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I am thrilled to report that the epic month-long rain has finally ended in Texas and we have a truly beautiful forecast for the week ahead. Everything is of course completely saturated so it’ll take a while to dry out completely, but we’re getting there. I even got to ride on Saturday AND Sunday. I’m not sure who’s happier, the humans or the horses. What a dreadful month May was. Henry celebrated his first turnout by pulling a shoe, so he was punished with bacon duct tape.

On Friday it was still too wet to ride anyway so I played around more with the dutch/cobra style braids. I used this tutorial that Now That’s the Spot found, and while I’ve seen many a video by now on how to do these, this one by far was the best one for me. I actually got a good looking braid on the first attempt! I’m gonna try to braid him like this at TR this weekend and see how it looks.

I also took advantage of a beautiful sunny Friday to get all my poor neglected tack out and give it a good clean and condition. Maybe I’m weird, but there’s something oddly satisfying about tack cleaning, especially when it’s really dirty to start with. I love looking at my pretties. And no, I don’t think I have enough PS of Sweden bridles.

On Saturday, Bobby (who is so narcissistic that he pretty much just scans my blog to see if I talk about him because he thinks that makes him “famous”) and I hauled over to our dressage trainer’s place for a lesson. Henry hadn’t been ridden at more than a walk for over a week, and the farrier wasn’t coming out until later that day to put his shoe back on so I wasn’t sure how sound he would be, but he was perfectly fine and ready to work. He’s really come so far in such a short period of time… I remember when it used to take 30 minutes to really get him connected, and now he’s connected pretty much right off the bat. We’ve still got a long way to go, but I can’t complain about his progress and his willingness. At the end of the lesson we worked on a few movements in the Novice test, mostly the half circle to canter depart. We never really got a good one, but Trainer helped me figure out the best way to ride it, so we’ll just do the best we can. His canter departs are really the only thing that’s still kind of icky right now. We’ll get it eventually. Until then we’ll keep getting 6’s for it and try to make up for it elsewhere.

On Sunday since he had 4 shoes back on again I decided to take him out and do some conditioning sets. That’s really the first time he’s been out for a gallop (besides at shows on XC) for at least 4-6 weeks. I kept it pretty simple with 4 x 4min trots with 30 seconds rest in between, and 3 x 3min gallops (350-400ish meters per minute) with 1 minute rest in between. He worked up a good sweat but I was happy that despite the warm day he wasn’t even particularly winded at the end, and in fact would have liked to have kept going. Thank goodness for a thoroughbred, who can pretty much sit in a stall all month, run XC a couple weekends, and come out with a decent base level of fitness naturally. He should be just fine for Texas Rose this weekend.

Hopefully now that the monsoon is over (at least for a week) things will get a little perkier and more exciting around here! It’s so incredibly nice to see the sun and be able to ride again.

Yesterday while perusing the entries for Texas Rose I was delighting in the fact that there are a couple folks in my division that have been to Rolex (welcome to Novice Horse!) and it’s 2/3 professionals. This makes me super happy because of a few reasons: 1) I’ve spent all spring caring a lot about who was in my division and worrying about beating them so I could get my AEC qualifiers. Since that’s done, now I don’t have to give a single crap who I’m riding against and it’s awesomely liberating. 2) I love low expectations. I’m totally the bottom of the barrel in the group, which is 100% fine by me. 3) I get to see firsthand how the pros warm up their young horses. I’m pretty excited for that, not gonna lie. 4) I have a built-in excuse for when they all beat me. I kid, I kid. 😉

Then I started thinking about this program that they used to have back when I did cyclocross. It was a race predictor website, and before each race it would factor in each competitor’s total points and previous performances/experience to sort out how it thought everyone would finish. I have no idea how the math worked but I loved this thing, because it almost always put me at the bottom of the pack. I got a lot of joy out of trying to prove it wrong. Granted, it was right a lot of the time, but sometimes I showed it a thing or two.

Can you imagine if such a program existed for horse shows and events? Obviously we already have rider and horse rankings as far as points earned or money won, from local level all the way up through the best in the world. But there’s no such thing (at least that I’ve ever seen) as a competition predictor that sorts people out beforehand and predicts a finish order. I can’t decide if it would be the best thing ever or the most humiliating thing ever. On one hand, I see it as a challenge, and nothing sets my competitive spirit on fire quite like a good challenge. On the other hand, if it ranked me high and I totally bombed, it’d be another layer of disappointment. Plus it seems like it probably wouldn’t encourage a spirit of good sportsmanship in the show community… it’s already competitive enough as it is.

What would you think if horse sports did this? All in good fun, or total embarrassment? Coming from a horse sports background into cyclocross, it completely floored me when I found out it existed, but I have to admit it never affected me negatively. Then again I never took cyclocross nearly as personally as I take the horse competitions. My good humor might not (let’s be honest, probably would not) extend to this side of the fence.

When things start getting stressful or overwhelming in my life, riding is usually my coping mechanism. A canter truly is the cure for every evil, along with a dash of pony kisses and a pinch of barn buddy camaraderie.

So what do you do when you can’t ride?

Obvious answer #1 is shopping for horse stuff. Tack ho tendencies and all that. The sad thing about being a poor tack ho is that it’s really hard to ho tack when you ain’t got no money. Since all of my cash lately has been going to horse shows, the only things I’ve bought are cookies and fly spray. Boring. Well, I did order an Airowear Outlyne from Riding Warehouse, and although they’re amazing for special ordering navy for me (if you ever want a color/size of something that isn’t in stock, just ask!!), it’s gonna take 4-6 weeks to come in. No instant gratification. Plus the SO is buying it for me for my birthday so it could actually be AUGUST before I get to hold it in my hands, pet it, and cuddle it. That’s not helpful at all in coping with life.

Obvious answer #2 is food. I love to eat my feelings, they’re delicious. Especially when they’re hiding in the bottom of a big vat of queso or baked into something chocolate. Unfortunately this can only go on for so long before your breeches start getting tight, and lord knows I can’t afford to replace those. Delicious as you’ve been lately, feelings hidden in food, I’m afraid it’s time to back off.

I guess that leaves me with non-riding pony time, since I can’t think of anything else to do besides eating and shopping. Non-riding pony time consists of such fun activities such as hand grazing, foot picking, ointment slathering, mud dingleberry untangling, explaining the Novice dressage test to Henry, cookie stuffing, and selfies.

On the plus side, I’ve learned that Henry likes strawberry Pop-Tarts. Maybe he likes to eat his feelings too?

 

 

I think if you go by the Kubler-Ross model for the 5 stages of grief, I’m waffling back and forth between anger and depression right now. Texas is on it’s last straw with me. First was a horrible many-years-long drought, then wildfires, then rattlesnake epidemics, now floods. I don’t know why Mother Nature hates this place but I’m about done with it. It seems like all we have is 100 degrees or pouring rain. WHY is there never nice weather in this godforsaken slice of the world? Someone find me a decent horse related job somewhere else, please. But little to no snow… that’s the caveat.

Seriously though – on Friday when I changed my Texas Rose entry to Novice instead of Beginner Novice, it was actually a little invigorating. I started having all these grandiose plans and ideas. Like fitness plans with trot and canter sets.

And was excitedly perusing my new dressage test, mapping it out in my mind and taking note of things to work on before the show.

I even spent an afternoon looking at all the video I could find from Texas Rose’s Novice XC course, getting all kinds of pumped.

Needless to say, now I don’t even know if I’ll really get to ride my horse at all before Texas Rose. Luckily he’s a trooper and it worked out ok with Corona. I guess I should be counting my blessings that I got to ride 3 days in a row last week. Even if we can’t ride much before TR he should still be good to go (thank god for a thoroughbred), but man… I’m so over this. It seems like I’ve got nothing to do on this blog anymore except whine about the weather because, well, that’s all that’s been happening since November. I feel so sorry for everyone that is having to keep and care for horses and horse property in this weather. It’s become an impossible task. Especially since Henry pees constantly and his stall is a perpetual swamp no matter how hard you try to keep it clean. Any suggestions for helping keep his feet dry, since it seems they’ll be stallbound for quite a while longer? I’m starting to worry about abscesses and soft soles.

On a less whiney note, Brandy and I at least got to go out on a road hack Monday morning before the monster storms blew in.

I’m about to give up on blogging except for horse show recaps, because that’s really the only thing that ever happens anymore. There are only so many pictures you can take while walking around on the roads. I have several review posts that need to happen but I’m waiting on professional pictures… they were supposed to be here a week ago but so far nada. Anyone have any blog post or review requests?

To add insult to injury, my $550 that was stolen from my account with a fraudulent card will apparently take up to 2 weeks to be returned to my account. That’s a really great thing to have happen right before all my bills are due and we’re about to head to a show.

When it rains it pours. See what I did there? Ba-dum-tss.

Texas sucks.

At Corona HT a couple weekends ago I overheard a trainer telling one of his students that you shouldn’t move up to the next level until you’re consistently winning at your current level. I thought about that, chewed on it for a while, and decided I don’t really agree.

I think deciding when to move up is one of the hardest decisions we make, especially those with young and/or inexperienced horses. There’s always the worry that you’ll overface yourself, overface the horse, you’ll both die, and the world will explode. Oh wait, maybe that’s just me. But still, no one ever wants to feel like they’re in over their head.

In talking to other people and thinking about conversations I’ve had in the past, it seems like I’ve mostly heard three different approaches on the “when to move up” question:

1) when you’re winning at your current level

2) after X amount of time

3) when your current level feels easy

My issue with the “consistently winning at your current level” approach is that ribbons don’t really tell the whole story. In eventing, you could have a horse that just isn’t great at dressage so never finishes on a super low score, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t 100% capable of competing at the next level. In jumpers, if you’ve ever tried to show in the low children’s or low adult section you’ll understand that unless you have a really fast horse, you’ll rarely win. Again, that doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of the next level. The same can be said across pretty much all disciplines. This approach just doesn’t hold water with me.

Other people like to plan their move-ups based on a time schedule. One year at X level, the next year at Y level, etc etc. That can all be fine and good too, but sometimes things don’t go as planned (whether that’s for better or for worse). I think trying to hinge move-up decisions purely on time frame isn’t really the best way.

That brings us to – when the current level seems easy. This is the one I like. It’s that sweet spot where you’re rocking around at your current level thinking “these are so tiny!” “that was easy!” and your horse shares the sentiment. When your current level looks small and you’re looking at the next level, wishing you were doing that instead. At that point you’re probably in a good place to contemplate an upward progression. But then the next question is – how long do you stay in the “this is easy” phase before stepping up? That’s a harder one to answer.

Then again, maybe all my rambling doesn’t make any sense and I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. That could be true too.

It’s probably not hard to guess what spurred this topic for me… I switched our entry for Texas Rose from BN to Novice. My reasons, whether you agree with them or not, are as follows:

1) Henry is on a roll right now. We’ve had the benefit of doing 3 shows in a really short time frame, he’s been an absolute XC machine at all 3, and he’s felt like he really gets it. Even Corona, with a few Novice size fences, and Greenwood, with some Novice level technicality, were walks in the park. He ate them up without a second thought. We’re both pretty confident right now, and my gut says now is the time.

2) The dressage and stadium are no problem. He showed in the 3′ jumpers last year, was nonplussed in the 3′-3’3″ at his jumper show a couple weeks ago and he’s really been solid at 3’3″ at home for a while now, so 2’11” ain’t no thang for him at this point. And the N dressage is pretty much the same as BN.

3) The Texas Rose course isn’t easy per se, but it’s well designed. It asks legitimate questions for the level and has some big fences but there won’t be any unfair bogey fences waiting to eat you. Well… he’s never seen a Weldon’s Wall so we’ll see what he thinks about that, but a little bit of unknown is always part of the game in eventing. The XC is in big fields that invite a forward ride, so as long as I sit up and go forward (and isn’t that always the truth) I think it’ll be fine.

4) Nothing hinges on this. We’re already qualified for AEC at BN. I really only wanted to do this event at Texas Rose because it’s the AEC venue, and I thought getting him there once to see the sights before AEC would be an advantage. It’d be an even bigger advantage if he’d already run Novice when we show up for AEC at BN. So since we’re really only there to feel things out anyway, it’s a pretty low pressure situation. If he needs to circle, I’ll circle, if he feels like he’s losing confidence, I’ll retire. No biggie.

5) Trainer says do it. This is super important to some and less important to others, but if she says go for it I’m certainly more inclined to go for it.

That’s not to say that I’m not a tiny bit worried that it’s the wrong decision. That will always be a worry when you’re completely neurotic and overprotective about your horse’s mental state like I am. But I’m hoping that if I ride semi-well and Henry stays in his awesome groove that he’s been in all spring, it’ll be just as easy as everything else has been. Otherwise, I feel like I’ve overthought it quite enough by now, and it’s time to just put up or shut up.

So I’m curious – what are everyone else’s thoughts on knowing when to move up? How do you gauge things for yourself?