Cob Jockey

As I sit at my desk "working" these days, I find myself dreaming about a Dressage show season, and not really thinking about eventing at all, despite Connor's jumping going really well these days.

There are a few reasons for that.  First, it feels like the sky's the limit with his Dressage.  My rides on my own have been improving under the new game plan, and his work in lessons continues to be awesome.  Combine that with the fact that it's even easier to get a good ride on him at shows, where he's amped up, and he is a LOT of fun to show in Dressage.

I turned him loose in the ring to play, and when he was done I walked over to him, petted him, and asked him to follow me all the way across the ring - and he did!

Second, there's that promise my husband made me that if I show Third, he'll buy me a new, custom, Dressage saddle, and yes, he knows what that costs.  His said "If I'm going to pay that much for non-road legal transportation, I at least want some bragging rights to go along with it."  So I need to at least show 3-1 at a schooling show someday, and I am not going into the ring for it until we're ready - as tempting as it is to get a 40% at a schooling show in order to get a custom saddle...I'm not that person.

How you get from the indoor to the barn when it's 15F: quarter sheet plus cooler

Third, we're limited in eventing.  His size will likely limit us to Training, and my brain will limit us to Training if we're lucky, but more realistically Novice.  That sh*t looks huge from the back of a pony!

We can get him less squirrely on XC with time and patience, but he's such a worrier, it almost feels cruel.  He needs to know everything is going to be perfect or else he's nervous to the base of the fence, and it takes him time to analyze the situation and feel comfortable enough to jump it.  I can give him the kind of security he needs in the Dressage and even jumper rings, but not on the XC course, where I need him to be brave and to use his "fifth leg" in less-than-perfect situations.  Sure we have never had a jump penalty on XC because he has springs for legs, but it isn't enough - he needs to be comfortable and confident too.

Everything looks bigger from a pony.

So, all that is to say, we're not giving up on eventing, we'll definitely school XC as much as we can and hit an event or two, but I won't be renewing my USEA or IEA memberships this year.  A year of Dressage and XC schools before revisiting the eventing scene in 2017 isn't the worst plan. With luck, our first Dressage show will be in less than a month from now!

Thanks to everyone for entering my 1,000th post giveaway!  In a very funny twist, Rafflecopter chose...



The girl I just met last week!  Congratulations, Emma!  Look for your Riding Warehouse e-gift card in your inbox in the next few days.

I'm not even going to go back and look at my goals post for this year.  2015 was just one of those years - and that's okay.  I'd rather my yearly goals be blown up by landing my dream job and renovating a historic home than by something like unemployment, as they were in 2012 and 2013.

Worth everything.

So instead of looking back, I'm looking ahead to 2016.  What are we going to do in 2016?

- Show rated 1st level Dressage

I feel like I have to admit that he's got more talent here than as an eventer, and to not chase it a little bit would be foolish.  Plus we're both having fun with it.

- Show unrated 2nd level Dressage by the end of the year

- Take him to a schooling jumper show so Mary can show him

Because everyone benefits when Mary rides their horses.  (Me and Connor's first show jumping round ever, for either of us, GDHT 2013)

- Take him trail riding with Connor's breeder and Dr. Marks

This is changing my goals!

- School XC enough that Connor gets bored at BN...maybe...hopefully...

We always make it over with room to spare, but sometimes we do interpretive dance in the air over the fences.  JSHT, 2014

Note that there really aren't any eventing goals on there.  I mean, yes, I am going to event him, but probably not enough to make my USEA membership worth it (BN non-member tax is $25/event, a year's membership is about $85, so I have to do four rated events to make the membership worth it and that legitimately might not happen this year.)  I'm going to focus on Dressage and go with the flow on eventing.

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.

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.

Connor's breeder told me last night that it makes her sad to visit this blog and not see any updates.  And I am not one to make people sad!  So I'm going to do my best to keep going.

I haven't had a proper Dressage lesson in about a month, so last week for my lesson I came out guns blazing in Dressage tack, ready for a biomechanics beatdown...and then my favorite barn rat said, "Hey, I think she's teaching XC lessons in the big field tonight."

Cue fastest tack change ever - XC vest, breastplate, saddle, girth, bridle, and fly bonnet.  Favorite barn rat was impressed.

Favorite barn rat multitasking by keeping Connor entertained (he's licking her hand) and texting while I was in the bathroom.

The lesson started out - no joke - with me breezing my Welsh Cob around the field like a racehorse, bridged reins and all, until he got tired.  He came out with so much energy, there was no way the lesson was going to be productive unless I took some of the edge off.  In my warmup, when I asked for a canter depart, he bucked so hard my neck snapped, which has never happened before.

(Found out later he'd been in all day due to heavy rain. Don't blame the little guy a bit.)

It really took five or so minutes of cantering and galloping before he stopped accelerating anytime he got the chance.  Toward the end, he really flattened out into a true ground covering gallop, which delighted my trainer, who says the canter and gallop will always be his weakest gaits and he needs to figure it out for himself and get comfortable in those gaits more often.

The best part about all that was, he was at his worst and I still never felt unsafe.  On a lot of horses, that would have been a lunging situation.


We ended up having the BEST lesson!  The highlights were:
1. Getting a true collected canter, for a long period of time, that enabled me to take the up bank, do a tight rollback in the direction of whatever lead he landed on, back to the upbank.  With a bigger canter, that would not have been possible.
2. Cantering the down bank for both of our first times ever - and it felt so smooth compared to trotting it!
3. Cantering the faux ditch for both of our first times ever, and that also felt smooth.
4. Cantering the down bank and doing a less severe but pretty small rollback immediately to canter the ditch - and not even blinking.

I came out of that lesson beaming.  Every moment I ever questioned that horse being an eventer melted away.  Sure, we have been working on those things for years, and I'm sure he'll find lions under down banks at other facilities, and I'll have to keep my guard up forever, but he CAN do these things without scrambling.

What a good boy!  Bigtime bath for the sweaty guy after all that cantering and jumping:

The short version of XC is that our well-executed plan worked until I was too tired to execute it anymore, and then things got interesting.

The even shorter version that says absolutely nothing about how the ride went is that we went double clear.

(All photos taken by Connor's breeder, Lisa, unless otherwise noted.)


The "how much leg Connor actually needs" epiphany extends to fences too - remember the lesson a month ago in which I really put my leg on and put him together when he was strung out for the first time?  So today's trainer tip was LEG - approaching the fence, at the base of the fence, and over the fence as well, so he's never even a millisecond without support from me.

The plan worked great in warmup - they actually had Starter and BN XC fences there (usually they just have stadium fences in warmup) and with my leg on him, he wasn't squirrely at all and took them well.  I felt good going into the course.


The first few fences rode really nicely, for us.  They weren't fluid, but he didn't scramble and weave before the fences, and he never thought about running out of anything the entire course.  I thought, "PROGRESS!"

Fence 3

By the middle of the course, I was starting to get tired from using that much leg.  It was a long course for our first one of the season too - 2,000m.

Fence 8 - always a good boy about water. Photo used with permission from Xpress Photography.

At fence 9, immediately after the water, my leg started to really go.  He gave this brand new fence a hard stop/look, then leaped it. Photo used with permission from Xpress Photography.

The next fence, 10, was an option.  Ditch or trakehner.  I chose the trakehner because we're not ready to do ditches in rated competition yet, but my trainer told me not to overestimate it, because "That log never rides nicely for people."

She proved right like that so many times on this course!  He totally, completely stopped in front of it for a full second, and then jumped it from an actual standstill.  He's jumped from a standstill before, but never like that.  I ended up on his neck without stirrups, and had to pull him up to a walk to get them back.

11...

Photo used with permission from Xpress Photography.

Immediate left turn to 12...

Photo used with permission from Xpress Photography.

13 and 14 rode pretty sticky, and then there was 15:

It was actually our smoothest jump of the day - notice he didn't put his nose down to it on approach.

Not bad, all things considered.

Fairly normal landing here...

...and then this happened.

To be honest, I really could not tell you what happened with the stumble.  I know he was tired after 15 attempts over a mile to that point, and "a tired horse is a lame horse." (Dr. Marks).  He fell and got back up so quickly, I could feel that he was as bewildered as I was.

The ground was really strange that weekend - it rained a lot two weeks prior, then not at all in the week leading up to the event, so the ground was firm under people feet, but the horses' feet were making massive divots, so maybe got a hoof half in a divot or something.

One way or another, I was so proud of him for righting us that quickly and, as shaken up as we were, the next fence was truly abominable:

There should be a cartoon sound of pots and pans clanging out of a cabinet accompanying this picture!

But we recovered nicely for the B element of the combination.  (For the record, I am so not a fan of combinations on XC.  I am also not a fan of combinations on XC at the end of a long course for the first event of the year.  But we deal, we deal.)

Tired pony is tired. Photo used with permission from Xpress Photography.

After that fence, I swear I heard (pseudo-resident clinician we ride with a couple times a year) CJF's voice come out of the heavens and say that I was in danger of not making time.  *Noted after Britt's comment: I didn't actually hear her, because she was still in the warmup area, and even if she was on course, she didn't have a watch on me and wouldn't have known my time.  It was definitely all in my very tired head, which is why I said 'I swear I heard', but one way or another, the thought made me pick up my pace.*

I asked Connor for one more big canter, where we sprinted to fence 18 and then the finish line.  We ended up being 3 seconds under optimum time, which is perfect.


So the major takeaway from XC is that we both need to be more fit.  When we were still both feeling good, the fences were actually better than they've ever been, which is not saying he's a cross-country machine yet - far from it- but there was tangible improvement there.

Since it was the first show of the season for almost everyone, we were not the only ones that were feeling the effects of XC.  Time for conditioning for Connor, and more CrossFit for me!

I would like to end this post by encouraging everyone to admire how perfectly shaped JenJ's (handmade) dragon patch is on my saddle pad, and how perfectly it aligns to the saddle I didn't even have when she made it as my Blogger Secret Santa present.  Slow clap for JenJ!

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:



Runout and then a good fence to end on:

A surprising number of you said you were living vicariously through the Jump Start posts because you weren't eventers or your horse wasn't ready for eventing yet, which means maybe the nuts and bolts of an event aren't as boring as I thought they were!  I thought I'd talk about post-XC care today.  More my Beginner Novice (up to 2'7) post-XC care than the upper levels - that's a whole other thing entirely.

(All pictures in this post were taken by my mom - she caught so many awesome moments that weekend!)

After we cross the finish flags, I have to bring him back down.  He's pretty full of it, so this usually takes a big circle and me just sitting up and waiting for him to get with the program.

Check out those massive trees!

As soon as he's stopped, I jump off his back, undo one billet on one side entirely, and drop the other one a hole.  I give him a quick glance over to make sure he doesn't have any scrapes or bumps, and we start the (sometimes really long) walk back to stabling.



I could ride him back at the walk, but I choose to give him this reward.  I want him to know that as soon as we cross the flags, his job is done.



Usually my trainer meets us somewhere to ask how it rode, since she can only see part of the course and listen to the announcers who will say things like "Rider 310, Castleberry's Contender and Jenifer Slabaugh, now on course," or "Overnight leaders Castleberry's Contender and Jenifer Slabaugh clear through fence 10", if they have an announcer at all.

Trainer asking how it went.

And then we start walking back to stabling together:

With one or both of my boots unzipped, because forget walking in those things.

Oh yeah, and somewhere along the way Connor usually realizes he's alone and starts screaming in my ear: