Cob Jockey

IDS Show, 1-3, September 2016:

For January-June's review, click here.

Connor got his first real injury days before Pony Cup, because of course he did.  He got his permanent pony card at a surprising 14.1hh, and we had an absolute blast at NDPC, where we also met Katlyn and Emilie, and Connor met his sister for the first time.  NK gave me some tough love in a lesson, and we survived 2-1 at a schooling show with a 60.000%.  I finally pulled the trigger on a PS of Sweden bridle, and JenJ introduced me to Franklin Balls. I also continued to wax poetic about how much better my life got after I moved Connor.

Still the straightest canter stride this horse has ever taken in his life.

My trainer moved her program from my old barn to my new barn.  I had kind of mixed feelings about this after I realized that I made a lot of progress when I started riding more outside of lessons.  Things were just good, every ride left me with a huge smile on my face.  NK fixed my leg aids in a lesson and I did a side-by-side comparison of my scores from the same test at the same show two days in a row.

We also photographed someone that's not for sale!

I'm trying to find the motivation to write about IDS Championships, and I just can't.  It's not because it went badly.

Nope.

Honestly it's because it went so much better than last year.  The bar for me being happy with this show was set so low this year after last year's IDS Championship 1-3 ride left me sobbing, questioning myself as a rider, and putting my horse in a month of full training because I could not figure out what was wrong, but I knew it was me.

2016:

PC: my mom

2017:

PC: Paul Wood Photography

My 62.3% this year was 0.1% higher than last year's (with a -2 for forgetting that damn 15m canter circle at A!), but that doesn't tell the whole story.  Last year's scores were wildly inconsistent movement to movement, with a 4.0 and a 4.5 in the mix.  This year's scores were pretty level across the board, with no 4's.

Baaaaaaaasically need to totally start this canter over this winter. PC: Paul Wood Photography

Should I have made more progress in scores over the year?  Was it even worth showing this year if I was going to "not improve"?  The scoresheets say one thing, and I'm trying to be pragmatic about it: my score didn't improve, and that's good feedback, but I know I'm a different rider with a different horse vs last year after all we've learned this year.

2016.  PC: my mom

We both changed a lot this year.  The pictures back me up on that.  I get a lot out of showing, and of course I wish the scores were higher, but I know we are in such a better place today than we were last year, and that we have a much more solid foundation built now than we did then.

2016:

PC: my mom

PC: Paul Wood Photography

(I mean, if I'm being honest, primarily shows are a great excuse to drink booze water with Karen and Liz all day!)

Even if the scores don't reflect it, this has been a truly transformative last six months of my riding life, and for that reason, I feel so much more upbeat about this year's 62% than last year's 62%.

PC: Paul Wood Photography

1. I am coming closer to being able to hold my new position through an entire test.

2. My torso can get behind the motion sometimes.

3. My reins are too long.

Way too long

But!  The most important takeaway, and the reason I'm not upset about my too-long reins, is that this is the first test EVER in which I can hardly find throatlatch tension in a single photo.  I did see evidence of it in one photo, and two strides later you can see in another photo I gave forward with my elbows and he relaxes into the contact.  Look at my elbows and his neck in the next two photos:



Relaxation had to come first.  Relaxation is a result of sitting well and not pulling.  Now that we've internalized everything that leads to relaxation well enough to do it at a show, we can start focusing on all the good things that will happen when I shorten my reins.

Last weekend's rated show was eye opening.  Saturday's 1-3 was our highest score ever by 0.2% but really...we did the same test we've ridden for 18 months now, only with a lot less tension owing to my better position.

I was frustrated that all that progress we've made was not demonstrated in the scores or the way I rode.  My position was great, my piloting was not. Overnight, I studied every comment on that score sheet until I could recite the test with the comments.  I also thought about how NK always tells me I ride him too politely.  And we BROUGHT IT.  I rode the s*** out of Sunday's 1-3.

Not pictured: Karen off to the side shaking a tree branch at Connor

We scored our highest ever by 4+%, 66.618%, good for second by 0.3% in the open division to a good local pro.  (And remember, I have done an embarrassing number of 1-3's at this point.  Slow learner and all that.  I sincerely dislike this test.)

It's weird to be able to see the end of this year's show season.  I went into this one with no plan and no expectations (unlike last year, when I was very much points chasing).

And that worked out pretty well.

This year, I am so much more obsessed with how much Connor and I have learned/changed than I could ever be over points or year end awards, I didn't think about or check points once this whole show season.

Like, uh, this was two years ago this month.

So I still kinda can't believe this is a picture of me.

But, turns out I did qualify for my GMO's championships somehow, so I'll be riding 1-3 again on September 30 for that.  And then it logically follows that I'd use the last rated show of the year to practice 1-3, so I'm doing 1-3 both days for that show in mid-August.

I really hate 1-3.

I think we both do...

But.

I hate it because it's hard for us, and I hate it because it always seems to kick our butts, and those are not valid reasons to avoid it; really, they are reasons to attack it.  We're going to spend all of this month and next month schooling like we're chasing 2nd level, but practicing the first level movements.

I won't say it's the last time we'll show First Level (because there's no way we'll be championship show-caliber ready at 2-3 by National Dressage Pony Cup 2018), but I'm going to ride those tests as if it is and school 2nd over the winter like we're done with First.

Done with First, and more importantly, done with rides that look like this

As Karen alluded to in her post, I came down with what I'm pretty sure was salmonella at 11pm Thursday night, when I had to be up at 4:00am for my flight home.  I was up every 20 minutes throwing up, and I couldn't even keep water down - which became a problem when I came very close to fainting getting on my connecting flight around 10am (dehydration?).

I had to go down to my hands and knees in the aisle to keep from passing out, then a flight attendant walked me all the way down the plane with my hands in her hands to put me next to the bathroom.  People thought I was afraid to fly - how embarrassing.  It was one of the worst trips home ever, for sure.

I used my helmet as a purse on the way home rather than check it. #onepersonalitem

I had my husband take a taxi the 52 miles to the airport because I wasn't sure I could drive myself home, and then I asked Karen - best blogger friend ever - if she would be willing to drive me and Connor to the horse park (thank goodness he only lives 20 minutes from the HHP now).  Yeah, I had a horse show, and yes, I seriously thought I would recover from food poisoning in 36 hours and be able to show on Saturday.

Nope.  Let's scratch Saturday.

Thanks Karen for this photo I didn't even know you took!  This is how we spent Saturday: sit in a chair for a while.  Do one thing.  Sit in a chair for a while.  Do another thing.

If I hadn't been sick, I would have had a schooling ride Friday and a test Saturday before my test on Sunday.  As it was, Sunday was my first ride in over a week.  In retrospect, I really should have scratched, but I was feeling better and it's really hard to kiss $300 goodbye and not have a single thing to show for it.

I was really hoping we could repeat our amazing 1-3 from the schooling show in May, but we did not. I was super not present in the ride, and was basically hanging on for dear life riding whatever horse I had...which was not my best horse.  Turns out just because we're progressing doesn't mean he'll go well if I don't ride at all.  Push button, this horse is not.


It wasn't all bad though.  This wasn't a judge I had ridden for before, and she gave us a lot of constructive comments.  We ended up scoring a 58% on a day when the highest tests were only in the mid 60's, and we deserved every bit of it.  Our comments were "lacking lateral suppleness and push".  Noted.

At the end of the day, I shrugged my shoulders and chalked it up as an expensive life lesson.  And immediately texted NK to start taking lessons again.

Connor and I are turning the corner into the abyss that is the land between First and Second.  First is starting to feel easier, but we have a lot of work to put in before we'll be ready for Second.

A lot of things have happened that have allowed my trainer to start asking us for harder work lately, not the least of which being I am actually remembering to sit up, use my core, and ride with appropriately short reins more often than I forget these days.  It's made an enormous difference.

Photo by Paul Wood Photography

When I get the Pixio video from last week, I'll go into more detail about what we're working on lately, but basically, the work is getting a lot harder for both of us.

Photo by Paul Wood Photography

This means a few things:

- We take very frequent short full neck stretch breaks, because what we're asking him to do is hard and new.

- I am very much out of my comfort zone.  I am right back in that zone where I can feel what's wrong, but I don't always know if my response is the right answer.

- It's going to feel bad for a while, and that's okay.  My trainer was talking to me about this in my lesson the other night, making sure I understood that I can't give up or feel defeated if things feel bad as we start working on harder concepts, and that especially with Connor's need to sleep on new things, I need to give everything time.  Accept the small wins, but keep striving for the big breakthroughs.

Ok, so I sometimes still forget to shorten my reins.  Work in progress. Photo by Paul wood Photography

So I've thought about where I want this summer to go.  This is what I'm thinking through the end of July:

June 10/11 IDS Classic: 1-2 on Saturday and 1-3 on Sunday.  This is 100% a dry run for the next show, which is...

July 6-9: National Dressage Pony Cup: 1-2 on Friday and 1-3 on Saturday.

And following that:
July 23 IDS Schooling Show: 2-1

The July show is my last chance to show 2nd Level at a schooling show at the HHP (home base) until October, so if I want to get a judge's opinion on our progress at 2nd at a non-rated show sometime before the very end of our show season, that is the best time to do it.  That gives me two months from tomorrow to work on it (easier than ever now that I can ride more than 4x a week!), and in the meantime, we'll keep riding the rated 1st train.

So much to blog about!  And I have so much time in which to do it now that my little buddy is 10 minutes away from me.  I am in love with this place and its people already:


But, first thing's first!  We did 1-3 at the IDS schooling show on Saturday.  If you'll remember from my last post, my goals involved drinking with Karen and Liz and improving my canter scores in 1-3.

Karen literally had a drink in her hand when I rolled up around 11:30am, so I had some catching up to do, but I'm happy to report I caught up with the help of "booze water" as Karen dubbed it:

90 calories, 1g carbs, no sugar, 4.5% alcohol, literally might be the perfect horse show beverage.

Connor started our warmup with some epic headshaking.  Now, this horse shakes his head every ride, but something was different about this, so I got off in the warmup ring and noticed his browband was in a weird spot that was probably putting pressure on his head.  I could have ignored the head shaking and written it off, but I'm glad I didn't, poor dude.

All  of the following photos are by Paul Wood Photography.  Kelly was done with her rides by 11am but stayed until Karen and I were done at 4pm, AND her husband took all of these photos, AND she let me borrow her helmet when I forgot mine.  Plus Liz's son Will offered to clean my tack. Such good people all the way around!

The biggest change I made at this show was to really get him fired up going around the outside of the ring, and then completely drop my reins and give him his head for a few seconds when the judge rang the bell.  When he was younger if I did that, it would have been game over the gerbils have left the building, but as the work has gotten harder I've noticed he responds well to short, frequent total releases of pressure.

A dramatic re-enactment of our warmup from, sigh, our test.  I'm a slow learner when it comes to my rein length.  Homeboy wasn't supposed to canter here, and with my reins this long, there wasn't much I could do about it quickly or tactfully. PC: Paul Wood Photography

 I am finally (most of the time) aware of two important things in the canter that are even more important at shows: First, he's going to go faster, pull harder and run through my hands if I am holding too much in my elbows and hands.  Literally let go and he slows down and softens.  Sometimes when he's really hauling me around, I have to give myself a pep talk before letting the reins go, because it feels like the opposite of what he needs, but it's always the right decision.

Second, if my reins are too long, I can't do anything about anything in the canter.

PC: Paul Wood Photography

1-3 has been a thorn in my side forever, and all I've ever wanted is a 70% on it and to feel like we owned it instead of it owning us.  The biggest changes this weekend: I had the confidence to control the canter where I needed to thanks to my most recent lesson.  I had "a canter I could do something with", and obvious differences between the lengthen and the working.

Well, I'm sitting up MOST of the time these days... PC: Paul Wood Photography

I also am SITTING UP in most of the photos!  I'm finally helping him, or if not helping at least not actively hindering him with my position, for the most part.  Obviously a work in progress, but better than the ol' sack of potatoes from the past.

I think my right ankle might have been temporarily broken here.  But look at my shoulders!  Progress! PC: Paul Wood Photography

The one thing I am disappointed with after seeing the photos is the amount of throatlatch tension he's carrying.  I did actively remember to shorten my reins in the test (progress!), and they are way better than they were a few months ago, but they were still too long.  I'm grateful to Paul for getting these photos, because Connor felt pretty relaxed over his back for the most part, I'm not sure I would have realized how tense he was in the throatlatch without these photos.

PC: Paul Wood Photography

Most than anything else, I was able to be very present in the test, and Paul even caught an example of it.  We were just about to go into the 2nd/left canter shallow loop through X, the one Connor almost always breaks on, and I suddenly remembered discovering in the big Dressage ring at my old barn that it was because something something need more cowbell left hind or left bend or

On autopilot PC: Paul Wood Photography

"OH SHIT WE NEED MORE LEFT EVERYTHING!" PC: Paul Wood Photography

Dat hock engagement PC: Paul Wood Photography

 The other thing I made an effort for: I didn't rush the simple change at X.  I have in the past, and then the whole canter sucked after that.  I decided I would take my time, get him balanced no matter how long it took, and then ask.  And the judge agreed: I got an 8.0 on my simple change ("straight, smooth")

Position so bad, pony so cute.

As we came down the centerline, I knew it was the best 1-3 we'd ever done.  1-3 has always been survival mode for me in the past, but we OWNED that sucker on Saturday.  We've had some truly epically bad 1-3's, including a 56% at a rated show I forgot about until JenJ looked it up on Centerline, probably because my brain blocked it out as one of the more traumatic moments of my life #hyperbole.  But this, this was good.  And I smiled:

PC: Paul Wood Photography

because no matter if the judge agreed with me or not, that was progress and I was happy with it.  And it turns out, the judge did agree!  It was our highest 1-3 score by, I believe, at least 7 percentage points if not more:


And, for the Dressage nerds out there:




I just could not have been happier.  And with that, I loaded up my tired pony and took him to his new home!