Saturday my trainer scheduled XC schooling lessons in groups of 2-3 on the property (this requires clearing the main turnout field, so it takes some prior planning). We discussed this after discussing "The Plan", and mutually agreed that I should do a Dressage ride in the field, and end with walking, trotting and maybe cantering over a ground log, but no jumping.
(This post will be sprinkled with photos my Favorite Barn Rat took at the clinic.)
And you know what? We had an excellent ride. He came out with his XC hat on (I mean, it IS the XC field), and was all ready to cowboy over some fences and probably land bucking on the other side again, but I shifted his paradigm by asking for the same stuff we did in the arena on Thursday.
After a while he settled in and started giving me good work, so we asked him to go on a 12m circle with the log at one point on the circle, and asked him to keep the bend and keep his back level/not fall apart over the log at the walk. We want to teach him that fences can be comfortable if he just keeps his shit together. Harder than it sounds, of course.
Connor says STRIKE A POSE!
After about 45 minutes of work, I remembered to both sit up and lift my hands just a hair at the same time (usually I remember one and not the other...), and he gave me the most insanely amazing trot. I actually diverted away from the log just to ride it a little longer, it felt so cool! My trainer was like "Wow, he's really lifting his front end there! Wow!" I assume it was like this trot, only with more bend and minus the tension:
We quit there, without cantering. I could feel he was still a little frisky and I didn't want to start something I would be obligated to finish after 45 minutes of good work already.
Favorite Barn Rat asked me afterward if I was disappointed at being grounded from jumping. I said, "No way, this is the deal you get when you don't have a 'made' horse. You do what they need you to do, not what you want to do."
Plus I really really like Dressage. So that helps.
First up! The Blogger TPR Challenge blog hop closes in 14 hours. Get on it! So far L. Williams is winning the gift card...because she is the only entrant. Womp womp.
Second up - you may notice it's been a week since I last blogged. My life has changed in ways I both predicted and could never have predicted in the last two weeks, (no, not pregnant). The only part I can share right now is that we're couch surfing/living out of a suitcase with friends because we sold our old house before getting the keys to the new one (hopefully today), which is all kinds of fun with two big hairy shedding dogs with separation anxiety.
Anyway.
Horse related:
We did on-property XC schooling yesterday. At home, we have multiple banks, ditches, a corner, logs, trakheners, stone walls, and other things, all no higher than novice, which is pretty cool.
September 2014 Cathy clinic. Baby corner in the background, the jump we're over is adjustable height.
The good: he jumped a faux ditch almost without hesitation on the first try. We did a ton of that at our XC schooling in late April, so that makes sense. He was brave and game and quiet over most things, except for a head flipping incident after a log midway through a course, but I think I caused that by going to the reins too quickly to rate him.
The less good: he lost his mind at a pile of 3 railroad ties that may have been a foot high that I asked him to go over mid-course. Like, it took me a minute to get him over that, and he could have stepped over it no problem. My trainer said it was the location - next to one of the banks, in a little depression.
More from last summer, no pics were taken yesterday.
I tried hard to focus on staying quiet and relaxed like our last jump field lesson, but there's a fine line between enough leg to keep him committed and quiet and relaxed. I'm still feeling it out. Our only refusal, though, was at the logs and at the down bank (which we haven't done in nearly a year), and the only thing he crazy over jumped was when we put a stadium fence over the faux ditch.
Overall, though, I was happy. Most jumps were quiet and brave and in a good rhythm. Should get the keys to the new house today, so I'm not sure what this week will look like for the pony!
I came away from schooling with some interesting gear observations that I wanted to share. More comparisons to other types of boots and half pads than review, since I have reviewed both of these things before: Supracor, Majyk Equipe XC Boots
First, boots. I have lamented my boot woes here before, how he goes in plain three strap neoprene WoofWear fronts because I still haven't found an XC front that is small enough for him in height.
On the hinds, he was wearing his Majyk Equipe XC boots. Which I love. A lot.
(I haven't given up on my campaign to get ME to make a small XC front, although I understand why they don't. Especially after the performance of their boots today, I would pay them a whole lot of money to custom make me a set.)
This was a particularly great boot test, because one of the first things we did on our 2.5 hour XC school was the water complex, and also, the ground was pretty muddy in spots. This is what the boots looked like when we got back to the trailer:
And this is what he looked like under the boots:
Fronts: soaking wet
Hinds: I realize the tail got in the way, but they're almost totally dry.
I didn't get a picture of this, but the inside of the Majyk Equipe boots were bone dry, and the inside of the WoofWears were still soaking wet after all that time. My horse had soaking wet neopene against his skin for two straight hours, and it was hot under those boots too. If ever there was an argument against using something soft, squishy and not breathable on my horse, that is it.
And on the same subject, I put his Supracor half pad on under my saddle to give him some extra shock absorption, no cover, as well as my Lettia CoolMax pad. Guess what else was bone dry?
His back. The other horses with various other types of popular half pads definitely had some sweat marks, but aside from his girth, Connor looked like he'd been standing around for the past couple of hours and not schooling cross-country.
All in all, I'm happy with the performance of the gear I've consciously chosen (Supracor and Majyk Equipe) and unhappy with the gear I am stuck with due to a lack of alternatives (Woof Wear).
The floor of the trailer after an XC school. Are we eventers or what?
Sunday ended up being crazy. I had volunteered to fill in for stalls that weekend long before I knew it was our last chance to go XC schooling before Penny Oaks, so I got up at 5:30 to get to the barn by 7 and race through feeding/turnout/stalls before the trailer left at 10 for the 3 hour drive to Twin Towers in Ohio.
Trailering ended up being...interesting...but that's a story for another day.
Connor, for the first time, knew we were going XC. He was forward, forward, forward and feeling frisky.
I actually warmed up in the permanent Dressage ring just to give him some visual boundaries.
We started over some tiny logs on the ground, first one at the trot, then a long line of 2 at the canter, and he took off galloping on the other side of this 10 inch log. It was not mean spirited, he was ears up, truly happy to be out there. And maybe a little overstimulated, who knows. He was feisty the entire day, though it became a more manageable feisty after the first half hour.
As we finished up a line on the (shorter, steeper) other side of this hill at a strong canter, I gave him some leg and he attacked the hill at a gallop. We both had so much fun!
He definitely needed the XC reminder, but so did I. BN looked huge to my eye out there until we got our groove going. XC fences are definitely intimidating if you're not used to seeing them.
We had a few runouts, but I learned something from every single one. My trainer was spot on with her assessments of everything, including when I was slightly intimidated by a fence and Connor told on me. Takeaways:
- I need an aggressive canter on XC, it can't be too quiet. It also can't be too fast or too flat even though it is aggressive.
- If I am intimidated by a fence, he's going to be intimidated.
- Leg around him and on him hard. (Which is SO much easier to do in my new saddle!)
- My back needs to be tight, I can't let him fling me around. (When my back is where it should be, I can feel the back of my vest.)
One of the coolest parts of the day happened at the ditch, which we've only schooled on one previous XC outing. (Ditches are really hard for horses because they don't have good downward depth perception. When they jump them the first couple of times, they often dolphin jump them out of fear/lack of understanding of how to jump it, and they scare/hurt themselves. Also, ditches are "never comfortable for the rider." All of that according to my trainer.)
He initially refused it, but decided to go through with it and jump it much more quickly than I thought he would. You can see in the video the moment he changed his mind and decided to take it.
Videos? Yes, videos!
Water to log, and me with my hands way too high at the end:
Multiple runs over a log pile (with some dead space in between where she kept filming our barely visible heads, feel free to fast forward). Fun fact, this is the pile of logs that was our very first XC jump way back in May of 2013, and we had a runout at it then.
Fun fact - the last fence we take in this video (after a runout) is our-coming-to-Jesus fence from our first starter, where he stopped, I legged him over, he jumped it from a standstill, and he finally realized in that moment what XC was all about.
(This video is broken, my apologies. Working on it.)
And ditches. The ditch where I didn't fight him when he stopped, and he quickly decided to go over of his own volition:
We ended up jumping this ditch until he was so bored, his brain was leaking out of his ears:
We have sort of an unwritten rule at our barn that no one goes to an event without having XC schooled in the week before: at least/especially at the lower levels. With Jump Start being NEXT WEEKEND, that meant we were going XC schooling this weekend. Enter Bea Hive Ranch:
#nofilter. Does it get any better than this?
That house, oh my god, that house. It overlooks about 70 acres of XC schooling and a pasture, and the house itself is stunning.
None of us had been there before, making it a perfect show prep venue, since the horses would be facing brand new obstacles in a new environment. I have no pictures, so you'll just have to take my word for it. These things happened:
- We survived our first ditch! He jumped it the first time and my poor riding scared him, so the second time he was less inclined to go over. By the end he was jumping it reliably, though.
- He never peeked or hesitated at anything I asked him to jump. The only things that felt awkward were the bad strides.
- My Intec vest hit the back of my saddle and threw me forward after a 2'3 rolltop. Time for a new/better fitting one?
Gorgeous day.
One thing I did notice is that schooling my new level's fences is intimidating because my brain hasn't really caught up to the fact that I'm beginner novice yet. Much of the day went like this: "Jen, take the water complex, then circle back to that house."
Water complex
House
My brain: "That house looks huge!" My mouth: "Okay!"
I wasn't scared, just keenly aware of the height, until we actually jumped the first couple of BN height things and then my brain adjusted to the new height and I stopped thinking about it.
The best part of the day, though, was Connor stepping down off of a down bank like a normal horse instead of creeping to the edge, checking for lions and then leaping off it like a deer like normal. I wish I had video. He was like "Ho, hum, business as usual for this champion event pony," and I was like "Whose horse is this?!" because he has never taken a down bank so casually, ever. Not even once.
Not surprisingly, down banks aren't nearly as difficult to ride when your horse doesn't try to long jump off of them. Who knew?
I wouldn't let Connor graze as we handwalked the horses back to the trailer after watering them, so he took a chunk out of this ornamental grass. "So there!"
Finally, woman!
It's in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, and the middle of nowhere, Indiana is the most beautiful place in the world in September.
I think next weekend should be very successful, at least where XC is concerned.
With BN at FRVPCHT (the alphabet soup event!) coming up soon, my trainer called a Sunday afternoon on-property XC lesson, partially to try out a proposed XC bit change - not for brakes, mine work fine, but to encourage effective half-halts and an open throatlatch:
TL;DR: It was a really successful experiment.
We used the ring directly underneath the snaffle ring, and it was still more leverage than I'd ever ridden him in before. The best way to describe Connor's reaction to my engaging it was "immediate gerbil roll call". I generally rode with a very light contact, but when I half-halted, he was an on-task, easily packaged, hind-end engaged XC machine.
Our best guess is that he feels really confident on XC after Penny Oaks, and that confidence plus this bit encouraging him to keep his head up and his throatlatch open meant he wasn't doing this anymore:
Checking for lions in July 2013; this brief pause is SO HARD to ride and I'm SO GLAD we might be through this stage!
The bit helped me get his hind end packaged underneath him before the fence in a way that is normally difficult for me to do, and as a result we had some great fences, even over scary looking things we'd never jumped before. "Ultimately, it's up to him when to take off, but your job is to make sure the hind end is under him and engaged. Ride the hind legs!"
When I got him there on a good distance, all the fences were smooth as silk largely because he wasn't putting his nose down to the fence anymore - we think because he can see it further out when his head is up. When I got him there on a bad distance, he saved my ass one way or another, and wasn't scared the next time we re-presented, we just fixed our previous mistake.
It went so much better than the loose ring or baucher that I ordered one of my own when I got home, but a two-ring instead of three - my trainer said I'd never need the third ring on Connor, and I tend to agree.
Also, today is hind leg shedding day?
Before today, I was pretty nervous about the move up, but I'm feeling much more ready after today. We were communicating about and generally agreeing on distances, he was really locking on to the fences, and we just felt good together. Good thing, since it's less than two weeks away!
Connor and I had semi-private XC coaching today on the property instead of full team practice. The plan was to duplicate the clinic XC school exactly (minus the down bank bounce, because no way n\man!) so that we weren't giving Connor anything new to think about.
Except that he had apparently slept since then and launched the down bank the first time. I mean, it didn't look like this:
Julie Pate and Catch Me If You Can at Chatt Hills last weekend, full photo series of his leap into the water here: "How NOT to Jump a Drop into Water". She says “I love that horse so much! He has the heart of a lion with the brain of a marble! A shiny marble! With glitter in it.”"
But it was scary. So I did it again. And again. And with the blessing of my coach, that's more or less all we did. Up the bank, down the bank, up the bounce bank, tiny log, tiny log, down bank, down bank, down bank. We both really, really needed it.
Halfway through, I said, "It's so hard to plan for, because he jumps it differently every time." My trainer replied, "I feel your pain. It just goes to show how much more exposure he needs to everything. He needs to do this so many times that he's bored out of his mind and it becomes routine." I know what she means. Keeping him interested will never be an issue when he checks for lions every time he takes the down bank at a slightly different angle than the previous approach, Connor creates his own fun.
We also did so much galloping and it was awesome! We always think Connor runs out of gas quickly in the arena, but he's been fooling us. That horse has lungs! Once we had done the bank a few times, multiple times in a row he landed bucking and/or bolting off the down bank just for fun, so my trainer said, "Don't pull him up if he does that, put him to work!"
So the next time it happened, I made him canter off around the (really) big field And then he moved up to a gallop, and I just hung out up there in my XC seat, having flashbacks to galloping racehorses and just calmly waiting for him to wear out. I assumed it would be quick, I was wrong! He was ears up having the time of his life, flying over the hilly terrain like it was the coolest thing he'd ever done with his life. Truly, truly enjoying himself. I wasn't going to pull him up, either, I was having fun myself. Getting run away with on a Welsh Cob, even an athletic one, is just fun, not scary.
When I finally got him pulled up my trainer said, "That wasn't very productive. His cruising speed needs to be slower than that." I was thinking "...but it was fun!" but I responded, "Okay."
But most importantly, neither of us were impressed by down banks by the end, and I was comfortable with the whole process of slipping my reins and keeping my upper body still and back while he checked for lions. We even calmly trotted it once, and when that went well, she had us quit there. We have a lot of work to do, but he's going to be worth all the time and effort we're putting in. XC machine!
Woo hoo!! This pony loves XC!!! Connor has officially started taking his job as an eventer seriously. Or maybe not seriously at all. Today was a big change from the last time we went XC at Greater Dayton. I said in my GDHT wrap-up post that it felt like he figured out XC half way through the course and really locked on and enjoyed himself there at the end. Today totally confirmed that feeling, as he confidently and strongly jumped everything I pointed him at for the first time, and almost acted like he knew more about it than I did. He had so much fun today! And had no brakes. Cheeky pony.
"He looks a lot different than last time," one of our younger riders told me, "He looks like he's really having fun and wanting to get to the fences now." That's exactly what it felt like, as he went straight at the fences rather than sideways. And three times, after this one particular fence that took us from a narrow path in the woods into an open field, he took off bolting and bucking with his ears up and his eyes bright. I stuck them, but barely the second time - he's getting athletic. It was such a sharp action that I thought he stung himself the first time, but no, he was just full of himself. I did a lot of halting in a straight line...eventually...and my trainer said that we may need to think about a different bit for cross-country if this is our new XC machine.
There was one little coop with an uphill directly behind it at which we had our only stop of the day (woo hoo! Progress!) and I'm not really sure what happened because I gave it what I thought was a good ride but he fizzled to a stop and sort of slid his forelegs sideways across it. It took him a second to recover, but I circled like nothing happened and he popped over it fine the second time. Unfortunately it was here that a big storm blew up so I never got a chance to talk to my trainer about it, as those of us who were mounted high-tailed it through the woods back to the trailer. It was honestly a lot of fun, five of us trotting briskly through the woods together as the wind whipped around us, and Connor gave me an 8 or 9 trot that I can only dream about attaining in the arena right now. Sigh.
Even if our day was cut short, it confirmed to me that so much progress has been made, and I was happy. It was the first time that I've felt like he knows what his job is, he's not afraid, and he's REALLY enjoying it. He was almost pulling me to the fences, he was so excited. This is a big change from the last time we schooled at the HHP in May, his first time there, when he rode like a broken shopping cart to everything. I am so excited to see how he handles his next XC run at Leg Up - I think it's going to feel a lot different from GDHT!
Due to scheduling issues, we ended up schooling at the Hoosier Horse Park today, a place Connor has been many times but he'd never gone XC there before. There were highs and lows, but overall, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have gotten that out of the way before Saturday, and I'm excited about Connor's prospects as an eventing pony.
Things we learned:
Being silly on the trailer
1. He does better when he's cantering, because when he trots the fences he has a lot of time to think.
2. When he has time to think, he looks at all the stuff around the fence (rocks, trees, people) and not the fence itself.
3. Down banks are hard for both of us, and I gave him a bad ride to our first one, which scared both of us. It sucks to have that been his first experience, but he did go down it, albeit hesitantly, every time. My constant problem of being forward was magnified, so when I looked down at this baby bank and went "HOLY SHIT THAT'S HUGE!" Connor went "SHE'S AFRAID, THERE MUST BE A TIGER UNDER THERE!" and launched it and I fell forward, but not off! But I was still pretty shook up and angry at myself for knowing that was going to happen, trying to fix it, and still failing. Thankfully, we have banks at home that we can school.
4. Up banks are awesome. He was uncertain the first time, but every time after that I really felt him lock on to it and go, "I got this, Mom!" It was an awesome feeling.
5. He gets tough when we're cantering out there, but not in a bad way, in an "I know my job and like it way." Ears up, cantering around happily.
6. Water was no problemo, as expected.
7. He really enjoyed himself, after an initial "moment" at pretty much every single fence.
The down bank experience and the crappy trot fences really shook me up, which is unfortunate, because he did really well and clearly enjoyed himself. I'll be okay, but it's clouding my mind as I write this, otherwise I'd be a lot more enthusiastic.
At the end, my trainer could tell I was down on myself, so she told me to go canter ahead of the group as they walked back to the trailer, and to take the tiny ramp jump, canter through the water, then do a long canter back to the up bank, then the fences we started with. It was the first time I got to do a long canter and the first time I cantered all those fences, and finally, it clicked. Without that moment, I would have focused on nothing but the bad down bank experience, but ending with him listening to me, and forward, and clearly enjoying himself, and the two of us seeing our distances and not the lions next to the fences, really made me feel better. My trainer is such a genius, and so tactful.
Sitting at my desk pondering the logistics of moving the Probation department from standard PC's to zero client-based virtual desktops when I am one hour and five minutes away from leaving work early to go to the barn for Connor's first off-property XC schooling!
The five of us that will be showing at Greater Dayton this weekend are taking the horses over in the lovely 85 degrees and sunny weather today in order to school them at the facility that they'll be at this weekend. I'm excited about what that extra level of familiarity will do for my otherwise spooky pony. He's only schooled XC on the property before.
Since I filled out my USEA medical card for the first time this morning, can we talk about the fact that they ask for your SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER on it? The social engineering/armchair Red Flag Law expert/ network security girl inside of me went "Noooope!" Do they really expect you to put your SSN on a piece of paper that regularly gets lost/maimed/dropped in a pond/etc? I won't even put mine on official forms unless the person I'm handing it to can tell me why they need it and what happens to that piece of paper after it leaves my hands. They can have my insurance number while I'm unconscious, but wait until I'm coherant in the hospital to get my SSN. Anyone else refuse to fill out that line?
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