Cob Jockey

2018 was a year unlike any other for me and Connor.  I backed off of showing.  I poured myself into getting our fundamentals correct.  I admitted I had no idea what I was doing at this level, and I sought to learn.  I cried.  I committed to achieving non-horse goals, like paying off debt.  And hey, while we're at it, I landed a fantastic job at my dream employer.

All photos in this post courtesy of Austen

Seriously not sure I've ever seen this much butt engagement out of him at the canter before.  At least in pictures. (Side note: this part of the indoor previously housed temporary stalls, so the fluffy white stuff is some new, not-quite-totally-mixed-in-yet TruTex.  It won't look like that forever.)

20 minutes later, goofing off.  This is how Connor would PREFER we canter...

I feel like it's time for a proper review of my barn's TruTex footing, which I mentioned briefly when we put it in a year ago, in November of 2017.  If you remember, footing was the only thing I compromised on initially when I moved Connor to the new barn in May of 2017.  My old barn had gorgeous Thoroturf and GGT rings, so I was definitely spoiled.  But now, our footing is just as good as my old barn's, and for a fraction of the price.

Not my barn.  Wouldn't that be awesome though? PC: TruTex website

First, what is TruTex?  Their tagline is "Making Luxury Arena Footing Affordable".   It's a purpose-made fiber additive that can be added to any kind of existing arena footing to give it the same stability, structure, water retention and shock absorption of any luxury footing brand.  Popular in Europe, it's just starting to catch on in the US.

PC: TruTex website

If you remember, the footing at my new barn was deep and shifty when I got here.  It would be alright the day you watered and dragged it, but quickly fell apart after that, requiring tons of maintenance.

PC above two images: TruTex website

As a rider, on the old, shifty footing a tendon injury was always in the back of my mind, and my very footing-conscious horse was never quite as confident on it as he was at our old barn, especially at the canter.

Before TruTex.  He always felt sticky and unsure of himself on the old footing, especially during tight turns in the canter as shown as the beginning of this GIF when I practically have to kick him out of the turn.

Then we got TruTex.  Our footing is still the same sand we had before, but it rides just like the high dollar footings I was used to from the old barn, no kidding.  And it only cost $3,000 to take our pretty big indoor from deep and shifty, to comparable to the best footing systems in the world.

After TruTex - much more confident on a similar turn.  I kicked him here too, but only to make the distance on the circle of death when we were alternating 4 strides and then 5 strides between the poles.

Over the past year, we've installed it in both the indoor and the outdoor, and I genuinely could not be happier with it.  It's stable under Connor's feet, absorbs shock extremely well, springs back after impact, and immediately after it was installed, Connor felt more confident under saddle than he ever had on the old footing.

From a maintenance perspective, the outdoor stays safely rideable in conditions that would have sent us scurrying for the indoor in the past.  And it requires so much less watering and dragging than it did before we added TruTex.



So besides the fact that it's a great product that's totally transformed my barn's footing and that it's the cheapest way to get high quality footing I know of, why do I think TruTex is going to take the US market by storm in 2019?  Short answer: I don't think any other vendor in the footing market makes it this easy.  If you've ever shopped for footing before, you'll appreciate the following:

• You get a quote by plugging in your arena's dimensions on the website.  Most footing companies require you to go through a sales rep for that kind of info.
• It ships directly to your front door.
• It requires no special tools or skill to install.
• It can rehab any type of existing footing, and doesn't require you to start over completely with your existing arena.
• It's compatible with any kind of sand.

Cross section of an arena with TruTex fibers throughout the sand PC: TruTex website

Not sure if BoT works or not, but I almost couldn't get this cat off my hock boots after he laid there my entire ride, so, that counts for something I guess!

I was already thinking this year I wouldn't do my usual year-in-review on the blog - this was a transitional year full of things that, frankly, make for boring blogging.  Spending as little money as possible on horse things, not showing, over-analyzing biomechanics and hardly going anywhere fun?  I won't make you sit through that a second time!  So I'm joining in Amanda's blog hop.

Favorite Show Picture

PC: Karen

This year was H-A-R-D in a lot of ways.  But we made a great deal of progress, and our second and final show of the season proved that to me.


Favorite Non-Show Picture

PC: Leah

I still have to pinch myself sometimes and remind myself that this really happened.  I'm still so grateful to Karen for including me in her contest winnings.  Sidenote: KPG came back to our area to clinic recently and the prices reminded me I definitely could not have done this if it wasn't for that contest!


Favorite Thing You Bought



Due to my spending freeze, I have a short list of 2018 purchases to choose from.  This saddle was a 2017 purchase, but having it professionally fitted in July is definitely my favorite purchase of 2018.  Especially after discovering Connor is exceptionally hard to fit in a Dressage saddle, seeing how well this one sits on his back now just feels like a miracle to me.


Favorite Moment on Horseback


This whole clinic.  How could it not be?!  This photo is KPG gushing over our shared love of Welsh Cobs.  She may not be competing one in the Olympics, but once a Welsh Cob lover, always a Welsh Cob lover.


Favorite Moment out of the Saddle



Moment?  How about weekend?!  Flying to Colorado with Connor's breeder to meet Erika, and to watch both Castleberrys Dillan and Castleberrys Gavin go in the RMDS Championship show was so amazing.  It was so cool to watch Connor's breeder watch her "kids" go, and and to understand that dreams 15 and 13 years in the making were realized for her that weekend.


Favorite Between the Ears Picture



On one of the last warm fall days this year Connor and I wandered the open field at just the right time of day, just enjoying each other and the warm sunlight and the beautiful surroundings before winter set in.  This picture is my cell phone background now, and I get a little zen every time I look at it.


Favorite Horse Book or Article



It's not a horse article, but nonetheless, Simone Giertz's TED talk had a profound impact on my horse life.  And then shortly after that, Matt Brown's CoTH series dialed in on the same ideas.


Favorite Horse Ridden Aside from Your Own



I only rode one horse that wasn't Connor this year and it was a great one!  Riding JenJ's T in January (then Second Level, now Third Level) was incredibly enlightening and really shaped my whole 2018.  He helped me realize I was as crooked as a pretzel and as tense as a vice, and that sparked a quest to fix all of that, even if I didn't initially understand what was happening.


Favorite Funny Picture of Your Horse



There was LITERALLY NO REASON for this!


Favorite Movement That You Conquered



I wouldn't call mediums 'conquered' yet, but this is the first year in which I actually felt some lengthening at the trot.  Such a simple thing, but so much went into that from a biomechanics, strength, feel, and straightness perspective, it feels like an achievement (in progress).


Favorite Horse Meme



You have to have a sense of humor to own a Welsh cob, as Dr. Marks said so many years ago!

If you'll remember, I set one goal for myself for 2018: spend less on non-essential horse supplies.

My intent was two-fold: admit to myself that I already owned everything I needed to keep Connor healthy and happy, and also admit to myself that my spending in that category was out of control in 2017. Oh and #3: Pay off some debt.

How did I end up doing?

2018 is green, 2017 is yellow.

Turns out, if you give a girl some metrics, she nails it.  I spent almost precisely one tenth of what I did the year before.  And of what I did spend, 3/4 of it was on the KPG clinic.  Cause, you know, if you're going to be videoed by a Dressage magazine and ride for an Olympian, the right outfit is borderline essential spending, c'mon.

Looking the part!  PC: Leah

Adding the "necessary" and "unnecessary" tags in Mint helped me realize most of my spending wasn't on big purchases, but was on $20-$50 purchases here and there.  In fact, if you take out my top 5 non-essential horse transactions in 2017, the average price of the remaining 24 purchases was only $44!  It's amazing how those little "just one more saddle pad" purchases add up over the year.


Using the "necessary" and "unncessary" tags didn't feel burdensome.  I'd log into Mint once a week and spend a minute or two tagging the week's purchases.  And it ended up helping me rein in my spending in other areas of my life too.  Turns out it wasn't just horse stuff that was making my money disappear a little at a time!



The best part of all of this?  We paid off both the kitchen and his student loans this year!  The kitchen was a certainty but the student loans were a definite stretch goal, so that feels especially good.

Noooooo regrets

In 2019, I'll be increasing my horse show spending again, but the year of cutting back on my non-essential horse purchases has permanently changed my relationship with spending money on "stuff".  I learned to be content with what I have, to unsubscribe from all the "SALE!" mailing lists, and how easy it is to let your hard-earned money slip away one $44 purchase at a time.  I'm not saying I'll never buy a pair of breeches again, but it probably won't be until my current pairs get holes in them!

What's up, it's your resident overthinking biomechanics nut here, back again with some incomplete thoughts about feelings.

Yeah I'm out of media so here's a ton of Hank pictures.  Side note, we have SUCH a long way to go until I can take this dog to the barn and ride.  Gotta install a lot of manners first...

My first feeling was when my trainer told me to fix my uneven seat by bringing the right side of my ribcage closer to my right elbow.

You know when someone says something to you in a way that just effortlessly makes sense?  That cue was the perfect first toolkit phrase to make sense to both my brain and my body.  And it evened out my seat without me trying to force my hips into a particular position, which makes me tense up my seat and try too hard.

Every time I have people over it involved a lot of frantic vacuuming and praying they don't wear dark pants.

The second feeling was even cooler.  We were working on getting his outside/right shoulder un-stuck in the left canter.  I was struggling with that, and I asked if we could do some shoulder-in to attack it another way, because I just didn't feel like he was in my outside rein at all.  It felt like he'd go back to right bend in an instant if I let him, and like he was too much in my inside rein.

(In retrospect, I should've remembered NK telling me that Connor being heavy on the inside rein is a smokescreen he puts up to distract me from him not engaging the inside hind enough, which just came to me as I was writing this)

Hank played so hard at daycare on Monday, he basically slept the whole next day.

Even in the SI, I tried to explain that I never get that "wrapping around my inside leg" feeling on the left the way I do on the right, and I asked her to help me figure that out, since it seemed related to the canter thing.

Hank laying down in the backyard for the first time ever since we've owned him

So my trainer got behind us on the rail and noticed that his left (inside) hip was slightly higher than the right.  The moment she said it it was like some long disconnected synapse fired in my brain and I felt that very familiar feeling (not getting him connected on the left) in a brand new way (horse not engaging inside hind/left hip higher than right).

 Reminder of the USDF definition of SI:

"The horse’s inside foreleg passes and crosses in front of the outside foreleg; the inside hind leg steps forward under the horse’s body weight following the same track of the outside foreleg, with the lowering of the inside hip. "

So I mean first of all, we're probably not even doing a proper SI on the left because if his left hip is higher it means he's definitely not bringing that foot forward and under his body weight.

And second of all, this is a problem ALL THE TIME and not just in SI.  Once I was aware of that, I couldn't not feel it the whole rest of the lesson.  He does that all the freaking time on the left.  We did some lateral work to get him to step up on the right side and engage the left hind, but it was toward the end of the lesson, so I didn't get to explore that as much as I wanted to.


It's amazing to me that I've felt him do that for years (remember, left bend has always been an issue) and I've never really been able to identify what was happening until she said that tonight.  It was both a familiar feeling and a whole new world of understanding.

Incomplete thoughts.  Now to figure out how to fix this.

...Carly!


Take that thing off your Christmas list, you win!  Or leave it on your Christmas list and hold your own contest, you know, whatever floats your goats.

LEAH.  New idea!  You're gonna need a pool...

Thanks to everyone for entering!  If you didn't win, remember you can get it on Amazon, AND Amazon has a promo code running through December 21st that I verified does work for this book:


Navigate to the book's page on Amazon and click the "1 Applicable Promotion" link to add the promo code (GIFTBOOK18) to your cart.

I got out to the barn Saturday morning to find that Connor had a fat leg.  No definition on the medial side of the left fore from the bottom of the knee to the bottom of the fetlock.


I wouldn't say a fat leg is ever normal, but it's especially unusual for Connor, who just does not get hurt.  The same quality that caused him to fail as an XC horse (off the charts levels of self-preservation) also causes him to avoid injury situations, or at least that's my theory.  In 7 years, this is his first fat leg.

(Connor's entire injury list: August 2015 (minor scrape), July 2017 (random swelling at girth - bugs?), September 2017 (minor scrape), March 2018 (splint, no lameness)).


There's a small superficial abrasion, just hair taken off, which you can see (sort of) in the above photo.  It probably would've been something minor, but they've been in for two days due to rain, so I'm sure injury + standing around a lot more than usual = fat leg.

Still got them racehorse wrapping skills

He's not at all lame, but I could tell he was uncomfortable on the lunge line on Sunday morning, when it hadn't really changed from the day before.  It was subtle, he's so stoic, but I could tell from his facial expression and just a subtle change in the way he moved that he wasn't feeling his best. 

Side note, the Equisense's horse management features are awesome.  Usually I just use it to record his trims, but it will be good for historical injury reference too.

Fingers crossed that it goes down quickly and we can get back to riding, since I don't have any travel at all scheduled for the next two weeks!

Just a reminder that the Dressage Rider's Journal contest ends at 12am Eastern time Monday!  So you have a day and a half left to enter.

Also for those of you who have already entered, double check that you have both left a comment and entered via the Rafflecopter widget.  There are 14 entries and 11 comments so at least three of you are technically not entered!

Hank being festive

Longtime readers will remember that winter boots are one item that I was just straight up cheap with a few years ago, and I lived to regret it.  After I got two years out of a pair of less fancy TuffRiders and then a pair of TuffRider Tundras lasted me essentially three weeks, I finally shelled out the cash for a pair of Ariat Bromont H2Os, in brown, which is a UK-only color for Ariat.

Now that they've survived two complete winters and are starting their third, how have they held up?

In a word, BEAUTIFULLY

First of all, understand that I take great care of most of my boots but I haven't taken care of these AT ALL.  I don't know why.  Maybe it's because I lose all motivation and willpower when it's cold outside.  Winter is a season of survival for me and I guess my boots too.  These have seen some abuse and not a lot of love.


The picture above is what they looked like after one cleaning and conditioning.  Probably their first cleaning and conditioning in a year.  The picture below is more like what they usually look like:


They are still waterproof.  There's no signs of cracking.  Scratches come out easily. The only signs of wear are on the suede on the inside of the boots, which is to be expected:



My only complaint, and something you should consider if you're buying these, is that at 2+ years in they really haven't dropped at all.  And since I bought them a size bigger in the foot and calf than I normally do (to accommodate my 9,763 layers of winter clothing), that means I'm still wearing heel lifts with them and still leave them unzipped at the top most of the time.


So yes, they were over 3x the cost of the TuffRiders, but the cost-per-wear is going to end up being much cheaper because these things are clearly going to last.  So this is not the cheaper option, but it's definitely the more frugal option.

In terms of warmth, they're not going to blow your mind when it's -10 outside, but they get the job done.  More than anything, I need winter boots to give me more room inside for layers + socks than any of my other boots, so I'm not looking for them to be super warm.  That said, they're definitely going to keep you warmer than a non-insulated boot (and note - there IS a non-insulated Bromont tall boot available).


Bottom Line: Expensive, but worth it.  Still practically look new after 2 abusive winters, but be careful on sizing the height, they don't seem to drop as much as regular field boots do.

What: Ariat Bromont H2O
Price: $349.95 at SmartPak (I paid $198 + $105 international shipping on eBay)
Sizes: 5.5-11, full and regular calf options
Colors: Black only in US, brown available in UK (Flip between Ireland and US locations to see color options on Ariat website here)