Loves to Show

This past weekend, TC and I were at our final show of the year! I had been feeling very apprehensive coming up to the show. Very apprehensive. Like to the point where I wanted to scratch. Even putting him in the trailer, I thought about turning the other way on the freeway and heading down to the one day event that Kate and her crowd was at the same weekend and just being like "I JUST WANT TO PLAY IN THE WATER COMPLEX AND JUMP A TINY LOG OKAY?" but no, I paid for this show, and we were going.

So much could go wrong. TC hasn't been to a brand new facility since the Jeremy Steinberg clinic, where he was fine, but very tense. This was a brand new facility. I had also had my Tracey lesson deflate me a bit, so the last week of riding, TC had been bucking in the canter like... the whole time. Or slamming on the brakes as we went into canter and sticking his head straight up in the air. Or running sideways kicking out at my right leg/seat bone/side in general. It was a rough week.

AND because I'm a genius, I signed him up for First 1, why not try a new level while we're at it?

I do like how his canter is developing rideability-wise

Such a good egg

But this show is important to me. It's the show I got my Gold at three years ago. I wanted to do this show the first year I had TC, but then he was a little nutty. Then the second year I almost signed up but he was still really not quite there. This time, we were going. I tried to feel the nostalgia and look at my three medals in the mirror as much as I could, but I was mostly in survival mode.

TC came off the trailer as he always does in a new place... with lots of presence. He was definitely more relaxed than he was for Jeremy's clinic, so that was good to see. He hasn't traveled a lot this fall due to me being sick and then gone for like every weekend. But he's slooowwwwly starting to figure out that the places I'm taking him are not horse cemeteries.

We went on a short walk near the show ring and then into the warm up. I've never thought this place was spooky, Rico never cared about it. And TC was surprisingly unspooky. He just hated the eurocizer that you had to walk by to get to the warm up arena. You know you've been on one, right, TC? I trotted him in the round pen near the warm up and all he wanted to do was stare into warm up and poke the people sitting near the round pen with his nose.

So I figured, fuck it, took him back to the trailer to tack up, and just got on him right then. I had my longe line, but never needed it.

Floppy ears :) 

Sassy 

The first five minutes of warm up were me riding a basilisk. He snaked his neck around and around and bounced around at trot and canter. At first I was pretty certain that I wanted to get off the pony ride. A few people goosed us and he was threatening to take off with me. I really didn't want to be THAT person in warm up. Luckily, the weather was on our side. It was 85 degrees outside and he still has his winter coat. It only took about five minutes for it to really hit him, so by the time I was even thinking that this whole show was a bad idea, he settled into work.

We had a GREAT warm up. My plan was to go and just get as far as we could at this show. By the end of warm up, he felt super through and quiet, but not too tired. At that point, I was ecstatic to be at the show. Talk about feeling ALL the emotions that day.

Despite the good warm up, as we walked to the show arena, it really hit me. I'm about to go into an arena my horse has never been in, and put a permanent score on his record. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I started to really get nervous.

Me wondering if this is a good idea

Looking mostly under control

But there wasn't toooooo much to be worried about. TC trotted around that arena like he owned it. He didn't care when the horse in front of us left. He didn't care when a guy at the house nearby started murdering babies cutting wood or something. He didn't care about a motorcycle going by. He didn't care about the automatic gate opening for a trailer (he cared a little). He just strutted his stuff and we got some really good scores. Lots of 7s and even an 8 on a canter transition!

Unfortunately, strutting his stuff meant LEAPING in all the canter work. Remember my issue keeping him in front of the leg in the show ring? Well, we now have a new issue. I asked him to canter and he was like FUCK YES I LOVE TO CANTER LET'S DO THIS and porpoised down the long side, then put in a respectable circle. The other direction he picked it up real nice (8!), then porpoised for most of the circle (5!). Mmmkay.

The last bit of porpoising was kind of hilarious. I could tell he was just SO EXCITED TO BE SHOWING. I really love how much he seems to love showing. He gets nervous in new places, but I think I've done a good job this year with all of the shows, making it super fun for him.

Too fun.

I got to the end of the test and dissolved into laughter. It was such a bad test. But I mean, I walked him out of this brand new arena on a loose rein and he was totally chill and proud of himself.

Coiling

Could you not?

A few strides later I mostly had him under control. PS, I stand up
when he acts up because of my back injury, I'm safe from whiplash
up there and better able to control him. It just looks silly

Our First level test was nothing to write home about either. He squealed into trot while going around the outside of the arena, so we had some rough bits in the trot in the beginning. Then he porpoised in the first canter transition so refused to do his canter lengthening at all (he gave me a "but I'm so tired after leaping, could we not?"). Then threatened to run off with me the entire fifteen meter circle and onto the diagonal.

The other way at the canter wasn't too much better, though we did show a lengthening! The highlight for me was the last trot lengthening, which just felt downright powerful. But he was a bit tight over his back in general in it though, so the judge marked us down accordingly.

Honestly, I wasn't in a great mood directly after the first day because it just felt like a letdown. We started the year scoring in the 70s and we were now solidly in the low to mid 60s (61 and change at 1-1 due to some unfortunately placed 5s; 66 and change at T2 again due to unfortunate lower scores in the double coefficients).

But when I got home I realized that being annoyed at the results was, in itself, a win. He was so good there that my annoyance wasn't "my horse ran away with me every ten steps in the show ring" or "my horse wouldn't get near the judge's booth" or "my horse terrified me and I don't want to ride him anymore." It was "my horse thinks that showing is the most fun ever and couldn't contain his excitement enough for me to get higher numbers written on this piece of paper."

Trot trot trot

He is always SO proud of himself after tests

We still had the next day, so I was eager to just get more miles put on him and ignore the scores. There is time to obsess over scores later. I was not going to let it ruin the fact that I had a really fun day with my horse at a brand new place. It was the first fun day in a long time. He is hilarious and maybe thought that leaping through the tests was a good way to cheer me up. In a way, it definitely worked.

Back to it

So it turns out that my sunburn is like a MILLION times worse than I initially thought. The first night I was incredibly sick- shivers, nausea, etc. Needless to say, I couldn't sleep, I got maybe 2 hours and spent most of the night playing video games and wishing someone was awake so I could complain.

The next day, boyfriend came to get me and we headed home. Did you know that a 6 hour car ride doesn't feel so good when your back is severely sunburned and sticking to the car seat? Well, it's true.

Today I woke up and luckily felt better, I got almost a full night's sleep (hoping that tonight is the night for sleep!). I managed to get a sports bra and breeches on and was ready to ride my horse!

This one

Rico was VERY good. Four days off and I was expecting him to be kind of an ass. Either high and wanting to get heavy or obnoxious thinking that he was finally retired. He wasn't either of those! He was happily forward and happy to work. I did a short ride, only a half hour. With the sunburn, I can't wear a back brace so I'm nervous about doing too much. I did manage to do some passage, a bit of piaffe, and a fair amount of canter work, including twos and ones (only 3 in a row, I wasn't going to push it).

Rico wanted to play so I let him run a bit. I don't turn him out (he lives in a HUGE paddock), but I'm happy to let him play while I'm on him since I think that's the safest for him (soundness-wise since we're in good footing, I can immediately re-balance him if he's going to get off balance, and I can prevent tight turns) and I don't mind riding out a few bucks. I know that sounds weird and mildly dangerous but come on, he's 18 years old and very well trained, if I tell him to buck, he bucks, if I tell him to stop, he stops. Never had a problem with him and I can sit everything he's got in him.

Anyway, I gave him the cue (letting him gallop and a special voice command) and he was SO excited. The first time around he just ran and struck out while shaking his head between his knees. The second time around he had a BIG buck to give me! I could tell he thought he bucked too hard, since he immediately slowed down and wasn't as enthusiastic from then on, but I'm glad he got to play.


This week we see Heidi on Thursday! Then it's two more lessons before the Intermediare II. I can't decide whether I'm more nervous or more excited, but it's definitely a little bit of both.

I may be heading down to the Monterey Aquarium this
week so more fishy pictures!

An Unstoppable Passaging Asshole

For the last two days my horse has been replaced with a giant asshole. That may not be entirely politically correct, but it's certainly very accurate. 

Today makes yesterday look good, so I'll go into detail about what I had to go through this morning.

I rode him fairly hard (harder than I thought I would with him being on rehab, the damn horse) last night due to behavior problems. When I got to him this morning, I was expecting to have a really fun ride on him with him being nice and quiet. I was wrong.

I'm speculating here, but it seems that Rico finally mustered up the courage to ask his neighbor out on a date and she rejected him, leaving him to obsess over her during all moments of the day (this is my most entertaining guess as to why I had such weird behavior out of him today). I got there and he had stopped eating his breakfast to stare at her. I said hi and he visited with me for a second, then stared at her. He stared at her the whole time I tacked him up and was reluctant to leave his stall because he couldn't stare at her while walking away, not without trying though. 

"Hey friend, look over here! Look over here!"

"Oh hey mom, have you met my neighbor who I just realized
exists and am now obsessed with?"

When I got on him, he dragged me to her stall and stared at her. I tried to turn him around and he threatened to rear so I kicked him and took him away from her. Once he was convinced that I wasn't going to let him back to his stall and that we were, indeed, going to be walking away from her, he lost his ever loving mind. 

This is very weird behavior out of Rico. My horse is LAZY and doesn't give a shit about anything, including my aids at times. Other horses will gallop around and there's Rico, just staring at them. Other horses will find something VERY SCARY and there's Rico, ignoring it and instead spooking at a leaf blowing across the road. The horse is not the sort of animal that loses his mind over what other horses are doing. But it was gone this morning!

I took him away from her and we walked down the road. I've ridden the last two times in the dark so today I thought he'd be excited to go on an adventure. He pranced the whole time.

He pranced until I got him into the arena and then he smushed himself against the rail leaning over toward her (she's a good forty yards away from the arena) while I took off my jacket. 

I then proceeded to passage my asshole around the arena. There was no trot today, there was no walk today, there was only passage. And... well... a pretty damn good one. Oh and for the first time, there were passage to piaffe transitions! And piaffe to passage transitions! And they were good! And... isn't my horse supposed to be on rehab? Yeahhhh well maybe we were both stir crazy. There was no way I was getting anything else out of him so I went with it. 

We still ended pretty early and we'll see what his leg looks like tomorrow. Based on today though, I think I can accelerate his rehab a bit, lest I fall off of my unstoppable passaging asshole. 

Little Ruby loves my boots

So freaking cute

The Penny is Dropping

I definitely had to come home and look up that idiom. 

After such a successful weekend with Rico, I was so so so excited to ride with Tracey tonight. It turned out to be a VERY cold night (keep in mind that I'm located in California so my coldness perception is a tad off) and although Rico has grown back most of his coat, he certainly was feeling about a third his age.

Last winter the horse was much less fit and
much more docile!

I got there and tacked up quickly since my lessons are at 5:30 and it gets dark at 5:15! I arrived early so I sat on the mounting block and watched part of the lesson before me.

I got on and knew immediately that I might hit the dirt. It wasn't as bad as Starr Vaughn but boy the horse was on fire. He kept sticking his head to his chest and charging around. When I brought his poll up, he'd crow hop so he could put it back down and charge some more. Ughhh.

He worked out of it a bit and I got some decent work done before we started the lesson. However, we took too long talking about the Alfredo clinic and Rico was feeling high again. We started in canter with the intention of doing some changes and Rico was NOT having it. Tracey asked me to canter down the long side and I said "I'm going to stay off the rail so I don't get bucked off" and then the horse ducked his left shoulder and spun right away from the rail. Tracey laughed and said "I don't know if that is going to help!"

After some kicking changes (despite me keeping him so straight and not swinging my leg too far back, ugh), Tracey and I talked again. She said she's at a loss for why he's kicking and thinks that there are several reasons why he does it.

Old theories:
- there is definitely a straightness element involved, when he gets too much over his right shoulder (which is his tendency in general), he kicks
- there is definitely a problem with my body, I swing my shoulders and legs too much and throw him off balance

New theories:
- I don't keep him up to the bridle enough
- my timing is too fast with my legs sometimes so he hurries to do his changes and ends up kicking

We worked on a cool exercise that Tracey learned from Conrad Schumacher. We cantered on a 20 meter circle and, maintaining the bend, asked for lead changes at every point (so every quarter of the circle, we'd change). This helped a LOT and showed us that he tends to get behind me and/or on the forehand and then we lose throughness.

I'm so frustrated by this change! I feel like it's slowing us down a LOT in terms of trying to score well at PSG and in moving up the levels. There's no way we can do 2 tempis (I1) or the ones (I2/GP) with this damn change. HOWEVER, I'm glad to be learning SO much about flying changes! After Rico and I get through this, there isn't going to be a horse I can't put a flying change on.


After the changes, we worked on the passage.

I was so pleased with Rico in terms of the passage today!! Tracey was also pleased, she noted that she hadn't had a horse catch onto passage this soon after learning. She also said that he showed a lot of promise in the movement. I'm incredibly bias, but I can really see that this horse has some pretty great talent in the passage. He's always liked to prance around like an idiot, and now I'm praising him for it!

I learned a few things. First, when I ask, I need to slow wayyyy down. I'm rushing him in the passage and am asking for too much ground cover so a lot of the time I'm getting a kind of knee-heavy trot instead. Second, I need to SIT. THE FUCK. DOWN. I tend to do the cha-cha while asking for passage and Tracey said that it's only going to confuse and frustrate my poor horse.

Third, I need to not get impatient about this whole thing. Just like in the pirouettes, I'm holding him to the Grand Prix standard rather than the green-horse standard. Tracey said "the penny hasn't dropped yet, it's in the process of dropping." And I promptly smiled, nodded, and zipped home to look it up online. Basically he hasn't been completely confirmed in the passage yet, so until then, my expectations need to be very low!

Would dropping all these pennies at
once help?

After the passage we worked on a bit of trot half pass, trying to get me to use my inside leg. I'm proud to say that to the left, I can actually use BOTH of my legs! Shocking that leaning off to the outside and flailing about ISN'T the correct aid for half pass.

To the right, however, my inside leg remains completely useless. I literally could amputate my right leg, replace it with a dead fish, and likely ride better than I do now. Ugh! But getting it right to the left gives me hope!! So it's right half pass boot camp for me this week :)

Starr Vaughn, or an Examination of My Poor Life Choices

Poor life choices were made yesterday when I insisted on hauling up to Starr Vaughn for our last show of the season when I was still getting over being sick. All week I've had what I thought was a bit of a cold but has ended up being a lot worse.

Friday morning I woke up incredibly sick after having a severe migraine the night before. I had planned on hauling up that day and obviously was not going to make it. Luckily my Saturday ride time was in the afternoon, so I laid around all day on Friday and then got up Saturday morning to bathe, braid, and make the 3 hour trek to Starr Vaughn.

I woke up very sick again on Saturday but was adamant about just getting up there and then deciding what to do. Looking back on it, I should have just scratched and spent the weekend in bed (which is where I am right now and where I will be for the next 48 hours). But I didn't like the idea of not showing again until at least January or February (stupid) and I didn't like the idea of "wasting" all that money (stupid).

So off we went with me trying to nap in the truck but unable to because of the coughing fits. When we got to the barn, I set up Rico's stall and shoved him in there before sitting in line for 30 minutes (!!) to get my number. By the time I had it, I was so exhausted that I had to go lay down for a couple hours. I kept thinking man, if I had any other horse, I'd scratch, but Rico is so damn reliable.

I went to tack up and did it in record time. I gave myself exactly 20 minutes for warm up (about half of what I normally give myself) thinking that I wanted to save my energy for the test. We walked over to the warm up which was in the big beautiful covered arena.

And that's when Rico lost his fucking mind.

He spooked at EVERYTHING on the way in, which I thought was fine because he's a silly horse and thinks that's fun. But then I got in there and he (yes he, I made few decisions in the first 8 minutes of the ride) picked up a trot. I say trot, but that's a loose term. He CHARGED around the arena in a big powerful medium trot squealing and shaking his head. I half halted and got a passage. Uhhhh. I kicked him out of it and got a threat to rear, then bronc bucks, then passage again. SHIT.

We proceeded like this for a while, I was just hoping he'd tire himself out but that wasn't happening. He felt like the kind of horse I'd consider taking into war. I tried a canter and holy shit that was a bad idea. He galloped sideways and when I stopped him, he threatened to rear, spooked at a dog, bronc bucked some more, passaged a bit, then cantered on the spot until I let him go forward into a working gallop again.

As this was happening, I was getting SO tired and SO sick. I finally put him into the Grand Prix pirouette pattern. On centerline one full pirouette left, flying change, one full pirouette right. Then I did the I1 pirouette pattern. Then we rode our St George pirouette pattern. That little shit probably did 12 canter pirouettes in warm up. He was soaked with sweat by the time I had him "warmed up."

We still had a few minutes left so I let him rest and then decided to do some suppleness work at the trot. At Greenville we had a few comments on lateral suppleness so I thought we'd work on that.

Hah.

The horse had found his second wind and shook his head, passaged, struck out, spooked at the place where the dog had been, and tried to take off with me again. I put him back into canter and continued to do pirouettes until we were called over.


Into the show ring we went and at that point I was just hoping not to get bucked off. The first half of the test went surprisingly well and our scores reflected it. We got a handful of 7s and 7.5s on our trot work and even an 8 on our right walk pirouette! I was feeling really good by the time I shortened the reins after the extended walk and prepared for canter.

But then Rico showed me that he wasn't quite done ruining my day. We picked up the canter and he shook his head twice. He whipped around both corners but did a surprisingly nice canter half pass zig zag and left pirouette... and then all hell broke loose.

The right pirouette wasn't a pirouette, it was a series of bronc bucks in a circle. He lost balanced and kicked hard at my leg in the flying change and then proceeded to get impressive air through his 4-tempis, kicking my right leg every time (I have a bruise on my ankle). The 3-tempis were the same and he kicked my right foot clear out of the stirrup, then (kindly?) offered to stop when I tried to get my foot back in the stirrup.

As I asked for the extended canter, he took that to mean that he could bronc again and just boinged down the diagonal, then in the flying change, kicked so hard that my foot came out of my stirrup again and we both almost fell sideways. I was pissed so I used my whip for the first time and he reacted by sitting down on his haunches and spinning around onto centerline. The halt was nice and square though.

Overall, it was the worst show experience we've had together in a long time. Sometimes he likes to goof off in the show ring but I've never felt like I lost control and that's definitely what happened yesterday. I came out happy with how we had handled it (it could have been a thousand times worse) but a bit upset that my horse had been such a nutcase.

However, the score didn't necessary reflect how horrible it was. We still managed a 61% and 3rd place out of 7 riders. We got four 4.5s, one 4, and two 3.5s. I don't even want to think about what the score would have been if he had scored like he normally does on those seven movements...

I made the decision to take him home last night so I could rest today and we could work out what happened at home. I don't know what got into him. I think it was a combination of him being very fit, having a day off on Friday, and being shoved in a stall the moment he got there.

The drama didn't stop when we got home. I was passed out with a whopping dose of NyQuil but when I came out to attempt to force breakfast into me, my mom told me that my horse had freaked out early in the morning. She heard whinnies at 5:30 and discovered that my horse was going nuts because there was a lot of fog and he couldn't see his neighbor who was out in his pasture. She locked him in his stall and then called the other horse in and my horse decided that rearing straight up over and over again was a good way of expressing his frustration.

So I'm taking Rico off of his LMF Gold and am going to get his fitness level down for the winter. I think he also may need a chiro appointment (certainly after all of his bucking and rearing this weekend) so I'll arrange for that too. I'm really hoping this was an isolated incident and that I have my exceedingly quiet, wonderful horse back very soon.


*I did get pictures which will be edited today or tomorrow (depends on my health, I feel yet another headache coming on now so I need to get off the computer and rest).

A Long Awaited Update

Greenville Prix St George!

This poor blog has been put on the back burner while I've been in school. The rest of my life, however, has not which is why I lack the time to write regularly. I have a bit of a light week this week and that coupled with being stuck at home until my laundry is done means that I can update!

Rico and I at Greenville

FIRST I must say that my horse is doing amazingly well. Yesterday we headed up to Greenville for our second Prix St George together and it went swimmingly despite some pilot errors and some horse attitude.

Sass in the tempis

Look at those hocks!

Such a good guy

We earned a 66.7% which is both my and his highest score to date at this level. The trot work was straight 7s (even a 7.5 on the medium trot!) and the canter work was pretty good too. The pirouettes were solid but still 6/6.5 for this level which I'm okay with.

Getting sparkly

Can I just say that I LOVE my shadbelly, not only is it very
cool, it flings out behind me in the extended canter :)

I miscounted in both tempis, the first one was Rico's fault, he was high and slipped a 3 into the 4s. The second one was my fault, I got to the count of three and my legs weren't moving... Woops so there was a 4 in the 3s.

Volte left

Super cute pony

There was also a hilarious spook RIGHT before the right pirouette which I thankfully have on film and will try to get a screen shot of. I was able to get him back to me and my score was not lowered.

Halting

Can I sit like this always?

Charging up centerline as usual :)

Other things in life have been going well too! School is busy and difficult but my cohort is really great, we socialize a lot and I get along with everyone well. We're only about six weeks away from winter break which is a relief, I can't wait for a nice long vacation.

My job is going well too, I cut back to teaching only one day per week for this semester and it's been sad not to see my clients as much, but I'm glad that I still get to teach at all! They're all doing very well and we're looking forward to next year.


Alright, back to the horse.

My dad's photography skills at their finest <3

Someone's rider needs to learn to sit better...

Extended trot (or, Rico's version)

We DO still have one more show this year at Prix St George and it's our first far away/overnight show in four and a half years. In just under two weeks, Rico and I head up to Starr Vaughn to do two days of Prix St George. Fingers crossed it doesn't rain!!

Loving this horse!