Vet School Application Drama

Lots of quietness on the Royal front. I haven't had much time to do anything and when I do have time, I get sick. I've been battling a very annoying cold for a few days now, and it's really sapped all my energy. I haven't had too much energy to play, although I did get a nice ride in on Saturday. Royal was a dream, just totally perfect.

But another time sink has been my vet school application. When I took the GRE, I knew I was taking the revised test. But what I didn't know was that it would take a long time to get my results, longer than the vet school deadline. I didn't realize this until after I took the test, and by then it was too late. So, I figured, that's it. The vet school won't accept it, so there you go. But a meeting with my adviser revealed that they would accept my score as long as everything else was in by the regular deadline. Which is Monday. So I've been scrambling to get everything ready: my personal statement, tallying up experience hours, and getting my letters of recommendation. So far, my letter writers have responded admirably, and it appears to be going smoothly. So, we'll see if all the drama ends up being worth it.

Where To From Here?

I've done a lot of thinking about what the future holds for me and Royal. Even though we didn't pull off a Disney movie finish, I still felt like it was an extremely successful weekend. I really want to keep going with eventing, even if we never get a ribbon.

The question become, how do I mesh competition training and Parelli? So far, the official Parelli line has been that you don't do anything even remotely related to competing until you graduate Level 4. This is the equivalent of mastering 3rd Level dressage and be able to do flying lead changes bridleless and canter half-passes while ground driving and trailer loading at liberty, when it all comes down to it. I think it's patently ridiculous to require that before doing BN and Novice eventing. To achieve Level 4 with Royal, I would either have to go down to the Centers, which is becoming more and more unobtainable to the non-Parelli-Professional, or continue toiling away for what will probably be another 4-8 years. Neither option is appealing, so I'm not doing either.

This summer I did a sort of half-and-half. We did lots of competition-type training, but with a lot of Parelli techniques, and always with Parelli philosophy. Confidence is number one, reward the slightest try, and always keep things fun. I feel like our relationship vastly improved this summer. Instead of chipping away at tasks, I had lots of specific small goals surrounding the shows and travels. Things like jumping ditches, going through water, various jump heights, beginnings of dressage, getting my new trailer, etc. I really don't think I would have done any of that if I hadn't been so focused on competing. I've also begun to see what Royal is truly capable of. I always knew he was special, but he has really risen to the occasion this year. So, I feel it was a really good decision.

But, it's been a quiet couple of weeks. I've been busy with school, volunteering at the Humane Society, work, and this weekend I audited a Karen Rohlf clinic. It was cold and windy, but so worth it. She had so many useful simulations and concepts that I'm still bouncing around in my head. She creates a very good bridge between Parelli and dressage, and I think it will further add more to my and Royal's journey. Hopefully I'll be able to ride with her next year.

I've been having some short and quiet sessions with Royal. Just online or liberty session, although today we tried to do some riding today. But it was cold and rainy, and I didn't feel like Royal was really connected to me. This sort of thing seems to happen about once a month, for whatever reason. He was really distracted and not "all there" so we just had a lots of undemanding time and retreat. Eventually he came out of his shell and we had a short ride, just doing passenger lessons and circles at the walk. After which, he returned to his usual goofy self and tried to eat some paper.

Ah, Royal.

Steepleview Professional Pics!

I made the decision to have professional photos taken at the horse trial and I'm so happy I did. Neither of my parents are not very good at the whole "action pictures" and wouldn't have been close enough to get good ones anyway. So, credit to DG Phtotography for some awesome pictures! I was so happy that they got the run-out photo and plenty of other "special" moments. Because the HT was full of those.

I joked that I would have some... interesting facial expressions during the jumping and it turns out I was right. I'll have to work on my poker-face-while-jumping this fall/winter/spring. Also keeping more contact with my leg, since it looks a lot better when it's not wildly swinging around.

Wheeeeeeee!

Steepleview Horse Trial: Long Version

I got a good night's sleep Friday night, and woke up sort-of early Saturday to head out to the farm. I braided Royal (which he was most confused about), hooked up the trailer, Royal loaded in no time, and we were off. We got to the show grounds around 11, and I made a stupid mistake. I had thought that Royal would react to the new place the way he had all summer, which was to go "Huh. New place and horses. Interesting. Eating grass now." But that turned out to not be the case. I walked him around a little bit, then tied him to the trailer while I had to go to the Secretary's Office and ask a few questions. It was a long walk back and forth, and by the time I got back, Royal had worked himself up into a MAJOR right-brain fit. Sweating and pacing and whinnying and pooping like a crazy horse. At that point, I knew I was going to have a major challenge on my hand. I was all by myself (again) so I had to wrestle with him to get him groomed and saddled. I tried playing with him on the 22-foot line in the arena, but that only worked while he was moving. As soon as I left him to change into my show clothes, he started flipping out again.

To make matters worse, as I got ready to mount up, it started raining! And I mean pouring at a 45-degree angle, which made neither of us happy. I rode over to the bit check, hoping that the person doing it wouldn't be stupid enough to just walk up to Royal and stick their fingers in his mouth. Luckily, she wasn't, but a discussion ensued over whether my Comfort Snaffle was okay for dressage. "It IS legal." I protested, nearly in tears. She checked the rulebook, and it was indeed legal, but now I was REALLY frazzled, which only made Royal worse. It rained on and off all through the warm-up while we had to keep dodging shrieking trainers and their students. "Right leg! Left rein! PUSH PUSH PUSH!!!" all while the student is coming towards us at a fast trot. I got yelled at for going too close to the empty dressage ring and Royal nearly tripped over one of the practice markers.

All the while, it's raining and I am cold. The rider before me had a beautiful test on a gorgeous horse, all while Royal is pacing and pooping. Our test did not go so well. Royal and I were tense and disharmonious. There were pretty much no positive comments from the judge, only things like "tense" "shying" "not responsive to leg". We got mostly 5s and 6s, and a 4 for our free walk when Royal decided to do his best giraffe impersonation. We did, however, get a 7 for gaits, so there's a ray of hope. My parents arrived at the show during my test, but went to the wrong place and missed the whole thing.

I unbraided Royal, got some lunch, gave him a bunch of treats, and then headed out to the cross-country warm-up. This was much more civilized, surprisingly enough. Everyone was a lot more respectful and Royal felt asleep. He sauntered around at all three gaits and lazed over the jumps. We did have one miscommunication at the telephones and a run-out, but otherwise I was pumped. When it was my turn, I headed out to the start box, somehow calculated the countdown just so we started walking through the box at T-5 seconds, and had enough time to thank the starter before heading out.

We had another argument on the way to this jump. He wanted to canter, I wanted to trot, and he couldn't get his feet sorted out in time. We had a run-out, but circled right around and popped over it, a short distance from...

We trotted this and jumped it well. He never wiggled or even felt like he was contemplating a refusal. We then continued up the hill to turn left to...

My favorite jump. He got a little bug-eyed, but decided to be brave and hop over it. We turned left again and went downhill to...

This he didn't ogle. He just sized it up and leaped over it. We went further downhill to...

I felt him sink back ever so slight before this one, but I gave him the tiniest of squeezes and he jumped with no more hesitation. My dad managed to get some video from the top of the hill which I'll post later. We then had to swing right over the land bridge and behind the trees to...

A slightly skinny log. I really focused hard on it on the approach and we sailed over it and drifted slightly left to...

Boring. No problems there. But our nemesis was lurking right around the corner and over the other land bridge...

The ditch! The exact same one that we had so many problems with during the schooling day. I had a laser sharp focus of "WE ARE GOING TO JUMP THIS DITCH!"... and Royal sailed over it like it was barely there. I was elated, as we continued uphill to...

A nice little tiger trap. He ogled at it slightly, but hopped over with no hesitation. A right turn continuing uphill took us to...

I dubbed this one "The Christmas Jump" and thought Royal might look askance at it. But I was wrong: he never thought twice and leaped right over. It was a short distance to...

The bank. Now, I took these pictures when I walked the course Friday night. By the time I rode on Saturday, they had added gravel to the approach to the ditch and Royal was not fond of that. It took some gentle persuasion to get onto the gravel, but he leaped off the bank without too much fuss. We swing right and downhill out to the tree and back into the open field to...

A nice little vertical, though Royal spooked at the Novice chevron jump next to it. I had to focus him a bit, but once he realized we were going for that one, he went over with no problem. Next was...

the water! They did an interesting thing and didn't mark a BN entrance to the water but had a little BN log less than 10 feet from the back edge.

That was as much as I could get in the picture standing at the edge of the water. As we trotted up to the water, I could feel Royal start to hesitate. So I said out loud, "Royal! You've been in Lake Superior! We can do this!" Either he understood me or he realized there was nothing to be scared of, and he plowed through the water and popped over the log. We turned right and cantered to...

No hesitation as we flew over it. It was a mostly straight shot to...

No problems. And another mostly straight shot to...

Boing! And then to...

The finish flags! And we were done. Both of us were full of adrenaline and excited. We had trotted a lot and the refusal cost us a lot of time, so we finished with 10.4 time penalties and 20 jumping. I didn't care. We made it through and it had been fun! After cooling Royal off, we headed back home to get some rest for Sunday.

Sunday arrived bright and early, and after going through the same routine minus braiding, we pulling into the showground around 10:30. I got Royal out of the trailer and could feel him grow about 4 hands. This time I was ready. I got out my 45-foot line and proceeded to help him get his brains back, with he thankfully did. We were parked close to the show-jumping ring, so I let him graze (furthering driving the RB out) while I watched a few round. It wasn't too long before it was time for me to walk my course and after that, I saddled Royal up, got dressed, and we headed out to the warm-up ring.

That had it's own special moment. He was so lazy on the flat that I wondered if he was kind of stiff from yesterday. He crawled over the cross-rail, but surprised me completely by deciding the vertical was full of demons. He over-jumped it sort-of sideways and I nearly fell off. I managed to stay on and it took a few more tries to help him realize that it was a non-demon-infested vertical. The rest of the jump went without incident, but most people stayed clear of us. Gee, wonder why. We were 3rd from last in the placing, so we were the 3rd to go in out division. First two jumps went okay, but we had another disagreement as to how to the third jump should have been approached and had a run-out. Oops. Circled back around and jumped it, and the rest of the course had no problems. As I said before, no ribbon and we finished something like 3rd to last. But I was so proud.



I'll go into what I learned from the experience and where we'll go from here later. Right now this post is long enough and I need to catch a bus. But, I'm very glad we did it and had the experience.