Trail Ride!!

Yep. Irie's mom brought out balloons. This one is shiny and plays a song when it makes contact with anything. Izzy quickly overcame her fear of it when it was tied above her breakfast. She even played with it a little bit. I'd say it needs more work, but it's definitely a good start.

Also, Irie's mom just got her fancy Ansur KonKlusion. It's way newer and nicer than mine and she loves it very much. Yeah... I'm super jealous. I'm thrilled that we were able to get a jumping saddle at all, but someday, I want a pretty, new-ish one. Still, hers has way bigger knee blocks and some thigh blocks. I keep telling myself that I wouldn't like that. I haven't sat in it because I'm not allowing myself to like it. I can't afford to.
Note: This is not our trailer in the picture. This is the trailhead we went to today. It's in the foothills just outside of Boise and it's pretty cool. The hills are great for the horses. They develop muscles going up and down them and they learn where to put their feet and how to balance themselves. Also, it's pretty awesome.

Izzy did ok for her first time out this year. She definitely remembered some of the stuff she learned last year (like about not running down hills, thank god). She also forgot some things, like how this is fun. We were up on top of a ridge and came across a mud puddle. Irie's mom was making him go through it, so we waited for her. I didn't bother trying to get Izzy through it; there was lots of space to go around and I wasn't ready for a fight the first time out. Izzy had a mini meltdown because she didn't want to stand still. I made her walk away from Irie, and that was pretty terrifying too. Fortunately, we resolved the problem by Irie going through the puddle and rejoining us.

The trail seemed to be going on forever, so we found a short cut back (on an actual trail; it's ok). It went down a pretty steep hill and Izzy didn't think she could do it. I'd try to ask her to go down and she'd just freeze up. Finally, she realized that Irie and his mom were doing cutbacks across the hill, which is what I was asking her to do. Oh. She can do that. So we did.

My favorite moment had to be when a whole group (covey?) of sage grouse EXPLODED under neath Irie and directly in front of Izzy. He bolted forward, but Izzy just froze up. She's really not a spooker. I like that about her.

We met a fellow eventer out exercising her horse, which was fun . I'll have to watch for her at shows (and maybe look her up on facebook--does that seem creepy?). We stuck to walking this time out because Izzy was on edge and I didn't want to tempt fate. Next time we'll go out the sandy way and do some trot and canter. It should be awesome.
Faithful trail buddies. Only they can't stand next to each other because Izzy tries to kick him.

Last year, Izzy was fine on trails as long as I just stuck her nose in Irie's tail. Today, I guess she thought he was walking too slowly, because she kept trying to nip his bum as he went along. Poor pony boy. I managed to stop her most of the time...
A close up of Izzy pretending to be a trail horse. The eventer lady thought Izzy was a thoroughbred. Yay! (I think.) She looked super cute with her bridle (minus a cavesson) on over the top of her rope halter. I'll have to get a picture of the whole getup next time.

All in all, a very good day.

Sing: Goin' on a trail ride!

That's right, folks. Izzy and I are going on a trail ride tomorrow with Irie the fearless halfie and his mom. I'm psyched. We haven't been since last summer and it will be good for both of us. The barn we board at is totally land locked on five very flat acres, so any opportunity to get out is fabulous. Then factor in that we live in Idaho with lots of mountains and it's a fabulous hill workout.

Ahem. So today we did several awesome things. First off, our new dressage bridle came. It's a lovely black bridle with white padding and no flash (and it was an amazing steal off ebay!). Best of all, I have pictures again today!!


Despite our fabulous new bridle, the jumps were set up and I really wanted to go over them, especially since Cathy gave us the all-clear to be jumping little stuff on our own. I love my rubber reins on my other fabulous bridle, so we switched the bit back and went for a ride. Izzy was wonderful!! (I'm running out of superlatives today.) We put the scary fake bush from our scary stuff session yesterday under one of the crossrails and I put a rail over the terrifying planks.

The scary plank jump in all it's glory. We are no longer intimidated.

Izzy jumped them all like a super star. I need to work on keeping her straight before and after the jumps and staying back with her... We had one hairy moment where I jumped ahead of her. She still went (over the plank, no less), but I nearly came off the front. Poor mare. I stayed back much better after that.
Izzy's cute face.

Then I talked Irie's mom into riding Cassie. I promised her that I would only take pictures of Cassie (Izzy's actual horse mother) and not of her, so please ignore the person. ;-)
The ol' lady's still got it. What a lovely girl she is!!
And...
Yeah. Not the best form picture ever, but not bad for the rider's first time on Cassie ever and the rider's first time intentionally cantering a jump ever. We'll work on it.

PS Does anyone know if there's a way to rotate pictures?

Jumping Pony Strikes Again! (and random pictures)

We had another lesson this morning. When I set jumps, I put a (scary) white plank in one of the fences and Irie's mom, who was helping, left the ground poles out a little far, so it was like a midget oxer.

Needless to say, Izzy refused. In yet another example of why I love Cathy, she had us walk up to it and stand there, to get Izzy relaxed. Then we trotted in again. As instructed, I was supportive, but not pushy. I wasn't going to force Izzy to jump; I just wanted her to go to it. And she did; removing the pressure made her much happier. The third time we trotted in and Izzy LEAPED over the scary white plank. It was only about 18" off the ground, but we made at least 2'6" over it just to be sure.

After that, the plank was fine.

On a slightly different note, here are some pictures from the show last Friday. This is Cathy and her mare Shasha warming up for their class.
I don't know who this is, but I'd never seen a Multibridle in person before. Very interesting.
Cathy and Shasha, 2nd Level Test 4. As you can tell, it was a schooling show and it was cold, so we weren't super formal.
Irie the Halfie and his mom. You can say it. A Halfie in dressage tack is the cutest thing ever.

After my lesson this morning, Irie's mom and I played with our horses and scary things.
Izzy isn't scared of ponchos.
Irie isn't too sure about balloons.
Neither is Izzy.
Umbrellas are nice.
Aww. Sweet pony.
Irie wears the poncho.
Irie does the tissue paper.
Izzy has more pizazz with tissue paper.
And Izzy takes a poncho high fashion. You wish you could wear it this well. (Also doubles as a super hero cape).

Walking

Izzy got two days off on account of the weather, my schedule, and me being generally exhausted. I don't think she minded. Today I turned her loose in the arena and she galloped around a little, but didn't buck. I didn't bother with lunging her before we rode because I basically just do it to allow her a chance to burn off energy, which she already did.

Then we walked. I started by not asking for much. I just wanted a steady, forward, 4 beat rhythm. She could stretch or she could not. Then, I started asking her to really push from behind. When she did, I'd give the inside rein and scratch her withers. Gradually, she moved in to accepting the contact and started offering to stretch. Then we changed direction and did the whole thing the other way.

I was so happy. She was balanced and rhythmical and taking a light contact and it just feels so good to ride that. I even contemplated not moving beyond that today, but I decided I wanted that same feeling at the trot and canter. We stayed very relaxed. She was comfortably forward, and she was very responsive. It felt amazing. When we could do walk, trot, and canter circles both directions while maintaining balance and a steady rhythm, I gave her a cookie and put her away. Every day should be like this.

:-)

Horse Show Report

We survived. I'm happy about that.

I've been away from the computer all weekend, which is probably just as well.

Our rides were at 7.01 and 7.30 (pm). Cathy rode earliest, at like 5, which meant we had well over an hour to just hang out and look at stuff on our first trailer ride of the year. That was good. Izzy was sparkling clean (even her white sock). We wandered around purposefully, looking fabulous and seeing the sights. Izzy was tense and spooky at first, but it's amazing what a little hand grazing will do to calm things down.

When we were about an hour out from our first ride, I went to tack up. I was thinking that I'd get on, we'd meander around some more, then warm up, do the test, you know... basic stuff. Izzy was thinking PANIC!!!! Don't ask me why. She had a 20 minute long melt down while tied to the trailer. She leaped around, reared, and acted nutty. When I went to try to work with her, she kicked me. (Yeah. Never done that before.)

So I left her. When she would stand still, I'd come talk to her and give her a treat, then walk away again. Finally, she stood still long enough to actually tack up. I didn't just want to hop on after the performance she'd given, so I tried turning her loose in the round pen. That was probably a bad idea because it gave her more time to look around at stuff and since there wasn't even a lunge line, she wasn't focusing at all. I'll have to remember that for next time.

As soon as I got on, I knew I was riding a completely different horse than I was used to. She was on the edge of an explosion. Another shameless Ansur plug: because there is literally almost nothing between myself and Izzy, I can feel her back like well, there isn't a saddle. It keeps me very much in tune with her. I focused on sitting deep in the saddle while walking calmly around the arena. We did a lot of walk/halt transitions to try and get her to listen to my seat. The arena is not really level, so she wouldn't go into the contact on the uphill and then dove into my hands on the downhill. There wasn't a lot I could do, because even when she settled a little, she was still very much on edge.

Apparently, they were running the tests about 15 minutes ahead, so we didn't have much warmup time. When they told me I was next, I took Izzy quietly around the dressage arena while we waited to be called. (Visual note: the dressage arena was marked off in a corner of the much larger arena). She spooked in one corner, but I just sat and let her look at it, and then we went on. The test (Training 1) wasn't great. It also wasn't bad. She was looky. She tried to jump out at one point (I stopped her). We didn't go into our corners and our circles were only semi-round. I wasn't too worried about it. We got all our transitions in the right place. She was no worse than could be expected of a green horse.

After the test, we had a few more minutes until the next one. We worked on the same things we had before, but Izzy was getting upset. Whenever I halted her, she ran backwards. I think she was just making blind associations without really paying any attention to me. Since we've done a lot of halt/back lately, she just did it. I just tried to keep from upsetting her more. I learned from my old girl that in situations like this, I just have to wait for her brain to come back to me and upsetting her will only make it take longer.

I didn't really have her together for the next test, but we went in. Again, we weren't straight on center line and our circles were more oblongs. Still, I couldn't help my ear-to-ear smile as we did our canter circle. She felt amazing. She wasn't really happy, but she was trying her best in this terrifying new environment. Ok, so we didn't have a free walk. Yeah, our contact never improved. Sure, the halt was crooked. I was happy with her, though.

I hopped off as soon as we were out of the arena and we took Izzy and the other horses home. On the drive, I got to look over my tests. The judging seemed fair. We got a few sevens. We got a few fours. We got a lot of fives and sixes. We had some strong comments on the inconsistent contact, which was ok with me. It's something we're working on at home, and I'm aware of the problem. Izzy got sevens on gaits in both tests. I bet she'll get eights next time if I can work on the whole submission issue (we got a 5 for that).

Here's what rankled me. I got a 5 for riding with comments that the test wasn't accurate. That bugged me. Yeah, it wasn't great, but a five? I was in kind of a funk on Saturday. Cathy told me I rode well, but she's not one who dwells on the past and I'm one who tends to read too much into certain things. Yeah. I rode well for someone who's finally back in lessons after years away. Well for someone who can't be expected to do much better. It rankled me. (Not Cathy; just my interpretation of the comments). I wasn't upset with Izzy. She did exactly what could be expected. I just wanted to throw in the towel. It didn't help that my eventer friend and her halfie got a 68% and a 73% to our 55% and 56%. (Of course, they also did intro A and B).

I guess I'm over it. It wasn't as if the judge was a paid professional; she's a local (and very good rider). I'm happy with how Izzy and I did. There were a few things I wish I'd done differently, but I don't know that they would have made a difference. Izzy was nervous at her first show, which is to be expected. I could have pushed harder, sure, but she was already on the edge of an explosion. It was better to just ride her softly through it and make it a pleasant experience for her than to really drill her in hopes of getting a higher score and risking a massive meltdown. Plus, after talking to my eventer friend more, she assured me that Cathy actually said very nice things about my ride while I was out there. She probably just didn't repeat them because I really didn't ask much. I knew what was wrong, and she needed to get back and feed.

;-) Sometimes it sucks when your coach has that much confidence in you.

So, all in all, it was a good experience. Here's the only picture of Izzy from the day:
Yep. Took a picture of her white (shiny white!!) foot with my cell phone. I have pictures of Cathy and my eventer friend riding, but they're still on my camera. I totally forgot to ask someone to take pictures of us when Izzy was having her meltdown.... whoops. Maybe it's just as well. Picture us being awesome, and maybe next time we'll live up to it.

Not Spring's Best Day

Yesterday was gorgeous. Sunny, 60f outside, almost no wind... and I was stuck inside feeling miserable. I guess that's not entirely true. I went to my lesson yesterday morning. I was feeling awful, but when one has once weekly lessons, one always shows up. ;-) I got Izzy ready. I contemplated lunging, and realized that the amount of energy it required was about equal to that of staying on for one good spook. Since I had limited energy, I decided to gamble on the spook. (I never considered an option that included more than one spook. Hmmm.)

Izzy was amazing. Cathy's comment was that she was matching my energy output, because she just ambled around. She wasn't incredible; she wasn't round, she could have been more balanced, you know, that sort of thing. But. She didn't spook. She didn't act silly. She just let me ride her around and was really sweet. We did jump a bit and she was fabulous!! She's still figuring out where her feet go in front of the jump, but she only knocked it down twice and she's so athletic that it really isn't even an effort for her. (This is me, swooning).

Today was a different story. The weather changed, the rain came in, it's cold, and now I'm operating at about 60% strength instead of the 35% I had yesterday. I (wisely) turned Izzy out before riding and she galloped and bucked like a maniac. When she was done, I rode. We worked for a really long time on getting her to listen to my seat. She is getting better. We did lots of walk/halt/back/halt/walk type transitions to make sure she understood what I wanted. Then we moved on to trot/halt/trot transitions. When she was responding nicely, I started using that same idea to rebalance her without actually halting. It took a while; at first she would try to just run on her forehand, but we worked through that by actually making her stop and back up when she did that.

When I had her going nicely, we went through both of our tests. I have them memorized, and she was decent-ish. I guess that's good enough for now. Here's to better health for tomorrow...

Sick Day

I woke up this morning and felt like I'd never gone to bed. Plus, now I have a sore throat and runny nose and a headache. :-(

The obvious course of action was to skip my run, get dressed, go riding, then come home for soup. Why, what else could I do?

I'm glad I did. I still feel like crap, but the ride was so worth it. Because Izzy was so quiet yesterday and we galloped around, I decided to forgo lunging and just warm her up with a long walk. It went really well. I focused on keeping her marching forward and let her stretch whenever she offered it. After 10 minutes or so, I picked her up and off we went. We're gearing up for a schooling show, so I wanted to work on transitions. At first, Izzy totally ignored my seat and would toss her head if I tried touching the reins in trot/walk transitions. I broke it down for her. We did walk/halt transitions. If she halted in a balanced and quiet way, we walked on. If not, I asked her to back until she gave (ie released tension and dropped her poll). It took a while and several times we had to back all the way down the short side of the arena, but she finally decided to co-operate.

After that, it was smooth sailing. We did walk/trot/canter transitions and she was lovely. We did trot/halt transitions. She can do them within a stride and she has a naturally square halt. Then we progressed to transitions within the trot; instead of actually halting, we'd do a half halt and practiced our shorten/lengthen trot. She has an amazing lengthen when she's balanced. We didn't actually practice our tests, but I don't think we need to. Plus, it helped me to find a good, quiet way to work through her initial resistance.

Win! Also, the schooling show was moved back from Wednesday to Friday. That gives us a little more time to get ready and means that our lesson is on for tomorrow and we get to JUMP again!

PS I'm 90% done pulling her mane and her fetlocks and bridle path are now trimmed. Behold the power of cookies! Seriously. She will stand still for anything if she has a treat to suck on.

PPS The mare has apparently opened a store under her registered name. I'm awaiting royalties.

Where I Don't Throttle the Pony

The past week, every time I've gotten off of Izzy, I've just been angry. Sometimes it was because she was acting up, but most of the time it's because of other things in my life that are getting to me. Either way, riding was not fun. I know it's not always going to be fun, but I think it should be fun most of the time or it's really not worth having as a very, very expensive hobby.

Today was fun. It was windy and cold and rainy, but the outdoor arena was just barely dry enough to ride in. I turned Izzy loose to run since I didn't get her out yesterday, and she just barely cantered around. Weird. I was expecting major bucking and squealing since she had to stand around for, you know, one whole day. Anyways. We tacked up and went for a ride. As I mentioned before, the weather was awful, but I think we were both just so happy to be outside that it didn't matter.

I thought about my comments from yesterday and I realized that y'all were right. We do need to work on developing more consistent contact, but we can't have that if she isn't forward. Today, I decided to focus on engagement, and oh boy did I have it! I didn't worry about contact very much and just rode forward. I looked at where we were going instead of what we were doing and I realized that Izzy is far more responsive to my aids than I thought she was. (I just needed to get my head out of my butt to notice.)

We did a lot of trotting and cantering. Izzy wanted to go forward and I had no objections. We probably tore around the arena a bit faster than was safe, but I think we both needed it.

Funny thing, though. After we blew off steam, Izzy was far more accepting of the contact and even quieter about listening to me. After we cooled out at the walk for a bit, I asked her for a bit of turn on the forehand each way, and she gave it. No fussing, no hassle. I kept her straight and barely even used my legs. I just turned my body and she turned underneath me.

Of course, that was an excellent stopping point. I got off, and when I went to untack, I found something else that made me happy (and no, it wasn't Izzy's constant cribbing whenever I leave her). The new padding arrangement we tried today worked! No extra rubbing!! Yay SB and Izzy!!

Ok, I really should go. I want to read all of your blogs and comment and I need to learn my tests for Wednesday.

Frustration

Izzy and I had a crappy ride this morning. I'm not sure why. Part of it was that she was pulling down (hard!) on the bit, then throwing her head in the air and running forward. Whenever I attempted to pick up contact, she would throw her head again. I was doing pretty well at regulating her speed with my posting, but that was probably the only thing I was doing well. We couldn't really get organized. I couldn't get her focused. (Yes, we were riding in the bubble). We couldn't do much of anything because Izzy was super looky and there was a lesson going on.

I'm not sure how to account for this. Part of me wants to say that asking her to pick up a contact and carry herself forward means lifting her back into the rub, which hurts so she throws her head. Another part of me says that Consistent contact is new to Izzy and Izzy hates change, so she's trying to figure it out and having fits on the way.

I think the second explanation makes more sense. She's fussing about her face, not her back. When she doesn't like her saddle, she doesn't go forward. We've been through this over and over. She's kind of in a phase right now where she doesn't want to stand for anything and she just wants to go. That's probably partly because she hasn't been turned out in over a week due to the rain, snow, and slick mud that we're stuck with right now.

I sympathize with her, but it's driving me nuts. Is it too much to ask to have one decent riding day once in a while? Grrrr.

I'm Liking It

Due to snow (yes, I wish this was an April fools joke), we were back in the Bubble of Doom today. There were two other people riding, one of which was in a lesson, so it was pretty crowded. Despite trucks going by, horses banging on stuff, and horses coming and going, Izzy was really good. She was tense. She was worried. Still, she kept her brain. She didn't spook so much as look around.

We weren't able to get much useful work in, between dodging the lessoner (who for some reason never bothers to steer much) and avoiding the greenie with an explosive spook that we didn't want to provoke. Oh well. I keep reminding myself that any work is better than no work, and we're very, very lucky to even have the opportunity to ride indoors at all.