Last Wednesday when I picked Henry up from camp, Trainer hopped on him first to show me what she’s been doing with him and talk me through what I need to work on. On one hand I love watching her ride him, because she gets better results than I do. On the other hand, when I watch her ride him I can’t help but think “The odds of me reproducing this at home are slim to none”. Especially with the dressage work.

Dressage is obviously not my forte – I come from a hunter/jumper background, one filled with green horse after green horse. We’re officially at the point in Henry’s flatwork education where I’m floundering a bit… his level of education has caught up to mine. And, as Trainer noted, he’s really good at convincing me to take the pressure off of him, which means we’ve plateaued a bit. He’s improved so much, and he’s to the point where he can take some pressure, work through it, and come out the other side having learned something instead of just shutting down. I have to figure out how to ride this particular horse I’ve got at the moment.

Sitting there watching her do canter/walk transitions and counter canter loops (neither of which he knew how to do when I dropped him off a week and a half prior) I felt 51% determination and 49% dejection. The learning curve for dressage is so steep for me, at times it feels almost hopeless, and I get frustrated. I’m not a quitter, but this… this is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling defeated. Sometimes I long for the days in Jumperland where the flatwork part of the job was so much simpler.

Then Trainer reminded me how much better and stronger Henry has gotten. In my head he’s still the mess of a horse I got two and a half years ago, or the powder keg I was sitting on last year that I couldn’t canter in dressage warm-up. There was a time when any little bit of contact made him put his nose on his chest. Or when just breathing a little too hard sent him spurting into canter. We started out with a big deficit, so it’s gonna take longer and be harder to climb our way out of it. There’s a lot I don’t know and there’s a lot I’m not good at. But day by day, ride by ride, we’re gonna keep trying, even if I feel like screaming on the inside. I know there’s a decent dressage horse lurking in there, and I feel like I owe it to him to cultivate that.

At least until they give us a form of eventing where dressage is optional…

I dunno what my deal has been lately, but I just can’t get my brain in the game. It’s like I know what I should be doing, but my brain won’t stay present long enough to let my body know what to do.  This is obviously very frustrating.

I had this problem at Coconino both in dressage (when I forgot my damn test) and in stadium (when I knew I should turn and just… didn’t…). Really no clue what my damn deal is lately.

Last night’s lesson was no different. I always knew what I should do, but actually remembering to execute it was an entirely different matter. I just kept spacing out. A couple times I even totally forgot where I was going (seriously, they weren’t long courses) and turned the wrong way. Like… cantered up to the fence thinking of turning one way, and then turning the other way instead, 2 seconds later. What’s the deal, brain?

Short of swallowing an entire bottle of Adderall (kidding, obviously. Unless you can do that…), what do y’all do when it seems like your brain is just totally checking out on you? This is getting super annoying. I swear I’m not THIS dumb all the time… (shut up, Bobby).

I’ve been drooling over lots of tall boots lately, mostly ones that are well beyond my budget (because I dunno, champagne taste, story of my life?). That was mistake #1. When I remarked to Friend that I really liked the Tucci Marilyn’s (mistake #2), she was quick to point out that I could customize them. Like, what about a navy top? Two of my favorite words – customize and navy.

Off I went to Photoshop, trying to decide if I liked how that would look. Mistake #3, because now I’m googly-eyed in love with these things.

So on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “kinda need” and 10 being “OMG RIGHT NOW” (there’s no choice for “don’t need” because obviously that’s a stupid choice)…

how badly do I need these?

 

 

 

In spring/early summer I had a lot of people asking me about Henry’s conditioning schedule. I wavered a lot about whether or not to share this, because I think that something like a conditioning schedule can be a pretty personalized thing and what it should look like varies a lot from horse to horse, level to level, sport to sport, or even month to month. I’m sharing it, BUT with the huge bold red letter disclaimer: This is just what we did.

This was June’s schedule, which is pretty typical of what our normal spring/fall schedule looks like these days. Rides get shorter later in the summer when it’s a million degrees, and when the ground is bad (ie too muddy or too hard/cracked) the gallops pretty much go out the window. Right now our schedule looks pretty much nothing like this, but next month things will ramp back up to more of a full “competition season” schedule.

Some notes:

• With that schedule Henry was very fit, probably over-fit for his level. I try to err on the over-fit side due to his respiratory issue, and especially in prepping him for AZ since I wasn’t sure how he’d handle the high altitude.
• Before an event there’s a bit of a ramp down in the schedule.
• Everywhere that says “walk” = forward, marching, on the aids. Not ambling around on a loose rein.
• “3 x 4” means 3 sets of 4 minutes each.
• “long trot” means no walking or breaks, just a solid chunk of trot.
• The speed of the gallop sets depends on where we are in our schedule, but usually somewhere between 400-450mpm.
• Road Hack is mostly forward walk with some trotting.
• Dressage rides are usually about 45min with very little walking.
• This is not set in stone… if something comes up things get shuffled around, or if we need to work more on one particular thing, days can be substituted (for instance, now we’re going to be doing 3 days a week of dressage, one jump day, and one or two conditioning days – so switching from a conditioning-heavy schedule to a dressage-heavy schedule). The calendar is really just a guideline to make sure we stay on track and fit everything in.

 

The day I dropped Henry off for a week of “camp” with Trainer, I almost felt a little bad. He hadn’t been ridden much in the few days beforehand, a cold front had just blown through, and he had already been a bit full of himself lately without those factors. I mean… I did warn Trainer that he might be a little frisky, so ya know, all’s fair? There was at least 1.25% feeling of guilt hidden somewhere deep down inside, but it didn’t stop me from cackling maniacally as I pulled out of the driveway.

Y’all already heard about the first update on day 1: “I didn’t die today, but… it was touch and go for a few minutes.”. Sounds about right.

I think he must have realized his situation, because the next day he came in missing a shoe and a bell boot. Jokes on him, the ground out there is so soft and sandy that missing a shoe was not enough to get him out of a dressage ride.

He got to do counter canter and simple changes and Trainer sat the trot and worked on the transitions. Basically a true Henry torture session.

Things continued to stay challenging and serious. Obviously he’s very stressed out being away from home.

He got his shoe put back on (ripping off another bell boot in the mean time, for good measure) then had a jump school on Saturday. So very grateful for people taking pictures for me (thanks Amy!) since I couldn’t be there. Trainer reported that he was a bit lazy and careless at first but as the jumps got bigger and he got better about jumping from the base, things improved. He has square poles and placing poles in his future.

I was originally planning on bringing him home on Sunday, but since we got so much rain I elected to leave him there for a few more days. At least there he can still get turned out and ridden… it’s going to take us a little longer to dry out here. But I did need to get up there and a) bring him more food, b) try out The Unicorn before the trial period was over, so I drove out on Sunday for a quick dressage lesson (in between rain storms) instead.

Summary – he’s trained me very well to tiptoe around his tension. Time for him to learn how to work through pressure instead of catering to him and taking the pressure off the moment he gets tense. It’ll take a while to retrain that instinct in me. He was pretty good though, and The Unicorn was PERFECT! YAY! No more saddle shopping.

She did another dressage ride yesterday…

then he’s got a jump school today and another dressage ride tomorrow before I go pick him up, followed by a jump lesson on Thursday before Trainer heads out to AECs (side note, I was feeling ever so slightly sad that I qualified at N but couldn’t go, until I saw the courses. Now I’m fine not going.). I think Henry is pretty pissed that he’s currently living at a facility with an XC course and he hasn’t gotten to school XC at all, but that’s what he gets for being so good on XC. Poor Henny.