Steepleview HT 2013: Long Version

Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post:

Music chosen because this was a weird event, due to circumstances beyond (mostly) everyone's control.

The week leading up to Steepleview was HOT, much hotter than the rest of the summer. I got a couple good ride in on Royal, but I wasn't sure how we would do in the heat. I suspected that Royal would be better suited for the heat than me (him being a mix of two desert breed, and me having mostly Scandinavian heritage which causes me to melt when it gets too hot), but then he'd be working a lot harder. Especially during x-c, which was hilly as ever. I was able to walk the course on Friday, and thought it was the best one yet. All jumps, very inviting, and seemed like it would reward the bold, but well controlled ride.

The next morning I was out in the pasture at 6am to get Royal. As much as I am the anti-morning person, the sunrise was beautiful.

Royal was most surprised to see me so early, but loaded in the trailer well and we were on our way. We took a back way consisting of quiet county roads and both of us arrived at Steepleview ready for action. I first took him up to the lunging arena to let him stretch his led and take in the event. He was pretty calm, at first always wanting to stay close to me. But I managed to get him to stretch out and do some nice relaxed trotting. Then I turned around and there was someone filming us! Seriously! Just standing behind Royal and me, filming us with her cell phone. She noticed that I noticed her, laughed, said "Beautiful!" and walked away. I managed to choke out "thanks...?" because I was so surprised and kind of weirded out. So, whoever you are, if you're reading this: if you truly thought it was nice, thank you and I hope you enjoyed it. If you were hoping to get some "Parelli abuse" footage, sorry to disappoint you.

Then I brought Royal back to the trailer, got him braided (note to self: braid straight up, if not slightly towards the other side of the neck) and got him all tacked up. I tried to schedule my warm to be less than 45 minutes long. In the past I've gone for longer warm-ups, but that usually backfires when he gets so bored and frustrated that it comes out as tension. So I tried to mostly just do some stretching and a few transitions before we went into the ring. My mother arrived, the ring steward and I joked about margaritas, and it was our turn (ten minutes after coats were waived to to heat, leaving me no time to change. Sigh).

I thought it was a good test. It felt much smoother than both our tests at St George's, apart from a few bobbles. The first came during the free walk, when I didn't release the left rein enough, causing Royal to veer to the left for a few step, but then he straightened out and stretched well for the rest of the test. The next came during the second canter transition, which is supposed to happen "approaching X", but Royal spotted a horse walking by the ring, stuck his head in the air, appeared to be thinking "friend?" and I was like "focus!" and gave him a strong cue. He flung his nose in the air and hopped in to the canter way after X, much closer to the rail. I thought we recovered well, and overall it felt like a smooth and accurate test.

It was hot enough that Royal was already sweating, so I tried like crazy to get him to drink some water. After much bribing and apple juice, he grudgingly drank a bit while I took out his braids. We were scheduled to run x-c around 1:45, right in the heat of the day. Once again, I waited to tack him back up for a while, and we headed to the warm-up around 1:15. We had a very low-key warm-up, in which we jumped exactly 5 jumps once: the cross-rail, the vertical, the oxer, a small pile of logs, and a good sized ramp, which lots of walking in between. Even that had Royal's neck drenched in sweat, since each time I aimed him at a jump, the afterburners engaged and he wanted to take everything at speed. He's not stupid: he could see the startbox and the horses running and jumping, and even with the heat, he was ready to go. I quick wiped off his neck before we headed to the startbox, trying to figure out how to keep him from overdoing it. Then we were at the startbox, and soon it was "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, have a nice ride!"

As you can see in the full starting jumps photo, this was part of a cluster of jumps, which sometimes has Royal confused about which one I'm aiming him at. Not this one. He locked right on and popped right over. We turned left and up the hill to

The Best Jump Ever: the Scrabble jump! Again, no hesitation. Lock and jump. We turn left and started down the hill to

A nice inviting rolltop. This was also in a cluster of jumps, but he focused right on this one and went right over. We continued down the hill to

A ramp. Also in a cluster of jumps, but he locked right on to this one. By this point I was starting suspect he was looking for the yellow numbers. We cantered all the way to the end of the tree, turned right over the land bridge and up another hill to

This was all the way at the top, and again, no bobbles or hesitation. He cantered up fairly easily and jumped over well. As an aside, this was the view from the top of the hill.

Then we went back down the hill to

Tootsie roll jump! This had caused him to do a double take in the past, but now he was more familiar and glided over. We turned right and went back over the land bridge to

The ditch! A much nicer and safer one than Roebke's Run. That one was extremely deep, which could injure a horse if it left a leg. This one was shallower than my knees and Royal jumped across well. We went back up the hill to

No muss, no fuss, not even a glance at the starter jump next to it. We went into the trees and swung right to

On Friday, I was unsure of how this would jump. This picture (which I took around 4:30 on Friday) shows it completely in shadow, but I knew it would only be partially in shadow on Saturday. And I was right: only the right third of the jump was dark. But even with that weird visual, he didn't look twice, just jumped straight over. We keep going on to

The bank. I slowed him down to a walk as we approached it so he wouldn't launch off it, because immediately we had made a sharp right turn and go out through the trees. He stepped off it nicely, we swung around like a barrel team, cantered out the trees and onto the top of the hill to

Boing! We then turned left and went slightly down the hill to

The turkey feeder where we had a refusal last year. At the time I gathered it cause a lot of problems, which is probably why it was moved out to the open this year to allow the horses to get a good look at it. Royal peeked at it a bit, but jumped over and we went down the hill and turned right to

Water. He wanted to walk though it (and probably splash himself) but we ended up trotting though and turned left to

A nice rolltop. He chipped in and jumped it kind of awkwardly, but we made it over. The course designer gave us a couple options for how to approach the next jump: we could take the short rote and jump it at a slight angle, or go around a different jump and jump it straight on. We'd had enough experience jumping slight angles that I took the short rote to

I felt him lock on and then all of a sudden, he dropped his left shoulder and spun out. I couldn't figure out why until I looked down and discovered that Royal was so sweaty that my saddle pad had slipped halfway under the saddle, and the saddle was really unstable. I'm not sure when it started, but I think Royal just didn't feel like we safe to jump. I tried to wiggle the saddle back into place and we jumped over, but awkwardly. We continues straight on to

The saddle was still wiggling, so we had another awkward jump, but we we done. I was so over heated and on adrenaline that I had to sit under a tree with my head between my knees and take some deep gulping breaths to keep from passing out. Once I could stand, we went over to the cooling-out-people by the finish line, which loaded my tack into a trailer and started hosing Royal. He wasn't the most cooperative horse, still on adrenaline from x-c, and had a look on his face like "The strangers are TOUCHING ME!" but we got him hosed down cooled down. We walked (well, I staggered) back towards the trailer, stopping to check our dressage score, where my poor fried brain got a nasty shock: we were in last place with 45.7 penalties.

What the what? How had what felt like one of our best tests overall generated such a bad score? Getting the test back only made things worse.

Apparently, Royal was "counterflexed" for ~80% of our test, and hollow for the rest. Now, we've had bad tests before, and usually I can tell. But most of the comments made no sense, to the point where I'm wondering if she was even watching our test. The free walk got "inattentive," with no mention of the wild veer at the beginning, and botched canter transition was "hollow." Yeah, hollow like Miley Cyrus is "quirky". So, yeah, I was wondering if the judge was even watching.

We made it back home safe and I basically passed out that night. I seriously debated going back, but I am not a quitter. We still had a number, dismal as it was, and the show jumping course looked nice. We headed out at 7 the next morning.

Royal seemed pretty relaxed when we got back to Steepleview the next morning, and the jumping arena seemed smaller than last year. It was a short quick course, with lots of twists and turns. Royal handled it pretty well, although there were some interesting jumps in the bunch, and we didn't add any penalty points to our score. The next person had a refusal, which put them behind us by what I found out later was .4 points, and we moved into 8th place and the ribbons.

Royal with what appears to be a bug in his right eye

So, all in all, not a bad weekend. The heat obviously played a bit role; Royal was on a mission, and I think if the saddle hadn't slipped, we could have had our first double-clear x-c round. But I am still so mystified by the dressage test. I'm usually able to peg whether we had a good or bad test, and I've never been so off the mark before, and had such bizarre comments. I'm VERY interested to see our pictures now. I know Royal has a Slinky for a spine, but I've ridden odd-shaped Royal before and odd-shaped Royal is weird and uncomfortable. So, we'll see. I could be wrong, but I'd don't think that wrong.

I'm super proud of Royal. He was the rock star of all rock stars.

Steepleview 2013: Short Version

Well, that was a whirlwind.

We had what I thought was a fabulous dressage test, but the judge disagreed in a way that makes me wonder if she was even watching it, a very bold x-c run in some pretty high heat until a very sweaty Royal led to a very slippery saddle pad which led to the pad slipping halfway under the saddle which led to a run-out at the second to last x-c fence, and a double clear show-jumping allowed us to move into 8th place overall.

I think he had a bug in his right eye or something; they were everywhere.

Fuller version (including someone creepily filming me without asking me first) coming soon. Right now, too tired.

Pre-Steepleview Madness

It's been a hectic couple of weeks for Royal and me. I've been trying to cover all the basics and practice some stuff that I think we'll come across at Steepleview. Of course, things don't always go according to plan, and when I tried to set up a jump-to-ditch combo, Royal took exception to the dogs barking (which he has heard pretty much every day of his life) and refused to go anywhere near where he heard the dogs. Which got me kind of frustrated, since this has become a larger pattern: he's been spooking at things he's experienced almost every day for a while (like the dogs, or a pile of wood, or my grooming box), but not in a pretend day. It's like his eyes go glassy and his brain shuts off. It helps if I play with him a bit, but the next time, we're right back to where we started.

Part of me wonders if it's a magnesium deficiency. There's evidence to suggest that horses who don't get enough magnesium can get nervous and spooky. With Royal, he gets spooky unless I'm doing something with him, and even then, my effect is somewhat limited. When he spooked at the dogs, I was able to get him over to the far end where he was spooking, but then he started running out at jumps he's seen hundreds of times, and freaked out at the ditch. So, we had to do some desensitizing where I would walk him up to the ditch and ask him to go over it. Calmly. He zipped over it like it was hiding alligators, but after a while, he'd pop over like it was no big deal. But it was still so weird, and not like him at all.

So in light of all this, I've put him on a mild calming supplement (Majesty's Calm+ Wafers), in the hopes that it'll help him to be less nervous overall. He's only been on it a few days, but seemed less nervous when he got his feet trimmed yesterday. And seems a bit happier in general. The real test will be how he handles this weekend with all the assorted chaos.

It's been very hot this past week (like 90+ and humid), and it's supposed to be pretty warm for Steepleview. So I'll have to be prepared and bring lots of ice and water. I'm going to walk the course this afternoon and get a feel for it. They already sent out an e-mail detailing their preparations for dealing with the heat, so we should be okay. Of course, we'll have to see what happens when we get there!

Unlocking Royal's Neck

Following up on my last post, I've been focusing on getting Royal to relax in his neck. I've gotten pretty much everywhere else fairly supple (although he tends to tense up through his back) but I've never really paid attention to his neck until now. I always figure that if I could relax his back/hind end, everything else would follow. But he's never really had a good topline, and his underneck used to be the stuff of legend. Even when he'd be mosseying around OnLine, he'd still have a very tense and bulging underneck.

So I've been doing some Moving Massage as well as T-Touch massage after all our sessions, and so far them seem to be helping. It doesn't take long for him to take stretching and chewing during MM and his muscles relax fairly quickly with the T-Touch.

I've also become more particular about him maintaining a good posture during riding, even freestyle. Yes, we're not doing contact now, Royal, but that doesn't mean you have to gambol around like an overly-caffeinated llama. We did have an... interesting session where we were doing some nice finesse, and then the neighbor cows took off. Well, not so much "took off" as "ambled off at a slightly faster than normal pace". And Royal's brain short-circuited. So we had a long discussion about stretching and relaxing wherein he twisted his neck in every possible way, curled up and down to avoid the bit, and even threatened to rear a couple times. I stayed (mostly) patient, and kept combing the reins, trying to get him to stretch. It took a a while, but finally he relaxed and yawning and snorted and snorted and snorted. I don't think I've ever felt him breathe that deeply.

A couple days later I got a set of white dressage boots on sale at Dover (4 boots for $40! Score) and it turns out Royal can really rock the Dressage Chic look.

Add the royal blue fly bonnet and we were both Dressage and Jumper Chic.

It was another contact session to see where he was at and it was pretty good. He still wanted to avoid everything at first, but then gave me some really nice trotwork and held the contact steadily. He also didn't seem too bothered by the boots either.

Steepleview is in less than two weeks! Need to start think about getting ready!

St George's Schooling Dressage Show

Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post:

This show came with a preface. For years I've been struggling with trying to get Royal to relax. That horse can hold tension like nobody's business, and for longer than most horses. And lots of times when I try to get him to soften and relax, it almost becomes about him holding the tension out a principle. He's gotten way better over the years with some chiropractic help, but still has that tendency. So we were playing OnLine on Thursday and I was watching him go around like he always does and finally it hit me: maybe it's in his neck.

I mean, it makes sense. A horse has to take the contact with their nose, neck, and feet. Royal has no problem keeping a steady feel of the bit with his mouth, and being an extrovert, has no problem moving his feet. But he will contort his neck into all sorts of weird positions, and has a lot of problem really stretching when he's tense. So as I watched him go around with his underneck stiff as usual, I decided to help him change it. I used what Karen Rohlf calls the moving massage, just lightly touching my fingers to his neck and waiting for him to stretch. And he did, and it seemed to help. I'll write more about it later, but hopefully it's the start of something good.

I had to get up ridiculously early to get to the show on time, since I was supposed to ride at 8:07, which meant I had to leave my house at 5:00. Ugh. It was dark enough when I left that I worried about having enough light to hook up the trailer. Luckily there was just enough to hook everything up easily. But Royal decided the best place to be that morning was at the far northeast corner of the big field and I had to walk all the way to get him. And then we ran into road construction on the way there. And I got lost. Twice. Including driving down someone's private driveway... while they were standing right there. Awkward. But we finally made it to what is probably the most expensive stable I've ever set foot on, save for the Schweiss Stables. Seriously, it costs more to board then than all four places I've had Royal at, combined. So I felt a little out of my league. That, and I only had a half an hour to get all the mud off Royal and warm up before my ride time. I also got chastised for doing my pre-ride flight checks in the parking lot instead of in the area down the hill. So I barely had any time to warm up in the super fancy indoor arena (with fans and heaters and fabulous footing and one side covered in mirrors) before our Intro B ride.

It was pretty casual. I was the second person to ride that day and the first doing Intro B, so I knew that the tracks in the arena would tell the truth. The judge was pretty casual, and told me just to start when I was ready, and after a few circles around the "A" marker, we went in.

It seemed okay. Royal held the contact pretty steady, stretched in the free walk like a piece of elastic, and our circles were the right size and shape. I felt like it was a good test, but given our history with what I think is a good test, and how our scores don't reflect that, I wasn't holding out a lot of hope. Plus, my mother arrived... right after we finished. Sigh.

So we hung out for a bit, talked with the head trainer of the barn about the place. Apparently it's only been open a year, but they're going pretty well. We couldn't go in the boarders' barn but the rest of the facility was fancy enough to give us an idea. I wanted to see if the show was running on time, so we stopped by the office, where I saw my score.

65.313%. First place.

I couldn't believe it. All I could was "there must be some mistake" but no. There wasn't. We'd won. I was in shock. We even got an 8 on our free walk! I took a ribbon off the wall and went back to the trailer to show Royal. Look, it matches! But of course he was unimpressed and went back to his hay. All in all, he was pretty calm. He still thought every horse in sight was his new friend, but overall seemed pretty calm. I gave him lots of cookies, we watched some tests and then it was time to warm up for our second test, Training 1. The indoor was pretty much deserted, so I used that time to ride around like I owned the super fancy place. Royal was still doing pretty well with the contact, although I was having trouble getting him to stretch at the trot without combing the reins. Too much to look at, I suppose. So I figured that was going to be a weak point in our test.

The test went well enough. Our stretchy circle was a joke, and he was a bit quick in the downward transitions, but we still had good circle and an awesome free walk. So after waiting around a bit, we got our score: 61.042% and third place. Out of three. But we were only about half a percentage point behind the second place pair, so I was pretty happy.

And these are seriously fancy ribbons.

We made it home, and Royal immediately rolled in the dirt. But I still couldn't believe we won something, for the first time ever. And not in a "everyone's a winner!" way. In a real way. And immediately I started thinking of why it didn't count. It was a schooling show, there were only 5 or 6 other pairs in my class, it wasn't a horse trail or the judge was too lenient. Basically almost trying to convince myself that I didn't really win. I've heard this referred to as "Jerkbrain", usually referring to depression or anxiety disorders. The badly wired part of your brain basically sabotages your happiness by convincing you it didn't happen or you didn't deserve it. And for the most part with me, it succeeds, because I don't do things that are quantifiable. Maybe I cooked a chicken quesadilla that was actually edible and tasty, but I know people who can make watermelon taste amazing, so it's not really that good. Or maybe I crocheted that weird pattern hat, but other people make beautiful blankets in half that time, so it's not really that big a deal. Jerkbrain is kind of a jerk. So usually I can't counter Jerkbrain. But this time I can. So it was a schooling show, but we still rode some good tests, among our best ever. We had a better ride than everyone else in our first class. So what if it wasn't a horse trail? I still would be happy if we'd won a jumper class at Carriage House or any other show. And so what if the judge was lenient? She still gave me higher numbers than anyone else. So, I've had to manually shut out the Jerkbrain and actually be proud of Royal and myself. We deserve all the cookies and Chipotle burritos. Because we rock and nothing can take that away from us.

It's been a quiet couple of weeks since Roebke's Run, and neither of us seem worse the wear for it. It got REALLY hot for a few day and both of us melted for a while, and then last weekend it got REALLY cold, like in the 50s and raining, although the flies never went away, which lead to this get-up when Royal ate his grain on Saturday.

Winter blanket and fly mask. Only in Minnesota.

I've kind of been doing more Parelli-leveling-up stuff with Royal. Unusual circumstances aside, we can usually do our show stuff mostly competently and I've been trying to keep his brain occupied. I got the 45-foot-line for the first time in a long time, and Royal took to it like a duck to water. He had a brief moment of "OMG ON LONG LINE RUN FAST" before getting his brain back and cantering around like a sane horse. And when we moved to the Touch It game, he decided that touching stuff with his nose was boring and he would just sidepass over it instead.

We've also done some ground-driving on the road, which we seems to enjoy quite a bit. He sets a pretty good pace going away from home until he gets to a place that sort of worries him, and we circle for a bit and he feels better and we keep going. We haven't made it to the Sheep of Death yet, but it'll probably happen soon.

We did have one odd that went wrong, though. I planned on riding in the back pasture, hopefully using the figure-8 pattern in freestyle and finesse, but Royal was not a happy camper. The neighboring cows are by the back pasture, and they are fascinated by Royal and me. And when they are fascinated by us, they move very... slowly... as... a... group... towards... us... and... it's... kind... of... creepy. Like you look away, and look back a bit later, and the whole group is ten feet closer and staring. This unnerved Royal greatly and I couldn't get his brain back. He keep wanting to gallop his willies away, which didn't work. When I tried cantering him in a circle, he was disjointed and flinging himself on the forehand, making it hard to ride. I got off and tried to get him focused on the circle, but he was still all distracted. And then his hind legs got all tangled up and he fell. First his hind leg slid out and he landed on his butt, then he couldn't quite get his forelegs right and lay all the way down. He got up right away and didn't seem hurt, but it was still so weird. The fall seemed to wake him up a bit and even though the cows still creep up on us, he doesn't get as distraught. So, problem solved? We'll see.

Our next show is a dressage schooling show next Saturday. Gotta practice our tests!

Roebke's Run 2013 Professional Pics

I got pictures from the lovely and wonderful D & G Photography at Roebke's Run, and they turned out fabulous as always. You can see the disharmony in our dressage test (and how wet we were), but Royal looks fairly confident on x-c and show-jumping. My equitation/biomechanics got pushed way down on my list of priorities, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. So, thank goodness for small favors, I suppose. You can also see what a gorgeous facility Schweiss is. I think it's well on its way to becoming one of the premier facilities in the Mid-west, if not the country.

 

Love this one

No monsters here!

Yay!