Cob Jockey

...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.

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

We're back from Pony Cup!  But before I launch into my recap, I'm sure you all want to know the results of the contest!

This one could have gone either way.  It could have went high, with a ton of people thinking he was one of the many Haflingers there, or it could have gone low, since most of the people there really know their ponies.

Really, if you look at him, he doesn't look like a Haflinger.  Really. Photo credit: my momma

In the end, it went...low!  Connor got mistaken for a Haflinger three times.  T, Jess, Carly and Karen all guessed correctly, in that order.  I entered them in the order they guessed into the random list generator at Random.org and...

Carly is the winner!  Carly, you can choose which prize you want, either the Riding Warehouse prize bag or the full set of Gen 2 Majyk Equipe XC boots.  Whichever one you don't choose, Jess gets.  Karen and T, as runners up you guys get a 20% off coupon to RidingWarehouse.com.  Email me at my spam address, jalean 11 at gmail dot com to claim your prizes!

Thanks everyone for playing, that was a lot of fun!  I wish you could have seen my entourage throwing up their hands every time someone called him a Haflinger.  It was a blast!

Time for a contest!

In honor of National Dressage Pony Cup being this week, Majyk Equipe and Riding Warehouse have agreed to sponsor a contest, and the prizes are amazing.  First, the goods:

Prize #1: a complete front and hind set of medium sized generation 2 Majyk Equipe XC boots.  No worries if you're not an eventer, they're great for flatting too (just ask Amanda, who schools all three phases in hers!)  Check out my review of them here and here.

Fronts

Hinds

Prize #2: an amazing prize pack from Riding Warehouse!  They really outdid themselves.  The prize pack contains:

• A Riding Warehouse reusable shopping bag
• A $25 RW gift card
• A container of Uncle Jimmy's Squeezy Buns horse treats
• A 12 pack of tack sponges
• A Mrs. Conn's Bath Day Shampoo Sponge
• A jar of Higher Standards Leather Care saddle soap, Fox's Lavender Vanilla scent
• A pair of RW boot socks
• A RW t-shirt (and can we talk about how the new RW shirts are Next Level brand? My husband won't wear anything else, they're super soft and break in even softer over time)
• A RW sticker
• A blue "magic brush"
• RW vanilla lip balm
• A 20% off coupon to RW (not pictured)

"Seriously, I'm not a Haflinger guys."

A while back, like four years ago, I had a contest winning streak going in blogland.  I won so many contests in a row, I stopped entering them.  It's been years since I won a contest now though, so I was pretty excited when I got an email titled "CONGRATULATIONS!" from someone at Dover Saddlery.

It worked!

In college, one of the first things we had to do freshman year was take our assigned school horse's vitals for an entire week, average them, and put that information into his health chart.  It was imposed on us early that your horse's normal resting vital signs are a really important piece of information you need to know.  Knowing whether your horse "runs hot", for example, can help you understand how significant his fever really is, and knowing his normal heart rate can help you keep tabs on his exertion rate during conditioning.

Me and my senior year stable management horse, Bandit.  I'm wearing my backpack because I had to bring him in from turnout so he'd be ready for his class, while I was on the way to a class of my own.  Equine college was great.

Unfortunately, if you don't already have them before you need them (illness, exercise, etc), you just have to go off of what's normal for the average horse, which is:

Temperature: 99-101 F
Pulse: 28-44 beats per minute
Respiration: 10-24 breaths per minute

Seattle, my first stable management horse freshman year.  Jockey Club: Seattle Flashdance

Of course, I don't practice what I preach and haven't written any of it down for Connor yet, but that's changing now and I want you to do it with me!  Who's up for a Blogger TPR Challenge?  Everyone who successfully takes their horse's average vitals will be entered into a drawing for a $25 Riding Warehouse gift certificate!  (And really, everyone wins, since you'll have your horse's TPRs at the end.)

Here's how it will work.  Over the next week, I'm going to do posts on how to get the TPR readings.  You'll also need to gather some equipment. Then, we'll get five days of resting readings - so don't take them if your horse is high as a kite, or sick, or anticipating the feed cart, or just finished a tough workout.

The days don't have to be consecutive, since a lot of us boarders can't make it out five days in a row.

Another of my stable management charges over the years, Pass.  Jockey Club and USEA: Passing Approval.

To enter, take five days of readings, then write one blog post afterward containing your horse's five readings, as well as the average (which is the number we're looking for), and add that post to the blog hop when it opens.  The challenge will start on June 1 and close on June 15.

You'll need to buy a digital thermometer ($7.95 at Smartpak), and lube (KY Jelly works great for both temperature taking and sheath cleaning!).  Optionally, you can buy a stethoscope ($9.95 at Smartpak) for more accurate heart rate measurements, but it's not 100% necessary.  I like having it on hand to listen to gut sounds too.

This is going to be fun!

Contest results at the bottom, but first, an amazing lesson!

I asked not to ride T in my lesson last night because I felt that I'd figured some things out enough after riding T to productively ride Connor, and it turns out that was the right decision.  In fact, it was such a dramatic turnaround from our last lesson that my trainer could hardly believe it.

"This changes everything!" she said, and she is not generally a dramatic person.  And later on, "This is the best he's ever looked!"

This post filled with pictures I never shared from FRVPCHT Dressage in June.

We started out focusing on walk-halt transitions from my seat with my forearms "not doing anything" and feeling as though I had "two shopping bags on the crook of each elbow, trying to keep them from sliding down but not using my forearms to hold them there."  If she saw muscle lines appear on my forearm, she got after me.  It led to soft soft soft following hands.

I think we were on a circle here, my upper body isn't turning at all though.  Another problem of mine.

That, she said, should be the exercise I go back to when the wheels start to come off.  It really helped me ride back to front and got him listening to my seat.  We both need a lot of that.

Next, we picked up the trot, and I really figured something new out here.  We've had issues with right bend, well, she had me continue using my newly soft arms and with him carrying his head lower, she had me lower my hands to keep in line with the bit.  When we were on a 20m circle to the right, I both lowered my left (outside) hand far lower than I normally carry it and shifted my weight from the inside stirrup to the outside stirrup at the same time.

What if there's no outside rein for him to come into here?  What if all of my weight is on the inside foot?  I think that's what was happening.

Instantly, I had awesome right bend.  What?  I tried it again. Same thing.

DRESSAGE IS AWESOME.

Derpy agrees.

Connor was soft and melty and paying such close attention to my seat.  He was consistent in the bridle and not trying to dive down at all.  It was so harmonious, which is especially amazing considering how difficult and combative the last few lessons had been.  "You really got a lot out of riding T," she said.  Who knew 30 minutes at the walk could have such an effect?

I know by now that these breakthroughs in one area are followed by working on something else, which presents the opportunity to forget this, so I'm going to work really hard to internalize this.  Feels good to get somewhere!

Going places, doing stuff.

And now, the 100 followers contest results!  Really, you are all winners, because I'm going to share the Adam's Labor Day Sale coupon code, good for 15% off your entire order.  This is how I got my blanket last year:


And I also will have a promotional code coming sometime soon from EquiFit ShouldersBack, if you're planning on purchasing one of those.  I'll post it when I have it.

And now, the big winner is...

Alli of Ponytude!  Congratulations, Alli!  I'll get with you via email for your prize!

First, some good news: my beloved (and very old) DSLR that has been broken for the past three years is now working again.  This means you get to see Connor in STUNNING HIGH DEFINITION:

"Nothing to see here, folks, move along..." That liquid on the ground all around him is less than a minute's worth of alsike drool.

It's seriously reached waterfall levels these days.

I did a lot of thinking on my 100 followers contest.  Blogging has been such a fun experience to share with you all, and I really wanted to show my appreciation in a personal way.  I wanted to offer something that personally meant something to me, but since I am the antithesis of cool, trendy riding gear and tack, I decided against that.  It's hard to get excited about Irideon tights and wool ski socks.

So I decided to support my favorite mom-and-pop online tack store, Adams Horse & Pet Supplies, and offer a $50 gift certificate from them.  If you've never shopped with them before, their prices, their clearance section, and their customer service are always outstanding, plus they do a lot of discount codes, which is great.  I would suggest waiting to use your gift certificate until their Labor Day sale, which is when I got Connor's winter blanket last year.  Make sure to sign up for their mailing list before then to get the discount codes!

To enter: Leave a comment below answering the following questions:
- What are your favorite things about being an equestrian blogger?
- What would you put the gift card toward if you won?

Then use the Rafflecopter widget to enter!  There's a bonus entry for sharing the contest on your blog, too.

Contest ends in two weeks on August 29!

(If you are from outside the US, you can still enter, and if you win we'll do an Amazon or Horze gift card.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Interrupting his first of many naps over the weekend.

The TL;DR version is: Connor finished on his Dressage score of 36.3 to take second out of...13?  15? to his former pasturemate by 0.5, and my trainer says we're ready to move up.  Woo hoo!  Also, I bought all the pictures.  Literally, all the pictures.  Get ready.

(Except the pro's didn't photograph Dressage, but managed to get almost every XC fence.  What?  Oh well.  All photos taken by Xpress Photo and used with permission).

Watched a YouTube video on how to french braid on my phone while standing on an overturned bucket in his stall.  Turned out fairly well, all things considered.  Austen, you were missed.

This is from SJ, but you get the idea of the Suspicious Spooky Ear/bending combo.  He's spooking at flowers here.

Dressage-quality canter transition out of the box...he still had no idea we're on XC...

"So...why are we here, again?"

Fence 1: "HOLY SHIT AN XC FENCE!" He scrambled to the base of this, then jumped straight up in the air - which is this picture.

Badass eventers!

Sort of deer-like, but we're rolling with it.

Yep.

THIS is what eventing the Welsh Cob feels like.  Having a blast, not scared at all.

Best friends and war buddies.

We really started to hit our stride together on the second half of the course.  He was jumping more across than up, and we were discussing and agreeing upon distances a couple of strides out.  You can tell he wasn't jumping squirrely because my eq (as it were) improves a lot.

My favorite.

And by the final fence of the round, we were absolutely on the same page.