On Sunday Bobby and I trailered to a farm a little over an hour away so we could have a jumping lesson from our trainer. Bobby is about to move up to Training (I gave him balls) so he wanted to jump some big-ish stuff, and I’m taking every opportunity to a) get a jump lesson b) jump in a larger arena than at home. Our problems tend to be exacerbated greatly when we have more space.

At Trainer’s suggestion I switched Henry to a full cheek Dr Bristol. I needed a little bit more respect and something that he couldn’t just lean on and drag me through the corners. I tried it out o/f on Saturday at home, doing some of the exercises Buck recommended, and Henry was actually quite good. Normally he’s a drama queen about any new bit, but he was fantastic in the Dr Bristol. I got more respect but he never tossed his head, curled up, or seemed pissed. Kind of amazing for Henry, usually he has an opinion about everything.

On Sunday when we got on and started warming up for our lesson, Trainer immediately said that she noticed a big difference in how Henry was moving. The magic fetlock juice plus new farrier are definitely helping. She set the fences as we warmed up, and had them at about 3′-3’3″ to start with, which we’re pretty comfortable with right now. We warmed up, did a couple courses at that height, then she started raising the fences. Bobby and I both looked like this

Trainer cackled (she’s evil, so she cackles by default) and said “We’re gonna put a few at Prelim height so Training looks small!”. Great. Super. Sure, why not? Seems like as good a day as any to die.

It took me most of the lesson to remember what our “right” pace is, and I really had to ride every step, but Henry was great. Very honest a couple of times when he totally didn’t have to be (sorry bud) and just quite rideable in general. A total turnaround from the horse I’ve had all fall – this is my normal Henry, back in business.

At one point Evil Trainer had us jump the big square oxer, bending 5 strides to the last big oxer of the triple. It was a bit of a wonky line that required you to jump the second one on an angle, and bless Henry’s golden little heart, he was super game.

The key points were pretty much exactly what Buck said (Trainer is evil but she is wise) – always keeping him bent around my inside leg, making sure to keep the power in the canter, and getting him more comfortable jumping from the base. It’s a work in progress of course but it was light years better than what’s been happening lately.

Dare I say that I think I have my horse back? BRB, gotta go find a shit ton of wood to knock on…

 

Overall success rate: 84%

But how did it break down by category?

Qualify for AEC’s – Yep! Qualified, went, even got ribbons and won stuff. That made my whole year, with just this one goal met.

Score below 35 in dressage AND finish on that score – Did this more than once, but that 28.3 totally rocked my world.

Get an actual, honest to god stretchy trot circle from Henry – He does this all the time now, it’s his new favorite.

Score a 7 or above on our free walk – this happened 3 times!

Stop being such a pansy about the down banks – Neither of us care anymore.

Be more fit – I went up and down with this but ultimately at this moment I’m not more fit than I was at this time last year so I can’t call it a win.

Keep Henry happy and healthy – He’s looking and feeling pretty great this days. A little TOO great.

Improve my attitude toward dressage – I still don’t love it, but I feel like we’ve come to have mutual respect and understanding.

Get a 4-legged bun in the oven – This got pushed to 2016.

Horse Goals success rate: 78%

 

Be more appreciative of my awesome SO – I think I’m better about this.

Be less selfish – I feel like I was better about this too.

Continue to always be as honest and transparent as possible while still being as kind as possible – I know I sometimes come across as brutally honest, but for the most part I at least tried to take off the sharpest edges.

Travel more – I’m in love with Belgium now. Trip of a lifetime.

Get at least one more tattoo – This is on the docket for sometime in the next few months but didn’t happen this year.

Compete in at least 2 triathlons and place in the top 3 – Ok, I feel like I should get a 1/2 point for effort here. I tried to enter a triathlon and it got cancelled, then the other two I wanted to do conflicted with horse show dates.

Personal Goals success rate: 75%

 

Move to my own domain name – Boom.

Roll out a more polished, clean look – Definitely an improvement over the old format.

Keep staying true to my original intentions – This is what I wrote for this goal:

Be as forthright as possible, be reliable, and always speak what’s on my mind even if it’s a tough subject. People won’t always agree with you, and it’s just not possible for everyone to like you, but as long as you have integrity people will always respect you. I think one of the worst things we can do as bloggers is to censor ourselves to the point of becoming automatons. We have the luxury of a built in audience – something most people do not. I think we should use it as an opportunity to speak up when the situation arises. I want to do that more.

I can say 100% that I did that. There were a couple of tough subjects and people definitely did not always agree, or like what I said, or like ME at all (to put it lightly), but I said what I felt needed to be said and I would do it all again without hesitation.

This year was both one of my best ever and one of my worst ever. My AEC experience was one of the best moments of my entire life, but the loss of my mom is still a deep, fresh wound. As time goes on I miss her more, not less. She was the first person I wanted to call after AEC when I was at cloud nine level euphoria. She was also the first person I wanted to call after Greenwood when I felt so utterly defeated. But I know what she would have said to me both times, so I said those things to myself instead and thanked her for the wisdom.

While the numbers and percentages are fun and neat to look at, the parameters have changed. My new measure of success is: would my mom be proud of me for what I did? For HOW I did it? If the answer is yes, then I’ve done the right thing, the right way. And I know she would have been proud of me this year.

Personal Goals success rate: 100%

 

 

This might be my new favorite gif of all time. It’s mesmerizingly weird.

But anyway… setting aside the MJ version of the black or white situation…

Henry has been wearing his black Majyk Equipe XC boots for over a year now. I got him black because, uh, I don’t really know. His legs are black? I’m boring? I’m lazy about cleaning things? All of the above, I guess. I’ve always been a “match the boots to the horse” kind of thinker. Grays wear white, chestnuts wear brown, bays wear black. That’s just how it goes. Unless the horse has white legs then by all means, go nuts and get white. Or if you’re a DQ. They love white. But I don’t buy horses with lots of chrome, and I’m not a DQ.

When Majyk Equipe sent me a pair of their new Gen 2 XC boots to try, abuse, and review, they blew my mind a little. Not just the boots themselves (which I am going to review as soon as I get my media together) but because they sent me white. I opened the box and my mind was blown. White? But my horse is plain bay. Can I do that? Do the laws of the universe allow it?

Then I thought about it and realized I’ve actually seen a lot of dark colored event horses wearing white boots on XC lately. Like… a lot. So wait a minute – is this a thing now? A thing that I didn’t even realize? I texted Trainer and she was like “I love white boots on dark horses, keep the white!”. Well eff me, the world has passed me by. Majyk Equipe knew. I didn’t know.

When I put the boots on Henry at first I was like “Whoa white”. And then I was like “Oh. Oooohhhh, I kinda get it. Damn Henny you fancy!”. It has grown on me a lot. I dig the white now.

What do you think? All other factors besides pure aesthetics aside… do you like white boot Henry?

Or black boot Henry?

 

It’s always funny when I sit down and try to make plans, because we all know how well THAT kind of thing works out. Especially with horses. It’s laughable really.

But if we don’t have plans then we’re just aimlessly wandering about, which makes life pointless. Okay maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. Point being – my OCD self definitely needs a plan, even if that plan doesn’t actually happen. And maybe I’m just filled with a false sense of confidence because our 2015 plans actually, by some miracle, worked out. Either way, here’s what I’m thinking for 2016:

Feb – PH schooling HT (Novice) or SA jumper show

March 25-26: MCP USEA HT or Curragh schooling HT (Novice)

April 23-24: Holly Hill USEA HT (Novice)

May 28: Willow Draw USEA HT (Novice)

July 14-17: Coconino Novice 3-Day in AZ (Novice)

Fall is where things get more sketchy, but:

Oct 1-2: Fleur de Leap USEA HT (Training)

Oct 22: PH USEA HT or Quail Run Farm schooling HT (Training)

Nov 5-6: Willow Draw USEA HT (Training)

If everything actually went as planned, we’d be showing in Texas, Louisiana, and Arizona. That sounds awesome to me, so things probably won’t go as planned.

Really my entire year is plotted around the Coconino N3D in July, and the idea of trying to go to venues that we haven’t been to yet. Because doing things we haven’t already done is what makes it fun, right? If Coconino doesn’t happen then maybe we’ll go to Georgia for a couple weeks instead. If THAT doesn’t happen, maybe we’ll aim for AEC in Tryon, NC.

Or, more likely, none of it will happen because I’ll be too poor from buying a truck. Details.

 

Sadly, torrential rain made the XC course was too wet to be safe for Sunday’s rides, therefore cutting our weekend short. While definitely a disappointment, I still got a lot out of even just one day with Buck. I came away with lots of things to work on, got a much needed confidence boost, and made some new friends. That’s a win.

Saturday was a stadium lesson, and we started out with the typical “tell me about you and your horse” part. I told him a very brief version of my and Henry’s history, then told him that our stadium has gone off the rails a bit lately and that I felt like I just wasn’t riding well in general.

Then we went out on a circle as a group and did some w/t/c work. The main exercise we did here was putting our reins on the buckle and then collecting/lengthening the gaits off of only seat and leg. I’d like to say we were good at this, but no… not so much. It didn’t help that Henry was quite excited to be there and ready to GO. Enthusiam, he gots it. Then we went back to a normal rein length and worked on adjustability in the gaits a bit more. Point made – we depend too much on our reins to adjust the horse.

After the warm-up we moved on to jumping. We started with a simple 3-jump serpentine exercise that really stressed the importance of rhythm, pace, having a plan, and executing that plan. It’s always the simple exercises that highlight those issues immediately. Luckily we didn’t have too much of a problem with the serpentine, except Buck wanted me to really keep Henry bent more around the turns (which ended up being pretty much the entire theme of the lesson for me). He stressed that it’s the rider’s job to get the right pace and keep a good rhythm, but we shouldn’t let ourselves become obsessed with finding a distance – that once we start trying to hunt for it we inevitably mess with the rhythm, the pace, or both. He was also big on always finishing the exercise no matter what happens. His reasoning was that you can’t stop at a horse show to regroup or start over, so you have to learn to ride through mistakes. Then we added the serpentine before and after some other fences.

Once the serpentine exercise was conquered, we moved on to other courses. He had us jumping on a more open, forward pace than I’m really used to. The first course or two went fine, and then Henry did pretty much what he did to me at Greenwood where he totally just flipped me the bird and basically locked his jaw and took off. He was like “You want forward? WATCH ME FLY!”. There was a fine line between forward and running, and Henry crossed it. I really could not get him back, either. He braced his jaw and just pulled me around. I have to admit, when I pulled him up I was very very frustrated. Henry’s tail has just been LIT ON FIRE lately and since it’s something he’s not done before, I’m at a bit of a loss about how to fix it. Buck suggested that when he starts pulling on me like that, I need to really overbend him to the inside, get him around my leg, and then give with the inside rein to break the cycle of pulling vs pulling. Once we did that he got a lot better.

We also did an exercise where in the middle of a bending line we had to reach up and pat the horse’s neck first with one hand, then with the other. Again the idea being softness with the hand, while steering off the seat and leg. Pretty much all of us got very crooked in this exercise – highlighting the fact (again) that we’re depending too much on our reins.

Luckily there was someone with a really nice camera and great eye taking pictures, so hopefully I should have some nice non-iPhone pics next week. Here’s a preview snapped off of her camera’s screen.

A few other key points from Buck:

• When you soften, the horse softens. When you tighten, the horse tightens.
• When the horse needs a correction, make it clear and concise, and then move on. Don’t continue to nag them.
• Use your body to help with turns after fences.
• Coming out of the turn, it’s common to pull on the inside rein and then cause the horse to be crooked down the line. Think of funneling the horse equally between both reins for straightness and use your legs to turn.
• If the horse is bulging out around the turn, you’re using too much inside rein.

But the main point of the day, and something Buck said to us over and over: You know how to ride, so just ride the horse. It really is that simple. Meaning: be a thinking rider, make sure that you’re riding every step, focus on the task at hand, and ride the same way at shows that you do at home. 

After the lesson I pulled Buck aside to get his suggestions for exercises that work well in a small arena and we got to talking about other things too. He scolded me a bit for what I said in the very beginning during our introductions and told me that I should never say I don’t ride well – that I ride very well, I just had to believe it. I have to say, I got a little choked up when he said that. While I don’t talk about my emotions as a rider very much, I’m extremely self-critical. I know that 99% of whatever problems Henry has are directly because of me, and there’s no doubt my confidence took a huge hit at Greenwood. We’re in a bit of a tough phase right now so it’s easy for me to feel lost and, honestly, sometimes borderline incompetent. I, much like Henry, internalize everything and it tends to fester. So while Buck doesn’t know it, the words he said to me in private were exactly what I needed to hear right now. If he has confidence in me, I have no excuse for not having confidence in myself. I need to suck it up, ride the horse the way I know how to ride him, and stop second guessing everything.

Thanks Buck – for the lesson and for the psychotherapy. 😉