Cob Jockey

To keep being cute:

(He's tied to a ring in the wall, in case you were panicking.)

We had a fantastic flat lesson in jump tack on Thursday.  Start to finish, fabulous work from him.  At the end, I asked my trainer, "So about the show...if I look at work like what he just did, and I also consider that his last three Dressage scores are all under 30, it makes me want to just point him at a Dressage career for a while."

She agreed, but not for the same reasons.  She said she'd forgotten how frisky he's gotten at his last few XC schools (including the last one where he started out bucking so I had to gallop him until he showed signs of slowing, which was about 7-8 minutes), and said he was probably getting his sillies out (see also that rocket style Dressage ride an hour earlier), but he was also uncomfortable, since it was the chippier ones he bucked hardest at.  His jumps have always been uncomfortable for me to ride, and imagine how it feels for him.

Okay, this jump happened because the ground changed color 10 feet before the jump, but still.  A great example of "not comfortable."

She and I came to the same conclusion but from different angles.  Mine was "He's good at and apparently likes Dressage, so we should Dressage," and hers was "Dressage will strengthen his topline and improve his canter which will make his jumps more comfortable for both of them, so she should Dressage for a while."

We like Dressage.

I just feel like he's telling me "This is exciting, but a little much."  Starter definitely got boring for him, we're past that.  But BN right now is a coordination and confidence issue for him, yes, despite the fact that we have won a rated BN division.  I want more than winning for him.  I could leg this horse around an event next weekend and go double clear on XC (if there aren't any ditches) but it wouldn't be good.  I want it to be good, and I want him to eat it up and be confident about it.

From the JLC clinic.  I will admit to being vain about that tail.  That horse has better hair than I do.

So I'm backing off all events for the rest of the year unless he tells me he's ready.  I'm definitely doing the ISHA show just for fun (Welsh classes and $6 enter-10-minutes-before-the-gate classes?  Sign me up!)  We're going to take Dressage seriously, but not take anything else seriously right now, and then re-evaluate down the line.

My little buddy.

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.

In the comments of my RIP GDHT post, Abigail said she enjoyed hearing about our first event, and that she'd like to read more of our early show recaps.  I've decided to replace my show results page (in the top navigation bar) with this.  Being able to read the posts that I wrote during the shows means a whole lot more than just seeing what place we finished.  The numbers only say so much in the journey of a green horse.

Photo by Gingereventer Photography

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!

In the middle of a terrible practice ride on the show grounds, an hour after my husband texted me to tell my my dog had ripped my new eBay'ed Tredsteps to shreds, it started to pour down rain.  Sitting there in a borrowed saddle, in the pouring rain, feeling like shit and knowing I couldn't quit with Connor acting like a meathead was a very pity-party moment.

I'm keeping it all in perspective.  This is what you sign up for, with a green horse.  The night before we had the greatest flat/jump round of our life together, and not even 24 hours later, I couldn't get him to turn left or soften or put his head down in the warmup ring with our horses and a few others going around.  He was calling to the other horses and acting completely green, which was so disappointing to me after how focused he was during the GDHT warmup.  But things could always be worse than being green and unfocused.

Fence 6, the bogey fence for us.  We've never jumped hay before.

Looks tiny to me now.  It would not have felt that way a few weeks ago.

It got better, but only after about a half-hour of just ugly riding.  Then, right when it was getting better, it started pouring, raining so hard the raindrops hitting my skin hurt, and all the horses left.  I was in the middle of running through my Dressage test, so I kept going, and Connor turned into an animal again, spooking at the rain on the roof of the judge's box and screaming his head off.  I quit on a good note, when I finally found one, and walked back, soaked.

The good news is that stadium (18"ish) looks tiny to me, and there are no flowers.  We're finally schooling higher than we're showing (2'3" and maybe 2'6" here and there).  Here's hoping he got that out of his system and tomorrow is better.