TC's Dream Job

When we were out on cross country for Kentucky, there were a bunch of people dressed up in hunting type outfits riding horses who... looked very sweet but who did not look like they could jump any of the jumps out on the course. 

We weren't sure what they were for but kept seeing them everywhere. 

Best job ever

Look at these guys just hanging out

Trying to get an idea of the crowd size, and that
horse is just enjoying the hell out of it

We finally asked what they were doing out there and one of the riders enlightened us: the horses were there for crowd control! 

My first thought after petting one for a long time was... how much would TC love that fucking job? The horses got to hang out with THOUSANDS of humans, all of whom loved horses and would probably laugh at him if he did something silly. Poor TC will never know what his life could have been. 

Back At It

After two weeks off, TC came back to work last week and has been doing well! I took advantage of having that time off to have my saddle maker fix my saddle and it came back last week. 

I think he likes it!

It's still the tiniest bit low in front, but apparently that's normal during the break-in period. I do want him to fill out more in his thoracic trapezius, so I put a thin pad under the front of the saddle, which fixed the balance for me and he didn't mind it. So I'll be ordering him a half pad and that should help us out while he's filling in. Then later, I can take it out! 

It still slips a tiny bit forward, but I've been experimenting with girths and pads to see about keeping it back. Luckily, it doesn't seem to bother TC, so we are okay to have it ride up a tiny bit while we wait for our in person saddle fitting appointment later. I might ask him to stitch the front billet a little more forward (it's just loose right now) so that we can keep the saddle back. But IMO it's not important until I start sitting the trot. 

It lets me sit down so much at the canter, I normally
get popped up a bit because of how giant it can be

Love how out to the contact he is and how much
he is in front of the vertical!

It's AMAZING to finally have a saddle that works for us. I feel incredibly secure in it, it's got a nice deep seat and big blocks, but somehow also really free to move myself around. I've been working hard on my biomechanics, which means changing where my body is in the saddle, and not once has the saddle been like "no, your leg goes HERE" and forced it. That's pretty insane to me given that when TC went to spin out from under me on our first ride back because he saw absolutely nothing, I could easily find the block to hold onto him with. 

Pretty convinced my saddle maker is a wizard. But I also think it's because the blocks aren't put on so vertical like most dressage saddles. Or, magic! 

TC's first ride was uneventful, he started out the tiniest bit stiff in his right hind, but he also has a gigantic scar with stitches still in on his sheath on that side. I'm sure it felt awkward to him! He worked right out of it and felt SO good over his back and in the contact. For our second ride back, I took some video and he looked stellar, I am so excited to have him going like this! 

I definitely need to be able to sit DOWN at the
canter, lol!

I did stick him recently and he's 16.3, he's actually
grown a half inch since I last measured him. He's
done growing, it's all the TS work!

I spent a LOT of time thinking about this horse when we were in Kentucky. I think that if TC knew how much I thought about him on a daily basis, he'd be... thrilled. I sat and journaled for hours about him and what I wanted to do with him and what my options were and all of that.

That will be a post for another day, but all of my journaling really made me hope with all my might that the saddle would work because I really want to move forward with TC in the dressage. I had all these concerns written down regarding what would happen if I simply could not get a saddle to fit TC and myself properly. But now, I think I can ignore those, we are back on track. My hip is even healed at this point, so I can begin building strength back up so that I can start sitting the trot again. More on that later!

Sitting this is going to be rough omg

Sitting this is hard enough!

At this point, we just need to keep on keeping on and we have a lot of fun things on the docket. This weekend we go to a ranch competition that our local horsemen's association is putting on. Then next weekend, we have a clinic with the biomechanics trainer I rode with a couple months ago. I'm excited for her to see us in person and see how my right hip rehab has improved my riding. Then TC gets a few days off while I'm at a jumper show with Flounder, so that'll be good, he always does well with short vacations. And after that, Celeste is in town and I've budgeted at least two sessions with her and TC! 

I'm excited for her to see his progress and for us to get some help with his hind end. I think I've got his front end healthy enough to focus on unlocking his hind legs. Aaaand I'm glad I've got my new saddle to keep me on him as we do that! 

Mounted Archery!

As you know, I was supposed to take TC to this clinic and he would have LOVED it. But he hadn't been cleared to ride until after the clinic and he doesn't yet have his stitches out actually. I'll post an update on him next week!

Luckily this is one of the many reasons why I'm glad I have the pony going right now: he got to step up to be my ride for this clinic. 

I expected the pony to be... a little less into it than TC. I wasn't sure if that would mean that I was more likely to fall off or less likely. Luckily though, I had my neck strap that I'd bought in Kentucky and I was really excited to work on convincing myself it was there in times of trouble. Fortunately/unfortunately, I didn't need to use it! 

Ready to rock and roll

Saturday Morning

We began on Saturday morning without the horses. I opted to not bring Sunny over before the clinic given that it was just across town and we had an hour for lunch. This was definitely the right option because I have never shot a bow and arrow before and it would have been hard to focus on the task at hand if I was worrying that Sunny was watching me and deciding that I was completely off my rocker. 

There was a lot of safety talk in the beginning, which made me happy. I'm glad to say that no one shot at anyone and no one got hurt! We talked about how to use the bow and how to load an arrow. That was a surprising amount of information. Once we were comfortable loading an arrow standing still, we then practiced loading an arrow while walking. The loading part has to be super fast and you need to do it without having to think about it, because you've got to focus on your horse and on the target. It was tough to load it properly without moving, but the more we did it, the easier it got. 

We finally started shooting and I was immediately bad at it. I'm not particularly coordinated off of a horse and it's kind of weird! They call it intuitive archery for a reason and apparently I do not have much natural intuition for archery. Soon though, we all got pretty good at it and I managed to start hitting the targets pretty consistently standing still. 

Then, we had our world rocked as we started to walk and shoot. Just like loading the arrows while walking, this added some difficulty and I missed some targets. I think it was about then that I realized that mounted archery was going to be really hard, even if I could shoot a bow and arrow. 

Quivers on day 2!

Saturday Afternoon 

Our lunch break gave me the perfect amount of time to drive to the ranch and grab Sunny. 

I decided to take it VERY slow. The pony is a very good pony, but occasionally in the past he's decided he's HAD IT with my antics (I do weird shit with my horses, I don't blame him for questioning me lol) and things get bad quickly. My primary goal was to not set us back in how well he's doing these days. 

We started out by warming up and I opted to do so on the ground. I led Sunny around the arena, let him look at everything (the targets, barrels, the cones/poles for the lane), and clicked for curiosity. Then, we stood while our instructor walked by with arrows and he got clicks and treats for watching her. After that, I got some arrows and he got a lot of clicks and treats for putting up with me making noise with them all over his body. 

It was about this time that I realized that we weren't going to have any problems. Sunny thought this was the BEST GAME EVER. All he had to do was find arrows and he'd get clicks and treats. For the rest of the weekend, he checked in with anyone who had arrows and got a lot of attention and treats for that, which he thought was amazing. I think he cuddled with everyone at the clinic. 

Super stoked!

I got on and we repeated the process and aside from the pony HATING all the horses at the clinic (as per usual for him), Sunny had an amazing time. 

Soon, it was time to actually fire the arrows at the targets. By this point, I was pretty confident in the pony. Clicker training for the WIN always. And sure enough, the sound that the arrow made as it fired and the sound that it made when it hit the target didn't phase him one bit. He just put his eyes on our instructor with the arrows at the end and he marched right towards her while I fumbled with my bow. 

It is WAY harder to shoot on a horse, wow! But I did end up hitting one of the targets before we were done. 

Upon getting home, by the way, TC was BESIDE HIMSELF that Sunny had gone in his trailer to go do something fun (since his trailer always means fun to him). He shook his head a bunch and cantered around enough where I had to go get him from his pasture and put him in the cross ties, where he proceeded to throw a fit, pawing and threatening to rear. I did get on him and ride him down the road to make him feel better, but then back in his pasture he galloped away from me. So he got an early dinner and I scrambled off the property because he always behaves worse when I'm around. TC! Really?!

Happy pony with his arrows, unhappy
gray horse not realizing what he's missing

Sunday Morning

We began Sunday in the same way we did Saturday, sans horse. We reviewed what we learned the day before and then spoke about equipment. On the first day, we didn't use quivers, we just held arrows as we rode and were handed more when we were finished shooting. This time, we got to talk about the different types of quivers. I decided that I liked a hip/thigh quiver and got to try one on. 

I wrote down the bow that I liked and the quiver. They aren't the cheapest you can get, but I did some quick math and the bow, the quiver, some arrows, and a glove for my hand that I kept slicing up ended up coming out to about as much as I'd spend on a dressage show. So I figured that I'd treat myself and get the equipment I wanted so that I could have another fun hobby to do with TC (and a potential new sport to compete in if I decide to continue not doing dressage shows). 

When we had our bows and our arrows in a quiver, we learned how to take the arrows out of the quiver quickly and load them to shoot. That was WAY harder than our instructor made it look. Once we were old hands at that, we learned to do back shots and front shots on barrels. There is a specific way to weight your body so that you can still shoot accurately without flinging yourself off your horse. 

Ready for day 2!

Sunday Afternoon

The weather wasn't great on Sunday, it was cold and windy, so Sunny was a bit more on edge. I decided to not push it with him and to just find a really good note to end on. He ended up settling pretty well despite being a bit more grumpy about the fact that there were still other horses around him. 

We started with the same exercise we did the day before, walking down in a line, all shooting at the targets, but this time we all had our quivers on. It took a little bit of time to get the horses used to the quivers, and you had to be careful because the quiver could tilt if it wasn't tight enough and bop the horse on the butt. Pulling arrows out of quivers is trickier than just holding them in your hand, so we got to practice that. I actually got pretty decent and was able to shoot two arrows per line rather than just one. 

Next, we shifted the targets and did some front shots. This was super fun and Sunny agreed because it meant that we got to go ALONE down the line. Front shots mean you shoot kind of diagonally over the horse's shoulder to the front, so we had to be careful not to have horses too close because you could accidentally shoot someone in front of you. 

I finally got a really good go and decided to be done there. There was going to be an option to trot or even canter while shooting and that sounded really fun! But I'd already decided I was going to buy archery equipment and get myself some targets, so there was time to do that at home when the weather was better and when both of my horses know that they're now archery horses. No reason to push it on the second ever day of doing archery from Sunny's back. 

Back at the ranch, my brother, SIL, and niece were there to pick up their car from their weekend adventure. My niece positively screamed when I drove in and she came running up to the truck yelling at me about her "Sunny Horse," which she calls him. She'd been cleaning my tack for me (omg so nice of her! She dragged my brother to the barn and showed him where all the stuff was and asked to clean TC's bridle for me). She helped me unload her Sunny Horse and put him away, give him cookies, cleaned the trailer, and unloaded the tack room. So as you can tell, the indoctrination is going well. 

Such a good pony!

While I'm super bummed that TC couldn't do the clinic with me, I'm so glad I went! It was so much fun to learn a new skill and introduce Sunny to something fun. He was such a good boy and it gave me so much joy to see him having a good time with something brand new to him. The clicker training has really made him come out of his shell and be a lot more confident in himself, which has meant that we have more fun together because I know I can throw more stuff at him without him getting emotional. I have some theories on that emotional side of him that I have seen, but I'll post about that later, I find him really interesting to work with! 

I really can't wait to introduce this stuff to TC, I think he'll have a blast! There's a local club opening up just across town too, so we'll definitely join and go play on their range sometime. I'm already plotting where to put some targets at the ranch though... 

WW: Best Photo All Weekend

I'm BEYOND entertained by this photograph that Liz took while we were at the event. It definitely deserves its own post. 

The context is that we were trying to figure out where to go from there, so we were looking out at the rest of the course. Aaand then a horse came by and we totally missed it. 

None of us were paying any attention, I love how bizarre I look

especially, apparently this is how I look after a week or 

more of insomnia

I definitely think it's got to go up in my office at some point with some motivational saying about how you should live in the moment rather than always looking for something better. 

Shout out to Liz for the amazing photograph, her others are STUNNING as well, I'm so impressed with her. Follow her on IG to see more! 

Kentucky 2022 - Show Jumping & Shopping

The last day of the event was really great. We woke up late-ish and I had actually gotten enough sleep and a good amount of sleep, so I felt pretty good, or would have if my entire body wasn’t sore from the day before! I’m definitely getting myself fitter (and not having a hip injury) the next time I go to this event. 

Seats for show jumping also thanks to Nicole!

We first went to the Correct Connect booth in the trade fair because I’d seen a jump strap I wanted. I’ve never really used one, but I want to get used to using it and figured it’d also be helpful for my niece learning to ride too. While holding the jump strap, I saw that they made super cute breeches in a very light fabric. And so I walked out with a jump strap, and two pairs of breeches, and two shirts to match. I also got a free halter, but it’s gold and brown, which are the opposite of my colors, so I’ll probably donate that. 

We walked around for a bit, but I didn’t find anything else to buy. I did talk to the Free Jump stirrup people but ultimately didn’t buy stirrups for my niece on this trip. She doesn’t need them until she wants to ride by herself and I think we are at least three months out from that. She’s also very little so if I’m going with a safety stirrup, I want something that is actually going to break away if she falls. I think she’s too little for the Free Jump stirrups to actually work. But it was good to learn about them! 

I also had to get this shirt, I love the
color and the fabric was very cool

I legit tried to spend money, I did! I
wanted to buy these boots for schooling
but Ariat does not think that tall
calves go with small feet

When show jumping was an hour out, we went to get lunch and then find our seats. What a fun experience it was to be there in person! We watched the early rounds, learning how the course was riding, but then once we were in the top six or seven, it got super serious. The crowd was silent except for some gasping after tough distances, groaning when a rail came down, and clapping after the insane combination and the entire round. 

There was one option to either make a couple of tight turns to one jump, or to go around over another. It was interesting to see who decided to do what. 

Michael Jung won the event of course. What I didn’t know at the time was that this was his fourth win at Kentucky, which is a record for the event, and it was the lowest score ever won at a five star, making it a world record. How incredible. The man is the best rider in the world, there’s just no doubt. It was so amazing to be there to see him ride in person. 

What a horse, seriously

At the end of the day, I snagged a couple of saddle pads from Smartpak that were on sale and we walked around the property. We ended up seeing fischerChipmunk getting unpacked and hosed off as we walked by. What a cool horse! He was yawning and relaxing as his people fawned over him. 

On Monday, we went to see a thoroughbred breeding farm to see some baby horses. That was super fun! We also went to the museum of the horse at the Horse Park, which was also great. Soon though, it was time to drop Nicole and I off at the airport so that we could fly home and get back to work. And then we were on our respective planes and I was back in California in the very similar weather. 

Look at the little baby! This one warmed
up to us quickly for some scratches

The farms out in Lexington are also unreal!

I’m SO glad I went to Kentucky. It was such a blast to be able to go for the first time ever. It made me so grateful for my new job that allowed me to go so early in my tenure there and for my friends, most of whom agreed to go with me when I announced that I was GOING this year and wanted them to come with me. And they dealt with my incredibly weird affect while I was struggling with my insomnia, thank you friends! Unfortunately I got home and it got worse, but I'm hoping I have broken it now. 

I am DEFINITELY putting this on the calendar as an annual tradition. Even with some of my shopping decisions, I was way under budget for the trip and am excited to come back as often as I can. What an experience! 

Kentucky 2022 - Cross Country

We woke up fairly early on cross country day so that we could spend the entire day at the horse park. The four star went in the morning and then the five star started just after lunch. 

The classic shot

After declining Jen’s tailgating invitations for years, we finally got to go! We spent the morning there watching the four star from the tailgating spot while we enjoyed Jen’s amazing food. Legitimately it was the best food we had all weekend (we did cook for ourselves a few times, which was also very good, so that’s my advice). 

It was blogger central, which was fun! I finally got to meet some new bloggers after so many years of not meeting anyone in person. As expected, everyone was super nice. My insomnia made it really difficult to interact normally with other humans, but I tried! 

After an amazing lunch, we decided to go to the start (and end) of the course to try to watch every jump. It was kind an out and back course, so we were able to see the first and last jumps and zig zag between the tracks before we ended up at the head of the lake. 

Watching the four star from Jen's tailgating spot,
which I neglected to get a picture of

The jumps are HUGE, obviously, these horses are so incredible. Seeing it in person is other worldly at times, like what even is this place where the grass is green and the jumps are as large as a small house? 

We were lucky to not see anything too scary. The worst we saw was a horse landing a little hard on the ditch and wall and the rider popping off. Horse and rider were totally fine, just an unfortunate moment.

There was a really long hold out on course and we had no idea why. This was the challenge all day. I bet if we had been better at paying attention, we could have figured it out, but it was really hard to hear/pay attention to the announcer. So we were sitting at the Normandy bank wondering what was going on and the longer the hold was, the more nervous we were. Without being afraid of what was happening, it was honestly nice to just sit down and relax, but we were on edge worrying. 

Later on we found out that a horse had fallen in the water and had to be sedated and taken off course. No one knew anything else around us though. Only that afternoon when the day had ended did we finally figure out which horse it was and that the horse was going to be fine (we knew the rider was fine from earlier in the day), so that was good! Still really scary to be out on course and I can’t imagine what it would have been like to see it happen.

All of my pictures were from videos on my phone
if you can't tell lol

I was so impressed when the hold stopped and the horse finally came through our jump, what a jump to be held in front of! But whoever came through was amazing and just popped right through. And then we continued our walk! 

The coffin complex was absolutely amazing to watch, as was the sunken road. We finally saw Boyd Martin and Michael Jung come through when we were at the edge of the course. Seeing both of them up close was pretty cool, different styles of riders but both rode so seamlessly over the fences we saw them at. 

We ended up at the head of the lake watching the last few riders. We moved around a bit to make sure we got to see it from different angles. During that time, a rider ended up causing a jump to collapse, so that was interesting to see! We’d seen one earlier on the 4* course that was being stored collapsed and it’s really amazing technology. Not like I’ll ever jump a jump with frangible tech, but I still love that they’re working hard to make the sport safer. 

These open ramp jumps are pretty scary, yikes

At the end of the day, I was feeling so inspired. I’ve had a rough time with the dressage for the last few years and jumping has been a fun thing to do to take my mind off of it. I wondered whether this weekend would make me want to event more or make me shift my gears toward another sport where the jumps fall down. But after that weekend, I am very confident that I want to make my return to eventing. I sat down that evening and did some calculations on where I needed to get to in my career and how much I needed to save to buy my next horse, who I want to be an eventer. 

I love dressage and I always will. I want to continue to learn and take TC up through the levels. But I want to be in a sport where I don’t have such a sour taste. And for that, eventing is perfect. 

It’ll take me a little while to get to the point where I can buy a horse (since I’m going to want a hefty budget so I can buy something very safe and who is my very specific ride over fences), but I do want to switch disciplines. Or at least, add another discipline! So, two to three years from now, I’ll be in the market for something very specific and hopefully will be gearing up to run my first BN in fifteen years. 

Kentucky 2022 - Dressage

Oh man, I have been wanting to post these posts for this entire week! But work has been so busy. The two days right before I left and the three when I got back were absolute madhouse. I did get some exceptional food for Cinco De Mayo yesterday though and we have today off so I'm spending it with the horses of course. And setting up these posts!

Unfortunately, with work being so busy the couple days before and my insomnia returning with a vengeance last month, most of my weekend in Kentucky was spent in zombie mode. But luckily I took a lot of pictures, so I'm sure I can piece together what happened!

Thursday! L spent the dressage days
seeing thoroughbreds so it was just
the four of us for a couple days

My brother came to pick me up on Wednesday morning because he lives on the other side of the airport and the SO was in meetings all afternoon. It was fun to chat with him on the way to the airport (and tell him that his child is going to be obsessed with eventing one day) and then in no time, I was waiting outside the gate. I grabbed some food and moved myself up in the plane because my flight had been delayed and I was facing a short layover. 

When planning, it had turned out that Nicole and I had booked the same flight from DFW to Lexington, so we chose seats next to each other and she was able to hold the plane for a moment for me to get there! Both myself and my bag did make it to Lexington. 

Proof we made it: ponies were the
first thing we saw when we landed

The coolest part of all of this was landing in Lexington and seeing how horse centric the city is. The Bay Area is essentially the opposite of that, with most of my coworkers being shocked that there are horses anywhere near us. There were advertisements for thoroughbred studs and farms, tons of horse statues and pictures, and signs that said Equine something or other all over the place. 

We got a ride from a very Kentuckian Lyft driver to our AirBnb and met up with L there. Our other friends were driving in from Louisville and by 1am, there were six of us in our cute and quirky AirBnb! 

Insane to see it all in person!

Wednesday night I did sleep better, but that isn't saying much and that plus the jet lag meant that I was an absolute zombie the entire day on Thursday. I have vague memories of wandering around the horse park and also of Peony chatting excitedly with Amanda and Hillary while I tried to stay conscious and took in just enough to realize that I came across as a huge weirdo. Great!

Luckily we didn’t have anything we *had* to do on Thursday, so we hung out in the morning, made some breakfast, and then made our way to the horse park. 

 

Of course we had to go see this guy

I’ve never been to the horse park, but I’ve heard it’s incredible and I can confirm that it’s incredible. We didn’t have seats for dressage on Thursday, so we kind of watched here and there but spent most of the time wandering around shopping. There were tons of tents set up with lots of brands I’d only heard of. 

My goal for the trip was to find a helmet for myself and stirrups for my niece. I want her in safety stirrups since she's a little daredevil (she is already cantering with me double at 2 years old lol her favorite words are "MORE FAST AUNT MIMI") and will probably fall off a lot, but I want to find the tiniest ones I can because she's in like, the 14th percentile in human size and will probably stay that way since her mom is so tiny. Neither of those I ended up finding, oh well. If anyone has any non-peacock safety stirrup recommendations for a tiny person, let me know. I want her to start riding on her own later this summer because my legs are tired from nudging the pony along. 

I came close to buying a OneK but their medium is just the tiniest bit too tight on my head. I love how you can change up the plates though so I was very close to just buying it and seeing if it'd break in a bit. It would have been so fun to have different plates for my different horse sports! The best fit came from a Charles Owen AYR8 Plus, but that’s a $520 helmet and it was not on sale, so not worth buying just to have to bring it home. But it was good to know that it fits, so when I do go to buy a helmet, I will just buy that one.

I did buy a jump strap though!

Thursday night, we ended up ordering food for pick up from a local restaurant, and that, plus the lunch earlier that day which was supposed to be Mediterranean but they offered us BBQ for a sauce, started us off realizing that Kentucky’s food is… it’s fine. It's edible and it's fine. 

On Friday, we did have seats, so we slept in and then headed over to the horse park to watch dressage for real. Thanks to Nicole, we could see the court easily, unobstructed by pillars! We were also protected from the elements, although it was sunny all weekend. 

Seats, courtesy of Nicole, thank you Nicole!!

We saw some of the bigger names go and I was generally really impressed with the dressage. The test looks fun and flows well, with some challenging parts, such as going from an extended canter to a stretchy canter circle (which I do really like, it used to be part of Second level and putting it after an extended canter, amazing, I love it). I definitely want to ride it on TC when we get back to that point. 

Obviously Michael Jung was in first place after dressage, it was a beautiful test. Boyd’s test was also really fabulous to see in person and he did this amazing counter canter circle to come up centerline which I was *obsessed* with, I'm definitely using that when TC and I get to Fourth level. What a brilliant way to enter the court to guarantee you're straight AND that your horse isn't going to go do a line of tempis up the centerline (erm, Rico and I got a lot of 5s on centerlines). Not all show facilities will allow for this around here, but I am determined to enter in counter canter from now on when I can.

There were some less well known riders (I mean, to me most riders are less well known so don't take my word for it) who put in really quality tests with correct basics. No one is perfect of course, but the quality of the basics were seen in the quality of the extensions, stretchy canter, and rein backs, and there were a lot of great basics. 

INSANE and very well deserved score

Smartpak ran a course walk with Boyd Martin, so we did end up going on that and getting to see some of the course. To someone who is jumping solidly BN right now, the jumps looked HUGE. It was cool to hear what he thought about each of the harder parts of the course though. I really like the technical aspect of the sport! 

On Friday, we ended up going out to dinner and continuing our uninspiring tour of Kentucky’s food scene. We did get really good ice cream though! I’ll give Kentucky that, they do unhealthy food really well, which I can definitely appreciate. I think it was that evening that we decided to cook for ourselves from then on. 

Friday night we decided to go to bed relatively early to get up early for cross country day!