Help a Sister Out!

Most of you are probably familiar with Alyssa--not only is she one of my best friends, she's also eventer and artist extraordinaire. Her amazing mare Bacon went and racked up some vet bills, so Alyssa is offering really cool custom art pieces at a fantastic price.

I have a painting Alyssa did of my old man Cuna and let me tell you, she really captures the essence of her subjects.

You might also recognize Bobby:

Or Racing to Ride's Beefheart.

Alyssa also does really cool captures of dogs. And she kicks ass at photography, but unless you're local, I'm not loaning her out.

content yourself with this awesome dog pic
I learned it's called "mixed media"

It's a really cool way to commemorate a special horse or dog in your life or a friend, it helps out a really great person, and really, what other incentive do you need? ;-)

I mean, no pressure, but if you're interested in an awesome custom portrait, there's no time like the present.

2016 Year in Review

These are my favorite posts of the year! I love looking back at everyone's adventures and remembering what we got through. Here goes.

JANUARY

Not much changes about January. It's a shitty month with bad weather, which prompts survivalist posts like "The Winter Rider" where I talk about making smart choices to not die.

It also prompts thinking posts like "Training the Sensitive Horse" where I reflect on the type of horse Courage is and the best ways to get through to him. And sappy posts about trust and relationships, like this one.

january trotting!

FEBRUARY

Apparently the weather finally decided to be less horrible, because Courage and I got ourselves back in regular(ish) lessons. In Learning Lessons, we used our trainer as a relationship counselor and started figuring out hard to get through the hard parts together. 

And then there was the Fantastic or Insane post where I talked about starting to bridge the gap between Courage being nuts and Courage being rideable. We actually had a lesson where I rode the whole time and he kept his brain in his head. Proggress! 

feb trotting!

And who can forget that one time Lindsey and I went complete nuts and bought a pile of shit from India! 

MARCH

Our relationship continued changing in March. Courage was learning how to trust me, and I was realizing that riding better meant deep ass soreness. 

Plus I started experimenting with dressage saddles and had the most amazing fail contest ever.

march trotting! (early precious sighting)

APRIL

I mentioned I was trying saddles. 

That escalated quickly. I fell in love and sold a good chunk of the hoard to afford it.

On a riding front, things were very mixed. Courage went to his first show of the year and freaking killed it at training level (70% WHAT WHAT). At home, he was a nut job who wouldn't let me catch him in the field.

april show trotting

MAY

May was basically one start-to-finish shitshow. As per the usual, I guess. 

We had out first level debut at a schooling show. Day one was bad, day two was worse. 

After that, I snarked at people who felt the need to run me down and opted out of paying through the nose to go fail at recognized shows.

may trotting!

Disappointing is the best thing I can say about that month.

JUNE

In June, we rallied and tried to go to another show. It. Was. Terrible. 

I struggled with whether to keep Courage. I got laid off from my job. I got super depressed and decked my horse out like he was going to a show.

June trotting

I started seeing some progress on the lunge line from our consistency under saddle, but it was not really making up for the rest of my life.

JULY

This month at least started out on a better note--I wrote a guide to the hot, emotional horse and talked about how the little things added up to game changers for Courage. I also got my job back, which is a game changer for me. 

We celebrated our three year anniversary together and he stepped out of the closet. I apparently failed at getting any under-saddle kickass trotting pictures, but we did canter sometimes.

Years in a row of posting every weekday was wearing on me though.

AUGUST

I was dealing with heavy personal issues and piling internet dumbasses on top proved to be too much to handle, so I signed off for a bit. Even with his struggles, Courage was helping me deal with life. 

I started reflecting on the process of developing a horse without getting bogged down in the daily details. Courage and I revisited our jumper roots (with mixed results). 

August trotting

We ended the month with new sparkles and a new appreciation for the partnership we were building.

SEPTEMBER

September ushered us in to a new era--Courage started pro training. I also discovered that a horse in training expects to be ridden by people who know what they're doing.

I also audited a Tik Maynard clinic that helped me think about how and why I did what I did with Courage. 

september trotting

I also wrote a craft how-to for people who don't craft. It's harder than you'd think.

OCTOBER

We kicked things into gear on the training front--I got myself into lessons and Courage was developing well. I had a family crisis that entailed skipping a lot of barn days and buying a lot of tack. 

We also tried out some new bodywork stuff that went really well. We even signed up for an open show. 

october trotting

What could possibly go wrong? 

NOVEMBER

For reasons that I'm sure are COMPLETELY UNRELATED to 2016 taking a massive dump all over me, November landed me back on the struggle bus in terms of Courage. Our open show was a catastrophe, Courage was increasingly worse at home, and I wasn't coping well. 

I did come up with a plan and ride in a clinic, but things were not good.

November Trotting

DECEMBER

December is pretty anti-climactic. I had an inspired revelation about why my horse was a complete lunatic, but then my poor car got blown to smithereens and I still haven't recovered. 

I was trying to stay consistent with the pro training, but the weather and the horse are stubbornly determined to not cooperate. Courage might be back under saddle this week. Or maybe not til February. 

yeah let's think that one through carefully

I can't say I'm sad to see 2016 go. It's been a pretty terrible year on a lot of levels. Despite all that, I've learned a lot and hey, if you examine my monthly trotting pictures, there is definitely progress shown. 

Onwards and upwards! 

Hoarders: Tack Trunk Edition

Most of you saw and/or participated in the "what's in your tack trunk" blog hop that was going around. Y'all had tidy little inventories of useful things and it was cute.

I was over here like "I have no goddamn clue what's in that giant abyss and I don't really want to find out". As Lindsey can tell you, I've been promising to go through it for like... a month. And hadn't. Oh and yes, it was/is my daily driver. I'd just sort of sit on the lid to squish it down and latch it each day.

But due to some unforeseen circumstances the other day,  I finally had time to go through it. Here's what I found:

bridle rack above

jumbled mess below

 I tried to make a bet with friends that there were 8+ sets of polos in there, but no one would take those odds.

stuff

This photo shows 7 full sets of polos in various states of cleanliness. There are also 3 pairs of polos and there was another full set ready for put on C-rage. That doesn't include two full sets of bandage liners or two full sets of boots.

I also had:

two sad pairs of bell boots

Two whips and a lunge line

eight bonnets

Plus there was this pile:

STUFF

So yeah, that's a quarter sheet, saddle cover, ogilvy pad, mattes shims, and you can just see the tboots. All good things, but possibly not things that actually fit in said trunk. This list actually isn't comprehensive. I had my CO sparkle helmet in a bag with a spare hat and gloves, plus my beater Ovation helmet and winter gloves, plus a couple of mismatched gloves and of course my brush box.

In my defense, I cleaned out the brush box a few weeks back to make room for fancy new brushes, so that part actually wasn't terrible.

I took everything out of the trunk, sorted it by whether it needed to be thrown away, given away, washed and put away, or washed and brought back. Then I threw away the trash, anonymously shoved shit to give away in barnmates' stuff, and tossed the other piles in the back of my car.

WE MUST REBUILD.

Obviously, an empty trunk helps no one, so it was time to start over. 

all I need is one cooler HAHAHA no

Here you see the bottom section of the carefully restocked tack trunk.

That's better

We started with a cooler, then added in the fancy CO for clinics and spur-of-the-moment photoshoots, included the tack cleaning kit (oh yeah, that was in there too), stowed the "bad boy" halter, the lunge line, and a dressage whip. My full set of DSBs (the only acceptable princess boot), one set of liners, and one clean-ish set of polos (much preferred to DSBs), and my mattes half pad. 

And look at that. You can still see open space in case I need to add something else. I do plan to keep two sets of polos and liners in there eventually, but laundry needs to happen first. 

 Add in the brush box and life is looking good.

o0o0o0o0o

 A couple caveats here--Courage's blankets live in an oversized rubbermaid tub outside his stall. You can barely see my wash bucket in the bottom right corner of the picture above--it also doesn't live in the trunk. I have an extensive horse-shit-organization system at home in my garage (which it looks like I'll be going through and cleaning asap).

Oh and I cleaned ALL the leather tack at the barn and reorganized. Now it looks like this:

three bridles, one martingale, one drop

I will admit that it's rather refreshing to actually know what I have around. Plus maybe now I look less like a hoarder? Just try not to think about how all that shit is now somewhere else. (such as in my car. hush you.)

Princess Horse Goes Pauper?

western bit, knockoff bit, sprenger bit

I thought I'd blogged about this, but maybe I didn't. Anyways. In the past year, Courage has decided that he will ALWAYS ONLY EVER go in his one true love bit--a $225 sprenger that I happened to get on a great consignment sale price for $40. That was a great bargain, but I'm not paying $225 for ANOTHER bit and I'm not changing the bit back and forth every time I change bridles.

It took me six months of searching, but I finally found an appropriate knock off this summer (for like $15), and it's been great.

Until now.

Courage had an easy week due to needing some downtime/bodywork and I was online shopping for some stuff for my trainer. One of her requests was a giant, old, heavy single-jointed snaffle. She has one that she uses for starting colts, but she's working with a horse now that is HUGE and won't fit in the normal colt bridle and really needed a 6" version of her favorite bit.

So I found it for $10 shipped online and bought it for her. The only problem was that I also found a 5" version that was also $10 shipped.

And I like bits.

And hey, who doesn't need a colt starting bit for $10?

So I bought it and chucked it on a bridle. I hacked on the buckle in it one day and that was fine, but that proves nothing.

Then the day of our ribbon photo shoot (which was also our first post-bodywork ride), I rode in it.

And omg. I think we have a new bit. Courage has a long history of being weird about contact, opinionated about bits and nosebands, and gaping his mouth open for giggles. Or gnashing his teeth--whichever sounds fun on any given day. He has one of the driest mouths I've ever been around. It's not optimal.

Sprenger left, $10 bit right. IT"S SO FAT.

I rode Courage in his usual loose cavesson with the new bit, and he trotted around sucking on that bit like it was candy. Foam flecks came out of his mouth and some even stayed on his lips.

Can it be? A $10 solution to a $225 problem?

TMT: How Long Do You Ride?

oops

I'm forever telling people that I only ride for about 20 minutes on any given day.

I pulled that number out of my ass.

I don't even know where I came up with it. Really.

The other day, I determined that I was absolutely going to time one of my rides. I looked at my phone. Got on. Rode. Got off. Put horse away. Cleaned tack. Went home.

happy faces!

And at some point the next day, realized I had never actually gotten a second time to make the first time mean anything whatsoever.

Sooooo. No clue. It seems like important information as far as measuring fitness levels, so I'm going to redouble my efforts (if I remember) at some point in the near future. In the mean time, does anyone else have any idea how long they spend in the saddle on an average day?

A Fundamental Shift

Early this spring, I started riding with a new jump trainer. He's an eventer and I'm kinda not, but he gets the OTTB brain thing and did some really good stuff for Courage in just two lessons (and then I started showing and had no dollars and haven't been back, but I will get there. Eventually.)

Anyways. He said something that stuck with me: "Once we get the thoroughbred to work for us, they are very cool horses."

And I remember that when he said it, I was just kind of upset. Courage and I were having lots of problems (like not turning right) (or getting along) and I just wanted to scream "THIS HORSE FIGHTS ME EVERY STEP OF THE WAY".

Which is true. He did.

But since then, we've ridden in several dressage clinics and taken a good number of lessons with our on-site dressage coach. And if I were more competitively-minded, I'd complain about how slow we're going with Courage and how we ought be farther along.

But you know what?

I put a solid dressage ride on Courage the other day. He started out stiff and unbending. We worked through it. Then he got rushy. We worked through it.

Then we were just trotting along in a perfectly fine training level balance to the left, and like... Courage slowed his cadence a little. Kept his stride length the same. Reached down into the contact. Maintained impulsion from his hind end. Swung through his whole back. We were probably going 40% slower than we had been 2 steps earlier, but now my posting took twice as long and we were covering the same amount of ground.

And I hadn't even asked for it. That was Courage, working for me, trying to figure out what I wanted.

Guys. A tear.

What's more, I was able to consistently replicate it going to the left. We aren't quite there to the right yet, but that's ok. We always get things to the left first.

I'm really kind of overwhelmed. Yeah, this year has been slow in terms of progress, but by taking things slow and really showing Courage what I want and helping him understand, we've built a whole new partnership. We certainly still have our spats (and I suspect always will), but there's an element of our relationship that didn't exist before.

You guys. He's trying for me now. And that is very cool.