I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. I was at work, sigh, but have been getting in plenty of horse time when not at work.
Amanda and I took Bingo and Henny to Majestic last Thursday. They were both absolutely perfect.
Henry is truly such a joy. He is generous and kind and just so much fun.
Meanwhile Charlie has been continuing mini leading and otherwise yielding to pressure lessons (stepping over and learning to back up). He's holding his feet up for a few seconds at a time. He's also trying less to climb/lean across my back when I pick up the front feet.
Best scritches, most llama baby
Nibbling on Maddie
Hi, I'm Charlie!
And Butterball has been walking for 30 minutes every other day. He did LOSE HIS MIND over some randomly tossed Chewy boxes that contained grain bags. He was positive it was a pack of wolves waiting to eat him.
I should have abandoned ship that day and switched to halter with treats, but hindsight and all that. We eventually made our way past them. They were gone the next day, but I did head out on foot in his halter and with treats just in case there was residual fear, but he was totally fine.
Generally though our walks are pretty relaxing. We're cycling through neighborhood hack; neighborhood hack with equibands; and walking in the field playing with turning solely off my seat and legs with some shorter and longer strides, halts, and rein backs thrown in. I *think* he's getting better about accepting contact without getting busy in his mouth and stiffening right away.
There have been some very vivid skies lately.
Near the Bronson city hall. Looked very old timey
Incredible sunset for my entire 45 minute drive home from work
Through some lovely, kind friends I've been having fun sitting on a variety of horses over the past couple of weeks.
First up was my friend's jumper. She picked him out in Ireland as a six year old and imported him last spring. Since then they've been killing it in the jumper ring. She recently started bringing along a green OTTB for a new career and wanted company out cross country, so I got to ride her jumper and come along and play. Her guy was an absolute blast!!! There's a lot more HORSE there than Butterball, and his canter was sooooo different. Jumping him took me a minute, but she rides and trains with PW (and is the one who introduced me to him) so things ended up translating well once I, y'know, stopped marveling at riding a new horse and RODE him. He definitely did not have a care in the world out there and would have easily jumped whatever I pointed him at. But he was also responsive and listened - if I lengthened him towards the fence then went "Oh SHIT" he would lengthen then chip and pop on over. Exactly as asked.
Much different jump than Butters too, but so fun
I'm told the banks in Ireland are MASSIVE, this was small potatoes for him
I've also been able to hop on Hillary's lovely horse, also Irish, but a very different sort. We've just done a couple walk hacks so far to get some fitness back. Plus it is freaking hot, and he doesn't necessarily love that. On our first walk we stopped to chat with someone for a minute, and I have never felt more still or anchored to the ground than I did while halted. Very content. Most zen.
Of course had to go visit last year's bebes
I've also hopped on Amanda's perfect dude Henry a couple of times now. He is such a pleasure to ride, you just think trot and he's swinging along in a rhythmic lovely trot that he maintains with no input from you. It's kinda Henry's MO actually - he seems to want and need his rider to do very little because he knows best, k thx. Our second ride I asked him to help me with not overriding my canter transitions. He obliged by telling me exactly when I shoved with my seat instead of just brushing him with the inside leg. If I didn't SHOUT at him with my aids he would step right into it. Push too much and he looked incredibly cranky and would run in the trot. Excellent teaching.
Yesterday, I had a long planned lake date with two friends and got to borrow an incredibly perfect pony for that. While I was definitely sad that Butterball wasn't getting to come participate in his fave activity, my friend offered up her pony who has done absolutely everything on the planet. She warned me that he has also been known to politely lay down in the lake, so I was excited to get to share in the joy of another pony who loves the water.
That's pony and I off to the left there
He did not disappoint and swam himself around in the middle of the lake. We both had a blast.
While I am definitely missing my best pony pants, it has been a ton of fun to play on some very different horses. I am quite grateful to my friends for their generosity with their horses/ponies.
Butterball and I went to Majestic Oaks on Saturday for the schooling show. A coworker was kind enough to switch with me so that we could practice stadium (and XC!) once before heading up to SC for Oktoberfest.
He got socks and tail bathed Friday afternoon
I dressaged at 8:28, jumped stadium at 11:15 and then headed over for XC right after that. Since Majestic Oaks is very, very familiar to me, I opted not to go walk the day before. We loaded up in the dark, Butterball and Mr. GY's horse, and headed out. We arrived around 7:45 and I slowly got dressed and tacked. In dressage warm up I discovered that Butterball can actually form significant attachments to other horses. He was bound and determined to call for his buddy every minute or so. Ms. GY kindly took his friend further away and he kept a lid on it in the test. I only did about 15 minutes of warm up because, let's be honest, we were there for the jumping.
And the judge, while scoring rather generously, called us out on the "more" of everything that was needed. More consistent tempo, more bend, more balance, etc. I don't really like Novice B and did almost lose my way once, so I'll consider it a win that I didn't get lost. Our 31.9 put us in 9th/11 with the first place score being a 26.4.
Stadium featured a course with a number of related distances - 8 strides between 1 and 2, 9 strides between 3 and 4, and 7 strides between 5 and 6. Then it finished on a two stride oxer to vertical, exactly what we had not executed at Stable View.
In warm up I remembered my wandering eye that I noticed over the summer and focused on keeping my eye ON THE SAME SPOT on the fence. Wouldn't ya know it, it helped. I'm still not honestly sure of the balance between micro-managing him that EM was trying to fix and acknowledging if our spot will be tight or long so I can add leg or wait a tiny bit accordingly, but I decided in warm up to ride him the way PW had me riding him successfully in May and June. My friend came and set fences for us and when I almost turned back to jump a larger than Novice oxer in warm up, she said "You're not going to gain anything by doing that. Just ride him forward and keep your shoulders up with your leg on, no matter what spot you get to." Turns out that was just the advice we needed because we went in and did that.
I used the corners to try to take EM's advice (and every trainer before her really) to not let him get behind my leg through the turns. Leg on, surge forward, then softly balance before the fences without sitting deep and driving his back down. We got 10 strides between 3 and 4, I needed just a bit more leg the first two strides of the line and then it would have flowed nicely. And then we got an ugly chip stride in to the oxer at 9A. But I sat up and believed that my very capable horse could get out and we put three tiny strides in and then jumped the vertical just fine. Which, truly, if it had just flowed over the oxer I think I would have gained less confidence.
After lots of pats for the pony we went over, got booted and vested up, and headed to XC.
Warm up went well. The course was so-so. The first few jumps I was anxious and DEFINITELY shoved him past the actual spot and got rewarded with two chips at the base. We mostly fixed that by the end of the course, aided by NOT fixing it at the fence before the down bank which was right before the trakehner. The trakehner here has made me nervous ever since I was jump judging when a horse had a rotational and had to be euthanized. So I have a good amount of respect for it and actually channeled it appropriately this time by creating a nice bouncy show jump canter that got us at an appropriately slightly close spot so he could bounce right on over.
Fence three where I first got it together a little bit
Fence five - corner
Looking towards the half coffin. He's SO CUTE
Rails towards the ditch
Getting the trakhener right
Second to last
With our two clear jump rounds we moved up to 4th
Huge thank you to my friend/coworker and Amanda and Hillary for the media and support. My coworker said after XC she felt like BB was maybe not as comfortable as he could be behind. He's definitely not lame, but now that she knows him pretty well, she felt like he wasn't quite himself. I had the same thought out on XC: He wasn't changing cleaning right to left, and left is usually his preferred galloping lead AND he had a couple slightly crappier than normal jumps even when I did my part. I *think* what happened is I bruised his feet again. We did some canter sets on the edges of dirt roads near the pond we've been swimming in. And around here those dirt roads sometimes contain lime rock. I could hear the hardness change as we went and then saw new bruises pop up on his feet a few days later. It would also explain a lesson last week where he was *not* particularly helpful about leaving the ground. I'm going to see about putting him in pads behind. And also haul down to what I know is softer footing for our canter sets. I do plan on supplementing those canter sets with our water treadmill days as well, which should be nice and easy on his feet.
If you'll recall, I pulled Butterball's hind shoes in early January. I had major doubts about the farrier I was using and figured there was less to screw up if there weren't shoes involved. We had a mostly great January after that, including joyfully bouncing around Majestic, feeling like we could just pop right over anything I pointed him at. We did have our blip at the horse eating pink roll top, but that felt like green horse + spooky jump + leaning adult ammy rider combo going wrong, as it will sometimes. Then Hillary and I went back to Majestic on Friday. And it wasn't as much rainbows and sunshine as it had been on our prior trip.
He was a very good boy, but was just kinda weird. Spooky to jumps he has been fine with in the past, including the tires where he said no freaking way about 30 feet out. So basically very not himself.
We were thinking hind foot soreness was the issue because his hind feet had worn A LOT. I think he definitely CAN go barefoot behind, but he'll need an adjustment period where he only does light work and potentially some hoof boots for the road hacking we do. Fortunately the farrier was coming on Monday. Later that day I also remembered that he had run out of his Relyne GI about a week prior and because I'm an asshole I had not gotten around to ordering more yet. He's not a particularly stereotypically ulcery horse, but he does do a TON of travelling and competing, so I've had him on it since I got him and being off of it coincided with new spooky behavior. Alright, then hind feet? Tummy? Both are fixable, yay!
I started him on 1/3 tube of GG daily until I could get him back on the Relyne. He had Saturday off, but then Sunday when I groomed him, he had muscle spasms in his epaxials basically any time I touched from mid-barrel up to the muscles themselves. I palpate his back EVERY TIME I ride him and had not gotten any soreness leading up to that day so felt very WTF about everything. He had also just gotten drenched with a slightly chilly rain, so I considered my options. I ended up taking the front shims out of my mattes pad in case that was dumping too much weight on the back part of it. The fitter had told me that the panels were too long for his back but it was probably temporarily fine since I'm not that heavy. Then I tacked him up and we did a nice, loose, stretchy 15 minute ride. After I untacked I palpated all over again and got absolutely no spasms. So whether that was the rain, the shims, or some other freak thing, it seemed better.
Monday he got his hind shoes back. The farrier barely had any foot to trim, soooo yeah. Not great. We did a little dressaging on Tuesday. Today we headed over to Majestic for the schooling show. Our dressage was... meh. I'm tired of saying the same things about the canter, so see prior posts. I was a bit bummed about the centerlines because I had scribed for this judge a couple of weeks ago and thought I was being SO DEAD ON. Apparently my dead on is to the left. I was very pleased with the final halt though. The day prior it had finally occurred to me to trick train it with the click and treat. We started working on it on our hack so that there was minimal pressure to feel like we ARE WORKING ON HALTING NOW DAMMIT, I'M GOING TO TENSE EVERY PART OF ME AND ATTEMPT TO SHOVE YOU INTO A BOX. I breathed out with a light "wooahh" and then just tried to close my upper thigh and softly halt. If he stayed square and straight he got a click and cookie. If he wiggled into it but halted there was a pat but no treat. This worked like gang busters and honestly worked a bit too well down the centerline which was part of our not getting to G. If I'd found the centerline though and made it to G it would've been a much better halt than any prior test.
Stadium was an experience. Parts of it were absolutely great. But I forgot that the outside line was a 5 to a 2 and tried to make it a 6 to a 2, which led to a great chip for the 6th stride and then 3 strides in the 2. After that fuckery on my part, he opted out of chipping to the base of the next oxer and ended up stopping, knocking rails, and kneeling in the jump. He paused for two seconds on his knees, I think assessing the situation, and then pulled us back upright. He was actively shaking, so I patted him a few times while they reset the jump. I trimmed the actual crunch into the jump out of the video because nobody needs to see that. We then picked the canter back up and carried on, with one other weird windmill jump. I think that one was him just trying to be careful from a weird spot with a bit of a shake to his confidence. Afterwards, we felt him all over and nothing palpated sore. I added studs since it was wet and I was unclear exactly what the refusal had been about, then headed to warm up. JT instructed that if he felt weird then I was to pull up. But if we were going, I needed to be committed to going. Y'know? Don't half ass it and question every single step leading to bad jumps that knock both of our confidence, but if he's doing weird things then stop.
He warmed up great, so we headed out on course with her and my friend who had shot his rads in the chase cart. The course was pretty long with an optimum time of 5:09.
1- Honestly this was the weirdest one. He was quite spooky and it took a tap on the shoulder to get him to commit to the jump.
2- Bench, Canter it, jump it, don't do anything weird
3- Boathouse that can be quite spooky, but was not for him
4- Ramp
5- Wagon
6- Water
7- Table
8AB- Brush rails to corner, these were not at all related really
He jumped the SNOT out of this one, but because of the shrubs his front half was immediately cut off, so you get a take off picture
I was unsure of what spot we were getting to this and rode it a bit in the backseat
But at least gave him the reins
9- Chevron
So cute!
10AB- half coffin
11- Roll, shared with BN
12- Cabin
13- Cut out cabin
14- More rails
15- Down bank
16- Trakehner
17- Log and box
After the water the whole course felt pretty great. We did of course chip the final fence, but y'know, other than that... He was responding to my half halts with my body and felt light and pleasant over things. The verdict from JT and my friend was definitely hind feet though, he was reluctant to take the spots where he really had to sit and push. He got his feet packed after and will get Equioxx as well as a few days off.
The moral of the story is don't screw with things that are working. Keep his hind shoes on, keep him on the Relyne.
Edited to add these because I don't know when/where else I'll post them, but lookit the speedy pony! Also I posted the heart rate because I found it hilarious it dropped from the start. I wouldn't say I'm nervous before leaving the box, but I guess my heart rate disagrees. I think the low point towards the very end was a glitch.
