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!

TC’s Lump

So, I have consistently forgotten to post about it, but TC has had this odd lump on the outside of his sheath for a few months. It started off looking like a small bug bite. Then it didn’t go away and looked like a large bug bite. So I thought “poor TC, a bug bit him.” It wasn’t hot or bothersome, so I decided to wait and have my vet look at it at TC’s spring shots. 

That happened on Monday and we decided to snag it off while it was still small enough to do so without general anesthesia. It was honestly perfect timing given that he needs two weeks off to let it heal. I needed to take 6 days off of riding for Kentucky and my saddle isn’t working right now anyway. 

These two are so funny together

I gave the vet the go ahead and we sedated TC to an inch of his life, blocked his sheath, snipped it off, and sewed him back up. I say we, as the general we, meaning my vet and the vet tech with my mom excitedly watching and asking questions. I stood far away trying not to gag at all the blood pouring out of him. So. Gross. I am not a Gross Things Person. My mom made fun of me. She was very excited to have been invited and she asked lots of questions. She wanted to go to vet school when she was younger and got a degree in biology, so all things vet-related are fascinating to her. I did not get those genes, hence there being no pictures of this procedure in this post. 

TC gets two weeks off from working and the vet said to keep him stalled or in a small paddock so he wouldn’t run around. Um… wouldn’t… run around? In a small space? TC runs the most when he’s in a small space because he is a giant complainer about not being in his pasture. He snakes his neck and boings around the paddock, harassing Rico over the fence. When he has pasture, 99% of the time he quietly walks in and out all day long. Then very occasionally he'll quietly trot or canter out. 

When I described these two options to my vet, she agreed that keeping him off the pasture would do more harm than good, so he still has his pasture. He WILL be locked in if he runs around too much and he WILL be getting a part time job to pay his own vet bills if she has to come back out to stitch him back up if he busts his stitches. 

Love this boy

The only major downside of this timing is that we have a mounted archery clinic next weekend. I was REALLY looking forward to doing it with TC but it’s not as important as seeing my biomechanics trainer in person at the end of May and seeing Celeste in early June. So it was either now and only miss one clinic and eight days of riding, or do it at the end of June and miss more riding. And we’d risk it getting bigger. 

I did opt to spend more money (TC, that job, let’s go) and send the mass to the laboratory. In true disgusting biology lovers fashion, all three strong-stomached individuals stood over the mass after it’d come off, poking around in it to see what it was made of. I was busy trying not to vomit, but the gist of what they found is that it looked like a fatty lump. Gag. No thanks. 

Obviously gray horses get skin cancer more easily than others. TC has, so far, not had a single mass on him other than this one (and it didn't look like what my friends with gray horses have described, I have chosen not to google these things). As much as I would love to be the one gray horse owner who never has to deal with it, I’m preparing for it to come back positive for cancer. Luckily, my vet thinks that 1) there’s definitely a chance it isn’t melanoma and 2) even if it is, it won’t have spread or anything. So fingers crossed, but I’m not too worried. I’m just glad we got it off. 

The one picture you'll get, don't look
closely, I tried not to take too many

If we have to do this on occasion, that’s fine. It was relatively easy and painless for TC (well, he’s also on antibiotics and bute for a few days) and for my bank account (less than $1,000 and that includes the call fee, the removal, the laboratory analysis, and spring shots). Honestly, my biggest concern was how disgusting it was, if it comes back I'll definitely call her the moment it shows up to have her snag it off when it's very small. Now let’s just hope he stays quiet enough to not pop his stitches. At least he’s older and more chill now, I could not imagine 4 year old TC handling stitches well, I’m glad his suspensory didn’t need surgery! 

Kentucky Bound!

Today I fly out to Kentucky! I'm so excited, it's my first time ever going to this event. I've wanted to go for so long but could never swing it. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to blog, while there, but I'll definitely try to write about it on the plane on the way back. 

If you're also going and want to hang out, message me on IG or your preferred way of contacting me, I think my email is on this blog somewhere. I'll be there with friends (bloggers and former bloggers mostly) from late tonight until midday Monday! Fair warning, I will likely complain about the weather. 

Woohoo!

Fixing my Hip

Let's try this again. I wrote this whole post out last week, accidentally posted it early, thought I hadn't, tried to update it, and ended up deleting it somehow. The idea of rewriting it (especially because I'd kind of forgotten everything I'd written) was a no go, so I figured I'd write it again later. This injury isn't going anywhere. 

One of the things I enjoy about my job is that it has good health insurance. I have not had good health insurance since I was on my parents' plan, but even the copays back then were tricky, so it's honestly been a while. Now though, it's great! And I'm finally able to get consistent care. 

I've done a physical, seen the doctor for my esophageal spasms that sometimes feel like a heart issue (they are not but it's nice to hear from a doctor that my chest pain isn't anything to worry about), and am going to finally get my contacts paid for after years of paying out of pocket, but the weekly/biweekly visits working on my body have been my favorite part. I started working with the chiropractor every other week for a while, which has been great. My upper back and neck are always really bad and I've always found that regular chiro helps with that. Sure enough, I didn't realize how much pain I was in until I started going regularly! 

I just started physical therapy as well! It took a while to get on his schedule and it was something I kept putting off until my hip actually freaked out. Then I went in (and have an appointment for my wrist coming up too). 

This

He did a full examination where he looked at my balance, having me stand on one leg and do certain movements. He came to the conclusion that my piriformis is incredibly tight and that is causing my pelvis to be tilted and THAT is causing some interesting problems. Long time blog readers who have very good memories for weird biomechanical things may recognize some of these symptoms...

1.) my right leg wants to be more bent than my right

2.) my left oblique is weak

3.) I might find it hard to drop my right seat bone

4.) my right side is stronger than my left

5.) I can't turn off my right hamstring

Hmmmm I told him that all of those things sounded like my long time riding problems. 

Me, about my SI injury

He thinks that this is a very old injury, where something happened where my pelvis was twisted hard. Then my body basically tightened up around that twist and it stayed. Namely, my right piriformis tightened around my right hip and locked it into place. Then a decade later, I was squatting and my piriformis yelled I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE and freaked out. 

Back in early 2011, I was riding a horse who my boss had assured me had been out all week (I was gone). He had not. He had this nasty root-buck-twist move and he did it to me early in our ride. Rooted me out of my secure position, leapt into the air, then twisted. I was out for a couple of weeks but all I did for it was take anti inflammatories and gave myself a stomach ulcer. Then that caused me to drop weight and therefore feel super weak, so I got flung head first into a fence. Being a horse trainer crash dummy is rough. I went back to school after that. 

That is very likely when this injury occurred and my body has been compensating for it for years. 

My SI and my hip to me, I'm sure lol

I'm bummed that I didn't take it seriously back then (and honestly, I couldn't, I had to keep working and had almost no money since it was winter) but I'm glad I can take it seriously right now. I am doing my physical therapy exercises each day, which mostly include me pummeling my right piriformis and right hamstring with a lacrosse ball. 

Hopefully it starts to get better! I can already feel it complaining. My back has been hurting, which I think was due to the balance on the saddle being off but could absolutely be part of what my tight piriformis was protecting me from. 

I go back today for a check in, I'm hoping to get some exercises for my wrist too! We'll see how far we get. 

Saddle In Progress

Well, it finally happened, on Saturday, I drove over the hill to get my new saddle! I definitely had my hopes up because it looked beautiful, but it isn't perfect just yet. It goes back in this week for some adjustments. But I figured I'd talk about what I do like about it. Swing it a bit positive! Kate got my negative Nancy bullshit yesterday on the phone so when I got home, I decided to force myself to be positive. 

Hello saddle!

The blocks are amazing!

The good news is that the saddle is gorgeous. It's my first fully custom saddle, so I got to design it. I chose to do a similar design to one of Kate's students' saddles since I am not a creative person. It was tweaked a little bit though, and I love it! It looks so sharp and not too gaudy. 

The channel for TC's spine is HUGE by the way. I've never seen anything like it actually. I wish I'd taken a picture of it. Somehow the saddle doesn't feel super wide though, so that's good for me. 

The other thing I really love about is the blocks. I dunno how these blocks even make sense. First, they're huge, which is exactly what I wanted given that TC still has some good sized leaps in there and his extended trot is impossible to sit. But I didn't realize that it was possible to make giant blocks without them feeling like they slam you into position. Amazing. I feel like I have a ton of freedom in my leg and yet when I need the block, there it is. MAGIC. I assume, at least. 

Before: this is ideally where I'd like the saddle to
sit, also note TC's posture before our ride

After: the saddle clearly shifted forward throughout
our ride, but look at how much better he looks in his
posture! Love this way of riding

You can see how far it slid forward
based on my sticky pad's movement

Unfortunately, in true TC form, he's impossible to fit. So the saddle slides forward as they all do. So it's hopefully going to go back in to try a different placement for the billets. This is why I chose this saddle fitter, he is very knowledgeable and dedicated. 

So I wish I would have been able to post this saying "the saddle is perfect and amazing and I'm so happy!" I cannot. But I do love a lot about it and I'm trying really hard not to think about what to do if we end up not being able to get it to work for us. There's a lot of stuff to try between now and then. 

Free Jumping the Pony

The pony has been feeling great lately! Between the bitless bridle and clicker training, he really feels good. Over the winter with his anxiety spiking and him dumping me a bit, I was kind of getting done with trying to do anything with him. My priority for him right now is to use him as a stand-in for my future second horse and to have something going so that if a friend comes to ride with me, we can go into the hills together. But he's doing much better now! 

He's a really good trail pony

We kind of got into this odd little routine in our work where he'd be super lazy for a bit and then he'd wake up and immediately get anxious. Like his body needed some time to loosen up but then his brain couldn't handle being loose/forward/whatever? I don't know what was going on. When that would happen, after about fifteen minutes, I'd spend about five minutes having him do something basic (like turns on the forehand or something easy) and then we'd be done with the ride. 

Over the last few weeks though, he's been having this really pleasant time in between the laziness and the anxiety where he'd feel really damn good. But he'd still worry, so we'd end with some basic stuff and be done. Last week though, we had a really good ride where instead of worrying, he just got very ON. There was a confidence about the energy and looseness that hadn't been there before. I had to kind of talk myself into doing more given that every time he's felt like this, I've either fallen off or come close to it (not like he's far from the ground lol but he's quick!). But I was feeling really good about my ability to breathe and visualize him staying with me and he did. 

We saw a snake recently!

Last week, I decided to longe him and see if he wanted to do a little bit of jumping. I turned him loose in the ring while I put up the world's tiniest cross rail. Normally I don't work with him at liberty because he thinks that eating leaves is way more interesting than anything I want to do with him. But this time he was super into hanging out with me! 

He immediately walked over the jump and got clicks for that, then turned around and did it again for more clicks. I wanted him to warm up for real though, so I sent him around the arena a few times before actually pointing him at the jump.

He warmed up fairly quickly and got clicks for moving forward and releasing his under neck. Once he was warmed up, I sent him over the jump and he happily hunted it down for a click. We did that several times each way and he was so game that I decided to put the jump up to the second tiniest cross rail that has ever existed. 

I love these trails, it rained this weekend
so they are not usable for a bit

He did jump that one a few times, but I noticed that his jumping arc was starting to change. He'd fling himself over it and then land heavily, tossing his head. I can't adequately explain how tiny this jump is. We have those white cavalletti blocks and I made a crossrail out of them with them on their side (not standing up). The poles are actually pretty crappy (going to replace those) so they were sagging a bit. It was SO small. He was giving it more effort than required and I think it was because the actual apex of his jump was well after the jump. He was cutting down right after it too. 

One too many hard landings and he was super over it. He galloped by it kicking out at the jump, then started to spin hard away from it. 

Now, I don't care about jumping this horse. It'd be convenient to be able to jump tiny cross rails like I did last summer on him so that I could practice what I'm learning in my jumping lessons in between. But I also feel more confident jumping now so I don't think I necessarily need that. I've tried my best to emphasize to the pony that he is no longer expected to do anything. He is on an R+ ONLY training plan. Good things get rewarded and bad things get ignored. 

So instead of pushing the issue, I put the jump down to poles and had him end on a good note trotting over the poles. It definitely got me thinking about the jumping issue though. 

And a deer!

I'd like to try to clicker train him to jump a bit softer. He seems super into the jumps until he lands hard and then he's not as excited about it. I'm curious as to whether I could teach him to jump in a better way that has him rocking back and jumping rather than just flinging himself over his shoulder to do it. If I could teach him to land softer, would he enjoy jumping more?

So the plan is to have him jump at liberty once a week and to shape him with clicker training. I'm going to start with canter poles and slowly build him up into the world's tiniest grid with the world's tiniest cross rails. 

We'll stick with the R+ only training so if he decides that he'd rather not jump, oh well, we will stop. But I figure it'd be a fun project for me given that I'll probably want to free jump my next horse a bit and shape the way he jumps. Kate did that a ton with Flounder and I think that's a huge part of why I love riding him so much. 

Always game for trails

As much fun as I'm having with the pony, it's definitely showing me that I really want another horse with TC's personality. The pony is a bit on the quirky side personality-wise. He's kind of hot and cold. Super into what I'm doing and then not that interested. Standing super toned staring at me aggressively with his happy pony eyes and then totally ignoring me. 

I don't know how much of that is nature vs nurture, but I appreciate TC's constant happy-go-lucky attitude and how personable he is. The pony has pretty good conformation, like I think in his youth and mine, I could have done something pretty spectacular with him. Whereas TC's conformation makes him more challenging to ride. But he's always super game, which I really appreciate. 

I still love the pony, I just think that I'll be after a Flounder/TC type for my next horse!