Cob Jockey

Leg Up was this weekend, a local unrecognized one day 3 phase.  It's about half the cost of a normal event, and at the horse park 10 miles from my house, so it was a no-brainer to enter.

We hauled in on Friday.  Connor had a stall and a half on the trailer and thought life was grand:

How we configure the 6 horse for 3 horses.  All the room!

When we walked the XC course Friday night, my little dog jumped every single fence:


and unfortunately she ended up jumping more fences than I did this weekend!

There was a ditch with no option at Beginner Novice, giving it the distinction of being the most challenging question asked on a BN XC course I have done to date. There's ALWAYS been an option if there's a ditch, and the one time we did have a ditch with no option, it was a faux ditch with two poles on the ground.  This was a real live 12" deep ditch, at a low-key unrecognized event of all places.  I wasn't stressed out about it, but I knew I'd have to cowboy up and would almost certainly take a refusal or two for steps back.  I just hoped he wouldn't scare himself over doing it in a high pressure situation.

The next day, I got on per our barn's schedule for Dressage warmup, which was emailed to us the night before:

Not having to think about when I get on my horse at shows is so valuable to me.

And Connor was full of it.  Powder keg full of himself.  Not screaming, just racing around as fast as he could.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

JenJ feels my problems.

He also got his tongue over the bit, which is an annual occurrence at Leg Up for some reason (he shows at this park constantly, so it's not the venue), and I followed trainer's orders not to braid since this show was tiny, but regretted that decision when he felt his hair touch his ears and started head shaking like a head shaker in warmup.  Never again will I not braid:

AAAAAAHHHHH MY HAIR IS TOUCHING MY EARS

His breeder, Lisa, came, and managed to take some awesome shots of him in warmup, all things considered (all photos by her!):


Unfortunately, by the time we fixed his tongue over the bit, worked through the tension and got him bending and listening to me, they called my number and I hadn't cantered yet.  I got one quick 20m circle in each direction and then raced down to my ring.

And he brought it.  This horse, I don't know what it is, but if I could recreate what he gives me down centerline at home, we'd be doing Grand Prix in two weeks.  I think the atmosphere just makes him tune into my aids that much more.

Hello, yes, I am Connor and I like to show Dressage.

Our 'ooooh shiny!' moment.

The canter, unfortunately, suffered the effects of too little warmup.  He was off like a rocket propelled 2x4 for it and it wasn't nearly as nicely put together as Penny Oaks.  I joked we tried to set a land speed record for a 20m canter circle:






But there were good moments, especially down the straight sides of the arena (BN test B riders, you know what I'm talking about):



And we finished with our least square halt ever.

I never got him 100% straight down centerline at the end, this is the result.

The judge's comments (besides writing down 'Haflinger' for horse color...grrrrrrrrr....) were "more bend, more bend, more bend, more suppleness, more bend", but she still gave us a 27.0 or a 73% in Dressage land terms.  It felt like a good test, too, and it feels good to be consistently under 30 like this.  We were first in our division over my teammate by 7.5 after Dressage.

...and then I scratched in the XC warmup ring because Connor landed bucking, hard, after every crossrail we took.

We don't know why yet.  He has a history of being silly for the first couple of XC attempts, but those were really hard bucks that almost unseated me.  He was moving well, but especially when he got a close stride, he landed bucking.  They called my number and I still hadn't made it over a fence without bucking or silliness of some kind, so my trainer and I mutually decided to scratch him.  You just do not mess around with either your horse's health (it was very out of character for him, so we wondered if he was hurting) or being anything but 100% safe and prepared for solid obstacles.

I informed the steward I was retiring, cruised him around at the canter for a long time in the warmup ring, took the crossrail without bucking twice, and called it a day.

Everyone expected me to be sad about it, but I was totally zen.  That's horses.  We ended the day safe and without bruising his XC confidence with a scary ride.  We had a great Dressage ride, one that makes me wonder if I'm not doing right by this horse by pointing him at something other than straight Dressage.

We spent a fun, low key afternoon together and with Connor's breeder, and then jump crew'ing with my favorite barn rat, and I honestly think I had more fun than if I had shown!

All the grazing!

Favorite barn rat doing her thing

All in all, I am totally not disappointed.  We both came home safe and know what we need to work through at home, and that's all I can ask for.

I was feeling pretty down after XC.  We put so much preparation into it, and aside from a few fences, nothing had changed.  After how good Dressage was, and how, well, usual XC was, I was starting to wonder if maybe he wasn't cut out for the jumping sports and we should just stick to Dressage.

The dream team trekking from warmup to stadium.  Also, we tiny. Photo by Claudia Slabaugh.

The plan was pretty much the same for Show Jumping as it was for XC: leg, leg, leg.  The course was trappy, with multiple rollbacks and weird lines, and had rode horribly for Training and Novice.  Clear rounds were rare, and rails were flying all over the place.

Connor warmed up quietly, like he did at our last two events, so I had my guard up, since that translated to a wild stadium round in each of those cases.

In the end, he surprised me.  It was the quietest, most normal stadium round this horse has ever done!  It was like he turned 9 that morning and suddenly decided to grow up and be a normal adult jumping horse.

Video:

The jumps aren't quite fluid, but he's not racing through it, weaving before the fences, or really putting his nose down much.  It was so NORMAL.  I was elated.

The one rail we had, you can see in the video, I pushed him to it in the last two strides.  Without that, I think he would have gone clear.  Lesson learned.

Now for myself...

This is really the first horse I've ever jumped.  And my eq has never been good.  And while the saddle has helped on approach, and has definitely helped me get my seat back faster after the fence, my lower leg is still swinging in midair, and I seem to be incapable of folding my upper body.

It's hard to get too discouraged about it, since we focused almost exclusively on Dressage all winter, and as a result, that is now what we're good at.  Now it's time to keep that Dressage progress, but work really hard on jumping.  Trainer is on board.

That said, here are some really ugly pictures of me:

Photo by Lisa Brezina

GUYS LOOK AT HIS EYE.  HE'S BORED!  THIS IS THE FIRST FENCE!  THIS IS PROGRESS! Photo by Xpress Photography

Photo by my mother-in-law

Photo by Xpress Photography

Photo by Xpress Photography

Photo by Xpress Photography

His genetic butt wrinkles are clearly evident here. Photo by Xpress Photography

A element of our three stride combination

B element

Our rail :(

Fence 8

Happy pony

I love accelerating away from the fence photos! Photo by Lisa Brezina

Photo by my mother-in-law

In the end, our rail dropped us from a 2nd place finish to a 7th place finish, which would have been disappointing except that I was over the moon at how maturely he has just handled that round.  Real, tangible progress!

What a good boy. Photo by my mother-in-law

All week, our Dressage had gone from 'bad' to 'okay' to 'meh and pretty heavy', so my trainer put a training ride on Connor on Friday morning, which she reported was "Excellent!", and instructed me just to handwalk him, not to ride him, when we arrived at the park on Friday night.

The next morning, warmup was a circus, and I almost ran into someone.  It took us a while to relax:

I'm not actually sure I'm breathing here... All photos courtesy of Connor's breeder, I am so grateful for every single one!

...but once we did, he was so on my aids.  He was in that very focused frame of mind where he tunes out the world and listens to my slightest cue, and was balanced evenly over his back.  Once I had that, I did not let him stop working until the test was over - going so far as to do 10m figure 8's in the grass outside the ring when I was on deck, dodging spectators.

Sitting trot in warmup

I used a lot of sitting trot in warm-up, because now that I know how much leg it takes to put him together (read: A LOT), I am a lot more effective in getting him on my aids in the sitting trot.  But we switched to rising for the test at my trainer's request, because I can't yet sit his bigger, more impressive trots - like the one we had coming into the ring:

WE CAN DRESSAGE!

For the first time in a test, he was both on my aids and relaxed, not one or the other.  He was so on my aids, in fact, that it bit me hard in this sequence:

He starts to get flat in a trot circle...

I try to develop more impulsion using a fairly normal amount of leg...

...and it was way too much aid for how on the bit he was, and he cantered briefly.

The judge appeared to almost regretfully give me a 4.0 for that movement - she wrote "Cantered - good recovery".  Every other score was a 7, 7.5 or 8, with all 7's in collective marks.  It felt that good, too.

This horse...holding this canter...on a straight line...after completing a 20m canter circle already...am I dreaming?  Years of work went into this picture.

She told us we needed better balance at the canter to the right, and also wrote that in her notes.  I see what she means:

Complete failure to use my right thigh here.

VROOM!  The sound of my horse motorcycling around a turn.

But still  - cannot complain.  I will take that over our former "king of the tranter" title any day.

The only movement I felt we really did not deserve our scores on was the free walk.  It was totally 'meh'.

The clock struck midnight and he turned back into a pumpkin!

But he recovered for the final medium walk to trot to immediate turn down centerline/halt/salute - which I always do sitting in this test.  (And I recommend that you do too.  Hugely easier and cleaner than rising when the turn comes up that quickly, at least for me.)