Sorry for the hiatus (again)! It's been a crazy few weeks and we've been up all sorts of wacky hijinks.
Good news! The tire on the trailer is fixed and there are now two brand spanking new tires on it. So hopefully there will be no more of that nonsense anymore. And Royal's dressage work is really coming along.
He has a really big and bouncy canter, and tends to get himself all tangled up, especially in transitions. So usually they end up being all fussy and frantic, and the canter usually suffers for it. So last week, I decided to try to start fixing that. I know that lateral yields are a big comforting exercise for him, so I incorporated a lot of those into our warm up, and kept on them going in the session. Basically I'd ask him to yield in and out on the circle, and when I asked him to canter, had the mentality that we were going to canter forever. I used a mixture of circles and straight lines: lines when he was balanced and circles when he needed to re-balance. We ended up with a nice balanced and forward canter.
This week, we first had a jumping session with a special bonus. I was participating in GISHWHES, an international scavenger hunt with a decidedly zany twist. One of the items was jumping the shark, which Royal was only too happy to help with.
He's always very patient with my shenanigans.
And as of last Thursday, it seems like all our hard work is starting to come together. I went up to ride, all prepared to work more on the canter, and it was just there. He gave me a near perfect transition when I first asked and everything went pretty smoothly from there. There was a bit of trouble with his left lead, but after an initial burst of frantic energy, he settled right in. Straight lines, circles, transitions, he was just engaged and there. So, to say I'm optimistic is quite accurate.
We also building a new shelter for the horses. I'll post pictures once it's once, but it's quite nice. Tall and long enough so all four horses should be able to stand in there to get out of the wind and snow. But for now, Steepleview! It's in less then two weeks, and I'm so excited! This year is going to be great.
So, Carriage House was an unprecedented success. This is our 4 or 5 year going, and for the most part, it's just a bit of fun. I've never figured us in the running for ribbons or anything; it's just a fun outing for the beginning of the year to see where we are, competition-wise. But, this year, it changed.
The week prior was full of its usual drama, which I'll write about later, but long story short, we didn't get a lot of prep beforehand. I jumped him a bit on Saturday, the first time in months, and he was pulling me to the jump which I took as a good sign. It was a short session, and we hadn't been able to get much dressage practice in either.
I only got about 5 hours of sleep Saturday night before waking up at 4:30am to go get Royal. I got the trailer hooked up, Royal hopped right in, we almost got flattened by the newspaper-carrier, and we were off.
I had originally entered us in Intro A & B, as well as both 2'6" jumpers. I decided to switch to one 2' jumper to give us an easier start. Our first dressage ride was at 8:12 in the large dressage ring, and we got there at 7. So I had plenty of time to let Royal stretch his legs out on the 22' line, and he settled right in. We both know Carriage House rather well, and had no reason to be bothered by the other horses carrying on.
One point of relief is that I couldn't see Psycho McCrazypants anywhere. Maybe she decided the judges are All Out To Get Her, and decided to grace us with the absence. A gift I, for one, shall cherish. I got Royal cleaned and saddled up, and we headed to the warm-up. He was a bit bracy, so I asked him to move his hindquarters and shoulders around, and it seemed to help. He was relaxed and ready to go, so we headed out to the large dressage arena... just in time to see the horse in the arena bolting away. Oops. The rider got him/her until control and they finished their test, but Royal was watching the whole thing.
Our test started ok, but when we turned to go up the long side of the arena, Royal started cantering in his "big arena, run fast, wheeee!" way. I managed to get him to trot, and he cantered again, and I got him to trot, and the rest of the test was him going "Is big arena, why we no go fast?" So, I figured it was not going to be good, score-wise.
Afterward, we had a bit of a break. My mom arrived, and then my sister and her kidlets, and I met up with Parelli Instructor Fran Latane and her student Arianna, who were entered in the hunters and jumpers. I checked in at the jumper ring, but they weren't able to give me a ride time before my second dressage ride, so we headed over the the dressage arena. I mostly just let Royal mosey around on a long rein and we manged to go a little earlier than our scheduled time, due to some scratches. This test went a lot better. Royal really like Intro B, and he was much more focused. We had some fussy transitions and I would have like more bend in the circles, but overall I was pleased.
Then I was time to head back to the jumper arena, and take our place in line. We ended up in the spot after Fran, so we got to watch her and Princess go. They had a double clear in the first round and the jump-off (yay!) and then it was our turn.
Double-clear! It was a somewhat disjointed, and it was clear we're both rusty, but he tried his heart out and overall I was pleased with my equitation and balance. I was mostly just happy to have not made a stupid mistake and gotten us eliminated. Happy times!
So, then we had more waiting until they reset for the 2'6" jumpers. We went fairly early in that class, and had another double double-clear, but I could tell Royal was getting tired. He was both chipping and leaving long, which he doesn't do unless he's tired. But the try was still there, and it got us through. He still was happy and eager to jump.
So, the ribbons:
6th out of 9 in Intro A; 57.50%
4th out of 12 in Intro B: 64.38% 3rd out of 30(??) in the 2' jumpers.
Not sure about the 2'6" jumpers yet. I left while the class was still going on. I'll know more when they post the results this week. But hey! Not eliminated! That's pretty awesome.
Royal seemed please with himself, as he should be.
The next day we just hung out, I did some basic massage on him and hosed out the trailer. Next outing is in a couple of weeks, and I think we're ready.
Here they are! Once again, the wonderful team of D & G Photography took some fabulous pictures of Royal and me! As I mentioned before, I'd be really interested to see the dressage pictures, since the judge's comments seemed off the mark. I still think they were, but not in the way I'd thought. The word that should have come up a lot was "hollow", not "counterflexed". Unless she was using counterflexed in a way I'd never heard of to mean "hollow", but then "hollow" was in a few comments. So, I don't know. Obviously Royal since has a tendency to brace in his underneck, and while I can usually get him to relax and soften, I need to help him not go there in the first place. So this fall, winter, and spring will probably revolve a lot around relaxation and softness on both our parts.
You can see in the last x-c photo how much the saddle pad slipped, but overall I'm very please with how it went, apart from the heat and sweatiness. Also, my equitation went to the Place Where Dreams Die in SJ. Probably because the jumps came up so quickly. I've been so spoiled by mostly doing SJ in big open fields. Go get better at keeping myself in place when the jumps come up quickly.
Bayfield happened in June this year, and apart from the BUGS it was awesome. Royal was focused and happy and we had an awesome week.
We arrived Sunday, after they'd gotten a few inches of rain over the weekend, and there was mud everywhere. We put Royal with two horses new to the farm, a mare and her yearling colt. Triplets, the lot of them.
Monday, it was still too wet to ride outside, so we toodled around in the indoor arena for a while. There was a lesson going on, so we stayed out of their way until they were done and we could od some jumping. There was a bunch of jumps set up from the previous day, so we popped over those. He was a little looky at first but gained confidence over the girds. He was NOT a fan of the stand-alone flower boxes, but I was satisfied when he was willing to at least smell them.
Tuesday it was nice and hot, so it was SWIMMING DAY!
I didn't know if Royal would need some time to reintroduce himself to the Really Really Big Puddle, but he just walked right in and splashed around like we never left.
So I hopped on and we went wading.
Love this one.
After that, we started walking out into the deep part of the lake.
Waterhorse!
And again, and this time we swam for a while.
All in all, he seemed pretty comfortable. The water was colder this year than it has been the last two year, but he didn't seem to mind.
Wednesday, I planned on doing some flatwork/dressage, but another board arrived who wanted to do some jumping, so we did that instead. He was a bit spooked by the fillers on the jumps (A single barrel? Evil!) but before long he was flying over them without hesitation in good form. He still tends to get a bit distracted by other horses or noise, but I'm hoping at shows that all the distractions will combine into white noise.
Thursday was actually Dressage day. He's gotten pretty good about holding the contact at the walk and trot, but tend to invert going into the canter. So I just waited until he relaxed and patiently kept asking for the canter until he was able to pick it up without tossing his head. He's getting a lot less claustrophobic all the time, but it's still a work in progress. I was pretty happy, though.
Friday I wanted to have a more relaxed OnLine session and focus more on connection, and it seemed to help. He's getting back to his previous mode of always checking in and not having his head in the clouds all the time. But there was also some jumps set up in the indoor (again), and he kept drifting towards those. Horse likes to jump, what can I say. The Flower Boxes of Doom were back, and he snorted at them at first, but soon flew over the 3+foot jumps in perfect form. So, maybe not so relaxed, but productive.
Saturday was X-C DAY! It had finally dried up enough to ride, but the grass was really long. The long winter and wet spring meant they couldn't get it mowed, so we had to ride among the long grass. I set up a couple jumps in the outdoor for warm up, and he barely glanced at them. He got right up to the base of the vertical a couple times and popped it, but then we were able to find a better spot. It surprised me because he tends to favor the long spot, so getting close was unusual for him. Still, he never tapped a twig, and we went out to the course. There weren't many jumps set up, just the barrels and the tires and the bank (which was always been there). The barrels and tires presented no problems, but on the way to the bank, we came across a large sloppy mud spot that neither of use saw until we were right on top of it. He skidded to a stop, unsure of his footing. We backed up and he kind of skittered across it, still not sure of how to navigate it. Once he figured out he could walk across it, he relaxed. Then we headed to the bank, where he hopped up and down it like it was nothing. I'm still figuring out how not to get popped out of the saddle on down banks, but usually relaxing my back does the trick.
Then, on Sunday, we had to leave. Royal traveled well, and though his roomies were said to see him go, he was happy to be home.
And now my focus is prepping for Roebke's Run. I feel pretty good and ready, but we'll see what happens when we get there. For now, I'm reviewing my dressage test and watching this video from last October's HT:
From what I can tell of the video, the terrain is fairly straightforward. Steepleview is all hills, which asks a lot of questions before you jump a fence. This also looks a lot bigger than any x-c course I've ridden, so I'll have to be careful not to get lost.
The run-up to Carriage House was, as always, full of drama and headaches. The late thaw and frequent rain meant most of our usual riding areas were pretty soggy, so on Tuesday we trailered out to a local indoor for some practice. It was cold and rainy, but we still got some nice practice in. A bit of dressage and a jump we hopped over at various angles, and I felt pretty good. We then headed over to the vet's office for vaccines. On my way back to the truck from paying the bill, I noticed there was something hanging down from the bottom of the truck that I hadn't noticed before. On closer inspection, it appeared to be one of the metal straps holding up the fuel tank. Yeah... not good. Then the truck was back in the shop and a limbo of fixed, not fixed, then fixed again, and somehow everything came together. Except that I'd been being working like a dog at my day jobs and was pretty much exhausted by Saturday night.
Still, I dragged myself/crawled out of bed at 5am on Sunday morning to get Royal in time to make it to the show. While I am not a morning person (AT ALL), it was sort of nice to not have many other cars on the road. And it was quite pretty.
I hooked up the trailer with few problems and Royal loaded well. It didn't take us very long to get to Carriage House as we got the second to last parking spot in the big field. I got my number from the tent, got Royal all cleaned up (although I ran out of green spot remover. Must remember to get more soon), and was in the saddle by 8:00 for my 8:40 ride time. I decided to enter us in Intro B twice to give Royal some consistency. He warmed up rather well, and we ended up walking around in the warm-up just to keep warm. It was fairly cold and windy and everyone was all bundled up, and I saw a jacket with The Logo on it. That's right, Psycho McCrazypants had brought Third Reich Stables again this year. Great. And a glance over at the jumping ring showed her terrorizing all and sundry with her psychosis and craziness. Double great.
Still, we had a pretty good ride. Our ring was in the back half of the warm-up and right next to a turn-out pasture, so it was a little chaotic and Royal started the test like he normally does. "What's going on? Where am I? Why am I away from the other horses? What are we doing?" But he relaxed during the free walk and settled into the test afterwards. He felt great.
So, we had to wait a bit before the next test, which we ended up doing 15 minutes early. Apparently people just weren't showing up, which was odd. You had to pre-enter the dressage classes a week before the show, and it wasn't that cold. Oh well. This test started out better than the first, although he was a bit tense in the walk, but just at the end of the free walk, someone turned out a horse in the pasture behind the arena and everyone went galloping off. This bothered Royal greatly and I couldn't quite get his focus back. Still, it was nice to be able to give him a bit of consistency to hopefully help him relax in the future.
You can see where the horses ran off behind us in the video. I'll have to work a bit more with Royal on picking up the contact. He's a lot better, but he still can get quite tense and somewhat claustrophobic if there's a lot going on.
Next was jumping, and was getting cold, so I had to put on my fleece jacket. We had a bit of a wait before the cross-rail class finished up, so I met up with Anna and Piper who were also going to do some dressage and jumping class, although at a higher level than us. Anna and I were able to walk the course together, which ended up being really helpful. Then she headed off to her dressage test and Royal warmed up over jumps. We only had to pop over a few things, but as always, the warm-up was filled with rude/oblivious/both people, one of whom decided to adjust his students stirrups right in front of the cross-rail. People, DON'T DO THAT! There are few things ruder than rendering a jump unusable, and it's a good way to make everyone else hate you. After we trotted twice around the perimeter, the blockers was still there, so on the other side of the arena, I yelled out "CROSSRAIL!" as loud as I could, and finally they moved and I could jump the fence. Sheesh. Royal jumped over everything without too much fuss and we headed back to the jumping arena.
Royal was excited. He started doing his little adrenaline dance that he often does when we have to wait in a crowded area and he can see other horses RUNNING and JUMPING and he wants to RUN and JUMP too. So he was pretty jazzed up when we went into the arena, and wanted to zip around pretty fast. He didn't really look too hard at anything, although he sucked back a bit at a few jumps, but over all was pretty game and responsive. We had a clean first round, and so went on to the jump off, where I lost my brain. See, we were supposed to go over fences 1, 2, 5, 7, and the the tan combination, but I forgot that and aimed Royal at the yellow combination. D'oh! I realized my mistake about two strides out from the combo and figured "Oh, well" Royal was locked on and popped over both happily. So we went off course and were eliminated, but it was all my fault. Royal was super fantastic.
So apart from my brainfact, it was awesome! I couldn't have asked for more from him.
And, as a bonus, I got to see Psycho McCrazypants get all paranoid when one of her students started their round before the starting signal, which is, of course, Not Allowed. This caused Psycho McCrazypants to start muttering about how the judge was out to get her by taking a long to give the starting signal. [snark filter off] Yes, off course. Even though other people were eliminated for starting before the starting signal or (ahem) going off course or various other things, it was all a conspiracy to eliminate Psycho McCrazypant's students. So, what Psycho McCrazypants can do it the future is a) stop going to shows altogether so no judges are able to plot against her (yes, please!) or b) TEACH YOUR STUDENTS THE RULES OF THE SHOW. And realize that EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES AND THIS WAS THE BEST PLACE TO MAKE THEM. Seriously. It's not a big deal at Carriage House. The whole goal is (or should be) to give horses and riders experience at showing so that when they show at recognized shows, they at least know the name of the game. I hope she didn't chew out her students, although she probably did because their mistake *gasp* may have cost the stable a ribbon. Horrors! [snark filter on] Ribbons are bonuses. It's great to get them, but not the end of the world when you don't.
Speaking of which...
Remember how I said Royal and I tied ourselves for 6th place? That was in dressage, where we got the exact same score (61.25%) both times. I know! I feel like we could have gotten it a bit higher in the second test, but thems the breaks. Personally, I was just glad we broke the 60% barrier; it felt like we'd been stuck in the 50s for a while. So I was pretty happy with our green ribbon. Royal didn't really care much.
I feel encouraged. We did very well despite not having a lot of preparation and some odd circumstances. It was awesome.
