags like that a million times. We walked until I felt him release his back a little, then we trotted and cantered both ways, lengthening and shortening, and then in the last few minutes I practiced a couple of the little 10m half circle “teardrops” that are in the test. Henry felt a bit like he was on a hair-trigger, but whatever… I was here to just ride him a lot more forward and see what happened.

As we trotted around the outside of the ring he looked at the letters, the judge’s booth, the announcer, and the chains around the arena, then flinched at the crackling loudspeaker. Awesome. The whistle blew and in we went. As usual, he was pretty obedient. The first teardrop rode a lot better than I thought it would, and was bang-on accurate. I expected it to be harder than that. He took a couple of wanna-be-trantering steps in the second teardrop but it was going away from the judge so I don’t think it looked obvious from behind. I really went for it in the trot lengthening, to the point where we got the comment “running”, but usually we get the comment “show more difference”, so LOL. Middle ground? Maybe someday.

The canters were ok – a bit launchy and crooked into the right lead depart – and again I tried to really go for it in the lengthenings. Those are quite hard for croup-high Henry, being on a circle. I was also a bit worried about both of the canter/trot transitions happening at X. He has a history of getting quite tense about the idea of cantering across the diagonal, anticipating a lead change. They were both decent though, no major problems. The stretchy trot, usually our best movement at home, is always just meh at shows (see entire post about tight and tense), but he took a deep breath and gave me some good effort in the free walk.

The second medium walk (after the free walk) was an absolute chess match, trying to keep him from jigging. Man it was close. REALLY CLOSE. He kept a lid on it, but barely. That is a long ass walk from H to M when your horse really just wants to gallop. I was a couple steps late picking the trot back up at M, mostly because I was trying to make sure I actually got a trot instead of a gallop. The half circle turn back up to center line and his halt were great though, garnering the comment “square, immobile”.

I really wasn’t sure how that test would score at all. He was still tense, just less stuck-feeling than he normally is. I knew it definitely had to look hurried in a few places, but I tried to ride as accurately as I could and not give any points away. I’m not even in the habit of looking at dressage scores anymore, so I had no idea how we’d done or where we were sitting until Trainer texted me while I was getting in bed and said:

Turns out that all of our scores were between 6 and 8, with the majority of them being 7, and a final score of 32.3. That landed me in a brand new place for us – the top of the leaderboard after dressage. I’d seen at least bits and pieces of most of the other tests, so I was guessing we’d be mid-pack, but no… somehow we creeped out ahead. Granted, there was only a 6 point spread between first and last, so that’s not saying much. I think maybe we got a little charity there for whatever reason, or maybe it was the accuracy that helped make up the difference, but either way I’ll take it.

By the time I cooled Henry out and hosed him, put my tack away, cleaned his stall, fed him dinner, took a shower, and set up my tent, it was 9:30. I was even too hot/tired to eat dinner, so I settled for chugging 2 bottles of water instead. And then my air mattress’ battery died when it was only about 70% inflated, but again, too hot and tired to care. I just collapsed into the floppy mess and laid under my little fan, trying not to move. Stadium was at 8:37 the next morning, with XC right after, and we still had a whole lot left to do.

Every year when I leave a summer horse show, coated in 15 layers of sweat and filth, rubbed raw in places that shouldn’t ever be, I think “omg, why did I do that? That was miserable.” and then the next year I do it again anyway.

Horse people, we are gluttons for punishment.

I feel a little bit like a walking piece of beef jerky today. I drank 12 bottles of water in less than 24 hours (and was asleep for 8 of those hours) but I still basically attached my mouth to the hose after XC and chugged. Then stopped on the way home for a Powerade and chugged that too. I have to give the show management many props for how they organized the ride times this year, though. My dressage was late on Saturday evening, and we were done with stadium and XC before 9am on Sunday. The riding parts were the most pleasant.

The show recap will have to wait until tomorrow though, mostly because I need to organize myself a bit more before I tackle that. Spoiler alert: we won.

But I have to be honest, it didn’t really feel like a very deserving win. I made some mistakes and had some bleh moments and picked up my ribbon mostly just feeling like I’d ended up on the lucky end of things that day. A friend of mine said that I was the most self-deprecating person she knew, a comment that I kept mulling over as I packed my things and started driving home. I fell into a cycle of glancing at the ribbon on the dash, mulling over my rounds in my head, and then thinking about her observation.

Finally I got tired of myself and starting flipping through radio stations, trying to find literally anything without static until I could get enough signal to turn on Spotify. Quite serendipitously, as I was pushing that Seek button over and over and over, one sentence came through loud and clear out of the static – “There ain’t nothing gonna steal my joy”. Not sure if you’ve ever spent much time driving through Texas, but the stations we unfailingly have the most coverage for are the Christian stations, and that’s what this was. The signal quickly faded away to static again as I went down the hill, but I found myself pausing for a second on that particular lyric.

That was really the perfect way to phrase what I was doing to myself… stealing my own joy. We won our first HT ever (pretty sure? I think our other wins have been in derbies and CT’s.) at a level that at one time seemed like my own personal version of Rolex, and here I was, stuck on a couple of fences that I rode sloppily. My friend’s observation was spot on – I AM super self-deprecating. I couldn’t even give myself one friggin day to just enjoy the fact that we finally came out on top before I started analyzing and tearing apart every single mistake.

I decided, in that moment, to just stop it. I turned my brain off, got just enough signal to open Spotify, and selected my “Horse Show” playlist… something I made a couple years ago to play when Bobby and I were driving to shows together. It’s a ridiculous mixture of really random songs, but they feel celebratory to me. I cranked that shit the whole rest of the way home and set everything else aside.

So, tomorrow we’ll tear this thing apart and talk about what went right and what didn’t and what we need to work on. There are always plenty of those things. But for today I’m just gonna shove a bunch of cookies into my fantastic horse and appreciate the awesome journey that he’s taken me on.