Tarrin came up for lessons the weekend of August 4th. I had an early morning lesson with her on the 4th, right before Frank tanked. I love my lessons with Tarrin - they are always SO helpful. She really has helped me with Dylan more than I can say. She is always able to isolate the exact body problems that Dylan needs to have finessed out.
The arena was too wet to use, and all the obstacles had been set up in the grass outside of the arena. Tarrin has set up some ground poles in an exercise that looked like this:
So, the exercise started out with cantering up to the L shaped pole (going either left, or right), transitioning to a walk, and sidepassing over the L. It was clear that Dylan preferred one side over the other - instead of crossing over going to the right, he quick steps and shuffles over. This translated over into his lead changes, which is interesting because it seems to switch sides for me. When I'm doing exercises like the double slalom, my changes from left to right are way easier. During everything else, my changes from right to left are easier. I'm not quite sure why that is, but I guarantee it's all me.
Once we started the L exercise, Tarrin had me straighten him more, which almost felt like haunches leading to me. She assured me they weren't, and that straightening him actually made him cross over better. We then moved to something much more complicated - I would walk up to the L shaped poles and enter between the two of them (see orange arrows), then halt. We would back up, then trot directly off, leg yield either to the left or right about three or four strides, then go through the other pole corridor and change bend. When we had that more organized, we would enter at the walk, halt, back up, then canter off in either the left or right lead, half pass about three steps left or right (depending on what lead we were on), straighten through the pole corridor, and do a lead change between them. That was CRAZY hard. It was almost no time at all to prepare, and I had to be super precise, but by the end we were getting it. The half passes really engaged him right before the changes, and the pole corridor insisted that we do it straight and accurately, both things that count enormously in WE. The pole corridor was maybe two and a half feet wide, so there was no ability for him to move sideways in any kind of evasion. It was super hard, but super helpful. Accuracy is everything in WE.
It was a great lesson. Of course, Frank's death completely ruined any kind of enjoyment I had gotten out of the morning. But, I won't forget the day, ever, that's for sure.
Whoa wild stallion!! I got him a broodmare collar recently, and he has been living in that instead of in a halter. I love that I can leave the halter off him, but can still catch him. He can be INCREDIBLY hard to catch!
I've been hacking him regularly, riding him at Willow Draw, and now have also started taking him to the local Aquatread to try and get some pounds off of him. There are several ATs in our area, and this one is closest - it's one I hadn't been to before. Dylan was absolutely stupid the first two times he went into the corridor - he got down into the water without issue, but then folded up his legs and sank. Once he realized he was sinking, he started thrashing around, and had to be taken out and put back in a few times before he started to understand that he could actually *touch* the bottom. The third time he finally started to get it, and walked on the treadmill for about 10 minutes. From here, the time will go up, and the speed will increase to high speed trotting. He has to work up to it though, of course! I hope it will help his fitness level, which has been really hard to maintain in this weather. It's been SO hot and humid, and he really struggles with that. Not to mention he's a fat lard.... but, details.
Yes, he looks like a beluga in the water
Staring at me. "This is definitely YOUR fault lady."
We've also only been able to fit in one lesson with Louisa this month so far, which is fine although I would prefer to do two a month. Normally her lessons are on Tues and Thurs, but I recently realized she also does Sundays. I usually work on Sundays, but I managed to fit in a morning lesson last Sunday, and then worked in the afternoon. I don't usually like to do that, but sometimes you do what you have to! We had signed up for the HDS Laborious Day I and II shows this coming weekend in Houston (or well, Katy, which is basically in Houston), as another All Breed Awards score at Third level. We also signed up for our first time at Fourth level, giving 4-1 a try on each day. I told Louisa I wanted to try running through the test to iron out any of our problems, and she agreed. First though, we warmed up with some trot and canter work, doing some 10m circles at the trot and canter before switching directions (and leads). The changes all came clean, so we moved onto test work before Dylan ran out of steam, and the test actually ran great. I need to make sure I pay particular attention to geometry, especially in the first few trot movements - aside from the mediums and extensions, there is half pass to a 10m circles and then a shoulder in down the centerline. That's all good and fine, but if you're not precise with it, you'll not only overshoot the 10m circle but you'll completely lose your track on the shoulder in. Which is the point of it really, to prove you can be precise in every way.... which is hard.
Everything else ran off very smoothly. The canter mediums are good, the canter extensions are not great yet. We just haven't worked on them that much. If they don't get rushy, they also don't show a whole lot of difference between the mediums. The line of three changes also went very well, although I can't always guarantee a perfectly counted amount of strides between them. We're not ready really for 4-3, but 4-1 shouldn't be a problem, and 4-2 probably wouldn't go off poorly.
Whoa wild stallion!
When he's clean... he GLOWS!
Like father... like child.
Hacking with no hands.... because he's the coolest.
Dylan telling Cregga that he's DONE with her nonsense.
So this weekend was supposed to be the HDS show right? I was excited, because not only was I going to see my friend Sarah from college who has recently moved to Houston, but JenJ was going to be there and I haven't seen her in a good long while, and some other friends were going to be there too.
Ride times were posted early in the week. We were excited! We all were texting back and forth our plans for the weekend, and were busy prepping to leave on Friday.
Then we noticed something questionable on the radar. A small tropical depression was over Mexico, and there was some talk that it might become a tropical storm over the weekend.
Whatever, we though. We laughed, and bought a lot of beer. Beer makes everything fun right?
Yesterday, there was some talk that the storm, called Harvey, would probably make landfall as a tropical storm, and we would probably get pretty wet at the showgrounds. We talked about it some, as I had also agreed to move Sarah's horses to a new facility for her while I was there. I wasn't too worried about it. What's a little rain?
Then today happened. Harvey suddenly exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. This is common enough during this time of year - the Gulf is hot as bathwater. What isn't common is the fact that two low pressure systems are going to collide with and then squeeze Harvey once it hits land. It went from tropical storm with a possible landfall as a weak Category 1 hurricane to a strong Category 3 and maybe even Category 4 hurricane. This will be the first major hurricane to strike the US in almost 12 years, and the first hurricane at all to hit Texas in 9. For reference, the last hurricane to hit Texas was Ike - if you remember, I have a little story about Ike!!
Not surprisingly, the show cancelled. Harvey is going to bring potentially devastating and life threatening conditions to the state, and so we're all staying home. They are trying to reschedule for next weekend, which I could absolutely make happen - but we will have to see. In the meantime, keep everyone on the coast in your thoughts - there have been mandetory evacuations in several areas, but for those who are staying in the non-mandatory areas, it's going to be one rough weekend.
I had two lessons this week or so - one with Louisa, one with Tarrin. I was also supposed to have a lesson two weekends ago with Tarrin but it got rained out, much to everyone's surprise. Rain in June? In Texas? What is happening?
Both of these instructors are complementary to each other in that they both have similar things to say about the horse, and the same ideas about how to get there, but with different (but complementary) ways of executing things. Louisa uses a lot of visual imagery, which is a learning style I process very well. Tarrin is excellent at pinpointing an issue and prompt to get you right to fixing it. Both of them are focused on me as a rider, because both know how much changing something in my body alters this horse. All of his issues are not really *his* issues, they are *my* issues. And when they fix me, it fixes him, automatically. This is why he is so completely priceless - he doesn't tolerate fools, and he doesn't give you any freebies whatever, but he's also completely safe. He makes you work for it, and makes you be correct, but the second you get it, he gives all of it to you.
Dylan is shocked that old man Gringo (who wanders loose on the property) would come and steal *his* cookies right out of the tack room
In the lesson with Louisa, I started out with a really, really, really relaxed stretchy warmup. Up until a few months ago I was not able to post at all due to the pain in my leg, but during and after the last show at Tyler, I started giving it a try. Much to my delight I've been getting better and better at it, and with less and less pain. It sounds so stupid to be struggling with something so simple - I'm showing 3rd level and I can't freaking post? - but it truly was causing me pain beyond what I can even describe. Now though, with all my physical therapy, I'm posting mostly pain free and can now utilize that whenever I need to.
Where I've been using it is in my warmups. I've been making so much more use of stretchy work at the walk and trot instead of doing warmups at the walk and canter (because that's just how you have to do it when you can't post). As a result, I'm able to unlock his back that much faster, and relax him that much more. He really does like to stretch, but he's just as quick to get short and tense at the base of his withers, much like every other Spanish horse on planet Earth. But when I start my warmups with a long, loose, stretchy walk and trot, it loosens all of that up and it warms my muscles up too, so that I can find where I need to be better and faster.
I put him back in the snaffle for our lesson and have kept him back in the snaffle. The pelham is getting shelved for the time being, because Dylan is just *better* with it. As always, the more I just pretend like I don't have reins, the better he goes. When I get to micromanaging his face, everything goes down the toilet. We warmed up at the walk and posting trot, just doing some simple bending and stretching. Then we got to more of the meat - cantering squares with quarter pirouettes in each corner. It's exactly the same thing - just forget about your reins beyond simple positioning, and move him with your body. In pirouettes especially, which I am just learning about, my first instinct is to tilt which makes me lose my inside seatbone. The second that lifts off the saddle, he's quick to spin through his pirouettes almost like he wants to be a reiner, and he'll swap out behind. But if I really sit down and think about things in slow motion, he is a thousand times better. I just have to think my way through them.
There wasn't too much else that we were deeply focused on, aside from a few flying changes. He was a little slow to switch from right to left, but we edged around that by cantering down the long side in a bit of shoulder fore to the rail, and then executing the change on the far side of the ring. He's been so good with his changes that I honestly think he was more tired than he wanted to admit after doing the quarter pirouettes (or, maybe I was). When we got back home, Dylan also had a chiropractic appointment that showed he was much looser in his withers but had both hips out - so that also probably wasn't helping much!
Even though it wasn't too complicated of a lesson, the work was just so quality. It felt so good. It felt SO good. All of that stretching in the beginning meant all of the execution of things was just so fluid and so connected and just so good. If I can get that kind of connection everywhere.... that will be magical indeed.
Yesterday I rode with Tarrin again in preparation for the scheduled show today (stay tuned for an update on that at the end of the post). There are rules in the Confederation for WE that state that private instruction from a judge ahead of a show is not legal, but a clinic held by that judge right before a show is, which I think is really great. We rode at 8am, which I was very thankful for given the fact that it's about 113 degrees outside right now with high levels of humidity. Tarrin asked me first thing what I was wanting to work on, and I talked to her more about the last show and what I think went wrong. She pointed out his one major flaw - he likes to lose his haunches out towards the right. He does this in both directions and it's something I don't always really realize is happening until it's too late. To combat this, she parked herself in the middle of the dressage course and held one end of the garrocha pole, while I held the other. I had to go around her in walk, trot, and canter while holding the pole in one hand in both directions. I was not supposed to move her, or move my hand - the pole was supposed to stay perfectly balanced in the same spot between us. Talk about HARD - it completely relies on use of your body while trying to keep the horse on a perfect 10m circle, including through transitions.
Dylan's first inclination in that exercise is to drift his haunches toward the right. And as usual, this is mostly something I allow him to do without realizing it - I'm stronger in one direction than the other, so if I am not definitive enough with my outside leg and seatbone, I lose the haunches. It's not something you would even really see if you were watching us go, because it's very minor - but this exercise highlighted it. And it's not something that makes too much of a difference when we're doing simple things, but it gets amplified during changes or pirouettes. By the end of the exercise, I was so much more aware of the problem than I had been before. And it makes total sense.
From there, Tarrin had me ride my entire dressage test one handed. Now remember, I have almost no experience with real one handed riding, much less one handed dressage. Dylan does not neck rein. Or well, he sort of does like the rest of my horses do when we toodle on a long rein on the trails - they just sort of pick it up but it's certainly not like actual western horse neck reining. I wasn't really sure how it would go.
To my surprise, it went much better than I expected. What a surprise... when you ride with your body the horse goes well, who knew right!? He had no problem whatever with walk half passes and walk pirouettes - they were just as good as with two hands, which surprised me. The trot work wasn't stellar, more like not-quite jogging, but he leg yielded well and was responsive. I had some trouble with my reins getting too long, and had to adjust them a few times. Tarrin said short reins are my friend - that way I am never tempted to pull back, only to lift upward slightly if I need it, and make small adjustments left or right. The canter work started out a little funky, as I was struggling to figure out how best to keep him straight, but once I got a little more organized the canter instantly got better. If I just stay out of his way with my reins, he's got it, but the second I get a little too one sided or a bit heavy in the contact, he's all kinds of crooked. I have a tendency to be a little heavier on my left rein when I ride one handed, and Dylan made that perfectly clear when I came in for my first flying change from left to right... and he kept counter cantering on the left. He was just doing exactly what I asked even though I did not mean to ask for it. We tried again, I got organized and sat in balance, and he had a perfect change. Our next two changes were also perfect and not only were clean, but were straight and with the same good cadence coming out of them as going into them.
I actually really enjoyed riding one handed. I felt like it forced me to be better because I didn't have a choice, I didn't have the crutch of reins. Not only that, but the horse became perfectly soft and round in front as soon as I had full control of his body.
I am an awfully long way from going Advanced even though it's just the next level up, but I'm starting to feel like... maybe I could do it. (Although, if you look at the dressage test and imagine riding that with one hand... might be awhile before we ever get there.)
It was a good lesson and it wasn't actually too heavy on the workload, which was good because at 8am it was already a billion degrees. We got our coursemaps for the show, looked them over, and then headed back home to finish prepping for today.
And then today actually happened.....
What the hell!?
I was awakened at about 1am by a house shaking roar of thunder. Not surprisingly, after wave after wave of deluge, the show was cancelled this morning and rescheduled to November. So that's the second time in a month that Tarrin drove up here to Decatur and then got rained out. Damnit all!
Out of two planned clinics and a show this month, I only got to ride in the one clinic. Boooo. Next month I also have a clinic (with Tiago) and a B-Rated show at Haras. Both of those places have indoors so they shouldn't be cancelled unless there is something dire happening! I need to go back over my show schedule beyond that and confirm what I really want to be shooting for in the fall too.
The first week of the new year has started off with a bang. I've been powering through my days getting tons of stuff done. Aside from working literally every day, I've also been steaming through my year end bookkeeping, cleaning my house and putting away (most) of my decorations, paying bills, and ordering supplies (for business as well as supplements and FOALING SUPPLIES YES). I also dropped my trailer off for it's yearly servicing. Without it, I'm stuck at home, which is fine but it also limits me until I get it back. Considering that I've been working from dawn until dusk anyway, and I have no way to work anyone here in the dark, it has been a good time to get important indoors-only type stuff done.
Today was one of the coldest days so far. The wind chill this morning was only 3 degrees. I worked all morning, and got home around noon after my afternoon clients rescheduled for next week (when it will be almost 80 again). It was a good thing they decided to reschedule... shortly after I got home it started snowing. Snow in Texas happens about once a year, but it's always pretty fun when it does. The horses LOVE to play in it, especially old Pmare who always gets reminded of her youth in Canada.
Before snow.... O has been sleeping a LOT lately
It was solidly snowing by this time but O refused to get up, so Dylan wouldn't leave her
Sriracha and Zoodle going nuts!
That's quite a snowstorm for Texas
Pmare was INTO IT! She only plays like this in the snow!
I don't know which is more fun.... seeing the babies playing in the snow because they don't know what it is, or seeing Pmare play in the snow because she DOES know what it is
Frank and Zoodle
As of right now the snow is still on the ground. It will melt by tomorrow but it was fun while it lasted! I could watch my goons play in the snow for hours.
Texas is not known for being gentle or half-assed about ANYTHING. This of course includes the weather, and this past weekend was a prime example of the extremes that we get.
This usually happens a few times every winter, but this time it was EXTREME. It was about 75 and somewhat humid on Saturday. The horses had all been naked the night before, and were enjoying the warmth. Future Hubs and I had to leave that morning to go to Austin for his family Christmas, so I left my pet sitter with instructions to blanket them when the cold front hit that evening. We knew the temperature was going to drop, but you never really can appreciate how violent it is until it actually hits.
The cold front coming in. No precipitation, that's just REALLY cold air!
We were out on the porch having some beers when the cold front hit. It came in like a freaking freight train. Out of nowhere, this huge cloud covered everything, and suddenly we were slammed with icy cold wind. Chairs flipped over, papers flew, and people fled for cover as our fingers and faces instantly froze. The temperature dropped from almost 80 degrees to 20 in a matter of minutes, with wind chills in the single digits. It was like Mother Nature reached down and punched Texas in the face, and then beat us with a bag of ice.
Back at home, my poor pet sitter was faring little better. I had wrapped all the faucet heads ahead of time, and made sure the insulation in the well house was good, but all the hoses still froze immediately, and the troughs iced over. The horses were naked and the wind was gusting wildly, so my pet sitter had to catch and blanket all the ones that needed it (P, Pax, O, Big Frank, and Dylan). Most everyone was easy to catch, and I had her catch and blanket Zoodle too (she said he was wonderful), but she couldn't catch Dylan. The neighbor's collie was back and chasing him around, and he was doing his usual you're-a-stranger-and-can't-be-trusted thing, giving her the runaround and refusing to be caught by any means. It must have taken her an hour, including the few minutes where she had to go sit in her hot car and warm up. Finally she got him after she gave O a carrot and convinced him to come and get one too.
Fortunately, everyone survived the horrible weather. It was 14 degrees on Sunday morning, and the windchill was 3 degrees. When we arrived home it was little better, still very cloudy and gusty with temps in the 20s. Naturally, since *something* had to go wrong while I was away, when we arrived home all the mules and mares had let themselves out into the yard and were causing a ruckus. Dylan and O were FREAKING out. I grabbed Pmare, and everyone more or less followed her back into the pasture like little sheep. Everyone was fine thankfully, but of course, my life is a comedy of errors so something HAD to happen while I was away.
Moo and Tonka say, the only way to survive cold weather is to be inside and asleep
Finally warmed up today!
Unfortunately WD was not unaffected by the cold snap. A pipe burst in the indoor, which flooded the arena and made it unusable. I'm sure it will be fixed soon, but I guess Dylan's winter break is starting a little early! It's too cold to do much anyway, but when you have a lit arena to trailer to, you can make due during the winter even when it's chilly. Except... not if the arena is a skating rink.
Tarrin came back up our way for private lessons last Friday and Saturday. She does that every few months or so, and I intend to keep taking advantage of this. The lessons are held at an outdoor about half an hour north of me, and weather wasn't looking so promising, but I picked the last lesson of the day (5pm) so as to make sure I was done with work and ready to roll on time. As it turned out, my clients of the day rescheduled, so I had a random day off anyway. The rain was coming our way, but we still loaded up and went, hoping we would outrun the storm.
The sun was just setting as we tacked up and got on. Tarrin was still finishing up with the previous lesson as I warmed up, just doing some walk work, leg yields and half pass. I paid particular attention to lightness and moving him exclusively off my seat aids without using my leg aside from idly placing it where it needed to be. Dylan is so sensitive that he responds to seat aids alone, if I can get my body out of the way and let him do it. The lighter I can be with my leg and my rein, the better he is.
I mentioned this to Tarrin when I went over to start my lesson. I told her about my problem with the canter straight to walk work in the Intermediate tests, and how it dings me hard. We also brainstormed about what to do with the solid gate, and came up with some ideas to build something solid to practice with. From there, she put me on a circle to the left going around her, and we started in on transitions.
Dylan likes to live in a box. He has a little square space that he is certain he needs to be in all the time, and he's always anticipating the next thing to happen within this box. He is quite sure he knows everything there is to know. If whatever he is anticipating doesn't happen, his little box can get to be a kind of wild place. It's like being in a stall with a horse that suddenly gets upset about something and starts to flail around. You just kind of have to get out of that box if you want to resolve the situation, or else you might get squashed. In some ways it reminds me of the time when Hermione the pony got attacked by angry hornets in her stall, and the only thing to be done was to fling her door open and let her gallop out. As Tarrin put it, "his box can be a dangerous place to be if he gets upset." Not physically dangerous in any way... but mentally dangerous. It can be powerfully brain frying to think you know in complete certainty what is about to happen, and then it doesn't.
Louisa said the same thing during out last lesson. "We need to get him to think outside of his box." In a lot of the exercises we have done with her, she has been having me change up some things to shake up his world a little bit - exaggerated overbends in our leg yields, pinging back and forth between leg yields and half pass, transitions within gaits as slowly as possible, taking six or seven strides to move from collected or working gaits to medium gaits, and back again. Things he doesn't expect. Things that make him wait, instead of anticipate. The more he realizes he has to wait and see what I'm going to ask for instead, the better the work will be.
This is very different from the last few horses I've had longterm rides on. You could never do this with O. You couldn't do it with Gogo either. Both of those mares needed very, very, very simple work in order to relax them, and only once they were relaxed in that work could they be asked for more. Other horses I've ridden needed a lot of energizing in order to get them forward and working. With Dylan, he's waiting every second to do the next thing, and he gets stuck inside his head. You don't need to add ANY energy, because he has is in excess. So, you have to do what you would do with the lazy horses in order to energize them, but in reverse. You're not using the transitions and changes to create energy, you're using them to create relaxation and the ability to wait for direction. It's so different to me, but so interesting and it works. The types of transitions are different as well - to energize, you might do a lot of upward transitions. To relax, we did a lot of downward transitions, and a LOT of stretching.
And it worked. Every couple of strides, we would do two half halts and a release, and make it a dramatic release - let my inside rein almost get a loop in it. We did lots of transitions, within gaits and between gaits. We did tons of walk stretching too. Every time he would get a little hot, we would stretch. Over the course of the lesson, he got more and more mellow, and the last few flying changes we did were so quiet that Tarrin had to squint in the dark to see if we had done them. They were so smooth she didn't even see them happen. After each change, we would walk and stretch, to keep him thinking about being quiet instead of zooming ahead for the next change.
There is something kind of magical about taking a lesson in a lighted outdoor arena at night. Only part of the arena was lit, so we were in semi-darkness. You can't see the outside of the arena, and nothing else is in the arena except for you, your horse, and your instructor. As I spent much of my lesson going in a small circle around Tarrin while she talked, the world spun around a little, and everything else fell out of focus. Upward transition, downward transition. Upward, downward. Stretch, pick him up, stretch, pick him up. Canter, halt. Canter, walk, stretch. Stretch, walk, canter, change, walk, stretch. Over and over, up and down. Round and round.
As we finished the lesson, the rain started to fall. Despite that, I had a big smile on my face. I feel like being able to unlock this horse's tension is the key to everything in the future. When the tension is gone, when the horse is relaxed.... everything else can flow outward from there.
Now, if only I had media to show it every once in awhile....!
Holy CRAP it has been hot these past two weeks. At the beginning of September (and end of August as well) we got a fairly significant amount of rain, and we were told that there was now going to be a cooling trend and we could all rejoice.
Halleluiah! Pumpkin spice for everybody!
Except... not. It's been nearly a hundred degrees every day with 70%+ humidity. The heat in and of itself would not be such a big deal, but when you add in the humidity.... no.
Just no.
It's been too hot to bother working with the babies. I'm in no rush with them anyway, so if they have some time to hang out and relax, that's just fine. The only real priority is Dylan, come heat, rain, or whatever Texas throws at us. Yesterday was the first day I actually pulled Lendri out in two weeks, and played with Zoodle too, although I do try to mess with him a little bit every day.
As for Dylan though, he is not off the hook despite the heat. We don't go full steam ahead when it's a million degrees, but we work regularly.
Speaking of work regularly, I fully intend on making blogging at least 3x a week a high priority in the coming months. I haven't been terribly diligent about it and this irritates me. This is my story and I want to document it, if for nobody else but myself, and I forget things if I don't write them down. Like with this post, I feel too scatterbrained now to consolidate my rides very well, so mostly pictures and some jabbering notes will have to do. But this needs to change. I want to be better! I want to write with more clarity and detail.
Other homestead projects I've been working on.... regraveling the carport/carriage barn!
Dylan's secret admirer sent him a present last week... a beautiful new bridle!! He says thank you very much! <3 <3 <3
The silver is perfect! I have a black show pad with silver piping too!
I also found a KK Ultra bit on English Tack Trader that I scored for $30. He loves it and once again I feel like I am excellent at finding bargains. I should do a blogpost on that...
Also wearing a mule tape halter... because why not.
This past week, despite the heat, I trailered out to WD four times. That's about what I want to do per week, plus a hack at home. Especially now, I try to be mindful of his legs and footing, and feel that because I can't get out and bomb around in the field much, his fitness isn't where I want it. It's not critically important that he be super fit - not like an event horse or a driving horse needs to be certainly - but he does need to be strong enough and fit enough to make it through his shows. To bolster this I am going to add in long walk hacks before and after rides. Walking is boring but it's such good low impact fitness work. Back when he was walking the fence 24/7, he was SUPER fit. Now that he doesn't walk the fence at all.... all that walking muscle is gone!
I've also decided that I'm going to plan on showing in the snaffle bridle, especially when we first start showing and I am trying not to look like too huge of an idiot. I asked K what she showed him in and she said mostly it was the snaffle at 4th, but that I should bring the double along and gauge him the day before - if he needs a bit more, I can always switch to the double. As usual, with Dylan I find that if I am riding well, he goes perfectly well in the snaffle. I can tell now pretty clearly when I am not riding well, because I can feel myself starting to rely on my reins instead of my body. He requires a lot of body strength - probably not anywhere near as much as a giant bouncing warmblood, but he is incredibly strong.
I rode on Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I felt great especially on Wednesday and Thursday - I felt like a centaur. We were just *together*, you know? My rides were short and sweet - a few clean changes, a few half pirouettes in canter and walk, a few half passes and boom, done. I felt that he was working well and what was the reason to push when he was already doing so well? On Thursday I also moved 18 freaking TONS of gravel by hand in my driveway, and by Friday I felt like I could barely move. I rode anyway, but could feel that I was relying on my hands and letting my legs get swingy. I just didn't have the physical strength to keep it together after the enormous effort of moving all that gravel. Again, I kept it relatively short - about half an hour. While we did most of the same things - more changes with an emphasis on keeping them clean, a few not-spectacular pirouettes, and some decent half passes, I felt that I wasn't really giving him a great ride even though he was being a good boy for me.
I did get a few video stills from that ride though!
He's basically perfect. Even though I can't grow any more mane on him than that
I decided after Friday to take some really hot epsom salt baths and take a day off!
This coming weekend we have a first: a working equitation clinic with Tarrin Warren. This will be my first clinic with Dylan, and also my first WE clinic. We're in the "beginner" section, because that is where the organizer told us we should go. When I rode at the WE practice a few months back, the people putting it on told me I should go right into Intermediate, but now I'm being told I should actually be doing beginner things, so basically I have NO idea where I'm supposed to be. There is a schooling show on the 22nd, so I am going to ask Tarrin where exactly she thinks I should be - which level she thinks I should be in after she sees us go. That's about the best option I think!
Texas has this weird super temperate super wet extended spring this year. We didn't really have a winter - we had some frosty mornings but no ice storms, which is unusual. Temperatures warmed up by February, and then we had this long, steady, relatively temperate extended spring, complete with quite a lot of severe weather and tons of rain (and flooding, although our house was spared from the worst of it). We had months of this kind of weather.
And then, literally just this week, Mother Nature decided to put the pedal to the metal and floor us right into blazing summer. All of a sudden, it's just SO. FREAKING. HOT. Sweltering heat. Dripping humidity. Total misery.
What the... what happened!?
It's not like we didn't know summertime was coming. But it came on like a freight train this year, and we're all just sort of flailing around trying to adjust to the heat before we all pass out face down in a puddle of our own sweat.
The mules all are completely fine with the heat. Uma was slightly sticky on her neck today, but for the most part, they run SO hot that they just aren't bothered or affected by the heat that much. They spend their time out in the full sun, playing gladiator with each other, and they never or rarely break a sweat. I've seen them all break a sweat when stressed - like when each of them was transported home in the trailer and were anxious - but as for regular old summer days? No problem for them. Their heat tolerance is exceptionally high. I didn't know this about them before I had them, but in speaking to other mule owners, they mentioned it - and I have noticed it in my herd as well. Donkeys are desert animals, after all!
The horses though? The horses are just roasting. They're miserable. They're dripping with sweat through the heat of the day. They are still out grazing, or eating from their haybags, but they are just soaked. They don't often spend time in the shade, although they all certainly have plenty of it, so perhaps the sweat is doing a good job of keeping them cool.
They have all been getting a hose down at dinnertime, to cool them down and rinse off the sweat. Dylan and O both need to be tied for their showers - they like feeling cool, but they don't much care for the actual event of bathing.
I even hosed off Lendri a couple of days ago - her first ever 'bath'. Of course, she was pretty convinced I was spraying her with acid, but once she realized the cool water felt good she stood still. Unfortunately, she then went and rolled so vigorously that she completely changed color. Mules...
How she really feels about this
They all seem to like being cool, but they just tolerate the actual baths. They'd rather not spend an extended time in the spray if they can help it.
Except for Pax.
She is a seahorse.
Should I be insulted by that or pleased
I can NOT keep her out of the water. Every chance she gets, she has as many feet in the trough as she can fit. Since she is now 14.2 in front and almost 15 hands behind, she is getting too big to do much of that anymore. So, she settles for running for the hose every time I turn it on, and grabbing it and flipping it out of the trough. She then stomps on it and tosses it around, so that she can get as wet as possible.
Every day this week, after work, I've taken the hose and turned it on, and turned the spray out towards the pasture. Both P and Pax see the spray flying, and they come right over for a rinse. Pax LOVES the water, and P just has enough sense to come over and stand still while I hose her off. She stands still for once side, then turns herself around so that I can get the other side. Sensible beast.
As for Pax, she is just a total pest and wants to get as wet as possible, as often as possible.
I have to literally stand at the water trough with a crop and beat her off of it while I am trying to clean and fill it. Otherwise, she is back in it, pulling out the hose and splashing with her front feet. Really filly?
Does anyone else have a seahorse? Surely I am not the only one with a water-obsessed horse!
Phew - I am finally caught up with Pine Hill! Of course, now I am leaving today to go to the Cowboy Country HDT.... so I'll have another huge writeup at the end of that! Doing back to back shows is super hard - it's exhausting to prep for and go to a show, and then to literally come back and prep for ANOTHER show the next weekend? Phew! My showclothes are loaded, my harness and carriage are scrubbed and ready, O's boots are washed, my grooming stuff is all loaded, my trailer is cleaned, the hay and feed are all packed, and I think everything is just about ready to go... oh wait, I still have to pack my going away bag. Damnit!
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Stop me if you've heard this joke... a mini, a mule, and a mare walk into a bar...
How many other sports can you have all of these types of equines interacting with one another, and not care one bit? The sight of a mini - or the sight of a mule - sends a lot of horses into a total tailspin. Not a driving horse though! The little mule is Handsome, who is known well around these parts, and O fell in LOVE with him. I'm not sure if she liked him because of her own mules here at home, or if he just was the right size to make her think he was her baby, but she couldn't stop nickering to him, and then cried hysterically for him when she went back to her stall. She doesn't feel that way about the other minis, just the mini mule apparently!
Sunday morning dawned bright and early again, and once again we had our ritual of terribly bad coffee, donuts, and filling the cooler with things to drink. I decided after feeding O and cleaning her stall that I really needed to go walk obstacles 4 and 5 again, since I was not clear on the route and couldn't remember some details. Thank god I did - I was completely confused and lost. Some experienced people came along at one point to find me standing in one spot looking totally lost, and they were kind enough to point me in the right direction.
Oooo aaaaah
I finally got things sorted out in my head, and walked back to the barn. My feet were sloshing in my shoes already - it was still SO wet. There was active water running across the course still! Everything looked like this:
Ehhhhhhhhhhh
If you are super interested in actually seeing the coursemaps, you can find them all here. But they are kind of image heavy, so I won't post individual pictures of them, save for part of Hazard 4:
I also did a few Facebook livestream videos over the weekend, one of which I'm going to share because it's both educational and kind of funny. You'll hear me make some random commentary, which is directed at the people who were interacting with me and making comments on the livestream. It's a super fun tool for things like this! I'll probably do a few more at Cowboy Country too.
As we were one of the last to go, I knew the course was going to get increasingly torn up as the day went on. The VSE drivers all came back to the barn with their minis looking fresh, and with reports of it not being too bad, but I figured it would change. I didn't even bother to really seriously wash my carriage... because why do it. It was just going to get covered in muck anyway! It was so mucky that I decided to go completely barefoot for O - usually she shows in boots, but it was so muddy that I felt they would just get ripped off anyway.
Fat girl standing around sweating in her stall from the humidity
We warmed up at a walk... got ready... and off we went!!
Right from the get-go, everything was slop. TOTAL slop. It felt like we didn't even have wheels on the carriage - like she was just dragging a dead weight through the mud. There wasn't a single spot on the course where I felt like it let up for a little while. It makes it so much more exhausting for the horse when they have to drag the carriage like that instead of it rolling along smoothly. She was exceptionally clever about her footing, and slowed in a few spots of her own accord - I let her choose these, and then trotted onward once we were through the areas. The entire course had been slowed down a whole kph to account for the state of the course, which I was thankful for.
The hazards were all fairly simple and easy to negotiate. She cruised through every one of them like it was nothing, no issues whatsoever. The only alteration I made to my planned course was in the 4th hazard, where I decided to go around a jump instead of button hooking the first gate (go in, go out). It was too slick and muddy at that point, and I felt it would just tire her further, so I opted to go around.
I let her walk a large part of the last 300 meters, as she was very tired by the end of dragging the carriage and our two butts through the horrible, wretched slop on a super steamy, ridiculously humid day. She never quit on me. O has a history of totally checking out when the going gets a little too beyond her, but this time, she showed that she has really matured and that the sport suits her. She was tired - SO tired - but when I asked her to trot on, she trotted on. She never quit, and she never said no. For that alone, I was so proud of her.
It's pretty poor camera footage - I didn't place the GoPro very well, so I will try again this weekend. If you turn the volume up high you can hear me talking some!
We finished under the time and clean. She was very hot and breathing pretty heavily at the vet, so we dropped the carriage and went to vigorously cooling her. Right about this time, poor B2 got the call that one of her dogs had to go in for emergency surgery (he's okay!), and she had to take off to get home. Poor B2... she had to get soaking wet all weekend, almost heat stroked out a million times, never got her proper coffee, had to deal with my ruthless taskmaster orders, and then her dog almost kicked the bucket. I don't know if she'll ever want to go with me again!
After about 20 minutes of aggressive cooling, handwalking, and grazing, we went back to the vet, and were cleared. O was quite fine by then, which meant we were officially finished!
With our excellent cones and marathon, and halfway decent dressage, we finished 2nd! We scored about 20 points better overall than we did at Sunrise Ridge, and we were only two points behind the first place finisher (who was also the first place finisher at Sunrise Ridge).
We leave TODAY for Oklahoma... oh man!!! Wish us luck!!!!
