Somewhat needless to say, Butterball and I did not trek to Aiken this past weekend. We would've been fine getting out of Florida, but once it became apparent how hard the storm hit the Carolinas (as well as many other areas), we called it. In spite of that, the hard working crew at Stable View got things cleaned up and running as well as sorting out getting water to all the horses on grounds.
Our house was less than 80 miles from where Helene made landfall. Considering that, we were incredibly lucky. A few big limbs down but no major damage. Good thing we were late getting seeds in the ground this year in the garden, the young plants wouldn't have stood a chance, but this way they were just emerging after the storm. We did exist in a state of half power at home for 48 hours before the dedicated and amazing line crews got it back up. We are on a well as are the barns where Goggles, Ben, and Butterball live. No power means no running water. Growing up in that same situation, we had an artesian well. But when we asked about drilling one here we were told it isn't possible. Given the number of springs we live near, I'm confused by this. But my knowledge of hydrogeology is about zero. Fortunately at home and both barns, there are generators that run to power the well pumps. And battery powered and plug in fans made sleeping tolerable at home.
Was delighted by 82 degrees and open windows. She did have the courtesy not to take her usual sleeping spot directly ON me while it was this warm.
Butterball got to go for bareback hacks on Thursday before the storm and Friday after the storm. It was blown through our area by about 7am on Friday, but I waited until the afternoon to head out to see him so I wasn't clogging up roads or running into too many down trees.
Pre storm hack
Post storm, post hack grooming
Saturday we did some dressage. He was very positive he was a trail pony by that point and tried to drag me out the driveway twice to go wander. But we did end up getting some very nice canter transitions done.
So as to not completely miss out on galloping and jompies for the weekend, I made plans with Amanda and another friend to go to Majestic on Sunday. Goggles actually got to go along as well because the other friend's horse had less than the desired number of shoes on.
Please may I touch the pony???
Lol
Googles has been coming back into work the past 1.5 weeks post stall rest for his large cut. I've been doing a lot more with the Equiband with him on the lunge, and it seems to be doing really great things for him. Saturday he came out soft and responsive and had the most delightful trot and canter work. He just stepped into the canter and stayed soft and bending throughout it. I quit after just 15 minutes because with that quality work I wanted him to be rewarded. He continued to be a good fellow for the XC adventure. When it was insisted that he could in fact hold himself up headed downhill and could lift off his inside shoulder he complied quite well.
Presto and Goggles together are trouble. They wanted to start a grand game of bitey face/tack. Butterball wisely let the two large chaos horses have their moments without him.
Butterball was fantastic as per usual. We bopped around mostly novice lines with a few training fences thrown in. We kept it pretty light and fun overall. I was guilty of riding him too much like a pony a few times. And he was throwing in a few more bucks. Our newly repaneled saddle is getting looked at on Thursday. In the trot he feels very happy with it, so I don't know that it's the problem. The bucks do seem to coincide with turning back away from home and being asked to use his butt, so maybe there is a degree of pony-tude to them. We're going for a supervised school tomorrow, so I'll get JT's input as well.
Then it was time for him to move to the same barn as Ben and Goggles! He will be out with Ben. Ben's gelding friend had left for the trainers that morning, so the barn owner's almost two year old filly had stepped in to be his friend. Though we removed her from the field before putting BB in, this did spell a little trouble because Ben fancied himself a badass with a GF. He was quite a jerk to poor BB and guarded the side of the fence closest to the barn where his GF had gone. Even at his worst though Ben still isn't terrible so we left them to work it out.
BB being a good friend to his buddy at JT's
Enjoying the grass, but wondering why he got put out with such a jerk
When I checked on him a few hours later, BB was in the far corner of the pasture and eyeing Ben. Fortunately there's water in multiple spots, but he did have messed up hair on his butt where it appeared that Ben had bit him. Sheesh Ben 🙄. I know Ben will come around soon, but I still feel bad for my poor sweet pony.
Butterball and I tackled the Florida Horse Park POP schooling show this weekend and had the best time. We're headed for Stable View this weekend, so figured we'd better get a run in at novice at home.
It's finally gotten a tiiinnnny hint of fall here and the poor dude was very non-plussed by his 7 AM bath. But he doesn't hold grudges, so he was a happy pony again by the time I loaded him up on JT's trailer with his two buddies. We were all laughing about the fact that the 15.2 hand connemara x TB was the biggest horse of the three on the trailer that day. My BIL wanted to work on finishing up the paint job on mine, so it was easiest to just have BB ride the party bus.
Dressage: I tried to remember my dressage time incorrectly AGAIN this time and thought it was 10:40, but fortunately checked around 9:30 and realized it was 10:30 instead. Sheesh, not something I normally do, don't know why I was trying to short myself a warm up two shows in a row. Dressage was decent, the canter still needs more work, but overall I was a more active participant this time. At home schooling we can get really nice canter work... eventually... so when you have a transition, one 20m circle, and then 2/3 of a long side, we're barely getting it nice by the time it is time to trot again. I also *forgot* the left lead canter and was planning on doing another short diagonal, so that canter transition was never going to be a good one, oops! We're riding the same test again next weekend though, hopefully it will stick better.
Still, not upset by a 32.2 for our first time at this level and a month in to our partnership. Afterwards he got hosed off and then put back on the trailer to chill in front of the fan.
Stadium: We had 3.5 hours between dressage and stadium, so he chilled on the trailer and I wandered around, watched a few friends go, and ate lunch. It was pretty warm by that point so there was a definite afternoon slump feeling around noon. But BB and I both managed to wake back up to go jump!
The course was the same as the last time, but I RODE the whole time, and he rewarded me with a clear round. We met a friend of his old owner who was manning the in gate. She was so sweet, and he had a whole cheering squad when we finished the course.
Why yes, I am perfect!
As JT pointed out when I ride him like a horse not a pony then he goes so well and feels like he's got so much scope in there.
Cross Country: I walked before dressage, so these are early light shadows, not the ones we had at 2 PM. We headed over from stadium, popped the brushy roll top in warm up out of stride and headed to the box.
Out of the start box. He was actually a bit sticky and bucked once. I think *most* of the problem was the saddle, we were in one of JT's that has longer panels than he likes and he threw in a few expressive lead changes in stadium too, I think for the same reason. He is certainly more motivated when headed towards home in the course though too, so that likely played a role as well.
But he popped right on over one no problem and landed with his mind on business
Two - bench
3- cutout cabin, from his back the training fences don't actually look big... he jumped this great
4- another cabin
5ab- the villages - this walked as a 6. I screwed it up and did zero half-halting between so we did 5 and a bit of a scramble over B. Sorry bud.
6- another cabin thing
7- water then left hand turn to a corner
8 - I hate corners. JT told me to go into the water close to the right hand flag and then make a smooth left hand turn to the corner "go get it buddy". I think I've shared before how much I like wedges, so I asked her if I could ride it like a wedge, she said sure. I picked the point on the face of it that she said to aim for and rode that like the tip of the wedge.
Go get it buddy!
Best boy!
9- Sometimes riding BB feels so easy that it really feels like cheating. However, he is still only 7 and new to this level, and I felt him question for a second on the way to this jump. But the same way he gives me so much confidence, I closed my leg, and he responded with more confidence and headed right over
10- cut out cabin
11ab- half coffin
You can see the wedge of 12 in the distance
Wedge, I felt him wiggle a tiny bit coming to this, but he was good and honest
13- Brushy roll top
14- Wagon, we were headed back towards home at this point and he was GAME!
15ab- water, left hand turn again to a wedge
We took a little chip at the base of this, but it wasn't a confidence issue I don't think, just me botching the stride
16- log, jumped it right out of stride and we were DONE! 11 seconds under optimum time
We ended up in 6th! I finally used my Garmin to count up instead of screwing around and tediously setting it to count down. We averaged 15.9 mph for the course, how fun!
TOUCH! Refusing to pose with his ribbon. It was a long, warm day, and he was just super for the whole thing. I was about to turn him out when I tried to snap this, so I gave up after one attempt and let him go be a pony with his friend.
I was so afraid of screwing up my perfect, beautiful, could-do-no-wrong actual golden pony that I rode him right into a run out on Thursday. It was near the beginning of the lesson and we did a six stride line with a slight left curve at the end. I missed the distance to the in and then held my breath and did nothing other than tip and pray while he drifted right and then ducked out right of the second fence. While thoughts of that weekend's novice entry ran through my head, JT talked me through it and said "you need to make a decision and you need to be wrong sometimes, but you have to commit". And somehow that snapped me out of it and I started riding the horse. It felt like being back on Ben, balance up, look at the jump, bring the outside shoulder around the turn.
I don't have videos of BB jumping still, so you get old Ben videos. I hadn't watched these since last year and thoroughly enjoyed that walk down memory lane.
Anyways, BB and Ben are very different horses, but the general principle of ride the horse, make decisions, believe that you can do this still applies. And the thing they both have in common that I need to keep telling myself is that they have plenty of scope, so even if the distance is wrong, they're fine. Ben needed commitment because if I screamed with him there was no way we were going over the jump. BB needs commitment because he is half pony, and if I don't commit then he might possibly find a slightly easier way of doing things that doesn't necessarily involve going over the fence. This is absolutely not to say that they both don't cut my adult ammy butt a lot of slack, but they both require me to actually make decisions. As I've rolled a Ben sale ad around in my head I've thought the line "You can miss but you have to be committed to your miss" and I feel like that actually holds true for most horses I have jumped. It essentially means that I can't stare at the wrong distance getting ever closer and do nothing (typing this out it seems so obvious, but... yeah... so much of riding is...). Stretch up, support, add leg, and then a light bouncing up and down hand feeling that worked wonders for Ben actually works pretty well for BB too. Ben has a distinct pulling down into the hand as he spooks that BB does not have, but the idea of the slight up and down bouncing hand helps BB rock back onto his hocks and get a really, really nice jump.
OMG LOOKIT HOW CUTE THOSE EARS ARE
With my refound decision making abilities, the rest of the lesson continued swimmingly. We had started out with a really interesting exercise. Down a cavaletti line on the quarterline in 6 strides, left hand turn over a crossrail oxer across the diagonal, then a right hand 10m half-circle to go down the same cavaletti line, this time in 7 strides. While doing this I was thinking how grateful I was to be on a smaller horse. I watched my lesson mate do it beautifully on her large Irish mare and was super impressed.
We then moved on to course work with all of the lines being six strides other than a one stride line across the diagonal. It all went well and at the end I had JT bump the jumps up a bit more since we were entered in Novice for the POP show four days later. And whaddya know, the pony jumps the slightly larger jumps just the same as the smaller ones. Good boy!!!
The next day we had a dressage lesson with the same idea of "touch the (precious) pony". And it was great. He's very bendy and supple and trotting straight down a (very long) centerline was really the hardest part. We ran through Novice Test B. JT had me emphasizing bend, stating that "you can ride a lot deeper into the corners than on a large horse, but that means you need more bend". The test also has short diagonals both directions in the trot in it, which look pretty atrocious if you don't emphasize the bend. We still can get a lot more consistent, but we made so much progress in one lesson.
I spent most of the week prior riding him bareback because he managed to cut himself right in front of the girth area. Also, what good is having a pony if you can't bomb around bareback.
Lovely placement, sir
The bareback rides did wonders for my shoving into the canter with my seat, and BB and I had reached a happy agreement in which I didn't shove and he politely picked up the correct lead with just a little lift off the inside leg and slip of the outside leg back. I had 100% been ignoring reins for doing that transition, so he was coming up above the bit during the transitions. But JT pointed out that I needed that reset and she didn't see me shove with my seat once during the dressage lesson. All it took was adding a little connection back in, and we had lovely up transitions. The down needed a bit more prep than I was giving them, but we got it towards the end.
It's so fun to be in this lovely stage of still getting to know each other but also becoming more confident in our partnership each day. He has started greeting me in his stall and pasture, which is also a great feeling.
More on this later, but he still seems to be getting more fond of me daily even though I do things like dress him up in aquamarine fly gear
Better late than never? And heeeeyyyyyyy, look who is back on the chart!!
Ben
Goggles
Training rides
0
5
Lessons
0
2
– 1 each jump and dressage
Hacks
1 – ponied
2 – 1 ponying Ben, 1 at JT’s
Ground work, lunge, long line
4
– lunge sessions
0
Flat rides
2
2
Conditioning rides
0
0
XC school
0
1 – training ride at Magnolia Sands
Shows
0
1
– Majestic Oaks BN
Random side note before getting into their individual recaps, I tried out the spot on fly/tick repellant (Farnam equispot) in August. Neither got ticks for the rest of the month, but apparently high dose permethrins do something to sweat glands. They both had dry spots in the spots where it was applied. This lasted for several days before going back to sweating all over. I will still use it in the peak tick months, but I certainly would NOT put this on a horse who had any tendency towards anhidrosis. Strange stuff.
Random dry patch right under the withers where it was applied. You can see it a tiny bit on the shoulder too.
Goggles: This was a tricky month for shoes and this kid. He spent the first week down at JT's in training still, but then lost a shoe there and couldn't get it back on for a few days because of the hurricane. He came home after the Majestic show and promptly lost a hind. I was ignoring that, but a few days later he lost a front. Three days after that we finally coordinated with the farrier to get them both back on. Spoiler alert, they then stayed on until his 5 week appointment a few days ago, thank goodness. Overall though, he benefitted from the time at JT's and had a new found softness in our work at home.
He's trustworthy enough to hunt for shoes bareback. Unfortunately the tall perspective still didn't help me find them. One turned up a few days ago, but this field has about 5 at this point.
Looking forward for him, hopefully September will be the month where he finds himself a new person. He threw a wrench in that plan by getting quite a cut that didn't stay closed so now is in the open stages of healing. But we'll get there. Being in a stall for a bit probably wasn't the worst thing to stop his quest to remove all of his shoes either.
Ben: YAY! My best dude went back to work. He got wraps put on by a trimmer on the 12th and was immediately walking better.
Spoiler alert: these stayed on 4.5 weeks before both coming off the same night/day
Hind
Soaking the hinds with white lightning for some white line
I gave him a week to get back to feeling right through his body, and then we started back with a few short lunges. The last week of August I popped on him, and he's been feeling pretty good since then. His canter reaalllly wanted to be stuck, but as soon as I remembered I needed to move my own back and not just sit and ponder how stuck he felt, things got way better.
Work?? Why tho?
For him September will be another month of building back up. He's getting his wraps reset on the 16th and then I do plan to get back with his farrier to get him in some composites before he starts over fences. He feels really good in the wraps, but I can tell he's wincing a bit on hard ground still. He's also going to get adjusted in the middle of September which should help his overall feeling too.
Butterball: Obviously the most important news of August was buying a golden hony at the end of the month. September will be a busy month for us as we get to know each other and then end the month with our first recognized outing at Stable View!
As noted by our appearance at the POP show, we launched right in to doing the thing our first week together. I also scheduled him for some aquatredding since I had leftover sessions from when Ben went. He was great about it. They asked about sedating him, but given that when he got 0.2cc of dorm for his foot rads for his PPE he was soooooo sleepy he let the cross ties hold him up for a solid thirty minutes, I asked if they could try without. They walked him through a few times and then started the belt moving a bit, then stopped that and added some water. He was such a good dude for the whole thing.
I've also been letting him ride in the "box stall" version of the trailer like the princess he is
Heading on in
Good lad!
On technically day 8 of being his person, we headed to the Local Champions Tour. We signed up for one round at 0.8 and one round at 0.9. I had wised up since my trip with Ben and while I looked at their projected schedule, I decided to arrive at the scheduled end of the 0.8m section. I worked late the night before so wanted every minute of sleep I could get. It worked out and we arrived just as they were finishing the 0.7m. I wandered around, scoping out the course, and BB munched grass.
While the warm up ring was every bit as chaotic as it was when Ben and I went, I felt more confident and settled on BB. He also is just a doll about traffic and gives no shits about approaching other horses. We focused on going forward in two point after landing and then sitting and rocking that forward power back onto his hocks through the corner and on approach to the fence. It mostly worked well and our 0.8m round was pretty smooth with just one rail when I got... casual to a fence. JT told me to ride him like a big powerful horse not let him slip into a pony feel.
There were a bunch in the 0.8m class and then a drag break, so he got his bridle off and ate more grass.
#spoiled
We geared back up for the 0.9m class by popping a sizeable oxer in warm up. It came up perfectly both times, and we headed on in. The round went... Okay. JT said I was riding much better than at the POP show, but I just kept missing. He wasn't bothered by it much but I couldn't see a distance to save my life. The line that went the best was a one stride then a forward six to an oxer. Since I had concrete advice (ride forward on the inside turn) we did the one stride and then did a lovely forward six to the oxer. We ended up with just one rail down, but a ton to smooth out on my part. This is part of the reason why he is living at JT's for this month - plenty of lessons.
The next day we went for an hour hack with a friend around the back field. The next day we tacked up with that same friend and headed to Sweet Dixie again for some galloping/slogging up hills. It was a bit tricky to find the driest areas because they were not necessarily the higher ground. But we sorted that out mostly.
All ready to go. So cute.
We did 20 minutes of trot and then 3x3 minutes canter, incorporating the large hill into each canter set at least once. The two horses made a GREAT pairing. My friend's horse is a TB who can be a bit firey and BB sometimes needs encouragement to keep going up the hill. So they complemented each other quite well and we had a great time getting some fitness work in.
All in all a delightful first ten days with him. He is such a pleasant dude to do all the things with <3
