Cross Country and the Ordeal

This post is only a week late, so I'm sort of on top of things, right?

Also, quick unrelated note - this is my last finals week ever!! I can't believe I will be starting 4th year in less than a week. Starting first year, this seemed so far away and I can't believe I made it. 4th year is going to be crazy hard, exhausting, tons of long hours and of course studying for the NAVLE. But I am getting so close to reaching my DVM!

Anyways, we had Memorial Day off of school and PR (another vet student) invited me to go cross country schooling. It was the last weekend for schooling before several shows, so it was crazy busy. We rolled in fairly early at 9am and I'm glad we got up early for it!

Sadly, I have NO pictures, so I apologize for the media-less post.

I was pretty nervous actually to take Jetta. She hasn't been jumped (except for one time over a month ago at <2') in at least a year and a half. We've been to this place a ton so I wasn't worried about the venue part of it. We did a short trail ride around the property and then warmed up in part of the field that had very few jumps in it and everyone else was schooling elsewhere. Jetta was AMPED. A girl I know from when I used to take jumping and eventing lessons was there with a training group and she commented "Jetta looks so fancy!". Not a sentence I would have ever thought to be associated with Jetta lol. Basically we pranced around with very little braking capacity. We did lots of circling like we've been doing for dressage, changing direction often at the trot and that helped. Our canter was another story and I think while it looked controlled, I really didn't have any control for stopping!

We went to a section with some small jumps and warmed up over a couple little logs and a small coop. Jetta didn't blink about either one but she really wanted to gallop after every jump. We went to school the ditch (usually not a problem) and Jetta apparently didn't remember how to step over a ditch. It's the tiniest little thing but she was not having it. Eventually I got off and borrowed a crop and she finally leaped over it. Such a dork.

After that we went over to a field with some bigger stuff. I wasn't really sure about jumping any of the stuff in this field - the blue barn coop and rolltop coop, even though they were BN height looked HUGE to me. Finally I mustered up the courage and trotted up to the coop and Jetta easily jumped it with hardly any effort. I sometimes forget that she can jump! From there we came around again and took it at a canter then cantered up to the blue barn and she didn't even glance at it. I was estatic. The blue barn can sketch out a lot of horses because it has empty space beneath it. I was standing around watching another lady in our group jump the trakehner when a rider from another group brought her balky horse up to the blue barn... and promptly got lawn darted into the ground. I was SO glad I had already jumped it because after seeing her horse pull a dirty stop into the fence, I definitely didn't want to try it!

From there we ended on playing in the water. One thing I love about Jetta is that she has no qualms about water! She might not always want to canter into it, but she will never refuse it. We jumped a large skinny log into the water (I think it was a Novice height fence) and then popped over a stadium fence on the other side. At the very end we cooled off in the water, PR's horse Bailey likes to paw in the water which was cracking us up, splashing water everywhere. Then the other lady's horse started to paw. This whole time Jetta was just standing there looking at the other horses like they were crazy... then she started pawing and all of the horses were going to town in the water. Pretty cute, but I hope she hasn't learned a bad habit now!

Waiting for the tow...

And now the ordeal portion... I got Jetta untacked and loaded in the trailer, started the truck and was driving away... when the truck died. In motion. It refused to restart. I thought maybe it needed a jump, so we did that. No effect. A handful of people looked at it and tweaked a few things. It started and we let it run for a while, but I wasn't wanting to drive it with a horse trailer if it was going to die while driving. Not fun with a horse trailer when you lose power steering and braking... I called a couple friends and finally found one with a truck that was semi-ok to haul a trailer (one friend had been rear-ended recently and truck was in the shop, other had a lifted truck with no drop hitch, other one was currently using their trailer at another location). The truck was slightly disassembled from installing a flat bed, but was road worthy and would haul my trailer ok. It just couldn't hook up the trailer lights for whatever reason. He had been meaning to replace the plug for the trailer, but hadn't gotten to it and we couldn't get all of the trailer lights to work. Eventually he just hotwired the lights. But half of my lights still wouldn't work... only to find out I had 2 bulbs burnt out on the same side. Ugh.

Jetta finally made it home to the barn and I called a tow truck for my truck. I meant to drive it home, but even though it started and drove off fine twice, the third time it wouldn't start. Poor Freddy the Ford. Not sure what's wrong and of course don't have the money to fix it at this time, so it's been sadly sitting in the driveway. So of course here's another plug for the stuff I'm trying to sell... buy my things pretty please! I'll take reasonable offers on things. I have to pay for my NAVLE next week which holy smokes is spendy, so the poor truck is not going to get fixed for quite a while.

Getting dropped off at home :(

It's super hard not having my independence with my horses. I was planning on a trail ride and taking Maisie to the barn to learn to pony last week, so I was pretty bummed at the wrench in those plans. I've been driving my horse places by myself since I was 16 so this is going to be a weird non-mobile time for a while! I'm just super glad I board at a barn that has access to trails so at least I can get my trail riding in still!

Little Jumping Bean

Trask and I went to another derby this past weekend. Spoiler alert... this one didn't go as well as the last one.

I jumped him the day before the show and he was AWESOME. A little bit strong maybe, but he didn't hesitate at any of the jumps. I brought out some new jumps - a little fake liverpool and a panel fence. And he wasn't bothered in the slightest. I bumped the jumps up to the highest we've done thus far and I don't think he even noticed.

Biggest little fence so far!

I ended up hauling in the day of the show since we didn't do our dressage until 11:43am. We got there plenty early so I let Trask graze in the field for a bit since I wanted him to be relaxed and I also didn't want to repeat our trailer tying/halter breaking episode from a while back...

When I finally tacked him up and started warming up in the indoor arena... I knew it was going to go poorly for us. He was SO SPOOKY. About everything. The walls, the mirrors, the windows, the birds, the stall cleaners, etc. It was ridiculous. One thing I loved about this show was how absolutely nice everyone was. It was awesome!

Attempting to eat plastic flowers

Another person warming up noticed our difficulty with the mirrors (aka Trask stopping dead and staring at himself, then trying to run away from his reflection) and she offered to lead us up to the mirror which helped quite a bit, though Trask was still on edge. We did our best with the warm-up but I knew it wasn't going to happen for us.

We got to walk around the outdoor show arena briefly and Trask wasn't scared of anything surprisingly. They had some jumps and barrels stashed along the edge of the arena but he didn't care. Nor did he seem bothered by the large black water tanks or the hose reel outside the railing. We started our test and it wasn't too bad until we did our first circle. All of the sudden we were traveling sideways instead of in a nice circle, towards C. I managed to keep him kind of on track and then we went to canter. He didn't want to. With a very ugly transition, I finally got him into a canter but when we circled the same thing happened and he veered off towards C. We came back down to the trot and then the walk for our free walk across the diagonal and I was confident that this was something he could nail. Nope. He kept popping his head up to look around. We went for our next trot circle and the same thing happened, drifting off towards C. At this point I'd had enough and this was a schooling show anyways so I gave him a big kick with my outside leg, earning us a nice few steps of canter (ugh) and we finished our circle. We got to the corner almost to C and he tried to jump out of the arena. I ended up having to circle him in the corner so we could get our canter transition while he continued to try and jump out of the arena.

At least he looked nice part of the time?

Finally got a very, very ugly canter transition, did our circle, trotted to X and did our (very crooked) salute. And walked out of the arena very disappointed.

I'm not quite sure what happened but it was definitely a big baby moment. That test was so incredibly ugly, I was so embarrassed. We went back to the indoor and schooled our canter transitions for a while, during which we had a discussion about spooking at things unnecessarily. Ended on a better note, but I was still pretty frustrated.

We had a bit to rest before jumping and I didn't even attempt to pick up my test. While walking to the jump field I had my bf grab it and then realized I didn't have my number since I had left it on my dressage bridle. The person manning the table quickly offered to make me a new one so I wouldn't have to walk all the way back to the trailer. Like I said, so nice!

I got on Trask up at the warm-up area for jumping. Of course as soon as I got on my eventing vest's zipper split which was fantastic. I tried to fix it while the bf held Trask but I couldn't get it. A very nice bystander came up and offered to help, so she ended up holding Trask while I held the edges of the vest together and my bf tried to get the zipper down. With all that teamwork we finally got it back to normal.

Trask warmed up well. They had a pretty large log for warm-up and while he initially refused it, after a good sniff he hopped right over. I felt good about our warm-up but I knew the course would be a struggle for us.

And it was a struggle right off the bat. The first fence, a stadium fence, was right next to fence 8 which was a small log next to the water. Since this was Intro level, the water was optional so you could go over the small log instead. Even though we had been trotting and cantering through the water a mere couple weeks ago, he thought the whole area - water, log and first fence was HORRIFYING. It took me forever and a half to get him to walk through the start flags. Again, pretty embarrassing. Finally walked him through the start flags, marched him up to the first jump so he could sniff it and then we came back around and trotted it. It was so nice that people clapped for us every time he jumped something that he initially refused. It made me feel a lot better that it seemed that people knew he was a baby and we were really struggling, so that was nice.

He's so cute though!

He popped over and we headed to the second fence, a large mossy log. He stopped at it, sniffed it, then popped over. We cantered up to the third fence, a moderate sized log. He seemed game so I let him keep his canter and he popped over it without hesitation. We crossed the bridge and cantered up the hill to fence four, another log. He jumped this one without hesitation too. We approached the fifth fence, a stadium fence but he would not pay attention and was spooking at the fences in the tree line so he almost missed the stadium fence but I made him do an awkward walk/trot hop over it, resulting in a pulled rail but no refusal. We trotted down the hill to a small coop, which he refused. At this point my legs were absolutely dead and I could barely even give him a squeeze so I just clucked at him and hoped he'd go over it. He did and we cantered to the next coop, this one he hesitated at but didn't refuse and hopped over.

Generously clearing the tiny coop - I chopped my face off cause I looked ridiculous

Then we got to the dreaded fence 8. I knew I wasn't going to try and get him in the water, I just wanted to hop the tiny log then go to fence 9 (a stadium fence) and be done and go home. He refused the log so I thanked the timers and left.

I was pretty bummed since I knew before the show we'd likely get DQ'd for refusals, but my goal was 1) stay in the dressage arena (barely achieved), 2) no rearing (mostly achieved, there were a couple tiny rear's that my bf called "expressive turns"), 3) jump all the jumps even if we had a lot of refusals (fail) and 4) no falling off (yay I really did achieve this one!!)

Babies are so good at humbling you. I really thought we were ready for this show since he was schooling so well at home and we had schooled at this facility recently. Oh well. Packing up to go, the super nice lady parked next to me (her daughter had the CUTEST pony) complimented me on my patience on the jump course and wished me well in vet school (she noticed the sticker on my truck).

I love how nice everyone was at this event! It made it so much better even with a disappointing outcome.

Takeaways for me were - work more with the dressage whip so I can carry and use it at a show without him getting offended. Continue our work on canter transitions and getting him to pay attention to my outside leg. Work on getting him to jump unfamiliar jumps the first time without having to sniff them (thus earning us a refusal). Get him in more water!

(Kinda) Wordless Wednesday

So I ordered some pictures! I couldn't not at least look at what photos the photographer got, even if I had to pay to get them. I emailed him and found that the $20 posting fee went towards the cost of the photos instead of adding on top of them, so I figured why not!

He only posted 9 photos of me - 2 were dressage and just not even close to what I wanted: a salute picture and an extremely awkward canter photo. Then there was 3 photos in sequence of the bank, and then the other 4 were stadium jumps which were either just a half second too late or too early. This is mostly what I expected though I have to admit I was extremely disappointed there wasn't a photo of that massive trakehner that Jetta jumped, or at least a coop!

But she looked too cute jumping off the bank to not get and I kinda liked one of the stadium pictures. Just don't look at me. I make weird faces. Look at my cute horse instead!

I'm really glad that he got these cute pictures, even if I do look like a dork. I think he did a good job with these. I've got a pretty adorable pony!

Confidence... And Lack Thereof

I have way, way too many things to post about, I'm quite behind! But we'll just have to go in chronological order.

Which brings us to cross country schooling!

Gorgeous mare

Before I left on my trip to Nicaragua, I signed us up for a derby... at Novice. Not to mention that we had only jumped once in the past year or two, and that we hadn't jumped cross country in several years. Let's just do Novice since we haven't even jumped xc that big! (where's that sarcasm font when you need it)

The night before we went cross country schooling, I schooled Jetta a couple times over a jump in our own arena, just to make sure she could still jump. She did really great and I kept jacking the jump up until it was roughly 3' and she was foot perfect, minus being a bit zoomy about it.

The next day we hauled to Inavale and schooled everything I could get the courage to do. It all looked HUGE. I don't know what it is, but a 3' stadium jump looks like no big deal, but a 2'11" xc jump looks massive and impossible to clear.

Acting like she doesn't care

But we seriously had the best cross country experience to date and I think it was one of my absolute favorite rides on Jetta. I have been thinking for a long time that maybe Jetta doesn't want to event. She doesn't particularly seem to enjoy cross country and we pretty much only have one completion at an event ever... She loves stadium and tolerates dressage so maybe those are things that we should stick with. But after our ride that day, I really think it's just confidence building and more experience that we need to be successful. We seriously did a couple Training level jumps and I didn't die!

We jumped that log into the water!

Other side of the log

We had lots of refusals, but not one of those was a dirty stop and I felt them coming all a mile away. She just needed to look at the fence and then she'd jump it. The only real issue we had was with the big bank jump down after coming out of the water, but after practicing on the little bank a couple times it was no big deal. We did a really fun bending line from a blue barn coop to an up bank, to a bigger blue barn coop. We even did this Training level hanging log jump into the water. I was blown away that Jetta would do it for me! Jetta was a little bit of a snow plow after the jumps and she did try to get away from me twice, but I never felt like I was super out of control, just that I needed to remember to sit up and half halt after the jump.

Bank we finally conquered

I was feeling a lot better after cross country schooling and looking forward to the show. Since I don't have any media from the show really, I'll just do a giant post about it too!

Can't believe we jumped this

Dressage went fairly well first thing in the morning. Jetta was a bit amped up because we tried warming up in the indoor arena while they were cleaning stall and all the four wheelers and loud noises was making her spooky so I gave up. I was expecting her to be a lot hotter during our test so I rode too conservatively. I knew we'd get comments about getting Jetta more forward from behind and over her back, but I was just happy that I didn't have a tense little fireball on my hands like our last dressage show!

I was pretty happy with our score. We got a 30.9 placing us in second place. Comments were as expected, mostly 7's with an 8 for our free walk (Jetta's favorite). Mostly about getting more bend, steadier connection and a freer back.

Our course

Cross country I was so incredibly nervous for. I walked the course and we had mostly schooled everything on there, with a couple exceptions. The down bank was the very large one which we had only schooled the small and medium ones. The trakehner was the medium sized one and we had only ever schooled the small one (also, I find them terrifying in all sizes), and the 10AB combination was a downhill combo with the first fence being a stadium fence and the second was a ditch we'd never schooled.

Trakehner of death

Overall though, it seemed pretty doable. I was nervous for the trakehner so I mentally allowed myself one refusal for it.

The first 9 fences went BEAUTIFULLY. She did refuse the trakehner, but she jumped it on the second try, so I was really happy. I thought "It's all downhill from here, the rest are easy!" Fail.

We tackled this big down bank easily!

Apparently ditches are really terrifying things and are not to be trusted. I'm not sure what it was exactly, but that ditch was a horse eating monster and we had two refusals and were eliminated. I think it was a combo of being a new jump, being the second element of a combo, and being a downhill jump that all just threw a wrench in things. I was really bummed. They let us continue so I went around the ditch to one of the big blue houses that we've jumped before... and refusal. She jumped it the second time though, so we continued to a big roll top that we had jumped before... and refusal. After we cleared it the second time I just said we were done and left. I think that was what I was most disappointed about. After our amazing confidence building schooling round, we just completely lost all confidence over that ditch. That really bummed me out.

But in the grand scheme of things, Jetta still tried really hard. She was super good about not snow plowing and didn't try to get away from me, she came back perfectly every time I asked her to, which was a huge win. I watched the three riders before me - 2 got eliminated for refusals and one was a rider pull because her horse managed to get his shoe halfway off in the middle of the course. So at least we weren't alone! It was just a bummer because I really wanted that little ribbon! There's always next time of course.

I'm hoping to get some professional pictures, but we'll see. I feel terrible saying this, but I really don't like the photographer that's there. Plus this year he's charging $20 just to look at the proofs. Which, if it was someone I liked and I had complete confidence that they'd have some awesome pictures of us I'd do it in a heartbeat, but I'm not usually impressed with his pictures, so we'll see. I'm always grateful to have a photographer at an event and I know it takes a ton of work to take and edit and post those pictures, so I'm happy to pay for them... if they're actually good pictures. Fingers crossed!

Jetta Jumps!

I don't know why I love this picture so much, but I really do!

I actually got to jump Jetta for the first time in forever! My friend at the barn who owns Dundee told me that she was going to set up some gymnastics if I wanted to join and I couldn't pass that offer up! I was pretty worried that Jetta would be awful, but I figured we couldn't go wrong with some gymnastics. Of course when I got to the barn it was super busy and in addition to not being able to find my lunge line, all the lunging areas were taken.

Jetta warmed up extremely spooky. Not that I could really blame her though. There was a horse being worked with on opening a gate so the gate was clanging, the horse was dancing around whinnying for it's buddy who was just outside the gate and the owner yelling at the horse. Then there was the horses being brought inside, the little kids running down the aisle... So I couldn't really blame Jetta a whole lot.  

Warming up I just focused on doing a lot of half halts and if she didn't do them, then we'd halt and back up before going back to whatever gait we were in. This helped tremendously. I was worried she would try to refuse the jumps since we haven't jumped in like... a year or two? But she was game. We just needed to work on not rushing the jumps. Originally we started out with two trot poles to two tiny little fences, then just gradually kept bumping things up. 

After halting Jetta a couple times in front of the trot poles I finally got her to listen to my half halts in front of the line of jumps so she didn't rush... but we still had to deal with her rushing after the jumps. 

Knees

I feel like I'm learning how to ride all over again almost! Misty was so different - it was all about riding Misty forward, forward, forward where as with Jetta is a balancing act in getting her to not rush and not be on her forehand. 

That hind end though

Finally once Jetta took off bucking after the last fence (once it got raised way up - Jetta was so proud of herself for clearing it) I told MS's roommate who was graciously helping us, to yell at me to sit up before I went over the last jump. That helped immensely. I just kinda want to curl in the fetal position and let Jetta take me over the jumps, but that's not really going to work. I needed to sit up and give her a strong half-halt before that last jump so she wouldn't take off. After going through the line cleanly without taking off, I called it quits. That last jump looked HUGE to me, even though it probably wasn't all that big. I'm hoping it was 3' but now that I look at the videos it really just looks like it was barely 2'9". Oh well. I was proud of the monster pony!

I really need to work on my leg position, I probably should shorten my stirrups a bit to help with that! 

Videos got in a weird order. The 1st and last are of the smaller jump, the 2nd and 3rd are the large jump, with the 2nd video being the one she took off bucking over, and the 3rd is the one she jumped well and we called it quits on.

 

 

Pony torture (aka grid jumping)

Poor Misty-moo. I still haven't had much time to ride her, but I'm really going to aim for consistently riding at least twice a week. I need to make time for that because I feel so much better after a ride!

Misty had an interested buyer come down for the second time to ride her. Sadly, they still haven't gotten back to me so I think it's a no-go. She wasn't super good jumping for the girl (though she was super good on the flat, I was impressed. Spurs might have helped a lot in that...). Besides the interested buyer jumping her, she hasn't been jumped in a long time... Since November probably when we went to that show. So I'm not surprised she was sticky about jumping the terrifying barrels with the prospective buyer, and if you accidentally hit her in the mouth just once (heaven forbid) then she bunny hops the next several times, afraid that she's going to get hit in the mouth again. She finished out good, but she had to be ridden on a loose rein and the girl was used to her pony taking off after a jump. Ha, that would NEVER be a problem with Misty.

So I decided I needed to jump Misty more, since I am selling her as a jumping horse. She just needs more miles and she'll be fantastic. I've been told by multiple trainers that "I ride like a trainer, so I need to ride my sale horses more like a beginner" meaning I need to do less "helping" the horse and more sitting back and letting them make the mistakes so I can correct them and hopefully eliminate those mistakes (you know, real training).

Right now, that means getting Misty to need less leg to a jump. She needs a ton of leg in jumping. Which is fine with me, I'm used to horses needing leg (except Jetta) so I've got that part covered. But a junior rider isn't going to want (or possibly even be able) to give her as much leg as I do.

So I set up a grid. I've never jumped her through a grid, though I'm sure her lessor did over the summer. Lines are one of the hardest things for Misty. She sees the second jump and gets distracted by it so she wiggles her way up to the first jump, lands crooked and wiggles to the second jump. I'm hoping grids are going to help with that straightness and hesitation.

Four jumps (including the scary barrels) with the last fence set at 2'6" and the first cavaletti was set low so I could trot her in the first couple times. All the fences were set at a single stride, I think next time I'll set it with some single and some two stride fences. And bump up the last fence to a 3'.

The first couple times in you would think Misty had never seen a jump before. But once she got a good look at the barrels she decided it was fine and could jump everything. I was glad I put wings on the barrels because she almost decided to go around them a couple times, then decided she'd have to jump the wings anyways, so she might as well just jump the barrels. She still needed a lot of leg, but by the end she was really keeping a nice pace, not looking at the jumps and getting those one strides perfectly. She has a really short stride so you definitely need to keep a more forward pace to make her fit those strides (I think I even set the strides shorter for her).

Overall, a really good ride that I need to do more!

And some more cute pictures from when Misty decided that the flag in the corner was terrifying so we had to do some desensitization:

"Ok, this isn't actually that scary"

So much pony torture

Her face after playing with the flag. Poor thing.

The Cold, Wet, Miserable Schooling Show

I took Misty to a H/J schooling show. Because why not take a major study break at a horse show on a day with the worst possible weather?

I had a lot of fun. The weather was really that awful (there was no covered area except the show arena so we all got soaked). ML came and rode a couple classes and did a good job for not jumping in 6 months. And Misty was only jumped once before the show after not being jumped since the little derby we did a month ago. So I was happy.

I rode the Hunter I class in the 2'6" division. It was rather bad. I didn't ask for any leads so we got lots of wrong ones. It was pretty ugly. We placed a deserved 4th out of 5. But Misty didn't try to refuse anything, didn't spook at the fun Halloween decorations on the fence and didn't pull any rails.

ML rode in Hunter II and did a very good job. She's been riding Misty occasionally since I don't have time. But she's never jumped her. Their only issue was a chip in on the very last jump. The lines were all set at 4 strides, but Misty was riding them at 5. She also likes to back off about 1-2 strides away so if you don't anticipate it and keep her forward, it messes up your perfect approach you had planned. Placed a 4th out of 7 in the class.



She also rode in Eq. over fences. It was not quite as good. Misty was losing energy. It was cold. She was backing off and chipping in to almost every fence.

Then we switched horses again as it started to absolutely pour. Misty was soaked. I was soaked. ML was soaked. It was miserable. I rode in the 2'6" jumpers. I am definitely not a jumper. I enjoy it, I love jumping, the courses are fun, but I love eventing. (I love having ride times or estimated class times at the very least!) and I find the different Tables weird. At least this wasn't the table where if you went clear, you rode your jump off immediately after your round. But we did go clear, only one other girl did.

Misty was great for the jump off too. She was being lazy and I was really pushing her to pick up the pace. She jumped clear again. The great thing about her is no matter how sloppy the distance I give her, she will still do her best to not hit anything. And we won the class! I was happy. There were six riders and only 2 of us made it to the jump off.



So it was a fun show. There was also Misty's mega-me twin there. I've seen her at several jumper show/clinics. The horse has the same exact coloring as Misty (bay roan tobiano) but is a draft cross. She's absolutely adorable. I don't know if she competes in dressage, but if she does, I think we need to get in contact to do a Pas de Deux. How freaking cute would that be?!

Spring is Here

Ahh, I love spring. The weather, the getting rid of winter coats, the flowers, just about everything. I feel like I have so many things to update on! In reality, probably none of it is super exciting, but things have been going really well.

Misty has been getting ridden about 3-4 times a week, which I'm really pleased with. We've been doing a ton of dressage and a little bit of jumping.

First off, the shedding has been ridiculous. I don't know how this little horse is capable of growing so much hair (especially since she barely looks that hairy in the winter) much less how she is capable of losing it at such an alarming rate. The good news is that she's almost done shedding! The bad news is that my car is covered in white horse hair and Jetta is just beginning to shed. Sigh...

SO

MUCH

HAIR

Misty's dressage work has been feeling really good lately. Sure, plenty to work on still but she's starting to really pick up on the stretchy trot, leg yielding and transitions have been quite perfect lately. I've introduced 15 m circles and lengthened canters finally with some pretty good initial work. I'm really looking forward to the dressage show next weekend!

We have jumped a couple times and she has been pretty awesome as usual. I was super, super happy with her. And we even did our first triple line! She definitely looked at it and we ended up trotting the entire line the first time, but she was awesome! Now if I could just set the line better next time so she can do it all smoothly, that'd be great.




Additionally, we had a really fun trail ride last weekend. I took my boyfriend for his first trail ride with me. The deal is if he went trail riding with me, I would go on a motorcycle ride with him... Terrifying. But he endured a torturous three and a half hours, so I think the least I could do is go riding with him!

We ended up getting pretty lost on the trails (hence the almost four hour ride... I seriously intended a nice short and sweet hour long ride!), but it was an absolutely gorgeous day so it wasn't all bad. He used to ride as a kid so he looks like a natural. Misty was great as per usual, though by the end we were all a tad grumpy and just plain "done" with the ride. Overall though, it was definitely a success!

Gorgeous weather and views!

*swoon*

30 Day Challenge - Create a fun jump course

Hmm, I'm not the best at creating jump courses. Especially "fun" ones. The ones that I typically end up making when I'm setting a course for myself is two outside lines (one at two strides and one at three or four strides) and one fence set on a diagonal to make a bending line. Mostly just because it's an easy course to set. Then I can mix it up and do right outside line, bending line, left outside line or whatever else I feel like. I have no idea if this is "fun" or not, because I personally consider the circle of death exercise to be "fun" - while most others in my lesson group groan about it, I get excited, lol.

This looks SUPER fun, but I'm way too lazy to design something of my own. Image from Wikipedia

30 Day Challenge - Explain the division you show in and why.

This a bit of a tough question because I show in a lot of disciplines...

Dressage - I am showing at Training with Misty and First with Jetta, with hopes that I'll be showing comfortably at Second level by the end of this summer on Jetta.

Jumping - I can usually be found doing classes from 2'6" to 3' jumpers. I don't do hunters unless it's just to add in some classes for experience, since I have never been competitive in those divisions.

Eventing - I've only ever shown at Beginner Novice. I'm a bit of a chicken on cross country and while I've definitely schooled Novice on Jetta, Misty and my old horse, Jazz, I still haven't gotten up the courage to compete at that level. I'll probably be one of those people who stays at the lower level of eventing forever. But then again, I hope that one day I'll make it to Prelim.

And lastly, I made a small foray into endurance riding last year, and while I wasn't able to compete this year, I really hope to stick with it. I am currently perfectly fine with staying at the LD rides at 25 to 30 miles, but hopefully someday I'll do a 50 mile ride.

Cool Weather Crazies

Ugh, it's been crazy lately. In more ways than one.

It has finally made the transition to fall seemingly. I LOVE fall, except for the whole "leads to winter" thing. Days are a lot cooler. Which is what I'm blaming for the recent spastic nature of a certain roany paint pony...

Since I've been short on time and motivation, I've really enjoyed just hopping on Misty bareback for a ride in the field. But for some reason, this particular field just makes her all excited. I can ride her outside anywhere else and have a perfectly behaved pony, but for some reason this one gets her all uppity.

I thought the first time it was a fluke. I took her out bareback and she was walking along, a little tense, head up and looking around, but nothing indicating a looming explosion. Suddenly she reared up and spun around for absolutely no reason. Okay... Weird. I stayed on at least. We go back to our walk. And she does it again. And then again. Not okay.

I am so glad that even being out of shape for riding I still have some strong thighs and a sticky seat because I needed it all to stay on that night! She got worked quite hard and I decided that next time a saddle would come in handy.

Bad pony, pretty sunset.

Next time rolls around and I saddle her up and take her out. This time I was prepared for her shenanigans. She certainly wasn't as bad, but there were a few times she tried to give a head toss and be naughty for no reason and even once almost tried to bolt after I had her jump the ditch out there. Geez mare. Lots and lots of figure 8's and serpentines to get her to loosen up and pay attention to me. By the end of our ride she was being absolutely perfect, but I'm still not sure what gets into her when we're out there.

On the flipside, she's been an absolute angel in the arena. I've been having some really good dressage rides and I had one of the best rides to date on her over fences the other day. I was over the moon. One goal this month was to jump her once a week to prepare for the show and just get her going better (more on the show later) and I mostly stuck to that plan, save for one week.

She looks dwarfed by 3'

Anyways, this particular ride I just set up the barrels and a vertical. Warmed up at 2'6", bumped it up to 2'9" and finally finished it off at 3'. She was a little looky and wiggly towards it the first time at 3', but every single time after that she jumped it like a champ. No chip-in's or long spots, no knocking the rail or rubs, just perfect jumps. We jumped it a handful of times in both directions and it gave me a lot more confidence for the upcoming debut at Novice... Which didn't last by the way.

Poor neglected Jetta

MOAR JUMPING

More jumping! I really want to try and jump Misty at least once a week to both try and get her endurance up and also smooth out our skills.

Also, I have the show bug. I'm going to sign up for an eventing derby on September 21st and we're going to go Novice! Or at least try.

Today's jump school was not as smooth as last week. I guess that's what I get for not riding her on the flat for two days beforehand. She was quite spunky and exuberant with the flying changes and head tossing "look how awesome I am!" moments.

But, we nailed every flying change and she was good. I set up a line with a vertical one stride to a swedish oxer. We'd never done a swedish oxer before and she thought it was quite suspicious looking at first. After a brief snorty introduction, she was over it and jumped it fairly willingly. The toughest issue we had was her sucking back in approaching the oxer meaning that she had to put in two strides in the one stride. Our last attempt was absolutely perfect though with just one stride, no chips or long spots and no brushing the jumps either!

My good pony

Canter adjustability is something that has been quite the focus lately since she has... barely any. Now the trot adjustability we've finally gotten down. (Shh, it took us a whole year) but now that we're doing First Level work, we need a lengthened canter and while she can do the lengthening ok, the transition back to a working canter sucks.

Anywho, it was still a great ride. She is just such a fun little horse. After jumping the line one last time, I asked for a flying change to the left lead, did a 20 meter circle and came across the center for another flying change and finished with one last circle. LOVE having flying changes.

Finally Jumping Again

Yesterday was a great, productive ride. I finally got up the motivation to have an actual jump school on Misty because so many people have been wanting jumping videos. I've jumped twice maybe in the past month or two and they were just hopping over one little jump, not actually doing a course (albeit a small one).

You know you haven't jumped in too long when you set a course at 2'6" only to measure it and discover that it's only 2'. Wow. 

I set up a three stride line, a singe oxer and some barrels across the centerline on a diagonal. Misty was just so good. Not anywhere close to perfect, but I'll take it for what little time we've spent jumping.

We hopped around the course at 2'3" after a brief warm-up and stroll past all the jumps. She was great, save for a bit sassy. She gets so proud of herself she just has to toss her head a bit!



I bumped the jumps up to 2'6" and ran through it a few more times. And we had two refusals. She was being naughty! She ran out on the barrels the first time through, then the second time through she ran out on the second jump in the combination. She has NEVER run out on a jump. Refused yes, but usually it's a gradual rolling stop that I can feel coming from a mile away (just fail to prevent somehow). It wasn't a dirty refusal, I could feel it coming, but by then it was too late to fix.

I decided that the picket fence jump needed a ground line once it got raised up to 2'6" but, typical lazy me, I decided to just drag it over on Misty. Gosh this horse is awesome. (Apologies for the lack of video editing. I have neither the software nor the patience for it, so start at 0:15 and stop at 1:00)


The third time through however was great, but by this time she was getting tired. I ran through it once more just to make sure I had a good enough video. Of course, in the process I had a major brain fart and completely forgot the "course" I had decided on, so we had some fun squiggly work all over the place.





Lastly, I bumped the oxer up to 2'9" and jumped it a couple times for good measure. She didn't bat an eye and jumped it easily. What a good girl :)

Inavale One-Day Horse Trial

I had SO MUCH FUN today. I'm still so in love with this horse and I really wish I didn't have to sell her :/

In true worst-prepared-horse-show-person ever I didn't get to ride or bathe or load or clean any of my tack the day before the show. I had the best intentions, but ended up in urgent care to get an inhaler to deal with my asthma that has returned after almost 10 years of being gone... Needing to breathe is definitely high on my list of priorities though.

Got to the barn at 9am and quickly hooked up the trailer, lunged Misty and gave her a quick bath. Shoved everything I needed in the trailer and loaded up. Got to the show at 10:20 and my ride was at 11:10. I was completely calm and collected while checking in until a friend commented "You sure are calm for having only 30 minutes to tack up and warm up. You're not even dressed!" Thank you for that, cue panic attack. Misty got braided, tacked and I got dressed and memorized my test in time for a 15 minute warm up. Not ideal, but we could work with it. Only to find that they were running 20 minutes behind. Perfect! We really needed that extra warm up time. Misty was great in dealing with the craziness, but she was really not wanting to bend right or take consistent contact.

The test went ok, not great. I don't think Misty was too sure about the grass footing and it was rather uneven so we didn't maintain that great of a tempo and she was really behind my leg the whole time. I felt the judging was accurate but wish the judge gave a little more comments, though I can't blame them for not because that takes too much time when you're running behind! Mostly 7's, a few 8's and 6's. Comments mostly consisted of "inconsistent tempo" or "inconsistent contact". It landed us a fairly respectable 31.5 and 4th place.

Of course, it wouldn't be a horse show without something unexpected. The seam in my breeches, right at the crotch, split open just before I went in to ride my test. Lovely. I would love to share my brightly colored underwear with the world. Luckily there were lots of pony club moms around so I asked one if she had a needle and thread. She did! PM (who also took all the amazing photos of us) stitched it right up for me, since of course I did not have a spare pair of breeches to wear.

Additionally, I was "that person" again. Misty decided to untie herself and go for a little stroll when I went up to see the cross country course. Sigh. I really need to hurry up and buy a single cross tie so that I can snap her in and she can't untie herself. 

Stadium was what I was most worried about since we've never jumped these bright decorative jumps. Make that, "we've only ever jumped a grand total of 6 times before this show". I needn't have worried though. It wasn't pretty (my stadium round at a horse trial never is... I can do a respectable and well put together hunter or jumper round, but for some reason the stadium round at a horse trial just gets me all frazzled) but Misty didn't refuse anything or pull any rails. She definitely sucked back and asked a few times, "Are you absolutely sure we need to jump this?" But she was great and I couldn't have been happier. Need to work on straightness for sure (well, plus I need to actually ride well), but all she really needs is just some more miles over fences!

After stadium I was super excited for cross country. We'd jumped everything that was on the course before and it was a nice, easy-to-remember course, nothing too scary. The only jump I was nervous for was the very last blue barn. Anyways, she was fantastic and I was smiling the whole time. She never even tried to refuse anything and the only issue we had was sucking back at the combination and the baby trakehner (they added some brush underneath it so that was "new") and the blue barn was a little scary, but you can see that in the pictures.


It was great, there was a single turkey on course just before we left the box. It popped out of the trees as we went along the back fence and Misty stared intensely at it when it ran right in front of us then flew away. She was a rock star though! I know Jetta probably would have done a spook/blot/spin at that moment, but Misty just kept trucking on to jump the roll top!

Trolls live under this jump!

Oww. Poor pony

The blue barn jump... My fault on that one. I was nervous about it so of course I didn't ride it very well. A) I stared at it. Always helpful when convincing your horse that trolls do not in fact live beneath it. B) I crunched up instead of sitting up tall. Also not helpful. C) Kind of combined with B, but she was just too strung out, I was just intent on setting a nice forward pace to the jump, but I should have sat up and collected her a tad and got her more uphill and bouncy. She got way too close to the jump and didn't have enough room to bring her back feet up over the jump so she just kind of dragged them over. Poor pony. She had three little shallow scrapes along her hind legs and I'm sure she's going to be sore. She trotted sound, but she's going to get at least a couple days off.

The result? Second place out of 12! How fantastic is that? I am so proud of my little roany paint pony :)