Foothills of the Cascades Ride Part 1

Wow, what an awesome weekend!

I still can't believe how everything just came together so perfectly.

After class on Friday I headed out. No address was provided, just some vague instructions to get off the interstate, go to Mollala then follow the signs to the ride. Hm. I called one of the ride managers and managed to get a little bit clearer instructions then after everything was loaded in the trailer, we set off!

It took a lot longer than I thought. Mapquest said it would take an hour to get to Mollala, but being that the ride was out of town in the middle of nowhere added an extra 45 minutes. Got there before the sun set and managed to squeeze my trailer in with enough room to set up a corral.

All settled for the night!

I signed up for the ride and got Jetta vet checked. She was quite good for the vet - she stood nicely for him to look in her mouth (she HATES having that done) and even lifted up all her feet without threatening to kick. Always a good thing right? All A's on our card!

I got everything set up for Jetta overnight. It was a bit of a challenge setting up the corral with just one person but I did it. I brought her slow feeder and stuffed it with hay. I also brought a big muck bucket to use as water and I filled it from the water tank in the trailer. I think she appreciated having water from home.

Sunset in ride camp

I slept in the bed of my truck. I have the camper shell on so it was nice and cozy. Except for me worrying about bugs. I cleaned out the back of the truck and found so many bugs. Ew. So I slept with a blanket over my face just in case... I actually slept pretty well. It was a lot warmer than I thought it would be. I was able to watch the stars before I went to bed and even saw some shooting stars! I woke up at 3am and saw Jetta standing and apparently staring directly at me. Kind of creepy. I briefly thought that she must be out of hay and that I should go refill her but decided on more sleep. She'd be fine for another 3 hours.

Morning view!

At 6 am, the truck I parked next to loudly roared to life and turned on their generator meaning I about jumped out of my skin/sleeping bag ready for whatever was coming. Only to realize that everything was fine and I could take my time getting out of my cozy bed!

Despite the ride manager's assurances that 6am is when it got light out, it was definitely still pitch black. Well, as dark as it got since the full moon was super bright. Got ready in the dark, even managing to put all of Jetta's boots on while she ate her breakfast. Her easyboots fit! I had been so worried about that overnight, but they fit perfectly and actually weren't all that hard to put on like I had been led to believe. I managed to eat a tiny bit of breakfast myself and loaded up the saddlebags. 7:15 am was the start time for the LD riders. The big main group left right at that time but I left a few minutes after just to give them some space.

Watching everyone get ready was interesting. I would say about half of us had fire breathing dragons on our hands, though I must say Jetta was a much "smaller" dragon than most of them... lots of them were rearing and bolting! Jetta was just very forward.

We started out on the blue ribbon loop that was 10 miles. Jetta was so amped up. Her thought process: "I am a thoroughbred race horse! I must beat all the other horses! I must gallop!" She was disappointed to find that we were NOT going to gallop and instead she must maintain some sort of rational horse trot. Which she did not. When she's super excited and trotting fast her trot gets sort of lateral. I swear she thinks she's part Standardbred. I wouldn't be surprised if she started pacing.

Around 45 minutes in we were finally able to have a four-beat walk rather than a jig and by an hour and 15 minutes we had a semblance of control in all the gaits. For the most part of this loop we had that "sweet spot" where we were in between riders but couldn't see the ones in front or behind us, it was just us. It was really nice. And the scenery was gorgeous! I couldn't get over what a perfect day it was. The sun was bright, it wasn't very cold, the fall leaves were pretty and the trails were awesome. We even passed a waterfall!

I was feeling good when we rolled into camp for our first vet check. We were right around our normal time of an hour and 40 minutes for 10 miles, actually we were 10 minutes fast probably due to her behavior at the beginning. She pulsed in at 80 which worried me. She usually comes in right at 60 so I think it was due to her being so amped up at the start. Spent a while trying to get her to drink (she wouldn't). I sponged off her neck/jugular area and fed her an apple, loosened her girth. She finally dropped to 48 and we did our vet check. She got A's on everything but jugular refill. I need to research what affects refill times, but I think it's because she didn't drink?

Had a 30 minute hold and then we were off on the trails again! This time for the orange loop. It was kind of hard mentally switching from looking for one color of ribbon to the next. I decided to be a little more conservative on this loop since a) she hadn't drank anything and b) I wasn't use to her pulsing in so high. The goal was to come in with her being dry and not sweaty.

Off the beaten path. I promise there's a trail in there somewhere...

To be continued...

Mostly Complete Update

Lots of little things all happening right now. School has been kicking my butt this week but I'm handling it. Unfortunately the ponies have gotten the short end of the stick through all of this. I rode Jetta on Monday. That was it.

But we had a really good ride. I think we're finally making progress!

So, the news (fair warning - no pictures and very wordy post!):

I finally found out how Misty and I did at the trail competition. At the last competition we got third in the Open division! Wow, I was surprised that we made it all the way up to Open! At the show before that one we were 4th I think in Amateur? Like I predicted though, there was no belt buckle :( Basically I had to get First in Amateur or Novice, but since I got First in Novice at the first show, that knocked me into the Amateur division so I wasn't eligible to win Novice. Bummer... I ended up with an overall score of third in Amateur. So close! The lady that won the Amateur division definitely deserved it though. She's a good friend that I've known through JF for years. An older lady with two horses who does natural horsemanship/classical dressage (albeit western) and takes her time with her horses. She did a very good job with her horse Champ, even doing some obstacles that no one else was able to complete! And she's been competing in the trail competitions for as long as they've been going on and has never won a buckle.... So I guess I can gracefully concede the victory to her, seeing as I have 5 horse belt buckles ;)

In other news, I finally got my new dressage show breeches! I've been hemming and hawing over what to get and then ultimately decided my budget ($150) wasn't large enough to allow a purchase of what I really wanted and I didn't want to spend money on something I didn't completely love. Along comes ebay... I've been searching forever for the "right pair" to come up cheap enough. I found a pair of Tropical Rider breeches with the deerskin full seat, that I really liked. Higher waisted than I would have preferred... but for $40 I was sold! And then they came and the zipper was missing... Uh, yeah. Not in the description. But a quick trip to get it altered to have a new zipper put in, voila! New-ish. The seat is slightly stained from the saddle making it look gray, which is totally fine for me since I like white breeches with gray seats.

Then, the even cooler purchase... While perusing ebay I found a pair of Dove gray FITS for sale. Oooh, gorgeous! I liked them so much better than the white. Instant love. But they were the wrong size so I decided that I'd save up and buy them for myself when I had the money. But still casually perusing ebay I found a pair. Dove gray. In my size. Brand new! And in my price range :) And I won! I got myself some brand new FITS for $90.

Can you tell I'm in love with ebay? Two pairs of awesome breeches for under my original budget for one pair of breeches. Score!

In other pony news, I've talked to both Jazz and Tux's new owners and they're both doing well! I love so much to hear about them. I miss them both so much.

Tux's owner (older lady) was retiring in the spring and with all of that preparation didn't have time to ride so he got the whole spring off and just hung out in the pasture. Which I'm totally sure was completely fine with him. I can only imagine how rotund he became ;) Then she fell and broke her wrist at the beginning of the summer. So obviously no riding. But once she was almost healed she sent him off to "school" with her sister, a dressage trainer, and he's now getting ridden 5 times a week, 3 of those being trainer rides and he's doing really well it sounds like! She was telling me all about how he's now going in a KK Sprenger snaffle (vs the Myler) and seems to like it better and it really starting to reach down and out for the bit. What a good pony. I really hope she gets him going well and maybe shows him. Or she offered to let me come stay with her in Washington for a long weekend and visit with him/take some lessons with her sister. Um, yes please!

Then with Jazz I talked to the mom of her little girl and it sounds like things are going perfectly and that they love her. I was stalking pictures and someone commented on a pic of Jazz that they wanted to come learn to ride and Jazz's owner was telling the person how amazing their daughter's horse is and that she's "trained to the nine's" and would be perfect for them to ride. Cue proud mom moment! Then the lady that won the trail competition that I commented about above? She went riding at Elijah Bristow park where Jazz lives close to and was talking to this random lady riding a black mare... And the lady was saying how her horse has done everything - trail competitions, etc. And my friend looked at the horse and said "Hm, is your horse's name Jazz??" And it was! So I have from a second source that Jazz is looking good :)

So happy. I always worry when I sell a horse.

And the most exciting of all exciting updates? ENDURANCE RIDE THIS SATURDAY. Gosh, I'm so excited! Everything just fell together absolutely perfectly. I wasn't going to do this ride even though at the beginning of the year I was definitely planning on it just because they're were other events this weekend so I decided to do those instead. But as it got closer, I decided screw it, I haven't gotten in my goal of doing an endurance ride this year and this is the second to last ride and it's PERFECT so let's do it! Of course I decided this about a week and a half ago... Queen of procrastination I tell you.

This meant that I needed to find some way to contain Jetta overnight at the ride since I don't have anything. I talked to JF whose hubby sells portable corrals to see if I could borrow a set. Score! I went and picked them up last night. Her hubby was helping me load them and asked what the event was. I told him I was going to try out endurance. He used to do endurance a long time ago. His comment "Well if I had known that these panels were for such a worthy cause!" He does just cow stuff now and I honestly can't imagine him doing endurance but it sounds like he really loved it. He still has one of his endurance Arabs, an old grumpy guy named Lone Star. He gave me a few tips and wished me luck!

Then about a week ago I was perusing the local endurance FB page and found a thread about trail conditions at the ride. The general consensus was that it was so rocky that you needed to either boot all around or shoe with pads all around. Geez. And guess what? I only have front boots. Crap. Frantic search for boots led to the discovery that no where local stocks easyboots in my size and my farrier only had boots that were too big or too small. Last minute I finally found a place that could order boots in and have them in by Friday for me to pick up. Win! I went and picked them up this afternoon. Let us pray that they fit well...

Now just to go to my last class of the day then gather up all the last minute randomness needed for this weekend! I CANNOT WAIT. I am just too excited right now!

Drowning in Physics

Gah, I feel like I'm drowning. In physics that is. Challenge homework, Mastering Physics homework, Recitation homework, Lab homework... It's not fun. All of this homework has made for very little pony time and even less for blogging time even though I've got several posts in the works.

Things coming up:

• Endurance ride this weekend? Still have to find some back boots for Jetta in order to ride, but I've wrangled up a portable corral. Time crunch for sure.
• Possibly a dressage show at the end of the month
• I've got some tack for sale that I've been meaning to post on the blog!
• Some good-ish/bad-ish news and some definitely good (well to me...) news. 

Speaking of physics, I was laying in bed thinking of the portable corral I'm borrowing. It has 5 ten-foot panels. Cue me, trying to figure out the diameter of the corral... Gah, definitely too much physics.  

Ponies' Got Hops

I had so much fun free jumping the beasts yesterday evening! I decided that I would free jump Misty because we'd never done it before, then I'd ride Jetta.

Note: There are pictures, but they are pictures of a still on my camera. I was too lazy to actually upload them to Youtube and/or put them on my computer and screenshot them. So very poor quality. But cool! Also, I couldn't take pics because somehow I forgot the batteries for my remote. Oops. So I had to do vids. 

I set up a 2' vertical, 2 strides, then a 2'6" X for her to jump. First challenge: getting her to go in the chute. She showed off her most fancy cowhorse/reining moves - sliding stops, spins and fast turns, all to avoid going in the chute. Finally I got her to jump over the first fence, then she hopped over the side which was taller (3') but apparently less scary than the X. After getting her to awkwardly go through a couple times and stuffing her with treats each time afterwards, she finally decided that it wasn't THAT awful, and she could potentially forgive my meanness for making her jump if I provided her with enough treats.

Cuteness!!

Once she felt more comfortable I upped it to 3'3" (I thought it was only 3' but afterwards I measured and found all of my estimations were way off!). She cleared it but it was a definite stretch for her. I think as a jumper pony 3'3" would probably be her max schooling height with 3' her comfortable show height, but hey, maybe once she builds more strength she could do more. I was super proud of her anyhow!

With all the time it took convincing her to jump, I didn't have as much time as I'd like to ride Jetta but she was looking so eager at the jumps so I stuck her in the arena, where she immediately started trotting around. I love how excited she is to jump :)

No bigs

I popped her over the 3'3" jump with no problem. She barely put in any effort. Easy peasy for her. So I bumped it up to what I thought was 3'6" (but it turns out was actually 4'3") and that was definitely more work, but still fairly easy for her. So I ran her over that a few times. That's the highest I'd ever free jumped her.

A little bit better effort

But on a whim, I decided to bump it up one more notch since she seemed game. It looked HUGE. I thought it was 4'6", maybe 4'9" but after measuring it after I put Jetta away, it turns out that it was ALMOST FIVE FOOT ONE INCH. Dang. I could never imagine jumping anything that big.

HOLY COW. I can't stop staring at this picture on my Instagram...

Jetta trotted in all lazily despite my insistence that she might want to have a bit more impulsion, but after sitting back and looking at it she launched and cleared it!!! Crazy. I was super excited. I gave her some pats and treats then put her away, thrilled. I just love this horse.

That hind end...

Where to Start

Second week of school is definitely kicking my butt. Tons of homework, the beginnings of a cold, very little time to ride... yuck.

Made it to the barn on Sunday, Misty was good but those transitions just aren't improving quite at the rate I was hoping. She just has such a hard time being in a dressage frame and doing the transitions using her hindquarters and back like she's supposed to. Western frame transitions? Yep, those have finally started to get really good. But having impulsion and being round and on the bit and doing transitions? That's HARD. Poor pony. We'll get there eventually.

I lunged Jetta Sunday and she was a wild child. Holy smokes. I was glad I opted to lunge before hand and with the way things were going I decided not to ride. I had pulled out trot poles beforehand and she was so hyper we almost couldn't hold it together enough to do even that. She sure did look purdy though!

Whee!

She finally settled enough to do the poles/cavalettis and we played around with making the distances shorter or longer (after of course she stopped superman-ing herself over them - "Look mom, I can clear all five poles in one leap!") then made them into canter poles. Overall, a good workout for the beast.

No ride on Monday. Monday's are officially my worst day of the week :(

Tuesday after work I headed out and rode Jetta. I figure since she's the one most intent on tearing down her stall due to lack of turnout I should ride her the most. She was lazy on the lunge which I wasn't expecting... and pretty much perfect in the saddle. She started out a little bit all over the place at the walk and trot but settled down into the perfect pace, wasn't hauling on the reins, etc. It was, dare-I-say nice. Finally!

Lazeeee pony

I also got in some two-point practice - 3 sets of three minutes. Though I think that last set I probably stopped at more like... 2 minutes. My legs hurt today, stairs are a definite no. Luckily all my classes today were on the bottom floor!

Content with our ride

Feel the Burn

If you haven't heard about L and Hillary's Two-Point Challenge (which I'm sure you have) you should join! Good motivation to work on my two-point/jumping position. I sadly have done basically all dressage/western for the past several months, so I'm a tad rusty.

I got my baseline yesterday on Jetta. Legs were burning and my back was killing me by the end. Definitely need to build up my strength! It just occurred to me today that I should do some two-point on Misty because it would be SO much easier. No arguing with Jetta about what speed we should be going or trying to convince her that yes, indeed we can trot and two-point at the same time without falling on the forehand. Geez mare.

With that said though, I had a great ride on Jetta yesterday which was perfect because it was my birthday! One of my old roommates from last year who graduated, flew up from California on Wednesday to celebrate with me and so she ended up coming out to the barn with me. I had no class (ok, well a recitation at 7pm) and no work! Amazing. I stuck her on Misty, gave her the "this is how you steer and go and stop" speech and set her loose while I rode Jetta.

They were kind of adorable together

It was adorable. Misty had the slowest. walk. ever. The stall cleaner even commented on how she'd never seen a horse walk slower. Every so often Misty would stop and SC would ask her to walk again. Then she'd stop. Then she'd walk again. It was pretty funny. I tried to get SC to trot but she wasn't up for it. At least I got her on a horse though!

We kept our ride short and sweet since I didn't want to bore SC to death. There's only so much entertainment to be had by walking a horse around an arena! But Jetta was good. Our transitions after our few rides with the kineton (I think I only used it 3 times before she had a fit and fell in it) are incredible. So soft and just "there" when I ask for them. She is in heat and is feeling a little sassy and sensitive which isn't completely unusual for her, but it hasn't happened in a LONG time. I'm wondering if perhaps it's because I took her off the raspberry leaves while she was on "break" or if it's just the typical "rough" ovulation that leads up to their anestrus winter period. We shall see. She pinned her ears a few times and canter transitions were a bit exuberant but otherwise no theatrics.

Hoping that our good rides continue!

October

October is finally here, my favorite month because it's my birthday month :)

But oh, the craziness! I think this is the least prepared I have ever been for the start of school. I just wasn't really that excited about it... I hadn't bought books... or new notebooks... or looked at my class syllabi... The night before class I threw a bunch of stuff in my backpack, printed off my class schedule and that was that!

So yeah, back to school. Not enthused about it. Nothing really that fun this term - two writing intensive courses, Ethics in Animal Science and Philosophy: World Religions, plus Physics. Yuck. At least the religions class should be very interesting!

Add in that I have officially, as of this morning, submitted all of my application material that I've been working on the whole summer to vet school (scary terrifying) and that I started a new job last week. Craziness!

My morning: favorite sweatshirt, cozy boots and winter breeches, some Dutch Bros for caffeine and my pony!

I felt like superwoman today getting everything done. I got up early and went to the barn and rode Jetta. Then I came home to find my email had been hacked and I was locked out. Way to ruin a perfectly wonderful morning. Then I went to work for 6 and a half hours. Got home, fixed my email (with multiple phone calls to the tech department, sigh), showered, went grocery shopping, made dinner (ok, well I microwaved it!), did laundry, did my physics and religions class homeworks, cleaned my room and I'm even writing a blog post (to be posted in the morning)!

I know most people probably do that much in a day, but when you're the laziest person in the world (aka: me) and you'd rather sleep in than wake up early or ride rather than get groceries/do laundry, this was quite the jam-packed day for me! I don't know how people do this on a regular basis, I'm exhausted, lol.

Jetta was a good pony this morning which was good. Yesterday, she was awful. She started out okay, a little heavy, but I didn't feel like I was holding her up and she gradually just got heavier, and heavier and heavier, despite how many transitions, half halts, circles or leg yields I did to get her off her forehand. It was frustrating to say the least. But she redeemed herself this morning.

Misty got to try out the new bit last night. We'll see how it goes in the next couple rides. Nothing was dramatically different, but I'd like to think I felt a difference between the Happy Mouth and the Myler. More on that later. I haven't ridden her dressage in a LONG time and it's amazing to feel how much she's improved since I first got her. Her canter is oodles better. It's always been fairly uphill with plenty of jump to it, but it's gotten rounder and more collected. Way easier to sit too since she's not all strung out and is now using her hind end! 20m circles are tons better too, as is halting straight. The main thing we need to work on is transitions. I ask really quietly... no response... a little bit louder of an ask and I get a "holy $%*& okay I'm transitioning!!!" with her head in the air, so we need to work on that!

Overall, progress is progress with both the girls and I'll take it. I'm looking forward to figuring out a routine and sticking to it so that I can ride everyday in addition to classes and work! We shall see how that works out, I forsee a lot of early morning and late night rides...