A-Trialin' We Will Go

So tomorrow morning we will pack up and ship out for our big event.

Ride times are up!
Dressage: 11:24 am
Stadium: 12:54 pm
XC: 1:09 pm

The plan is to arrive down at CHP (Carolina Horse Park) Saturday afternoon, give the horses a nice ride, stable up, sleep, then get up Sunday and compete. Of COURSE, it's supposed to be just gorgeous tomorrow. And rainy and cold on Sunday. Yay.

I decided four days in a row of dressage might very well fry Solo's brain, so since we had a nice school last night, I just put the jump saddle on and decided to stay light. We did some walk/trot warmup, a little work on leg yielding out and some quasi-shoulder-ins. Then I sat down, collected from the core and I'll be if Solo didn't give me a much better canter transition. Don't get me wrong, we won't be bringing home any 8's on that one, but even though he couldn't stay round, it was soft and he stepped under himself. I just got off his back, did a few canter poles till he fit them into his stride nicely and called it quits with a pat. I hope to be able to just let him hack around tomorrow and then have him primed for Sunday.

I don't like to work a horse the day before show. I think it irritates Solo to be over-schooled and I prefer to let him relax in mind and body with a trail ride or hack so he is bright and fresh and happy come show day. I figure he's not going to learn much the day before and I will probably try too hard in some mis-guided attempt to take my horse from Beginner Novice to Prelim dressage in one ride and the tension will only do us in. I do just fine doing myself in at the show itself, I don't really need any further contributions to that!!!

So cross your hooves, do a "no rain" dance for us, and think round, bendy thoughts!

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Hairy Adventures

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm ALL about low-maintenance.  I don't want to have to get up three hours early before a show to spend bleary-eyed time detangling hair or somesuch nonsense.  I want to take the horse off the trailer, slap my tack on & be ready to go.

I am also not one of the Hair Nazis.   You know, the ones who swoon every time you bang a tail or, horrors, brush it out.  Yeah, I know you can hear me, Hunter Princesses.  ;P 

I have startling news for you, Hair Nazis, you may want to sit down for the revelation -- IT'S HAIR. IT GROWS BACK.  In fact, if your horse is on a good hoof supplement, it grows back rather quickly.

So.  I will colour you not surprised when I tell you that I decided to try giving Solo a true eventer tail.

I've always liked the look -- a clean line down the tail bone, defining the hindquarters and giving a neat, braided look without actually braiding (which I recently learned from a dressage judge was a no-no in eventing; a tail braid makes your horse's back look stiff & can cost you points both in the dressage ring & in stadium, where stiffly braided tails have been observed to cost rails pulled by trailing back feet). I recruited our lovely BO as I saw that her TB had a grown out version.

Before (the ends just touch the ground, but the top is always shaggy with 500 different lengths due to Mr. I Love To Scratch My Butt):





And after, BO's handiwork (you have to take off a LOT of hair):





So far, I rather like it.   Standing right next to it looks a bit weird as I am not used to it.  But when I take three steps back, it looks really nice & provides instant finesse back there.  If Solo hadn't decided to be a bum & cock his hip, you could see the nice banged end just above the fetlock.

I should get video of our dressage test on Sunday, so I am excited to see how it looks under saddle!

In riding news, we've not been able to do much the past fews days due to my busy schedule.  We did get some nice jump work in on Sunday -- I finally successfully built a gymnastic line & we worked through that, then did a few of the regular jumps.

I tried out the great tip P gave us in our lesson on Sat: being taught to jump from a two-point position makes one prone to jumping up the neck.  I think all of us who have ridden in the hunters can attest to this fact!  It's something I've really been struggling with a lot lately too, grrr. 

When approaching the jump, just before take off, just think of shoving your butt towards the cantle & feet out in front of you like landing gear.

I gave it a whirl.  On each approach, my thoughts went, Lift the poll, wrap your legs, shoulders back, soften, LANDING GEAR DOWN, as we counted down the strides.   It totally freaking worked!!  I stayed back in the air, my legs stayed underneath & on my horse & I landed with my foot beneath me. Yahoo!!!

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Collecting Thoughts...And Strides

In celebration of the end of the Nor'Easter From Hell, I decided to strip down the horse bay of the trailer and clean it. Which always includes the fun task of dragging out 300-lb trailer mats. Hullo, where are those "space-age" materials??? In the process, I discovered my trailer tires have given up the ghost. One, in a fit of sheer irony, has a horseshoe nail jammed into it and was completely flat. The two on the opposite side had ominous looking cracks through the sidewalls that I could all too easily envision blowing out under my horse at sixty miles an hour. No worries, I'll just gather up the spare sacks of money I have sitting around and buy a new set of tires. *sigh*

In happier news, the sun came out for our afternoon lesson (during which I was mentally worshipping our BO for having perfect all-weather footing so the ring was just dandy despite aforementioned Nor'Easter). The first part of the lesson, I mostly spent in extreme annoyance as Solo was fixated on keeping the Insolent Hussy (aka Pony Lover) in sight. But we stepped up the workload and he came back to focus. We started introducing very deliberate half halts, much more exaggerated than you would normally do, but as P explained, you can't really expect your horse to obey a half halt if you don't first teach him what one is! Then--and this was really exciting--we practiced getting a few steps of collection at the sitting trot using seat! It was cool!

I had expressed to P my dissatisfaction over our canter departs and that I wasn't sure of the best way to approach them in training. She said, as I should have expected, "Don't work on them. The canter depart comes from being able to control the stride within the trot. Learn changes within the gait at the trot and from this will spring a lovely canter depart." And we did a couple canter departures using the collected trot stride. And it was an improvement!

Oh.  So, it looks like schooling will consist of lots more work on the sitting trot, so you will see us shifting back and forth...collected-working-collected-working...and then, hopefully, someday a beautiful canter depart will magically appear!

And as promised, a picture of the Insolent Hussy (who is soon to leave the farm, hurrah!) looking oh-so-innocent at moonrise:

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An Update About Nothing

It's wet. It's cold. It's windy. It's raining. We've gotten somewhere around 5 or 6 inches of rain at least in the last 24 hours. Perfect riding weather. :-\

In good news, since yesterday was a holiday, I got to meet the farrier around lunchtime and we got Solo's fancy new shoes on. So now, pads are gone and he has shiny aluminum wedges up front (pictures to come). I quite like the look of them, and best of all, no frog covering! Solo was a bit surprised walking back to his stall and about tripped over himself, not quite expecting his feet to be so light. I told the farrier that I now expect a guarantee that my horse will jump higher and snap his knees up like a Grand Prix stallion. We are counting down to our big Horse Trial coming up on the 22nd.

I pondered riding across the road to the indoor arena tonight. I am not entirely feeling the motivation though. But I've used up most of my busy work--I put Solo's tail up in its winter tail wrap of eye-burningly bright royal blue Lycra (because all horses need metrosexual accessories!). His mohawk is trimmed, wounds are dressed. I suppose I could clean my tack. Or not.

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Taking Stock

So, I'm pretty much caught up to the present. Finally! I've glossed over a lot, much of it I'm sure I'll come back to, what with my talent for repeating myself and all. Here's where we stand:

Yup, that's my little red speck to the left of the tree.

(1) Home: Solo is mostly settled in at the new farm. To my delight, he is back on pasture board, but with a big safe stall of his own for eating and severe weather. The rest of the time, he is out and about, keeping joints and intestines healthy and mobile.

To my not-so-delight, he is in mad crazy love with a little grey pony mare who is in insane heat. Praise be to the heavens, they will be forced to break up in two days when we rearrange the pastures and Solo will be back in an all-boy group, having proved his untrustworthiness around mares. I can't even catch him now and my sane, lovely horse is now a maddening wild stallion, herding "his" mare carefully away from all other people and horses. I might stab him with a blunt object.  Must...have... restraint...till...Wednesday. But the facility is lovely and BO and co-boarders are gems.


(2) Feet: I talked a little bit about foot problems here. Solo did great barefoot for a while, but EX-farrier managed to completely get rid of his poor heels, at which point farrier was fired. So we had to go back to shoes. They are on all four for now. The fronts are in wedge pads too, til the heels grow back, but the pads are trapping too much moisture and causing frog sensitivity so this week, we are switching to aluminum wedges and pads BE GONE, hurrah!




(3) Tack: Saddles fit, I am trying ANOTHER new bit for dressage -- he liked the happy mouth double-jointed Boucher, but I still felt like things could be better. Am borrowing a KK ultra French mouth loose ring (so happy I found one in BO's bit collection because I can't afford to buy that!) and so far, like it even more. He is STAYING on the bit at the trot and that's a REALLY big deal!

It's been a bit journey -- started with a full cheek snaffle, went to D-ring French link, then D-ring Myler, which worked well for a long time, I now look much more favourably upon the low level Mylers, then to this happy mouth Boucher we picked up at a consignment sale, which Solo quite liked. I have to stay with double jointed bits as Solo has a low palate and big tongue, so single jointed bits jab him in the roof of the mouth. I think we'll stick with the KK though, I really like this new feel.


(4) Dressage: Making good progress. Trot work is becoming much more enjoyable as Solo learns to reach for the contact and stay on it. Walk is good, but need more impulsion. W/T transitions feeling great, as is halt, although Solo has this new tendency to drift left into the halt, but only on centerline, grrr. Canter...well, it has single-stride moments, transitions are not great, it's our project. But Solo is becoming much more supple in all gaits, moves mostly readily off the leg and moves over his back.

(5) Jumping: We were going really well, but since moving to the new place, just haven't had any good schooling sessions as Solo has become a horse-shaped wrecking ball. Still jumping clean at comps as long as I don't mess him up, but we've lost the flow. I think I am not using enough impulsion... Our jumping coach is having surgery so can't travel up here for a bit and we haven't had a lesson with him in a while, sigh. I NEED one!

So...now you'll get some detailed progress and musings on our day-to-day crap, such as it is. I didn't get to ride this weekend, I don't want to work him until the stupid pads come off as we have our big competition coming up in two weeks and I don't want him going footsore on me. I spent some time ground driving him last night for a nice change of pace since he doesn't limp on the arena footing. He did well in the end, although it always makes him nervous. I am working on getting him comfortable with me driving him from directly behind where he can't see me, to build his confidence in himself.

If there are topical posts you'd like to see, feel free to submit requests as well and I will freely share my brain drivel on the topic at hand. But I like to read and explore riding theory and am always open to gathering new tools for the the toolbox, so I spend a lot of time thinking about all that -- now whether my thinking is useful or not remains deeply in question, but it amuses me. I also plan to do some product reviews, as I find them immensely helpful for my own purchases, I want to help out other horsepeople decide what is right for them.

I will keep our calender on here up to date with our various activities and hopefully will get some new videos soon as our routine at the new place settles a bit more. I hate winter because I have to ride in the dark during the week, but at least BO has good lights.

Long term goal: complete Training 3-Day Event at Waredaca. (3 years?)
Short term goal: get a nice canter transition. (10 years?)

SO, now you know the back story, let's see where it takes us...

Me and Solo on our birthday 2009 (my 30th, his 13th). Headgear courtesy of dear barn friends.

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