Cob Jockey

30 minutes from my house, twice a year every year, there's an event called The National Drive.

(You know, the thing I crashed last fall. Although it occurs to me now that I'm not sure I wrote about that experience...)

My first time on a cart of any kind, being pulled by the WPCSA co-Welsh of the Year for 2024. Photo by Mark Jump Photography.

 

It's an educational driving jamboree billed as "Disneyland for driving". People come from all around the country for it, and there are private lesson opportunities, educational seminars, trail driving, games, a tack swap, and the full complement of Hoosier Horse Park CDE obstacles to play on.

Me in the red hat taking a seminar on cones courses - how they're judged in a show, how to walk a cones course, and also how best to use cones in your training at home. Photo by Mark Jump Photography.

 

I waffled hard on signing up, but in the end, I sent in my entry. If I really want to learn more about driving, why on earth would I pass up an opportunity to take him off the property to a show complex (but not a show) for private lessons so close to home? Especially when one of the Welsh ladies I've shown with for years was one of the featured clinicians? And when IVC Carriage (tack shop) would be there and could help me with some harness fit problems I was having?

I am SO glad I did.

 

It ended up being an incredible opportunity for us both. I learned how he behaves in a "show" environment, and I got my harness situation all squared away and my rig inspected by multiple driving professionals. And best of all, I got two private lessons that were just what I needed.

I also, randomly, got to weigh him. They had a livestock scale set up. He's 950lbs already!

 

But let's start with the shopping, shall we?

On the first day, I walked Disco over to IVC Tack with his driving bridle on and just said "Help." The noseband has never fit quite right, and there were extra straps on the bridle of mysterious origin. Myrna took one look at it and said "You're missing noseband hangers, we'll fix you right up." 

Hard to see here in this photo from November, but the noseband passed through these little cuffs that attached to the cheekpieces, which, when I put a driving bit on the bridle, didn't work at all and caused the noseband to be way too high.

 

$10 later, I had a set of biothane ones and instructions to take a seam ripper to those weird extra straps that had been added at some point, and the bridle fit perfectly. 

I also bought a quilted harness storage/travel bag, and a gel saddle pad, which I will school in but not show in (scout's honor).

Unrelated - I was THRILLED to see they've redone entire barns over the winter at the HHP. Sometimes it still amazes me that this facility exists so close to me, and I'm always worried they'll close it, so it's nice to see them putting money into it.

 

That was all the shopping I intended to do, but two more times in the next 24 hours I would walk into IVC and tell Myrna "I'm on a mission from Joanna." Joanna is a Welsh world acquaintance who is also one of the best driving instructors in the country. She was one of the featured clinicians for the spring Drive, which meant I could sign up for lessons with her. And I did.

She's awesome.

 

After my first lesson, Joanna said "I bet your hands are tired". They were. "You need to go to IVC and try out different reins and see what you like. You don't have to necessarily buy them there, but you need to get a feel for what you like in person. I bet you don't ride with thick heavy leather reins like you've got there, do you? The right reins really make a difference driving too."

And that's how I ended up with a pair of synthetic reins with integrated rubber stops, sort of like my PS of Sweden reins. Wouldn't you know - they made such a massive difference the next day. Like, angels singing. And far fewer incidents of Joanna telling me I'd let the reins slip too long again.

They have longer stops than my riding reins, and the stop notched perfectly into my hand in a way that made it very obvious when the reins started to slip. Also - it's apparently normal and standard to drive in a black harness with brown reins.

After my second lesson, Joanna said "You need to go to IVC and get a gullet strap for that bridle." I had never heard of a gullet strap, and had assumed that the throatlatch was enough to keep the bridle on, so I asked Myrna about it as she was once again swiping my credit card.

 

Photo from IVC's website

 

"The throatlatch isn't enough on a driving bridle because the weight of the blinkers pulls the bridle forward and makes it easier to slip off," she said. And she proceeded to tell me a nightmare story about a horrible wreck that occurred at The Drive several years ago when the bridle slipped off a horse who proceeded to spook and run around the complex and ultimately sent both the driver and the clinician to the hospital. "We had a run on gullet straps after that, every single person there suddenly wanted them," she said.

Noted, I will never drive without one again.

With that, my setup is completely squared away and blessed by the pros. Well, except for that seat bolster I need... #shortpeopleproblems

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.

What happened at Heartland goes back to my lesson on Thursday.

Photos from schooling ride on Friday.

I wouldn't say Connor was running away with me, but he was strong at the canter and very difficult to pull up.  He finally relaxed when I figured out three things: I was gripping with my thighs, I had too much inside rein, and I wasn't tall/firm enough in my core.

(My trainer also constantly nailed me for my hands being too far back/reins being too long the entire lesson, which helped a lot.)


The first two, gripping with the thighs and the inside rein, affected the canter.  He softened, relaxed and stopped running through my hands when I fixed those.

(It goes back to something Nancy K told me, which is that something about the way I sit naturally, particularly in my thighs, doesn't encourage him to think he can go "up", which makes our transitions flat and the quality of our gaits poor and quick.  You can see it in most of our photos, especially at shows, I just look tense through my whole body.)

August of 2015: TENSE.

My core affected our upward transitions and the gaits that followed.  If I 'sat on my pockets', moved the tension from my thighs to my glutes and abs, and thought "up" with my ribcage, his transition and the subsequent trot was awesome.  Every. Time.




I schooled just long enough Friday night to cement those ideas from Thursday in my brain, and I have the photos to prove it stuck on Saturday.  My default position usually includes hunched shoulders, a floppy core, long reins/elbows too far back, and lower leg nowhere near it's supposed to be.  Even if I was aware of those issues in lessons, I was never present enough in the show ring to fix them, so when Connor needed me most I was not physically helping him out:

August of 2015:

And in the test on Saturday:


I finally feel, and can see in the pictures, that I am actually sitting on this horse and not death grip perching on top of him.  PROGRESS!

I didn't really need to do the last rated show of the year at the Hoosier Horse Park, but since my mom was able to come that weekend, I decided to do one day and have a nice confidence building outing before IDS Championships on October 1.

On Friday night, right as we got there and got unloaded, a big storm rolled up:


so we did what any reasonable person would do: ran for the nearest alcohol!


Once the rain stopped and the alcohol cleared our systems, I headed back out to get a ride in.

All photo credit goes to my mom!

Dressage in a jump saddle.

Didn't notice til writing this post that I missed a belt loop, dang it.

Gave my horse an actual bath with actual soap at an actual show, Connor's Aunt Mary eat your heart out!

Hello, I'm back from dropping off the face of the earth, and I have so much to catch you all up on!

Let's go back to a week ago Thursday.  I was having my last lesson before the schooling Dressage show, and my previous ride on Tuesday had been awful.  I couldn't even get him to go straight down the centerline.

Riding at the show grounds Friday night in my work shirt and a regular bra because I failed at packing that morning.  Womp womp.

When I said that to my trainer, she had me start at the walk going down the centerline, first in shoulder fore in the direction we came off the rail in, then switching to the other direction at X.  Once we had that, we started doing it at the trot.  But the most useful thing she gave me was a cue during this exercise to get me to sit deeper and quieter in the saddle:

"Make your lower back really wide."

This made me sit and relax my lower back both.  I imagined that my lower back was a wide rectangle, wider than Connor's back.

All photo credits go to FBR, who came with me to this show and stayed the night with me.  She took this from the judge's booth.

More than anything, when I was on my own at the show, that cue helped me when I was at the crossroads of using my seat to escalate a spicy situation, or to encourage him to keep a lid on things.

At the show grounds Friday night, I had an unimpressive but quiet ride in the show ring we'd be riding in the next day (dude, Dressage is awesome!  Got our flower spooking out of the way the night before).  Unlike at Majestic, Connor was like, "Ah yes, the Hoosier Horse Park, I must be here to show, ho hum," and gave just one whinny in response to someone else's whinny.  All things considered, I'll take mediocre over crazy for a pre-show prep ride.

Finally growing up?  Maybe?

Woo hoo!!  This pony loves XC!!!  Connor has officially started taking his job as an eventer seriously.  Or maybe not seriously at all.  Today was a big change from the last time we went XC at Greater Dayton.  I said in my GDHT wrap-up post that it felt like he figured out XC half way through the course and really locked on and enjoyed himself there at the end.  Today totally confirmed that feeling, as he confidently and strongly jumped everything I pointed him at for the first time, and almost acted like he knew more about it than I did.  He had so much fun today!  And had no brakes.  Cheeky pony.


"He looks a lot different than last time," one of our younger riders told me, "He looks like he's really having fun and wanting to get to the fences now."  That's exactly what it felt like, as he went straight at the fences rather than sideways.  And three times, after this one particular fence that took us from a narrow path in the woods into an open field, he took off bolting and bucking with his ears up and his eyes bright.  I stuck them, but barely the second time - he's getting athletic.  It was such a sharp action that I thought he stung himself the first time, but no, he was just full of himself.  I did a lot of halting in a straight line...eventually...and my trainer said that we may need to think about a different bit for cross-country if this is our new XC machine.

There was one little coop with an uphill directly behind it at which we had our only stop of the day (woo hoo!  Progress!) and I'm not really sure what happened because I gave it what I thought was a good ride but he fizzled to a stop and sort of slid his forelegs sideways across it.  It took him a second to recover, but I circled like nothing happened and he popped over it fine the second time.  Unfortunately it was here that a big storm blew up so I never got a chance to talk to my trainer about it, as those of us who were mounted high-tailed it through the woods back to the trailer.  It was honestly a lot of fun, five of us trotting briskly through the woods together as the wind whipped around us, and Connor gave me an 8 or 9 trot that I can only dream about attaining in the arena right now.  Sigh.

Even if our day was cut short, it confirmed to me that so much progress has been made, and I was happy.  It was the first time that I've felt like he knows what his job is, he's not afraid, and he's REALLY enjoying it.  He was almost pulling me to the fences, he was so excited.  This is a big change from the last time we schooled at the HHP in May, his first time there, when he rode like a broken shopping cart to everything.  I am so excited to see how he handles his next XC run at Leg Up - I think it's going to feel a lot different from GDHT!

Copilot Bitsy

Since I live fifteen minutes from the Hoosier Horse Park, my friends all know that they can crash at my house for free when they're showing/schooling/volunteering, and no one takes me up on that more than Austen of Guinness on Tap.  (Hey buddy.  Where will you be three of the next four weekends?  My guest bed?  I need to stock up on wine.)

My copilot Bitsy and I got up at horse show o'clock in the morning to groom for Austen (which really just consisted of obtaining coffee, reading her tests and letting her know that she had warmed up with her collar open and without a stock tie.  Woops), and we had a really good time.  We got to chat with Kelly of Princess Diva Diaries and see Riva take on Training level.  Those two have put in a ton of work over the winter and boy does it show.  I don't know how they pinned, but it was such a relaxed, engaged and consistent test.  Add Riva's gorgeous movement to all that, and you have a recipe for every photo I took of them turning out fantastic:

Because I was reading Austen's tests for her, her mom took my camera, and that, uh, didn't turn out as well as Kelly's photos did:

'E' for effort, Gwen, 'E' for effort.

I had to leave too early to pitch in on stall cleaning at the barn since the Saturday girl is sick, but I enjoyed what I was able to be there for.  I'd never read a Dressage test for someone before, and found the alphabet soup of letters in the large Dressage arena difficult to manage.  They don't throw R and P at you in Intro level Dressage or Starter level eventing!

Congratulations to Austen and Kelly on a great beginning to the 2013 season!