Cob Jockey

I realized yesterday that I've taken trail riding for granted. Both my access to good trails, and my solid little trail pony. But it crossed my mind as I cheerfully rode along in the sunshine on the buckle for two hours yesterday with friends on beautiful trails, and I was so grateful.

And this made me giggle too.

Yesterday FIVE of us (wow!) got together to do a 6 mile ride around Deam Lake State Park, which is about an hour away from the farm. Our haul-in endurance friend Barb offered to give the folks without trailers a ride and to be our guide since none of us had been to Deam before. 

Part of the reason we chose this place and this trail is that there's an endurance benefit ride there at the beginning of June that (according to Barb) is a perfect introduction to the sport for those of us who have never done it before. They have a 6 mile intro ride that is not timed, so you can walk it if you really feel like it, but you still get to do the vet checks and go out with everyone. If you know anything about endurance, you know 6 miles is laughably short, which makes it perfect for a first ride IMO - the distance won't be an issue so we can focus on learning everything else we need to learn about the sport.

This, but make it a sport

We ended up covering the 6 miles yesterday in about two hours, and that was with about 90% walking and 10% trotting. The horses were outstanding, including Ivan the Wonder Pony who went out with Mary partially because his owner was out of town and partially because I wanted to see how he was on trails with Mary before Deb took him out.

Turns out this was Mary's first proper trail ride EVER (which I didn't know) but she trusts me enough that when I was like "Hey, you're going to ride the new guy without a bit and in a treeless, flapless saddle on trails we've never been on before and I don't really know how he'll be but I'm pretty sure he'll be fine" she signed right up, lol.

Mary: "Okay, I never liked knee blocks before going down a steep hill on a horse for the first time but now I get it."

He was amazing, like a trail professor, gently guiding Mary to just the right spots on the trail and never putting a foot wrong. Can't stop being grateful to have him in my barn.

For my part, I was looking to just get Connor out, assess his fitness and do some minor gear tests. Everything passed with flying colors, including my saddle bag held onto my saddle with twine and his Scoot Boots.

Never been here before, couldn't care less

Connor is out of shape, but still covered the 6 miles no problem. He's just so good on the trails. This was the first trail ride I've ever not managed him at all, quite literally rode him on the buckle nearly the entire time, and he just...goes. Straight through creeks and puddles and mud, carefully picking his way around to find the best and safest footing on hills. Happy to lead, follow or be in the middle, not affected by what the other horses are doing. He's just...fun.

Pony in the lead

And pony not in the lead

So I'm excited for June. Excited to try a sport I've always been curious about. Excited to have friends to do it with. And excited to check another sport off of Connor's bingo card.

I'm happy to report that our newest boarder, who has been a friend of mine for years before she started boarding here last month, is down for trail riding pretty much anytime. I live 35 minutes from a wonderful state park with lots of dedicated equestrian trails, but what with cell signal being non-existent there, the forest being incredibly dense, and ground bees and timber rattlers being regularly reported on the park's Facebook page, I never feel comfortable going alone.

4 out of our 6 horses were on the move Saturday morning!

In a lot of ways, new boarder feels like Future CobJockey. She has a 19 year old QH who is her absolute heart horse, and she bred her to get her next riding horse 3 years ago. That baby is now 2, and she's doing all the things with him I'll be doing with Disco shortly.

Girl can drink a beer while riding one and ponying another. Meanwhile I spilled White Claw all over myself just trying to ride one horse down the trail, lol.

On Saturday we took them out for baby horse's first trail ride, just a quick 90 minute loop in our local state park. We kept it positive and he was a really good boy, although he had Feelings about baby's first water crossing:

"NO."

He was a good boy though, really stopped to think it through and explore and make good choices, and pretty quickly she had him through it 3 or 4 times, back and forth. She apologized for holding us up, but I was like no no, in a few years you'll be returning this favor for me, lol

As is his MO, Connor did not appreciate standing still on the trail waiting on baby to cross the water. I know I should work on that but as I always say, he's not for sale. Disco, however, will be learning to park it quietly wherever I put him!

We kept it pretty short for baby horse's sake, but also for Connor, since this was his first long ride in his Western saddle and also my first time taking the Scoot Boots out on an actual trail (although I've done a lot of riding in them at home).

Pony's first time wearing a rear cinch, and as expected, he didn't even blink.

Happily, we had no equipment issues outside of temporarily losing a Scoot Boot once when I steered Connor into some mud that went UP TO HIS KNEES. Sorry buddy. And I didn't have my mud straps fastened correctly, which didn't help.

But the saddle performed great. Since it isn't the absolute perfect fit that my jump saddle is, I sprung for a Toklat T3 shimmable woolback pad, which Mary set up with the shims where I needed them. The sweat marks were nice and even when I pulled it off and he wasn't back sore at all.

Looking forward to doing this a lot more in the future!

While I wasn't fussed about the low scores at Waterloo, it did leave me with a couple of nagging feelings I wanted to sort out.

The first was that I wanted some validation from my trainer that I should really be showing Second. Her students normally get higher scores than my low-to-mid-60s, and I found myself dreaming of the 70s we are no doubt capable of if I'd just drop back down to First. And I know she would not BS me about this.

Unrelated: I want to take a moment to appreciate how freaking well the Fairfax (F/S) browband fits around his head.

"Absolutely, Second is where you should be," she said when I asked in my lesson last week. "Don't let last weekend get you down. It was incredibly tough going on Saturday with all the standing water, and then on Sunday the horses were all tired, probably from slogging through the mud on Saturday. And the judges didn't go easy on people."

Uh, yeah, he was tired on Sunday

While that does make me feel better, it also makes me feel like Second is just not going to be Connor's jam, which I've heard people say is true for some horses. The good news is we've achieved just about all that I want at Second, so at some point she'll say "Hey, it's time to look at Third." We know the flying changes came more easily to him than simple changes, even with CGP in the irons, so here's hoping we can put Second behind us for good soon.

Misty horse show mornings in Michigan

Second, I know I need to start focusing on Connor's fitness. We can't make Dressage any easier for him than one test per day, and in order to score well he can't be behind my leg. Riding in a lake is out of my control, but increasing his work capacity is something I can do.

The body is strong, the work capacity is weak

I had already planned on adding in 20-30 minutes of walking a few times a week when I saw Lauren Sprieser's blog published last week about talking to Jimmy Wofford about how to condition Dressage horses safely. Her plan included 20-30 minutes of walking 3x a week on hills using Equibands. 

"Oh my god are you kidding me?" - Connor probably

So that's what we're doing. One loop of our (rather hilly, for our area) property takes Connor 15 minutes, 20 if I add in the front pasture, and I put his Scoot Boots on so we could leverage the gravel driveways as well. (He's very sound on gravel, but I want to avoid finding "a rock with his name on it" in the middle of show season, as Dr. Marks would say) 

Ideally I'd like to find a way to do 20 minutes of this in the morning and then a schooling ride in the evening, at least through the summer, but we'll see if I can swing that with my schedule.

Finally, after Waterloo I emailed the NDPC show secretary and asked to add a tack stall to my entry for the first time in my life. They've always felt like such an unnecessary and expensive luxury to me, mainly showing at the HHP where my trailer is never more than 50ft from my stall and where I can wait out rain delays from the comfort of my own home if I feel like it. 

But after Waterloo, I had to admit that my teammates had the right idea with their tack stalls. They had a comfy place to hang out, a place to change clothes that wasn't a porta-potty and their show setups were very organized with lots of space to spread things out. Plus, I'm going to have an entire entourage of friends with me at Pony Cup and I don't think we'll be able to fit all those chairs in front of the stall front alone, lol. It's a GREAT problem to have!

Going forward, at least the first time I show in a new and unfamiliar place, I'll be getting a tack stall, but I still can't imagine wasting that money while showing "at home"!