Working Equitation Schooling Show at Wildwood Stables!

Wow now where to begin- we took the horses (mine, and my WE coach Shelly’s mare Heidi) up island this weekend to compete in a schooling show for Working Equitation, which was also a fundraiser for the Comox Valley Therapeutic Riding Society 🙂 And it was a pretty intense weekend for 1 major reason- RAIN. Holy god, it was basically a monsoon for two days.

Oats was definitely a trooper and managed better about the rain than I thought, but me? Yeeesh, it was pretty rough haha. A good experience all around though, so I won’t discount that! I took Friday off and we loaded up the horses at 1pm, and headed up Island. It was so balmy out that we were wearing t-shirts, which was the last nice day we had, hah. We took the horses to the hosting stables, Wildwood out in Courtenay. It’s a great place with a coverall indoor and a really big outdoor. Too bad the outdoor was basically a swimming pool all weekend!

The horses settled in nicely and I had made 1 major mistake- I grabbed the wrong hay by accident and Oats HATES the barn hay. He gets really nice mega $$$$$$ hay and I …mixed it up and brought the wrong stuff. Shoot. He then kind of had me freak out this weekend wondering why he wasn’t eating much of the hay (ok he got hungry and had to eat) but not much and then was fussy about his grain (because I had his pills in it…) and I was worried! Plus I think he wasn’t drinking water- it is well water and he can be weird about drinking, because I saw him drink heavily from one of the huge puddles?! And he drank from it all day?! Sheesh, horses…Giving me heart attacks…

Anyways, drama aside, I also had bought Good as Gold calming paste, as he’s been a bit of a nut at shows lately. Getting it into his mouth turned into a big humongous fuss where he broke a crosstie off the wall and ran backwards into another horse. I finally wrestled him into his stall and managed to sort of finagle it into the corner of his mouth, but I think you can guess that this weekend I wasn’t Oats’ favourite person…

And in the morning (Saturday) I got out there super early to feed and wrestle with him/pick out his stall, and then I immediately went back to my in-laws because it was pitch black out and HAMMERING rain, allllll day lol. I cooled my heels for a bit enjoying the warmth of indoors and then went back to the show to warm Oats up. Newsflash: It didn’t stop raining, ugh.

He was hot to trot in the outdoor, pretty amped and was trotting around with his head on a swivel, charging around. I decided not to risk an explosion by cantering him like that, so I borrowed a longe line (I have one, but why do I never think to bring it?!!) from the barn owner and longed him first. He had zero explosions, just a few head tosses and then settled nicely. Phew, good to go!

I hopped on and he was ok, but tight throughout at the trot. His canter was better but yeah, he felt a bit stiff and resistant.

Finally our dressage test, it felt like forever to get there! I was completely soaked, hahah. Wet tack, gloves, helmet, boots, horse, argh. I wasn’t super thrilled with the test, he was still tight through his back and not coming through nicely. It’s a bummer, because we have SUCH NICE dressage lessons and they do not translate to horse shows, at all. Well, he did have a year off, so it’s a process to come back I guess??

Anyways, moderate griping aside, he was very compliant and well-behaved. He did have a look at the judge’s stand, but held it together nicely and gave me an honest, if not thrilling, ride. The judge (who I know pretty well) agreed and I got hammered hard on the scores, but with the understanding that she knew we could accomplish a nicer ride. I totally get that, and I think it was fair- we just need to get to a place where we see the work translate better at shows! 🙂

And stay tuned, Sunday was the exciting stuff- Ease of Handling, and Speed Round. My faves!!! Ok, speed round is my absolute fave 😉

Field days find us again~

A bit later than usual as I was away on holidays, but we’re back in the field! I am seeing a big difference between Oats who gets turnout (he is not allowed for 1 year after his injury) and the Oats who isn’t turned out….The Oats of this year is HOT HOT HOT in the field. He was amped, so amped that all he wanted to do was bolt straight up the hill, all the time lol!!

Walking after a LOT of work

I am not used to riding hot-spicy-butt on fire Oats, haha. We ended up doing a lot and I mean LOT of work in the field to settle. Almost 1 hour straight and it was quite warm out. I don’t know where he gets this energy? I may have added to his excitement by jumping the hay bales that are literally everywhere, hahah. He was on fire about it! Got so excited that he started bucking afterwards, and then almost bucked me off going up the hill. Crazy Oats?!

In his fairness I did get left behind a few hay bales and he really didn’t like that, so he threw a few bucks on landing. I get it Oats, totally get it- ride better!

We rode a few more canters (controlled in a circle, thanks very much) and then trotted more, up and down, and then called it quits and walked around. His nostrils were flaring even! I hopped off and walked him to cool out in the farm yard, and then hosed him down. He hasn’t worked that hard in over a year, I don’t think?!

The Oats who gets turnout is never that hot to trot, so this Oats certainly is jazzed up and has energy to move his butt.

Letting go to get there

Dressage lesson last night! Our trainer noticed my warmup was a bit backed off, with me sitting in the backseat (ha, now where have I heard that before, oh right, in my jump lessons!) and so guess what we did? Get ROLLING at the trot, big trot, bigger trot, and then CANTER! All on a very loose rein. It felt kind of wild to me, a little bit like we were just ripping around, but wouldn’t you know…we had a very lovely, loose through the back canter AND trot. Ok, after the downward transition we kind of bumbled into the trot but then he’d come down and release nicely. He still has that ‘snatch’ at the reins to come down, but he was much more consistent than before.

Just look at this handsome steed!

Kind of blew my mind a little! Sometimes dressage isn’t a tightly-held warmup and trot/canter, eh?? Sometimes it is a little wild!

Oats loved it, and his canter was SO consistent, forward and light over the back. Good boy! Plus he is looking fantastic these days- not so scraggly and gross and scrawny. I’m very glad to see him gain his weight back and his coat is just shining. He doesn’t look 19 right now, turning 20 in October 🙂

It was a very fun ride and reminded me to let go of the control sometimes (duh a horse person with control issues? Say it ain’t so 😉 ) ahahaha.

Plus on Wednesday we went on a hack around the block and while he did require a lot of convincing to get past the new, huge greenhouse (that wasn’t there last time!! Scary!!) that involved some running backwards, he got over it and was a gentleman for the rest of the ride, if a bit edgy/looky. Good pony, and PHEW!! I am a big trail ride chicken, haha so I rely on him to help me out here.

And my legs update- I had my hip tendon worked on last night (THANK GOD it was driving me insane for like 2 months, ugh, so gross…the tugging/irritation was constant) and I am entering my third walk-run of the week today at lunch. Fingers crossed for a recovery- even the physio was stumped about why I keep getting injured when I am in great shape and in general don’t have too many physical issues, other than the obvious hypermobility?!! Ah….

A stiff dressage lesson

Oats was just not there yesterday unfortunately. We had a private due to our other lesson partner’s horse with a cough, and Oats warmed up stiff and resistant and kind of…Stayed that way. It was definitely a bummer, but we ended up breaking down the steps to get the lovely, soft bending horse that I am used to having!

Is this too much to ask for? Right now, YES! hahah

Step 1: Leave the trot alone and go back to sitting trot quietly bending in a big bend in small circles.

Step 2: Trot/walk from the sitting trot to walk transitions. The key here is to keep a very deep headsets and relax over the back.

Step 3: Canter is from sit trot, deep bend, and when it falls apart, then ask for a trot transition BEFORE it goes. Sit the trot down, and bend deeply. Keep riding through the transition.

Our right lead was actually not bad, but the left certainly didn’t improve that much. We had a few moments of ‘yes thats it, that is the canter I wanted!!’ but we couldn’t keep it at all. And our downward transitions on the left were…Not good.

And I am trying to figure out how to get more weight on Oats. Time for new hay I think, after discussing it with both trainers this week. I upped his Equi-Cal to the max last night (after weighing it on Becky’s food scale) and I have a phone number for a new hay guy with better hay. I will call him today!

And we go through a LOT of Equi-Cal now. Like…a bag a week! it’s nuts! Have to go and get more next week even. I have, of course, like three freaking bags of All Phase still and none left of Equi-Cal, because that is all Oats was fed for the past 12 years! ARGH.

I miss my chubbier Oats, and I want him back 🙂 He was never really chubby but he was at a healthy weight and I didn’t feel his poor spine bones all the time when I rode him bareback.

Take a bite out of me

Back to the grind, part 2. This felt like a strange week- work Monday and Tuesday, run a night time race (the Run through Time fun run on NYE at UVic), ride during the day Wednesday, and then back to work Thur/Fri??? My mind is confused, ha. I am not sure I would do the Run through Time again…It was fun, but the rain sucked, and I’m not really into the ‘fun runs’ per se…I was lapping people and that was annoying to me.

Oats says, take time this year to smell or eat the flowers! 

I did have my regular jump lesson on Thursday, and we were under winter storm conditions all day leading to Fri/the weekend, so I did feel kind of anxious and apprehensive about how bad the storm was going to be during my lesson! (again!). I didn’t even have to worry though- it was misting rain the whole time but on the whole not too windy or anything. Phew!

We worked on a fun exercise too- poles in a gymnastic, and then a middle jump, and then a few jumps on an angle. Everything was really low- so low that Oats got really lazy and decided he could just trot them, or maybe knock them down? UGH! Have you tried, Oats?? Ha. I wanted to focus on not pinching with my knees. Easier said than done…

I always look like a 12-year-old on Oats

I can now feel *when* I am pinching, but I am not consistent in NOT doing it. Oh well?!

It was fun though! We finished by jumping a small oxer like 10 times, ha. It got boring! Oats jumped it perfectly each time. I know why my trainer made me do it over and over…I get anxious with oxers. Very anxious. Even if they are really tiny! hahah. Well rest assured that the one got ‘old hat’ very soon for us. Oats wanted to start trotting instead, wondering ‘why’ we had to keep doing this…

yawn!

Sometimes the boring jumps are fun too!

Mixed thoughts on dressage (stressage?)

Jumped into an impromptu dressage lesson last night (I was going to take the night off, but got super tempted so I joined in last-minute. I know, I know but hey I was on time for once?!) and we worked on similar stuff to last week with one exception- I was kind of sucking at it this time.

We worked first at the walk, then at the trot and were going to move it up to canter except we didn’t quite…make it successful at the trot. So we stuck it there, ha. Honestly it felt rougher than last week BUT also not terrible? Just that it was hard, and we were trying. His trot was really great, super amped and really ‘moving ‘ but getting him to reach down into contact was kind of not great aka a big work in progress.

He’d be in contact, I’d slowly (and my timing was off..) start giving him rein, he’d reach down, and then immediately pop back up out of contact. Ugh! I would go back to trying to get contact back, and rinse, repeat. It takes a lot of work to maintain the contact through a lower head/giving hands.

Still some pretty solid work. Just makes me feel like urghh the canter is going to be verrrry interesting if I am struggling this much with the trot!

No polo tonight, it’s getting too dark out too early now (sob). So I will just zip out the barn and do some field riding with Oats, he needs the mental break after our fairly strenuous dressage lessons.

Inch for inch, pound for pound?

Who needs boys when there’s booze around?! 😉

Here is a recap of my dressage semi-private on Tuesday- lateral work, more lateral work, and yes, more lateral work.

Old barn with Oats. Let’s take a trip down memory lane…

It was hard. It wasn’t that thrilling or much fun? But, as Karen reminded me, we were working it in the trot and not that long ago, Oats would rather DIE TRYING to do lateral work in the walk. Like, hissy-fit city. A total no-go. So, progress is happening, it is just hard and not that joyful.

The work we were doing was bend the horse in a ‘c’ shape- inside bend, with haunches off the track, moving to both directions starting at the walk, then quickening the walk, then trotting.

Oats had a few things to say about this, mainly he didn’t like it. If I didn’t release fast enough from the bend, he’d bottle up and hop up and down. If I let him have too much head, he’d charge off in the counter-bend, instead of bend. Sigh.

Dressage days- looks better than it was!

We then worked to do a leg-yield along the short side, and then the ‘c’ shape bend along the long side. It was…interesting. Not particularly successful, but we were trying? And I had to reward that try!

When we finished, Oats was charging off at the trot at Mach 10. He had some energy to burn off and I let him charge around for a bit, snorting and letting it alllllll out. Karen said that was very typical of extensive lateral schooling- they feel very contained, and when you let them go, they go WAY out. So, go for it buddy!

A good learning lesson, but it was definitely a challenge.

Trying is always enough

No jump lesson on Wednesday- got moved to Saturday instead (and joined my 10-item long list of things I have to do on Saturday as well, wtf is going on with my week of running errands EVERY SINGLE DAY?!).

Ummm when do I get to be this?

Anyways I digress.

My rides then this week consisted of messing around with the best of intentions on Wed, jumping some baby jumps instead of ‘cough’ trotting jumps like I wanted to, or working on counter-bend in the canter like I was supposed to…Hey it was fun though!

I did originally trot a fence or two, but Oats literally fell over the jump and face planted quite dramatically, and it scared the shit out of me, so yeah…Canter it is!! Yay! Jumping alone!!

My reality…

The canter was fine and the jumps were teeny, non-dramatic, and fun. We then did move on to walk lateral work, and he was pretty well behaved for it, so another win-win for us.

Thursday, I was bound and determined to finally work on canter counter-bend. I started it in the trot, working both sides bend/counter-bend before moving to canter. I had an idea that he would figure out what I was asking if I started it in trot first. And did that work? Well, sort of?

He was immensely confused about the counter-bend at the canter, and would frequently drop out of the gait into a very fast and hurried trot. Well, that’s ok. We’re trying. It required more effort from him to maintain the gait, and his balance too, and I could tell it worried him a bit.

That’s fine though, and it’s a learning process. I repeated the whole shebang on the other rein, and then played with a bit of asking for counter canter (shamefully by literally asking for the counter bend and then just going into the canter from there. Straightness? What straightness??) and it was okay…

I’m pleased with Oats’ effort, and the fact that he was willing to try instead of shutting me out entirely. He was quite sweaty after his work yesterday and it looks like clip time is coming on Monday!! (I am so desperate to get him clipped, it takes forever to cool him out and I am tired of getting home after 9pm every night!!).

Night off for both of us tonight, and the lesson on Saturday when my marathon week of a zillion pesky and expensive errands continues!!! (I am jealous of those with holidays right now. god.).

Orchestra for the Moon

Taken from a Jenn Grant album title, (saw her on Tuesday), to provide a recap for this week: mixed results.

Oh man do I want it to be summer!

Monday I had organized an equine counselling session, as I realized I was in need of a tune-up after my bad/good lesson on Thursday. For some reason, because I was feeling a lot of stress that week, I started making a lot of very negative value statements about my riding, my lesson, and everything– after what was, to be honest, not a terrible lesson. So what gives?

Turns out that I was likely trying to make that lesson resolve what I was feeling emotionally/ physically, and that just…didn’t happen. I was trying for redemption via my horse and jumping, and you know what? A big nope on that.

And it left me feeling discouraged, useless and like, unfulfilled. A good comparison would be my car: it was also breaking down last week and when it stalls or breaks down, I don’t immediately think I am a bad driver! I just think, well, time to get the car fixed. So jumping to the judgements after my ride because I am in a bad headspace and looking for my lesson to ‘cure’ it isn’t reasonable or good.

My future!

Good to know! So, how to solve this? Answers to handling and managing my feelings are to make sure I feel grounded, get myself in a better headspace. If I know I am not, then to acknowledge it, and make do. Realize that I might not hang the moon on the first try, but that I am going to work it, and see how things go. Be honest with myself about how I am feeling, and be honest with my horse.

I went to ride Oats after my session on Monday and woooow…he felt terrible! So stiff, wouldn’t bend, head-flipping, coughing, didn’t want to canter, didn’t want to hold the canter…WTF? I tried to loosen him up in the trot with minor success and then got off. Can’t deal, that’s ok. It was also monsoon raining the entire day and I now think he literally spent the whole day standing in his shelter= not good for the horse.

Tuesday Oats had the day off, and Ian and I went to see Jenn Grant. She was lovely! She played Dreamer, which I liked off the Heartland intro immediately. A lot of her other songs were really cool, chill and she has a great voice. There’s something really heartfelt about her singing, and she seemed like a very funny and interesting person. My feet were killing me after though, I’m not used to standing around at bar shows hahah.

Wednesday I went to the barn with some trepidation. How was Oats going to be? I longed him briefly before my ride and he hates the sand ring, so he kind of refused to do anything but jog around. Hmm…I didn’t think it was going to go well.

Actually he surprised me! He was moving so nicely. But then…dun dun dunnn…The hopping and head-flipping came back at the trot.So WTF is this then? I puzzled over it for a bit and then realized…Oats is feeling cooped up, caged up. He wants (asking as politely as he can), to GO!!

So, I got up in two-point, and we cantered. And cantered. And cantered. And it was sooooo nice. He felt flowing, free, just really good. He clearly needed to get this out of his system! Then we could go back to the trot, and I popped him over a few x-rails, at the trot, and then we worked in between trot and canter. Just some flowing figures, big loopy circles, and he felt great.

Interesting…

Struggle-bus dressage?

I noticed I’ve been complaining about flatwork a lot lately- in all honesty, Oats has improved by like, 100% and my ‘wanty’ behaviour is due to the things I now think we are capable of doing…

Another time when he was sweaty too!

Like yesterday- our dressage lesson was pretty good, I wasn’t scared off anything and Oats didn’t bug me too much. But, things like- he wouldn’t trot when I was asking for contact in a medium-low stretchy frame- he would only canter. And canter. And canter. For a pony who has the HARDEST time going forward, it’s quite interesting to ride him when he finds canter easier than trot. I wanted trot though, so I was like wtf horse, why won’t you just trot?!!

But, as my trainer pointed out, if he’s doing the exercise well enough at the canter, leave it there for now. It’s mentally doing the job that you need–you can get nitpickier about the gait later. Fair enough!

So, we cantered–seeking the nice, stretchy lower-frame work that we tried to get in trot. And then we eventually got it in trot!  And the tried for it in a quieter, more compressed trot to transition to a small canter. This was met with mixed results- Oats started being a twit about yanking the reins out of my hands and tossing his head…So, back to the drawing board.

I found (again) that I let him buldge off my right leg going left. Oh and I rely too much on my inside rein to keep him in corners- this has been plaguing me on my jump lessons bigtime!

It was a very sweaty lesson. Oats had rivulets of sweat running down his forehead! If he’d only trot, I’m sure it would have been much less sweaty, but you know, ponies…No sense reasoning with them!

I did give him a very big and long head-scratching session- as dictated by me so he doesn’t rudely shove his big head on me- and he LOVED IT! And he got some more candy canes as a treat!