Cob Jockey

Oh and we won this Dover contest.

Blue dot: my house.  Red pin: where Connor is now.  Yellow star at the very top of the photo: where Connor lived for five years.

Changed my whole year

So fat.

Somebody hit me if I try to put anything other than this Baucher in this horse's mouth:

Photo by Paul Wood Photography

I know he goes really well in it.  But every so often I feel the need to experiment either on purpose, or accidentally when I forget the Baucher in my dishwasher.

I even showed in his KK Ultra French link loose ring at the food poisoning show (accident - poor planning) and I regretted it. In the Baucher I feel like I can whisper.  In the loose ring, I feel like I'm shouting in the wind - and that effect was magnified at the show.

In a fit of wild experimentation, after new BO described my bit collection hanging in my locker as "extensive" (I have five?), I even tried my old pony's copper single jointed D ring on him.  THAT was so bad I actually jumped off partway into my warmup to put something, anything else on him.

"Extensive" bit collection?

While I wish he could go in the loose ring, I can't deny that there's something about the Baucher.  He relaxes into it and focuses better with it.  Maybe he's a fixed sides kind of guy.  Maybe it's the tiny bit of leverage.  Either way, it's time to accept that!

And on that note, if anyone is interested in a verrrry lightly used Neue Schule Verbindend in 5.25" size, drop me a line.

Judging by the decrease in posts in my Feedly, I'm not the only one who has struggled to find time to post lately!  There's so much going on this summer.  A brief recap on what Connor and I have been up to:

(All photos on this post taken by Austen of Guinness on Tap.)

In General:
- My trainer wants things to come at him faster now - transitions, aids, simple changes, turns on course etc.  We spent so much time getting him through his "Where are my feet?" stage and then his "I know where my feet are but I can't get things from your aids to my feet fast enough," stage.  We could stay in our low-pressure state forever, but he's (finally) ready for us to mentally push him.  It feels good to know all the time going slow and not pressuring him was spent wisely, but also that we got through it.

Calm and happy, now if we could just keep those hind feet moving a fraction longer in the halt...

Dressage:
- We've been working on getting him to come through more with the inside shoulder, utilizing baby walk pirouettes.


- I made my bi-monthly mistaken attempt to see if maybe the Baucher would be an improvement over the loose ring for the flat.  It wasn't.  I'm like a kid that keeps touching the hot stove.  He didn't mouth the bit one single time that entire ride.  Running theory is that he doesn't like the thin/light mouth of that bit and prefers the more substantial KK loose ring and Metlab elevator (all three are french links).  Different bits for different stages, and we are through the Baucher stage, apparently.

(Sidenote: Trainer's amused words: "Why do you keep doing that?  You hate it every time you try it.  Put that thing away for good!")

- He bends off of my seat only really nicely now.  It feels like the top 4 inches of my thigh are making contact with the saddle in ways they never have before.

Jumping:
- We want to encourage him to jump more across the fences, rather than straight up and straight down, so we've been using oxers that gradually increase in width.  He's responded well to this.

Not one of the wide oxers I was talking about, this was just a baby oxer for our photoshoot with Austen.  My takeaway from this photo is that I need to work on getting my toes up, and I have done that since seeing these pictures.  Sidenote, it feels really good that my former chicken of a brain considers this height to be insignificant now.

- He's been making his own decisions at times in jump schools, and the decisions he makes are good ones.  This makes me happier than almost anything else.  Not only is he getting good at the physical jumping game, but he's understanding the questions and independently thinking about how best to jump things.

This was my decision, not his.  I asked him to add a stride, and, well, he obeyed.  You can almost see the question marks floating above his head.  Check out that takeoff point.  And he somehow magically didn't hit a rail.

- "He needs to be more comfortable and fit in the canter," she says, "60% of your practice rides need to be in the canter," she says.  I did not volunteer that maybe 5% of my practice rides are in the canter right now...but I do intend to follow her suggestions.  60% of a ride in canter is going to be Transition City, though!

Not my favorite, not his favorite, but that's exactly why we need to do a lot of it.

One of the first things Austen commented on when she surprised me by making my Connor binder cover for 2014 was that he is wearing a different bit in almost every picture:


Which if you know us is actually funny, because we have switched bits very infrequently - maybe once every 8 months - since I've had him.  Our goal has always been to have him go in a loose ring French link snaffle, but based on what he needed at various times, that has changed.  Using the above cover as a guide:

Top center: August 2011, Welsh show: I hadn't even considered owning Connor yet, that's his breeder's bridle and D ring snaffle!

Bottom left:  June 2012, Dressage show.  I had had him for 7 months, and he was going in the Sprenger KK Ultra loose ring French link snaffle for the previous three months or so.  It was borrowed from my trainer as Nick had lost his job so I couldn't afford to buy one at the time, but I later bought one from Aimee.

Upper right (March 2013, clinic) and center (May 2013, GDHT): We were having a hard time turning left, so he's in a french link full cheek snaffle to help with steering, at the suggestion of semi-resident clinician CJF.

Bottom right: (August 2013, clinic): My trainer has a few clients going in the french link Baucher, so we gave that a try when she thought I needed a tiny bit more leverage and the full cheek was no longer necessary for turning assistance.  Our first lesson trialing it was crazy good.

Upper left:  (September 2013, lesson): After we had focused on straightness for a while and our Dressage work really started to progress, I decided to try the loose ring KK Ultra French link again.  The results were downright amazing, and he's been in it ever since.  We've come full circle!

Hopefully we can stay in the loose ring, it seems to suit him, but I'm not opposed to using other bits as training tools in the future.

(Stay tuned for an awesome CONTEST kicking off tomorrow!)

Lately, a lot of our focus has been on Connor's bend - or typical lack thereof.  I'm finding that I actually don't use the inside rein enough, or insistently enough.  This feels strange for someone whose entire riding career has been a series of discoveries that inside-leg-outside-rein is where the magic happens.  So I'm thinking, alright, if I have to ask this insistently in his loose ring, maybe I'll try the french-link Baucher we rode in for the second half of last year and see if that helps my cause, since it's got fixed sides:

Modeling his Baucher last summer...minutes before he got his tongue over the bit for the first and only time in his life.  In Dressage.  Wheels Himself ended up leapfrogging the field from second to last after Dressage to second in our division because we were one of two pairs to have no time penalties on XC.  In Starter.  I still find this hilarious.

I have never been so wrong in my life!  Of course, it could have been the dump truck right next to us dropping a ton of sand down the length of the track that runs alongside the outdoor (the only thing that bothered him was the air brakes), or the fact that we were in the outdoor for the first time since November, or the fact that it was 65 degrees for the first time since probably even earlier, but even when I had his attention his mouth never softened and he never mouthed the bit.

Back to the loose ring, and our very next ride was not quite on my aids, but with a soft mouth.  And our next lesson was on the aids and awesome.  (We're in that phase of learning something new where my rides on my own lag 2-3 weeks behind my lesson rides.  It'll come.)  So, lesson learned: right now, he needs me to ride well more than he needs a bit change.

Sign of spring in Indiana: still light out at 7:45pm.

Sign of spring in Indiana: muddy pony.

Edit: My RSS feeder (Feedly) cut this post off on my phone after the video with a "Visit Website" button.  There are a lot of cute pony pictures after the video, you'll miss out if you stop there!

What an emotional weekend.  From the low point on Friday night, to completely neutral after a terrible Dressage ride, to elation after finishing on my Dressage score, (which was my goal for this show) it was a rollercoaster.  A beautiful, fun, rollercoaster that I am completely hooked on and wish I could do every single weekend!

Happy rider and distracted pony are ready for Dressage

By Saturday morning I had let go of Friday, and we had an amazing, focused Dressage warmup. Then, sometime between walking out of the warmup ring and entering the ring for my test, he got his tongue over the bit!  What a terrible time to try that one out for the first time, buddy!  I had no idea what was wrong with him until my trainer saw it afterward, and only after I knew that did my test, in which he was super braced, his head was up, he was unsteerable and he was pinwheeling around my inside leg, make a lot of sense.  By the grace of some generous judging (scores from 4-7), we got a 46, which landed us in 2nd to last in out division.  I was really in control of my emotions after Friday, though, so I let it go and headed for SJ.  I kept telling myself, "I'm living the dream!" because actually getting to event still seems so surreal!

Video of our entire show jumping round:


It felt AWESOME!  I said I wanted to do this show for show jumping redemption, and I got it.  His canter wasn't as compressed and over his hocks as I've gotten it in practice, but these jumps were so small, that was not a huge deal.  The important thing is that he was confident and enjoying it, and it was SMOOTH, unlike GDHT, and we went double clear, moving us up to 5th.

Then this happened:

Dear Johnson County Commissioners: J Barn needs gutters, yo.

and Connor took a nap on my shoulder as I sat in a lawn chair in front of his stall, watching and listening to the rain fall.  It was a cute bonding moment.

View of napping pony

Finally, it was time for XC, and the sun came out just as I was heading over for it.  We popped just a few warmup fences, until my position was really solid after some coaching, and headed out.  My little cross-country machine ate up every fence like it was his job!  He took a trot step before almost every fence, and I think that's because the footing was chewed up and sticky at the takeoff point, since we were the last XC ride of the day.  I don't mind that kind of caution.  Otherwise, we cantered the whole thing, and when I pulled him up at the end of the 1,408m long course, which had three more jumps than at GD, I realized he wasn't even blowing.  We've been working on his stamina with hacks and jump schools, and it's clearly paid off.

Check out these awesome XC photos taken by Andrea of My Horses Love Eventing, a fellow eventer who owns another Castleberry horse, a Welsh Cob X Warmblood cross by Connor's sire.  She was jump judging/taking photos at jump 3, the step/coop option (we took the step).




And here's another XC photo, taken by a teammate.  This is fence 7:

I'm jumping ahead, but check out that scope and that improved pony form!

His only real hesitation was when I asked him to canter through the water, which, as I asked, I realized we'd only trotted water before.  So he cantered in like a brave boy and then broke to this trot with ridiculously high knee action, even for Mr. Cob Trot himself.  I can't blame him, the water is pretty deep for a 14hh pony with short cannon bones!

In the end, it was a good thing I cantered the whole thing because there turned out to be an optimum time for the Starter XC course, which I didn't know about and thought was unusual.  Only two rides in our division finished with no time faults, and we were one of them, so we ended up placing a very unexpected 2nd!  Regardless of what color ribbon we got, I was over the moon about the way he handled XC and SJ.  He even jumped the bogey haybales without questioning or swerving!  Where did my spooky pony go, and who is this mature, confident jumping machine that replaced him???  I love it!

I also got to meet Sabrina, aka Weenie Eventer, (which was an awesome converstion.  We're both on horseback passing each other and she stops and says, "Hey, are you Cob Jockey?  I'm Weenie Eventer!") and Andrea of My Horses Love Eventing for the first time.  I also saw Amy and Steady in the warmup ring but had a debate in my own head over whether or not that was really Steady, and did not say hi - I feel terrible!  They had an awesome weekend, I hope she gets a chance to post a writeup.  Steady is going really well!

I'm so proud of Connor, so excited for the way the weekend went, and so ready for my next event - which is wholly dependent on Nick getting a job.  Come on, baby, this pony is ready to go!