Author: Amanda C

As I briefly mentioned in the Maiden Voyage post on Monday, Henry and I had another lesson this past weekend. My trainer is headed to Ocala for the next 6ish weeks (that bitch, I hope she gets a sunburn and some mosquito bites. I mean… uhh… good for her…) and I wanted to cram in one more torture session before she left, so I opted for a stadium lesson instead of an XC school. Of course, I brought my phone out to the ring with every intention of having her get some video but then I forgot to ask. Typical.

This was much like our last jumping lesson in December wherein she jacked up the fences and tried her hardest to help me figure out how my canter needs to get better as the jumps get bigger. In my defense, our arena at home is fairly small (soon to be expanded hopefully!) and it’s hard to practice the bigger more open canter that you need in the show ring, or string together a course of bigger fences, plus we don’t have a resident trainer, so pretty much the only time we really get to do this is at lessons and shows. Which don’t happen a lot, because it requires hauling out and driving a ways. I also seem fairly incompetent about being able to figure it out without assistance. You know what that makes me? Constantly, perpetually, and unfailingly remedial. I spend the first 75% of the lesson relearning my pace and getting that good canter back and then it’s like oooooh DING DING DING. Every. Single. Time.

I’d be lying if I said it’s not frustrating. It’s REALLY freaking frustrating. Mostly because I feel like I should be doing better than this. I should be getting this faster and retaining it better. I’m in that really irksome phase where I know what I need to be doing but I just can’t seem to string it all together at the same time yet. If I had a dollar for every time Trainer said the words “wait” and “allow” my Coconino fund would be overflowing. Once I finally got Henry straight, with a nice forward canter, had that inside hind REALLY lifting and pushing, we cantered all the way down to the base of the 3’6″ oxer and Henry just rocketed off the ground like he had springs in his legs. He jumped the freaking snot out of that thing- it was probably the best effort I’ve ever felt from him. How many times was I able to duplicate that effort? A few. How many times did I actually string the whole course together without messing something up? Eh… once?

Part of it is my deeply ingrained love of the long spot. That just doesn’t work in eventing, or when the jumps get over 3′ in general, or with this horse especially. He loves long and flat. Unfortunately long and flat pulls rails. Getting him to not be long and flat is my job, and I’ve got to retrain myself to wait and go all the way to the base with power. When I see a half-stride distance my default is to either panic and gun it or pull like hell. Guess how well that turns out? Like shit. The base is my friend. I need to just sit up and close my leg, ride all the way up to it and get all up in it’s personal space. If anything, I need to be hunting for the chip like I’d hunt for real chips – with vigor and extreme enthusiasm.

But, ya know… I’m the only one that can fix my own problem. I’m tired of sucking at the same thing over and over, and I figure I can either whine about it or I can make a plan. So I’m going to haul out to my old jumper trainer’s place a couple hours away and fit in a few lessons while my eventing trainer is in Ocala. Old Jumper Trainer is magical and very well-versed in my neverending bullshit (he’s the one who once uttered the phrase “The only difference between a deep distance and a chip is what you do with your body”… see how long I’ve had this problem?). Maybe I’ll be slightly less shitty when Eventing Trainer gets back? Ha, optimism is cute.

I’ve talked about Jezebel on and off on my blog, but for those who don’t know she was a mare that I used to ride and event in the early 2000’s. After our time together she went on to have several lovely foals, but a few years ago she found herself looking for a new home. I was not in the position to take on a broodmare but my friend Michelle (Sadie’s lessee) was kind enough to step in and take her. She did it because she knew Jezebel meant a lot to me, and for that I’m forever grateful.

She was underweight and her feet needed major attention, but over time Michelle got her looking great again. Jez raced a good bit before she evented, so she had a decent amount of wear and tear from her years on the track. I have always known her to be a very stoic mare, so when Michelle called me and said Jez was having a really hard time getting around this winter, becoming much worse instead of better despite extra care, I said we should absolutely let her go. If that horse was hobbling, she was REALLY hurting, and I can’t stand the thought of that. We’d been hoping to make her comfortable enough to get another foal from her – she loved her babies! – but sadly it just wasn’t to be. At this point it would have been cruel.

I will always remember Jez as having had the most heart of any horse I’ve ever sat on. She was a tiger and always gave 100%. She was very sensitive and required a very tactful ride, but once Jez trusted you she would turn herself inside out to please you. She didn’t have the patience for dressage, but she never met a cross country fence she couldn’t conquer. She was a big, stout, old-fashioned type of horse that truly embodied everything a Thoroughbred really should be – a type that is becoming exceedingly rare.

Yesterday Jezebel was laid to rest on the new cross country course that is being built at Michelle’s facility. Now she will forever be surrounded by and a part of the thing she loved most. Happy trails, Jezzy… thanks for the ride.

Yesterday I finally hitched my truck up to my trailer, loaded my horse in it, and drove us to a lesson. That sentence might not seem special to most, but for me it’s a years-long dream finally coming to fruition.

It’s hard to explain just how I felt when I pulled out of the driveway at the barn. Elated? Triumphant? Exultant? Euphoric? Terrified? Maybe a little bit of all those things. I haven’t had my own rig for over a decade, and not being able to go wherever you want whenever you want is a very hard thing when you’re me. I greatly value independence.

As with any new thing there was a bit of trepidation on my part, hoping that Henry would like his new trailer and that it would perform as expected on the drive. Henry put his feet on the ramp, looked around, walked in, and pooped. I’m gonna call that his stamp of approval. The hour and 45 minute ride there was uneventful, as was the ride back. If anything, the rig performed admirably. My truck had no problem with the hills or the wind (as it should be, considering I’m only at about half of it’s towing capacity), and Henry seemed calm and happy.

When I posted last September about desperately wanting a rig, I really had no idea how or when it would possibly happen. But there’s something magical about putting things out there in the universe, because here we are now, only 4 months later, and it’s a reality. Thanks to Beth for passing Betty the trailer down to me and to everyone else who helped make Rue the truck possible… it means more to me than you’ll ever know. It’s not just a truck and trailer- it’s endless possibilities and so many open doors of opportunity.

Freedom is oh so very sweet. Here’s to many more happy journeys with Betty and Rue.

Even at 32, with 14 years experience of being a supposed “adult”, there are still times when I’ve hit the limit for how much grown-up stuff I can handle at one time. These past couple weeks have taken me well beyond that limit.

It started when my car died. There’s always a trigger, isn’t there? One car dead means a) you have to buy a new car, b) you have to get rid of the old, now-dead car. But it’s not that easy, of course. Selling the old car means finding the title (which took me all of two minutes, go me with my awesome organizational skills for ONCE in my life) calling someone to come get it, negotiating a sale price, cancelling the toll tag, signing over the title, and removing said car from your insurance. That’s so many phone calls. I hate phone calls.

Then of course the new car requires a lot of the same things in reverse except it starts with loan paperwork. OMG whyyyyyyy so much paperwork? Then insurance, toll tag, getting a new higher-rated hitch put on so it can haul my trailer, blah blah blah.  That right there is enough to explode anyone’s brain. So of course I had to take a childish moment to get a unicorn to hang from the new truck’s rear view mirror. Ah, Levity.

And then since the truck was officially purchased, it was time to get the trailer ready to go. I finally got it registered in my name, which was a hell of a process in itself. First I tried calling my county to ask what I needed, which involved a 35 minute hold time, a 10 minute conversation, an email, and a suggestion that I try to register it the county of the person I bought it from instead. No joke. Because my county is ridiculous and wanted me to do a thousand things which would have required an insane amount of time and money. Yeah no. So off I went, driving 1.5hrs to the seller’s county, since all they wanted from me was a bill of sale and plate number. Unfortunately I’m stupid and wrote down the wrong plate number, so I had to stand outside of the tax office and go through every single form of my social media trying to find a picture of the right plate. Instagram saved the day. Well, mostly… we had to guess a few times to get the first number.

Once the registration was done, the next thing was getting new tires put on the trailer. That required more phone calls, an appointment, and then a 30 minute wait in line regardless of the fact that I’d made an appointment. Then I got the USRider membership (yes, I caved). Then I had to buy the the actual hitch and ball (which took trial and error using barnmate’s hitches to figure out what I really needed), mats, silicone, WD-40, and all the other crap I needed to finish out the inside of the trailer. That part wasn’t so bad since no paperwork or communication with other humans was required. Communicating with humans is the worst.

Then came the last thing… having the trailer painted. Getting someone to call or email me back has proven to be a fun challenge. Or show up. Or be on time. Or just completely not leave me hanging in the wind. Or not quote me $1800 (that’s hilarious). This part is still a work in progress (we supposedly have an appointment tomorrow), but I’m kind of at the point where no shits are left to give. Spending 3 straight days working on Excel spreadsheets and charts at work hasn’t helped. Nor have my ridiculously awful attempts at trying to ride a decent 15 meter circle. I need a coloring book and some macaroni and cheese, STAT… adulting (and dressaging) is too hard.