Setbacks and Moving Forward

So, Eventer79 totally beat me to this post today! I had planned all about what I was going to talk about, and then I take a visit to We are Flying Solo and find this post: Today's Horse Is Not Yesterday's Horse Is Not Tomorrow's Horse.

Well, at least she did a much better job at talking about this issue than I did! I'm not that eloquent of a writer, so she said it much better than I could have. Go read it :) I think the best quote from it was that: "The one thing you can count on is that [the process of training] will never proceed in a straightforward, linear fashion." This might count as one of my favoritest blog posts ever. Well, that and Badminton Babes, haha.

That is definitely a true statement as I'm sure all horse owners know. I had this experience with Jetta this past month. She was doing fantastic, I was working on slowing down her trot and getting longer, swinging strides. She was responding very nicely. Our canter was amazing, the kind where you don't want to stop. Then she had a couple tantrums, very bad tantrums. Only two and that was it. She bucked when I put my leg on her or did anything except sit lightly on her, she rushed, she dived on the bit. She was just plain bad. I poked and prodded her all over and she was fine. No soreness. She was fine after she had her tantrum, was fine on the lungeline with or without the saddle, it didn't matter if she was in her dressage or jumping saddle. Her baby brain just decided that she was having a bad day and she wanted me to know it too.

I felt like it set us back a whole month, maybe even more. After her tantrums she was no longer reactive to my leg, but instead rushed and didn't listen to half halts, didn't want to canter or if she did she ran into them and she was really heavy in my hands. So we took some time off. I was frustrated and knew we weren't getting anywhere so one day I just decided to put the jumping hackamore on and just not care what happened. The results were amazing. We spent about a week and a half just playing around with riding in the hackamore and then went back to the bit and are slowly building back up to where we once were.

It's definitely frustrating, but like eventer79 says, JUST. KEEP. BREATHING. And it's really nice to know that you're not alone! It happens to everyone eventually. Jetta is finally relearning that trotting is not a race and that she can connect lightly with me through the bit and canter transitions aren't really all that scary. It's a process, but that's what you get when you have horses, a never ending process of both the horse and rider continually learning and re-learning.



"I just know you're not talking about me, right?"



Jetta's awesome!

We had such a good ride yesterday! I thought she was going to be a brat based off of how she was for our lesson and the day before I just went for a trail ride in the sidepull.

Anyways, I decided to get a head start on my goal of improving our ground manners. I lunged her in the rope halter which I haven't done for a while. I've kind of stopped lunging her because it's hard with so many people in the arena and when I do lunge her, I just do it in the bridle because she is such a pain! She pulls and leans and nothing you do can make her cut it out. But she was awesome today! We needed a little reminder on cues, paying attention when I ask her to go and listening to voice cues when I want her to slow down. I put out the barrels and lunged her over them. Sometimes Jetta just has good and bad days with jumping. Her bad days she will run out and refuse the jumps, but not today! I love it when she pricks her ears and locks on the jump and goes for it. I set the barrels up to their full height, about 3 feet and she was pretty hilarious. She's getting a lot better about using her body but she still rockets herself over with her hind end and her front end gets all wonky. After seeing her jump the barrels I was a little nervous about jumping her in the saddle.

After having way too much fun making her jump on the lunge line I just hopped on and worked on lengthening and shortening our stride and using half halts to bring her bak to me. Then we jumped the barrels and she was great! I made her take a collected trot in and she didn't speed up or run out on the jumps and she moved away nicely after the jump and I was able to do a nice halt with her. So good! Then after that, we had a super nice stretchy trot going on. It takes her a while because at first she speeds up and will only stretch for a second but after she realized that she really can slow down and really stretch, she loves it.

So overall it was just a fantastic ride and I was really happy with it. It's so nice when I get a nice ride early in the morning because it just makes my whole day! I wish I had some pictures of her jumping to show how she's improving! Maybe I'll get ML to do some soon. We were talking about her giving me some pointers while I jump, that way she gets more experience instructing and I get someone to yell at me to get my shoulders back!

On a somewhat side note, I'm watching the recording of Rolex that my parents did for me on TV and I love watching it!!! So awesome. I love watching Mary King. How amazing it was to see her win, she just seems like an awesome person. Wow. Cross country was quite interesting. I heard about all the crashes but geez! I've never seen so many crashes and almost every single horse I watched brushed or hung a leg on multiple jumps and most people just look like they had a rough ride. I'm so jealous of all the 20-something riders hat competed, how lucky to be so young and competing at such a high level! Oh and don't you just love the commercials for Rolex? I just think they're so completely awesome :)



Mary King's well-deserved victory lap



Inspiration

This has to be my favoritest video of all time. I used to have it on VHS but I lent it to someone and they never gave it back :( I think I want to buy it again. How awesome would it be to be able to do half of this?! I love the guy riding the cute pony, jumping cross country-type jumps bareback and bridle-less. The closest I've gotten to that is jumping Jazz bareback in a rope halter over a baby jump of a barrel on its side. And that was super uncomfortable, I can't imagine doing what he is! Take a look and tell me what you think!

Parelli Discover the Secrets to Success with Horses
Tags: Parelli Discover the Secrets to Success with Horses

May Goals

Goals from last month:

1) Start putting together some coursework - two stride and three stride fences. Introduce some scarier fences (barrels and oxers).

I think I did pretty well at this. I lunged her over some barrels, but never actually got around to jumping them under saddle though. We did jump a baby oxer and do both two and three stride fences so now we just need to refine them.

2) Jumping Lesson

Well, does it count that I did get a lesson but it wasn't in April? Close enough, I finally got it done!

3)Go on a trail ride - possibly to Elijah Bristow or school cross country if weather permits

Didn't get to haul anywhere for a trail ride and it was still too wet for cross country though at one point I was riding on the trails behind the barn almost every single day!

4) Practice dressage tests

Did this! The whole point to practicing the test was to prepare for the show that was on the 1st of May, but I decided to scratch because I was also helping manage the show. I'm still super bummed :(

Ok, I need some new goals.

1) Go to a show!

There's at least three that I want to go to this month. One is a Thoroughbred Exhibitor show that sounds like a lot of fun. There's the University H/J Show, there's a dressage schooling show at a local barn, and a Foxhunt Derby. I'm definitely going to go to the Foxhunt Derby no matter what because it was a blast last year and I can't wait to do it again! I'm super bummed though that it looks like I won't be making the trip to Washington for the Hunter Pace and clinics. There's a showjumping clinic with Todd Trewin and a Steffen Peters clinic at the nearby Traumhof Farms that I really, really want to go to, but no one will go with me and today was the deadline for the Hunter Pace. Super bummed.

2) Continue to refine the trot-canter transition, and for that matter, all my transitions need work.

3) Work on the stretchy trot. Definitely a weak spot in our dressage.

4) Jumping - get some real solid work done. Don't just do, but make progress.

We need to refine our half halts so that we don't get this silly rushing and ducking out at the second jump. Once that feels better I really would like to jump some scary jumps and do some cross country.

5) Touch up on our ground work and manners on the ground.

Jetta is one of those horses that tests you all the time to try and see how much she can get away with. I've been a little lax about reinforcing boundaries and such, and if you give her an inch she'll take a mile, so I need to get on that!

Jumping Around

I got a lesson today! Finally! ML and I went over to a barn down the street (ok, it was about 15 minutes away) and had a lesson with BP.

I was pretty nervous because I haven't had a jumping lesson in forever and I didn't want Jetta to be an idiot.

I had three goals today: 1) Show that I am actually a competent rider, despite how my horse sometimes acts otherwise, 2) not have Jetta act up too terribly, and 3) actually get something to take home with me to help improve my riding at home.

I rode Jetta for quite a while last night. She didn't get ridden on Saturday or Sunday so she was pretty dang hyper. I'm still a little put out that I didn't ride in the show, it would have been a perfect day/place to show :( Anyways, it was an interesting ride. Jetta was quite explosive but we still got some good work done. I've been doing lots of leg yeilds and shoulders in to help acclimate her to my leg and not get these touchy canter transitions. Ugh. Anyways, our canter, while not as good as it was a few weeks ago, is slowly coming back up to normal. I have to have the perfect balance of just enough leg on her to keep her round, but not let her take off galloping. Mares...

Since I rode her so hard last night, I hoped she was going to be good for the lesson. I lunged her a lot beforehand to get some energy out. We found the barn fine, luckily, since the last time ML and I went someplace we didn't know we ended up getting insanely lost. The barn was very interesting. We were thinking about possibly getting on the waiting list to board there next year, but I don't know. There's two parts to the barn, so everything is divided in half. There's the arabian side and the sporthorse side. BP is buying out the arabian side, so I wonder if all the arabian boarders will stay there. Anyways, the arena is even divided in half. There's a half-wall running across the center of the arena. If there wasn't a wall, then the arena would be a pretty good size, but divided in half it's tiny. There's several medium sized paddocks, but I don't think they use them in the winter. There are a lot of horses there and many college-age and younger girls. ML made the comment, "I'm not sure I want to go through that again, so much drama!" Which is definitely true in most cases :) But one thing I really liked was that they have grooming stalls! I hate having to ask 3 people to unclip the cross ties and move over so that I can get to the arena. Might sound silly, but I want them, haha.

Ok, so the lesson. We warmed up on the flat and she had us do some interesting exercises, leg yields down the wall, shortening and lengthening their stride and counter-bending and using the outside leg to ask the shoulder to move over. She said this was to teach the horses to use their whole body and get their hind end working under themself. Then we started the real work, starting with ground poles, then X's and then verticals. Jetta was a brat and kept trying to rush and kept running out on the second fence, grr. Eventually she was doing better, but geez, what a workout! I'm going to be a little sore tomorrow. Now I know that I really need to step up my game on teaching her to respond better to half-halts. I think I'd like to go back and take some more lessons, but we'll see. At least I finally achieved my goal of taking a jumping lesson!

Exhausted!

Well yesterday was certainly very interesting.

Me and my roomy woke up at 6am to get out to the barn where we were holding the show at 6:30. We set up all the concessions and show office and fixed up the arena a bit.

People started arriving at 7 and everyone was getting checked in. We started right on time at 8:00 with the intro classes. I started out doing concessions, but was soon relegated to the task of helping park trailers, which in my opinion was completely unnecessary and very boring. Somebody had already gotten stuck before I got down there in the mud that was very obvious to see and had a makeshift fence around it (just step-in posts to show the muddy areas) but they very clearly thought that they could drive through it. And they didn't have 4-wheel drive. Sigh, the guy driving was not at all pleased, but hey, I wasn't the one driving! Eventually he was able to back out and we didn't need the tractor to get him out. After that, it was very, very clear that you should not try to drive in that part of the field. Also, most people arrived early so there was only about 1 trailer coming every hour or two.

Eventually I convinced someone to change jobs with me and I scribed for the judge. It was so much fun! It was also really, really nerve racking trying to write all the comments plus the scores and not mess up, but I got it down really quickly and only made a couple mistakes. I enjoyed scribing because I got to see what they judge thought of them and got a better feel for what she really thought. Her side comments were kinda funny sometimes.

I scribed for a couple hours then switched again, but I refused to go sit at the end of the driveway because there weren't any trailers coming, instead I just kind of walked around and helped everyone who needed it. Then I went back to scribing for the rest of the show. I think I probably scribed for about 9 hours total. But is wasn't that bad.

By lunchtime we were an hour behind schedule. Yikes. I didn't feel too bad, because hey, it's a horse show and they are so very rarely on schedule. But then we got more, and more, and more behind. All in all, we finished three hours behind schedule. I felt really bad, but it wasn't something that could have been fixed in the way we managed the show. The girl that did the scheduling for ride times gave each ride 5 minutes which was definitely not enough. We used the large dressage court (well, really it's the standard size) so some tests took 5 and a half minutes, not including disobediences, errors and the judge writing comments. The ride times should have been 7-8 minutes, but at least now we know and I can tell you that we will never make that mistake again!

I was so glad that the weather was nice! While we did make a big mistake with the ride times, everything else seemed to go right. It was warm and sunny but not too hot, we had awesome prizes, no one fell off or got hurt, no one had to be unstuck with the tractor, no loose horses, we made our money back with the concessions. Pretty good! Scribing was super fun, I like riding for this judge because she's generous and reasonable with scores, she takes into account the surroundings (for example a horse got turned out during someone's test and it ran around and bucked causing the horse to stop dead still and stare. They were allowed to re-ride the movement), and she puts very detailed and helpful comments down. It was cool to see "behind the scenes".

We ended up finishing at 9:00pm (instead of our scheduled 6:00pm) and headed home! Luckily the barn owners are letting us come take everything down today so we didn't end up being there till midnight!

While we did have 5 (I think) people scratch at the end because it was so late, there weren't many people that were ticked off. One person earlier in the day was pretty rude, we had tried to accommodate her by scheduling her early in the day right after lunch, she was riding 3rd level, and we were an hour behind schedule and she was mad. I would hate to think of how upset she would have been if she had to ride at 8:00 at night in the dark (though luckily, the outdoor arena had lights!). One of the owners of a horse that had gotten ridden by a trainer at the end of the show was so nice, she came up and told us all that it was a great show and that we did a good job. It made the whole day, all 15 hours of it, worth it!

Panicking

I'm done with the 30 Day Challenge! I can talk about what's actually happening! There's been a ton of stuff happening, but we'll just start with the most important.

Today the university dressage team is running a show! So nerve-racking! Add that plus the fact that there's two of us basically coordinating everything and only a handful of club members actually participating to run the show and it's going to be a little bit crazy. Oh and the fact that we've got some major drama queen action going on. Oh how I hate drama. I try to avoid it at all costs.

I was going to ride Jetta, but since we have so few club members and so many riders, I just can't. It's nerve racking enough riding a horse, but add managing the show to that and you've got an almost full-blown panic session going on. Luckily after deciding not to ride and getting everything set up last night, I feel a lot better.



Oh and can I mention how ridiculously hard it is to set up a dressage arena? Especially
when the actual arena is a tad bit smaller than it's supposed to be in order to fit the ring.
And it's crooked.

We have 110 tests being ridden with 50 riders, some even coming from Washington! I'm excited, but I just hope everything runs smoothly and drama doesn't get in the way. Wish us luck!