Until...Spring Training Awesomeness!

Or at least it will be awesome if I can get my mess together...

I'm sure that you regularly study our posted calendar in the sidebar and, while doing so, have noticed our upcoming "Spring Training Surprise."  While making notes of our plans in your diary (right??), you surely have been dying of curiosity.

Rest easy, for the time of knowing is here.

Solo is skeptical of Becky's body demo...

The Most Excellent Mother has given us an amazing opportunity as a gift:  those ten magical days you see delineated will be spent by Encore and I with none other than  She Who We Worship And Stalk At Our Events, Becky Holder.  I only got to spend two days with her at a long format clinic after WEG late in 2010, but she did wonderful things for Solo.  It was a pipe dream of mine to take Encore to her, but thanks to this generosity, it is looking very very real very very soon!

Plans (oh, apparently I have not yet learned to not make these) are for Encore to stay at the lovely Southern Eighths Farm, where we cliniced with Becky previously, and then I will trailer him a short distance up the road to Becky's winter farm for our lessons.  Gunnar Ostergaard, the dressage trainer who has taught Becky to be arguably the best dressage rider in our sport, will also be teaching there for two days during our stay.  I opted to audit any lessons he will be giving, as riding with him ranked somewhere in the stratosphere, price-wise, but I think this works out well, as it offers Encore at least a day off in the middle and a chance for me to sit and absorb and process.

Becky and Scrappy, the cutest eventing dog evah!

Horsewise, the big brown charmer got prepped by Dr. Bob yesterday; his back is doing well, his hips and hindquarters have healed their injury and are doing much better, and his teeth, which were working on some hooks, are repaired to a normal, non-poky state.  I hope to be able to strengthen him some more before we go IF IT WILL EVER STOP RAINING, sigh.

Personwise, wellllll, that might be a bit harder.  It's all a big hot mess and my PT has his work cut out for him.  I gave him his deadline upon which the knee must be ready or not, but apparently no one told said knee, who decided to implode painfully on us last week, setting me back to simple range-of-motion work.  Hopefully, when I return there Friday, we will be able to get back on track -- I still can't quite get up to my XC stirrup length, but I only have one hole to go.  

Don't ever tear up your moving bits:  PT informs me that going into ANY joint generally means a year to really, truly recover, even though you may not be in therapy for that long.  With a giant cartilage tear, well, that's not coming back but that's why they invented ice and Advil, eh?  Good thing this is all free.  Oh wait, it's not.  Good thing I like noodles!

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Camp David 2013

Almost exactly a year ago, Encore and I went down to SoPines for two days of my invented Personal David Clinic.  Five days from now:  Camp David II.

In a whole year, we have...ummm...tried really hard? 

Encore came out well in the spring, hopped up to Novice, and was going strong over the summer.  August gave us the lovely gift of a pulled SI ligament.  That it took his dense owner two months to figure out.  November rolled around and I was in the OR, getting my knee innards sandblasted, effectively putting me on the curb for about two months.  Meaning I could only provide my muscle-y young horse with hotwalker and longe line sessions and an occasional ride from a friend.

It could have been worse.  Had I gotten my originally intended surgery, I would still not even be able to fully bend my knee at this point, much less walk around fairly freely.  So I was able to start actually Riding Properly in mid-January.  It was still enough time for Encore to lose a lot of that sexy muscle I worked so hard for. 

It feels like I've been back on longer, until I realized that we have not had any type of jump school until our light XC session at a local farm last weekend.  Doing the math, I've only been back in the saddle with focus for maybe four weeks?  So I am excited that Encore is strong enough now to actually step up into the canter again without running on his forehand and jumping evenly and roundly (and regularly saving his rider's rusty butt) once more.

We've lost a lot of time, but we had a dressage lesson Saturday and good (first since October!) stadium school today.  Even better, after spending the winter reading and thinking and watching and thinking some more about straightness and engagement and contact and all the other enigmatic processes of correct riding, I am riding better.  Encore was softer last summer, but he wasn't really connected because despite all the knowledge and years in my head, my body didn't get it until it got it.  Connection and straightness FIRST, then soften.

Yes, yes, we all know.  But do we really REALLY do it?  I wasn't.

Why the training pressure now, you ask?

Because we only have four weeks left until.....

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Forbidden Love

My schedule is impossible.  Every time I think I get Encore back in a flow, there's some other appointment or meeting I must attend.  Stupid life.

So instead, let's visit Imaginary Land.  There, I have endless time and I build card towers out my $100 bills because I have soooo many extras.

Someone else visits Imaginary Land too.  Meet Roxy (she's the one that makes you go OMG SQUEEE!!!!).

About one month old this past July

Roxy was a 'surprise' baby.  A fellow boarder purchased her dam, a TWH mare, late this past spring as a pleasure horse under the assumption she was just buying a normal horse.  Three weeks later, Roxy fell out.  Surprise.

Roxy has, I believe, been given to the BO as a companion for a SSH (Spotted Saddle Horse, or to me, a paint TWH) filly he bred who is only a month older.  He will keep her until they (now best of friends) are about 2.5 years old, at which point he will start his filly and sell Roxy.

Cool story, bro.  Right?

This is where Imaginary Me enters.  See, I've been watching Roxy.  She's at the ugly seven-month-old-yak stage right now, but this summer -- well, you know how they say you see what a young horse will be at 3 days, 3 months, and 3 years?  I saw.  And I WANT.

What the heck are you going to do with a Walking Horse filly? you ask, quite sensibly.  For the sellers of her dam don't know who the sire is, yet "swear" that he was also a purebred TWH.  You don't even want a mare within ten feet of you!  This is true.

Well, if Roxy is a purebred TWH, then I am the second coming of Tinkerbell.  Because even as an ugly yak, this is how she moves (the painted filly is her BFF, Callie):



Why yes, that is a perfectly balanced canter that takes almost no effort to envision circling a course of 5' jumps!  With a lovely trot with just enough suspension to not be overkill.  At 3 months old, she was a dead ringer for an Oldenburg, with a broad chest, straight, well-boned legs, and skeletal structure that is pretty close to perfect.  She has never gaited a day of her life.  She is also very intelligent and will be a brave, but sensitive horse.  Even Encore is in love with her; the filly pasture is across the lane from my pasture and he hangs out near them when Solo is out and always stops to say hello when we ride by the fenceline, where Roxy does that adorable baby mouth thing (I need to upload that video).

BO has even offered to give Roxy to me.  Cruel and unusual torture.  Yes, she is a girl, by which I am pretty much never tempted.  But she has the look.  That look in her eye which made my decision for me when I met Solo and Encore both.  That look which says if you want, I could be your partner and we could be great together.  OMG$#*$&#^!

Sadly, I am unable to find a bridge between Imaginary Land and Reality, so I am forced to tell BO I will be happy to take her...the day she starts pooping money.  He has given me free rein to go in the pasture and play with her, although for now, her dam's owner spends a little time getting her used to being touched and handled and both Roxy and her BFF are friendly and inquisitive.  Maybe when she is a little older, in my Imaginary Free Time, I can teach her some round pen work and ground driving and hope that someone in the sport horse world discovers her because someday, she will be amazing.

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I Have No Words

So you'll just have to read it yourself.

You see, we have been busy.  Physical therapy is momentarily taking over my life, but I've been doing my best to squeeze in Encore wherever and whenever we can build strength. 

Although the dork went and kicked himself in the front fetlock sometime yesterday, so that was nice and hot and swollen, sigh.  Please be just a knock, please be just a knock, please be just a knock....

It's been a bit of an opportunity to reboot things, though, and one that I've found has offered a chance to elevate the sophistication of our training.  The details are very, very difficult to elucidate, so much of it is feel and reaction and less contact and more contact and energy direction and waiting and very careful thought.  The basics are the same simple paradigms of correct training:  ride the back end of the horse and ride the horse straight.  But as we all know, there is NOTHING simple about that and as George Morris quite correctly stated in his training session this year, it only takes about 30 years to learn how to do it.

Thus, probably disappointingly, I give you my reading material of late, which has led to just a few tiny adjustments which in turn caused a big change in my horse, letting go of the tension, saying goodbye to wrestling, and although it requires MUCH more patience, is creating a much more solid foundation this time around.

Via arr.de -- which is also well worth reading.

Watch Deb Bennett's lectures, selectable from the sidebar.  Yes, they are a bit over-wordy, I confess to skipping through sections, as they could have been reduced to about 30 minutes and still been effective.  And of course, watch George and Anne teach, especially when riding -- I still learn every year, new skills and new layers to add to my toolbox.

Read the three articles in the right sidebar.  The biomechanics of straightness and the freedom it gives your horse, with some excellent mental images for your contact, really resonated with me for some reason.

A large part of what I've taken away thus far is that I need to do MORE engaging of the inside hind through lateral exercises as THIS is what creates straightness and impulsion in my horse.  I was rarely able to truly engage Solo over his back successfully; now I can and think I am finally on the track as to why.

Wow, life would be simpler if I just had money to buy lessons every week.  But then, I wonder if I would really dig as deeply if I did. 

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Night Rider

Bow before my cuteness!

This guy.  Me.  Twilight (sparkliness- and self-esteemless-whiny-girl-free, thank you).  Bareback.  Quilted quarter sheet wrapped around my legs.  Bliss.

Everything seemed so easy.  Every part of my body responded instantly to every part of his, correcting, flexing, straightening, suppling.  We just did a short session of transition work in the grass to build strength, but he was so happy and eager and ready and he felt so good!

I think back to the years I spent training, arguing, yelling in frustration, begging, the whole year I was afraid to canter him because it would only spiral into an unholy mess of gallop (I don't do bolters).  To the bottomless rage that caught in my throat as we left dressage arenas and skulked back to the trailer where I wondered why he wouldn't just cooperate.

Now, I get on and he is poised and waiting at attention for anything I ask.  I am undoubtedly a better rider (thank you, Encore) which I am sure Solo greatly appreciates.  This horse who drove me to fury (immersed in love though it was) is now soft and receptive at the end of my reins and I just...enjoy.  I know him down to his very blood cells, literally, and he gave his whole soul to me and reads my mind; there are no words which encapsulate the kind of gratitude and happiness that filled the cold air tonight. 

Thank you, buddy.

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