Cob Jockey

Last week I took a trip out to visit Austen in DC. The reason for the trip was a bucket list concert:

Death Cab for Cutie (who I had seen before, in 2006) and The Postal Service (who I had not seen before because hardly anyone has ever seen them tour before) playing Transatlanticism and Give Up respectively, more or less straight through. Two incredibly formative albums for me. It was amazing.

but of course we also made time for ponies.

All photos by Austen.

First up, I had a Dressage ride on Bast. This is the second time I've ridden him in a couple of years, and it's always such a joy. He's safe, solid, and gives you the right answers immediately even if you're new to him and maybe not asking in the way he's used to.

Even things I really haven't ridden much of myself

For me, it was the first time I've ridden real Dressage since, well, last year when I visited Bast and Austen. I haven't ridden Dressage on Connor much since late 2021. So I'm not going to apologize or point out my positional flaws at all. They're there, but they were overshadowed by the fact that I've really made quite a lot of progress in not pulling. Like I know I've made progress on that since I started riding with CGP, but it was still wonderful to see it in photos (And I'm sure it's worse with Connor, being the old married couple that we are.)

Just me, soft hands, and a horse with a nice open throatlatch.

Later on that weekend, we took a trail ride. Mark on Guinness, Austen on Bast, and me on Chardy/Chardonnay/Charizard, who I also rode last year.

Such a good yellow horse

It's a shame that it takes an entire day of driving to get out there or else I would visit much more often! Just such a good weekend.

Horses grazing under the stars as we plane-spotted, since the farm is under the flight path for Dulles international flights.

 July

My barn officially became a co-op using a hybrid plan I came up with, and I became the "ringleader." I sent Connor off for a two-week tuneup with CGP before National Dressage Pony Cup, and NDPC was a freaking blast with friends from all across the country coming to support me. We won my first ever neck ribbon!

Family, friends and framily!

August

I went trail riding with my new barnmate, Mary and I discovered my CWD's tree was compromised, and I showed at Lamplight for the first time ever!

One of my favorite photos of me and this horse ever.

September
I bought a bunch of Jump4Joy jumps from my Aunt Paula, Connor gave pony rides to my gym friend's autistic son, we freaking brought it to win the Second Level IDS Championship title for 2021, and my saddle finally arrived...but it was missing some features.

October

The fitter decided to completely re-make my saddle to fix her errors at no cost to me. I bought Annie a baby saddle, and Connor showed with all three of us, me, Mary and Annie at the Welsh North Central Regional. Disco won literally almost everything, and was Champion C/D Colt, C/D Grand Champion, and was Supreme Champion all ages/sections/sexes under one judge, and Reserve Supreme Champion under another. After that show, I sent Connor to CGP's for flying changes training.

I had no idea that I'd get not only my first, but also my second and third neck ribbons ever in 2021!

November

My CWD came back, repaired! I brought Disco home, and cleaned up at our GMO's year end awards. CGP made incredible progress with Connor.

December

I only posted five times this month as I struggled with a period of growth in not only horse ownership and riding, but also at work. Disco was a good baby for everyone at the co-op, and Connor made lots of progress with CGP but less with me as I struggled mightily with some imbalances in my body. Connor came home on December 26th.

Disco's geriatric best buddy

 January

I brought Connor home from CGP's and had to learn how to ride my new horse! It turned out all that Dressage gave him newfound confidence over fences. I decided to keep Aeres for one more month and got to experience owning two riding horses for the first time. Also, sigh, I realized (again) that my saddle didn't fit.

 February

The story this month was what I didn't post about: the lady flying out to try Aeres, falling in love with her, and then Aeres getting desperately sick. I only wrote six benign posts, including one about my truck stranding me at the worst possible time, but privately I was dealing with a LOT.

Love you too, jerk

March

This month, I finally wrote up the Aeres medical saga, and at the time I wrote it, I thought she was out of the woods, but unfortunately that wasn't the case, so I ended up basically live blogging the last few weeks of it. We spent a solid two weeks keeping her alive on feeding tubes without knowing if she would ever be able to swallow again, and the day before we were going to make the call, she began swallowing again, and eventually made a full recovery. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Final Thoughts. Outside of that, this was also the month I started virtual lessons, which were such a game changer.

April

I showed 2-3 for the first time at Heartland, got my amateur status back, hauled my mom's geriatric donkey from Illinois to Tennessee, and...a very special colt was born on April 28th, which just so happened to also be the day I got my second shot, something that made the entire show season ahead of me actually feel possible after everything was cancelled in 2020. I didn't speak for him immediately, but I had a feeling that I might.

"Why yes, hello world."

May

I officially bought Dyma Hi's colt, who I named Disco (Castleberrys Deja Vu). I rode with my trainer's trainer, who was the non-traveling reserve for the Olympics this year, and showed twice: once schooling, and once rated, for the first time with my trainer and her crew. I also rode the now-healthy Aeres one last time before she left, and tried a Bua.

June

Holly from Party Pony Eventing came to visit and rode Connor, I bought a Western saddle, and then I (finally) bought a Dressage saddle (that I still don't have as I write this post!). I showed at Waterloo for the first time, again with CGP's crew, and had a blast.

It was, um, wet.

What a show yesterday ended up being! 

It had everything - highs, lows, comedy, tragedy - and a couple of good lessons along the way.

We were stabled next to NK, whom I hadn't seen since I stopped riding with her 2 years ago (for no reason other than she's closer to me, but more difficult to get to than CGP).

If you remember, my whole goal for this show was to do it for fun, and because we qualified for championships, because why not? The weather ended up being amazing - highs in the low to mid 70s underneath those perfect late-September Indiana skies. My barnmate brought her coming 3 y/o as a non-compete just to see the sights and stay overnight off the property for the first time ever.

Sunday morning dawned clear, cold and panic-inducing, as I realized that I did not, in fact, have enough waxed thread to make it through to the last show of the season. I took a deep breath and calculated that if I did fewer, larger braids and only started the thread near the end of the braid instead of the top, I MIGHT make it. And worst case I could leave the forelock down and pretend he was a stallion. 

I ended up using every. Last. Millimeter. Of thread.

Shitty, shitty braids, lol.

Connor was bothered by those braids for the first time ever for some reason, and kept using a hind foot to scratch them out, which of course was worst case scenario for braids that had a lot less structural integrity than they normally do, but they did live.

Horses that try to scratch their braids out get tied to the wall, and are not happy about it.

But this isn't a blog about braiding, this is a blog about riding. We had two tests on Sunday, which I never do with this horse, but again, we were there 100% for fun. We rode 2-3 for the Imperio Trophy at 9am and then again for the 2-3 AA championship at 11am. Both tests, being championship rides, could be ridden with spurs but I could not carry a whip after warm-up.

Barnmate is such a badass. After lunging and warming up in an unused arena to check her steering and brakes, she walked her baby horse all the way around the warm-up ring, in this bosal hackamore, and he never put a foot wrong or screamed once. On a colt she bred and backed herself. Very impressed!

For the Imperio 2-3, he was quite behind my leg. I had gone for relaxation in warm-up and never really gotten him quite jazzed up enough for a test without a whip. It was a steady, workmanlike test with one big error when he broke in the second canter serpentine and then I picked up the wrong lead because OMG I can never remember which lead we're on when he breaks in a serpentine! Then I had to fix it in order to do the simple change.

But it didn't feel that bad, so I was surprised to see our lowest score of the season by a lot, a 57%.

Back at the stalls, I was hemming and hawing about whether to scratch the 2-3 championship ride. The idea of legging him through that a second time was exhausting. I actually made a pros and cons list (there were literally no cons, aside from potentially bruising my pride in front of the local IDS crowd), talked to Austen about it, and then the deciding factor was watching a video one of my former eventing teammates took of my first ride. I left a LOT of stupid points on the table, and I knew I could at least do better in accuracy.

Just, meh.

So I pulled a tired, confused Connor out of his stall, gave myself a 10 minute warmup that largely consisted of transitions between gaits backed up with spurs then whip if he didn't react to my leg in time, and headed in.

I took this GIF just to show off how my disco ball of a browband blinded the entire crowd, lol. Although fun fact, in the inconsistency of the angle, you can see me fighting to stay over his right side as he continually fights to tip my hip upward and off of him

We f***** brought it.

This scored an 8.0. Right in front of the judge. I'm so proud.

Every movement, I went for more, but tactfully, since I didn't have a ton of horse and being too aggressive would have led to him breaking gait, not giving me more impulsion. More angle, more bend, more lengthening, more stretch. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Was it a thousand percent improved from the Imperio ride? You bet.

Position has gone to shit here but my horse is bringing it.

When they announced my score over the intercom of 63.4%, for an improvement of 6% from the same test two hours prior, I was ecstatic. And when they announced we won the championship class, I was stunned. I've left this show crying twice in the past, completely lost on the path of Dressage, so to come home with a blue ribbon (well, I'll receive it at the banquet in November) was just so sweet.

Speaking of the poor announcer, they announced breeder and breeding at this show, and she did an admirable job of trying to read Connor's dam's name (*Bwlchllan Bessie) the first time, but the second time, she took the easy route out with "...and out of a Derwen Desert Express daughter". I cracked up.

The biggest win of this whole show? We did the whole thing in the thin, 3 piece Myler, the bit he goes best in but also the absolute easiest for him to get his tongue over, which often happened in the warm-up ring at shows in the past. It's one thing that he hasn't been trying to get his tongue over at home, but to do it in a show? It's truly a comment on my hands improving.

I love you, buddy <3

And with that, we are truly done with Second!

With Lamplight over, my 2021 rated season has come to a close. Unless someone comes out of the woodwork with scores that haven't been submitted from before 8/31 yet, we'll be the Second Level WPCSA Sec D All-Breeds champions for 2021:

I know there are better Second Level Section D's out there than Connor, but we put the time, money and effort in to get the 8 60%+ scores across four rated shows/judges, so that does count for something. And as always, I'm thrilled to get to promote the Castleberry name outside the Welsh world, which is always my ulterior motive for things like year-end awards.

Connor doesn't need year end awards, all he needs out of horse shows is divesting the ladies from their treats

With that, our time showing rated Second has come to an end. There's nothing more I want to achieve at that level, so from here, we won't show rated again until 3-1 is ready. Which will hopefully be next spring, but who knows? I'm not in a hurry.

We'll still show Second one last time at our GMO's schooling show championships and ride-offs the last weekend of September, because I qualified for it and it's 30 minutes from home, and they give out dope ribbons with tassels, so why not? 

Dope ribbons with tassels

GP trainer recommended I spend the rest of September working on the test movements that I can pick up points in at ride-offs, then giving him a week completely off at the beginning of October, followed by a light week the second week of October. That following weekend will be the Welsh show, and then the Monday after that, he goes to GP trainer's for Third Level Boot Camp for two months.

His pink Two Horse Tack halter is so manly <3

It's a bit strange then to think that this month is my last month getting to school Dressage regularly until January!

We arrived on Thursday morning and did basically just enough schooling Thursday evening to do ring familiarization. It took SO LONG, but this is the first year that I've been able to take Connor to places he's never been before and have him not lose his damn mind, (and to be fair, the first year I've even attempted to take him new places since 2014-ish for pretty much that exact reason), which I appreciate very much. But we do still have to snort at the judge's box.

All photos courtesy of my momma, who made the long drive up from Tennessee for this!

He was feeling a little spicy Thursday night, so I asked my trainer for an unusually long warm-up (for us) on Friday, knowing we'd need it. And boy did we ever.

Looking back on it, I think part of him acting out was the borrowed Trilogy. CGP tightened the girth halfway through my warm-up, and that was when he really started acting bad. I wasn't helping myself either, and was finding it hard to sit deeply and relax, which again, was partially the saddle.

To her absolute credit, halfway through watching me ride my spicy bucking pony in warmup, CGP said, "Drop your stirrups." I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. Here? Now? "Yes, drop them."

Walking into warmup with CGP

I never would have thought to do that if I was by myself, but it was exactly the right call. Suddenly I sat deeply, and a minute or two later Connor exhaled, still not super comfortable but also feeling less explodey. For him, anyway.

I rode the test conservatively, and it showed. This test was little more up and down, with 8's for both centerlines, a 7.5 for the quality of one of our serpentines (!!!!), 7's for our halt/reinback, the final collected trot and an upward canter transition, and then a lot of 5-6.5's for a 62.024%

Comments were "Some very nice moments! At times tight in topline - needs better bend through body especially in trot. Good luck!"

Did I really expect a good free walk in a saddle he didn't like?

That score wrapped up what we needed for All Breeds, so Saturday was just for fun! And...we would be doing it in yet another saddle!

CGP all smiles as we walk out

I showed up for my emergency lesson on Sunday in Mary's flatter-than-flat CWD SE01. It's as huntery as it gets.

CGP was like, I don't doubt this would work, but let's see if we can do you better.

And that's how I ended up taking home a party favor.

I will actually review this saddle after I'm done with it, because it's everything I hate and everything he hates but we're both going quite well in it. Just one more data point to show Dressage saddle fitting is an absolute crap shoot.

It's a 17.5" XW Trilogy that belongs to one of the barn's two resident Haflingers (of course it does, haha). Mary didn't get to go with me, but I sent her fitting photos and she said, "Well, I wouldn't let you buy it, but you could've done a lot worse for something you're borrowing for 6 rides."

I mean...it definitely could be worse.

Despite the long front gussets and "awful" point billet (Mary, lol), Connor did not hate it and had no issues keeping his chest up, when I remembered to make him.

Forgot my black gloves so white gloves it is

The lesson itself was so productive and much needed after Wednesday's lesson. Her lessons immediately before shows are subtly different from her normal lessons. They have more of a "here's how we're going to get it done" feel and less of a "we're going to pick this apart and make it absolutely perfect" feel, and I appreciate that, because there's nothing worse than going into a show worried about perfection.

Just gonna screenshot this great canter over and over

She told me to carry my hands lower and in front of the saddle, which was a completely new feeling for me, but I could tell immediately that something just felt right about it. So I've been carrying my hands a little too high, which activates my biceps. Interesting.

Still a pretty mediocre medium trot, but he's doing an above average job (for him) of keeping his breastplate up here!

There's an interesting place we got to in the canter work that I don't have a fully formed thought about yet. In order to REALLY collect his canter enough for good c-w's, I have to get so involved with my own body. It's hard, and it looks like shit, and it's so not automatic, but when I can muster the strength and coordination to do it right, FINALLY the c-w's come easily and with good quality. But of course it's just easier to let him cruise, so I am constantly self-sabotaging at home when no one is around to make me really dig in and make him sit.

First of two very early mornings this week!

At any rate, I left for Chicago yesterday with a real live Dressage saddle to show in, which is exciting!

Last week, my virtual lesson was a shitshow in almost every way possible.

It started out as a technical issue, when my Pivo would flash up GP trainer's face and then crash, despite no updates or changes being made to my phone or Pivo in the last week.

Okay, we can deal with that: a gracious barnmate showed up and willingly volunteered to video. This is the nature of virtual lessons after all, sometimes it just won't work and you roll with it.

But then Connor just did not want to play ball.

We have an official murder of four crows that lives in a very specific tree next to this pasture. I see them every day and want to make friends with them!

In the lesson, I was riding in my jump saddle for the first time in a week, since I have a show coming up this week, and they won't let me ride bareback (shame). I mentioned in my last post I've been wondering if it's not fitting as well lately, and I'm also wondering if he's lost a bit of topline. Or maybe I'm just paranoid (Spoiler alert: I am not paranoid).

He was sticking his underneck out and just not letting go. She had me work him at every gait, "threw the kitchen sink at him" and threatened to reach through the phone and get on him herself, lol. But he wasn't having it. 

CrossFit was extra weird and fun last week (I feel the need to clarify, I am not the pregnant one, lol)

We did finally get to an OKAY place at the end of the lesson, and with Lamplight 8 days away, I knew what she was going to say.

"You need to come see me this weekend," she said. I sighed. "I know." I really didn't want to since I'd just hauled there the previous weekend and had to haul to Chicago the following week. But I knew we couldn't go to a show - to Lamplight - after a lesson like that.

So we went.