Maybe Maybe XC Boots

A couple times lately, I've talked about jumping Courage. Or rather not. ;-) But then Amanda did her XC Boot Write up. And Cob Jockey. And I have a boot problem. And then I did a show schedule for us, and realized it was technically possible to make it to some derbies and if we do derbies this year, we're moving up to cross rails, which is you know, ACTUAL JUMPS.

or at least they are the way we jump them

And that almost justifies real XC boots. 

But not quite. 

Sob.

I (barely) kept my hands in my pockets through Riding Warehouse's various sales this winter when I could have gotten a full set of Majyk Equipe boots for $120 shipped. GAH WANT SO BAD. (Not gonna lie--it helped they didn't have white.) 

But some of the terrain we derby on is less-than-ideal and it seems cool to have actual(ish) xc boots and I don't want to tear up my pretty open fronts in a field. Or get the fluffy dressage boots all full of stickers.

too pretty for stickers

 But $120 that I decidedly don't need to spend (at least not on boots. Memberships, on the other hand...)

I got looking around. I really wanted white boots, probably as some sort of psychological overcompensation for being terrified of having to find an acceptable pair of white breeches BY MAY (have I even looked? no). Because you know, thick white boots over attractive non-fatty legs seems WAY SAFER than white spandex+my ass.

Cough. Wow. That went a little deeper than I meant.

you'll note they don't jiggle

 I stumbled across a full set of white woof boots for $40 shipped. They ticked all the boxes, were 1/3 the cost of the original idea, and are already at my house. They aren't glamorous and technie and cool, but they'll protect Courage's legs if and when we get to the crossrails derbies this year, and hey, if the ground ever thaws and I'm riding in the mud, GREAT. 

In Defense of Eventing

photo courtesy of Alli and Dino

I'm very lukewarm about eventing in general. It's certainly not what I want to do right now with this horse and the national/international scene has made a lot of choices that I find questionable at best. My top 2 favorite eventers of all time are both out of the game right now--Andrew Nicholson suffered a broken neck earlier this season and William Fox Pitt sustained a traumatic brain injury (of uncertain extent) at a young horse competition in the past week.

photo courtesy of Alyssa

These aren't young, reckless, first timers making stupid mistakes. We're talking about some of the best riders in the entire world of any discipline, and the sport is THISCLOSE to killing them.

And that's scary as hell.

I'm violating my own personal rule here (when you have something to say about eventers, remind yourself not to say it), and going out on a limb.

Eventing is reckless. Dangerous. Directionless. Ever-changing.

8.7

It offers all the dangers of climbing a sheer rock wall in the wilderness, with none of the safety equipment and adds a vastly-increased risk of head trauma. It involves making a fragile prey animal hurl itself over fixed obstacles at speed while the rider attempts to hang on to anything that keeps them more or less in the saddle. "Style points" refer to desperately clinging on in an inevitable sticky situation instead of any particular definable attribute that you could possibly train for.

photo courtesy of Lindsey

It's a terrible idea, a horrifying concept, and a sport embraced by many around the world.

When I heard about WFP's injury and the hour-long course hold while they stabilized him enough to move him to a hospital, I was tempted to lash out eventing for taking away yet another one of the "good ones".

And yet.

photo courtesy of Carly

Why is safety the most important thing to us in a fragile world where no one makes it out alive anyways? Why does it matter whether I limp sideways into the grave at 93.5 years old with no memory of who I am and who I used to love and who's gone on before versus sliding into it sideways, doing the thing I (hypothetically) love the most?

Eventing is a high risk, hugely irresponsible sport that I could not conscious-ably participate in on a high level. It is sport that you cannot make man or beast do unless they truly, deeply love it.

photo courtesy of 900fbpony

Hats off to you, eventers. May you have the time of your lives, every time. (AND FOR GOD'S SAKE, SLOW DOWN ON THE KILLING PEOPLE THING. I want WFP back. Nicholson is kind of a dick, so I can go either way on that one.)

Polos, Boots, and Leg Protection

so fancy in white polos

As you may have noticed from literally every picture ever taken of my horse, I am a big fan of leg protection and rarely ride without it. What might surprise you is how much thought actually goes in to the whole process for me.

First off, I use leg protection on Courage for two primary reasons. The biggest one is that conformationally, Courage is VERY narrow behind. I tell people that his back legs pretty much come out of the same hole, and I'm actually not joking. Because of how close his hind legs are, interference is a fact of life for us. I think letting my horse interfere and hurt himself is a shitty thing to do, so he wears leg protection.

dressage: the bootless sport!

However, the second reason I use leg protection is a bit more universal--whether jumping or doing dressage, I'm asking him to do things with his legs that he wouldn't normally do on his own and the last thing I want to have happen is for him to sting himself and learn that obedience hurts.

Bear in mind--some noted professionals (Lucinda Green comes to mind) absolutely refuse to use leg protection and there are studies indicating that hear buildup is the number one indicator surrounding lower-limb injuries in horses. To those objections I say:
'1) If I could ride like Lucinda Green, especially on the caliber of horses that LG rides, HAHA well I can't. Just remember that far more noted pros boot up than do not.
2) This is a very valid concern, especially if you live in a hot place. I avoid riding in the heat of the day (flexible job ftw) and make my own value judgments. Your mileage may vary.

contrasting color polos for sportsball

You'll notice I haven't touched on leg support at all. That is for a very specific reason: I call BS on any and all claims that a few strips of leather or fabric or foam is capable of supporting ANYTHING on a 1200 pound animal. No. The physics literally do not make any sense. Stable bandages can help reduce fill in legs if wrapped correctly, but that isn't supporting the horse as much as just moving some fluid around.

Ok, so if we've covered why we use protection, next we need to cover HOW. There are two primary types of leg protection on the market: boots and wraps. There is a huge variety. Jumping horses primarily use boots--open fronts for jumping over things that fall down and closed front for things that do not. Dressage horses occasionally wear boots, but are most frequently seen in wraps. Let's talk about why.

open front jumping boots

When a horse is jumping a stadium fence (with rails that fall down), we want that horse to be hyper-aware that touching a pole is no bueno. Whether it's your 2' stadium round at a schooling show or the Olympics, your score is dependent on rails staying up. The configuration of an open front boot in this scenario allows the horse to feel the rail on his legs if he hits it, but still protects him from an interference injury on the soft tissue of his leg if he were to overreach or stumble.

sometimes you have to use fluffy boots

So if we want the horse to feel stadium rails, why do we cover his legs for cross country? Simple. If your horse hits a stadium rail, it falls. If he clips an XC fence, he's very likely losing hair. It hurts. We don't want jumping to hurt. Horses do tend to respect solid fences more, but the higher consequence of hitting a fixed obstacle needs to be minimized. There are a lot of technical things that go into XC boots--air vents are becoming common and hydro-phobic boots are great innovations for a sport that guarantees encounters with water. I'll leave those descriptions to someone who actually events, though.

black BOT polos

And that brings us around to wraps. You rarely see wraps on jumping horses in the arena and should never see them on XC. Wraps are simply not as stable as boots. Fleece polos especially stretch when wet and tighten as they dry, which translates simply to the potential to slide down and trip the horse (bad) or tighten and injure a tendon (worse). Plus they don't have a hard shell like a boot to disperse the impact of a flying hoof. So what's the appeal?

Aside from being the classiest-looking option, polo wraps provide the most customized and flexible level of protection. They are my favorite for dressage for this reason. They're soft, which never impedes movement, they lay nicely around cuts and scrapes that might be aggravated by a boot, and they provide simple coverage to cushion incidental interference. Quite honestly, for dressage, they are my favorite. Especially with my narrow-behind horse, I love that they are almost flush with the leg and don't contribute to him tripping himself.

That said, polos take longer to roll and wrap and are a pain to wash. They take some skill to put on, though it's not rocket science.

dressage boots

There are also dressage boots, which are generally fleece-lined and have a softer shell. I do have a couple sets of these for busy days, but nothing beats the all-around protection of a polo wrap that covers the horse from just below the knee to just above the ankle.

And that's my basic philosophy of leg protection. Boots and wraps have a very specific function. If we're going to use (or omit) a piece of gear on a horse, I think we need to have a systematic reason for it beyond "they're trendy"*.

polo art!

*Unless we're talking about half pads, which I'm convinced are about 99% trendy anyways. Yes I have three.

PS I haven't covered bell boots at all. In my mind, they are shoe protection, not leg protection, and if you don't have a good understand of what I'm talking about, count yourself very lucky.

PPS As per the usual, I refer to all horses as he because I have a gelding and dislike mares. If that offends you, remember that mares offend me.

DERBY #2: Wherein Asses Are Kicked and Names Are Taken (mostly our own)

Courage is on the property

So that happened.

Ooph. As predicted on Friday, I am deader than a very dead smelling thing that your dog rolled in and prompted multiple baths with anti-odor shampoo. (No one else has beagles? Well, it's a thing. Trust me.)

Good news: it's (mostly) the good kind of dead.

So for reference, this was the first show where Courage basically had to step off the trailer into the dressage warm up and go. Like a show horse. That's how his dressage show next weekend is going to be also, so I figured another ground poles derby would be excellent prep.

dressaging

Anywhoodle. Here's how it went: Great.

Courage hopped off, plunked around warm up, did some nice work, and in we went.

8 BITCHES

It's actually getting kind of fun--instead of being like "dear god please don't die", I ride the horse in the test. We had some good moments (ROUND circles) and some less good moments (free walk does NOT equal rooting the reins out of my hands, horse).

But hey. He's learning. I'm learning. I don't think we got anything lower than a 6 and we nailed an 8 on our final halt, so yay dressage.

THEN.

BEST NEWS.

grown ups

Guess who stands tied to a trailer like a grown up horse?

COURAGE.

Super proud of that.

Anyways. I walked my "XC" course. (I'm trying not to be self deprecating, but it's hardly xc when it's poles on flat ground in a circle.) I actually didn't feel like puking too much, so that was fantastic.

yeah no

Getting to the xc course was a whole other story. We had to go through a dip of death with a ditch at the bottom WAY FAR AWAY from all the other horses. And also we were first, so there were no buddies.

We got within about ten yards of the dip and Courage started running backwards. I spun him around and stuck my spurs in him, he said yes ma'am, and wouldn't you know, the dip of death wasn't an issue at all.

trotting!

And off we went! The pictures don't really capture it, because our photog is used to taking pictures of people who, well, jump. So he shot the obstacles... which aren't that impressive.

cantering!

Still. At our first derby, we walked 60-80%. At this one, I brought him back to walk for his poles until he settled, and then we trotted them. Oh, AND at one point we cantered a few strides and didn't die.

All good things. In fact, by the very end, I (GET THIS PEEPS) ACTUALLY TOOK A HIGH OPTION.

HIGH OPTION

Admittedly, it was a log barely bigger than a pole, but it was outside our comfort zone and we nailed it. That's big for us. Taking risks. Living dangerously. All that.

class of one. #noshame

We finished on our dressage score to win our intensely competitive division (of one). I'm pumped for the ribbon because I'm a satin ho. I'm also pumped to jump double clear and conquer some of those nasty xc demons together.

We're building positive experiences together and becoming a stronger team. It's so much fun. :-)

First Show of 2015

dressage warm up

Whew. What a weekend. I'd drag it out into a ton of multi-day posts because I definitely have enough pictures for that, but I also have a schooling show Wednesday and content waits for no man, apparently.

Let's just jump right in. While auditing the (really fantastic, highly recommend) Jan Byyny clinic on Friday, I had the revelation that no one really likes having money anyways, so I might as well pay for a stall and bring Courage to the show a day early so he could see the sights.

Best. Idea. Ever.

He hacked around and was pretty freaking good.

trotting around the outside

Then came show day. Due to my very large and advanced division needing to get going (ok all two of us in ground poles), I was the very first ride of the day. It was great--I was the first person on the grounds, first in the arena. Everything was calm and quiet.

And OMG YOU GUYS you should have seen my horse. I sure didn't recognize him. I hand walked him once around the arena, hopped on, and like... he was perfect. Rideable. Rateable. Relaxed. Balanced. It was the same horse I had for my completely fabulous schooling ride at home two days prior.

we dressaged

WTF HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE I CANNOT EXPLAIN

I'm not complaining--I was 1000% THRILLED to have that horse. I just had absolutely no illusions he was going to show up prior to actually seeing him.

My goal for dressage was to keep my brain engaged and ride, no matter what.

Courage made it easy. I mean, yeah, it's intro A and there is nothing inherently hard about it. But still. Instead of hanging on for dear life and trying to channel his greenness, I was asking for more and better throughout the whole ride.

you sexy thang

And he delivered.

Our free walk is only so-so at home. I got the best free walk I've had in weeks IN THE FREAKING SHOW RING.

We did get a 5 on one circle because I completely forgot how to ride in the small arena (oops, #dressagebarnproblems), but we got a lot of 7s and even an 8 on our last centerline.

hullo dressage horse

The test felt kickass and it was.

Plus we got 7s on all our collective marks (except geometry. That was a well-earned 6.)

I am so thrilled with this. I can't even tell you. It really didn't matter what our score was (32, if you're wondering). It was just that Courage brought his A game to his first show of the year (also third show of his life) and OMG I know I can't expect that every time, but given all we've been through lately?

It was a moment of "Hold on, you're doing the right thing" that I really needed.

warm up!

On to XC!

Which I informed all my friends they were not allowed to call XC. It was a f****** trail ride.

Because I knew if I thought about it or said anything, my brain would completely implode.

I tried really hard to talk myself out of the nerves, but yeah. It's a good thing we entered ground poles, because I was about an inch away from full on meltdown mode by the time we were tacking up.

Of course, then I put my saddle on and looked at my beautiful blue iridescent Lorenzini stirrups and for a moment, it was really peaceful as I was like "I so love these stirrups and I feel so secure in the saddle with them".

it's really hard to make ground poles look interesting

And then back to brain melt.

It's ground poles. And hacking. And I can do it.

Except not.

I survived the warm up. Courage was tense for like 2 seconds and like "hey look there's horses galloping around" and then he was over it. Totally fine.

Again, my goal was just to use my brain and keep riding the whole time. 

Off we went. I walked the first pole, trotted the second, walked the third. Things we going well. My brain was still screwed in and I was starting to breathe and be like "ok we can do..."

...and the next pole was in between the UBER SCARY JUMP JUDGE and OMG F****** COWS (on the other side of the fence).

Courage spun around as fast as he could and headed for the barn.

I yanked him back around, but failed to put any leg on. We made another very fast and tiny circle and then I was like "I AM NOT GETTING DISQUALIFIED OVER COWS YOU M****** F****** S*** HEAD HORSE" and stuck my spurs in him and then he was So. Polite.

It was never about the cows. We walk/trotted the rest of our course. We had no other problems.

best dressed ground poles horse ever

I even thought about cantering at the end, but I didn't. I felt it was enough of an accomplishment just to finish. Something. Finally.

The truth is, if I started the course with the same grit that got us over that one stupid pole, we wouldn't have had any problems at all.

But the other truth is, it was all I could do to get out on that course and it took until pole #5 to have enough gumption to growl at him and make it happen. That's the sad truth of me and XC. It's why we aren't even trying to be eventers. We were at this show for exposure. And that's it.


I unfortunately blew my tidy lead after dressage and dropped to 2nd after the incident in the field.

But you know what?

I have never been prouder of a second place ribbon in my life. I kept my brain on and I rode. Courage responded well. He's not ready to just pack me around, but he's green (and a jackass) and that won't happen for a while yet, if ever.

We were a team, we both showed up to play, and we can be successful together.

It's a little piece of satin that tells me all this work is worthwhile, and if we keep at it, I won't regret hanging to this special little horse. 

HO BOY XC PICS

Now for sure these would be more exciting if I (or anyone, really) was in the saddle, but here they are!! (All photos by horselessinhalifax)

First jump on the line. Learning to use his neck, yay!

Slightly bigger jump. Starting to jump across instead of up.

Pats for being a good boy

Working on landing over a BN jump. It's not perfect, but not a deer leap.

Possibly the sexiest picture ever taken. Scope much?

We'll get there. We've knocked out a couple of educational flat rides this week and we'll incorporate more lunging over fences today. It's not my favorite concept ever, but it's obviously helping out the little dude. What more could a girl want?

Cross Country Lesson: Keeping Me Humble (and I didn't even ride!)

He's the best at... something... 

After my less-than-stunning crossrails debut at the derby, I thought it was perhaps in my best interests to enter the clinic at the same location the next weekend.

And then shit starting hitting proverbial fans and I thought that maybe instead of me, redheadlins could ride C-rage and all would be well. After all, we had a productive week--he gave me some of his best flatwork yet and I lunged him over a jump to help him learn how to use his back end and jump forward instead of deer leaping.

I guess we could mention that other than hopping over an X a couple of times, he hadn't actually jumped since the deer leaping incident, but eh, what did it matter for a cross rails clinic that I wasn't riding in? To be perfectly honest, I was just hoping the instructor would notice what a rock star my horse was and not let the other "crossrails" constituents hold him back. Hell, I'd probably have to turn down an obscene amount of money just to put my glorious steed back on the trailer to go home, right?

Just rocking his fancy new OTTB pad!

So yeah, obviously nothing went wrong with that attitude. ;-)

About that... Courage came out calm and happy. No screaming, no crack giraffe, just happy grazing and flirting with some mares. Perfect. We saddled up and lins hopped on. They warmed up great. I was super excited to watch them cruise around like badasses.

Of course, the trainer (who has never really seen Courage before) had him start on the same exercise as every body else--walking through ground poles.

So easy

And it sort of all fell apart. C-rage was just not keeping it together. There was flailing and leaping and pissing off and general unpleasantness to the point that the clinician got on and rode around for a good 10-15 minutes. He was able to get through the poles eventually, but my horse was checked.the hell.out.

Ok, well, he's never been the best at poles. No worries. Linds gets back on and they proceed to a tiny little log. I was back to being all pride and confidence because I have jumped little logs and he is totally brilliant at them.

Welllll... We're working on not rushing/flailing/panicking/leaping/etc, so the instructor has lins doing some simple figure eights in front of the log to get the little dude focused on her instead of freaking out. Then they go to the jump and he slams on the brakes. Hard.

Well, ok, kind of surprised him, whatever. Try again. BRAKES AND REVERSE OH HAIL NAW HE AIN'T GOING THERE.

Sigh.

Before the wheels came off

What? The instructor ends up putting him in a halter on a lunge line and having Lindsey get off. And yeah, instead of blowing away his fans with how brilliant he is, Courage got to lunge over jumps, then take a break, then lunge, then stand.

It was the right call--he was able to stand quietly with me in between sessions and watch the other riders go and figure out that he didn't need to have a massive brain melt session. It was incredibly educational to watch the other trainer work with him. Courage was able to walk off that course calmer and happier than he walked on and I have some great homework to really help him improve his mental game and learn to use himself so he can be successful in the future.

The instructor was very positive about him and the two of them really seemed to communicate well. I actually think the lesson was money well spent.

And really, it all makes sense. I've been asking him to step it up to the next level and he isn't quite sure what to do, which is hard when you're an overachiever, don't I know. I think he scared himself a bit deer leaping and he just needs to back off and take things slow again while he gets life figured out and he learns not just how to get through this obstacle, but how to develop a process to get through more and future obstacles. It's a good thing, just not something that most people brag about in public.

Which I guess I just did.

Oh well.

It's the sort of frustrating that just makes me want to go back to the drawing board and try harder. #overachiever

Seeing a theme?

PS Yes there are pictures. Unfortunately, all of my friends seem to have developed a case of "social life", which is severe but not very contagious if you're a curmudgeon. ;-) I'll get pictures eventually.

A Study in Forward 4: Jumping. Whoops.

attention fear gerbils

After dressage, I stuck Courage in his stall with hay for an hour or so so he could just chill out and I could walk the course. I told myself I was calm, but I was steadily moving into brain-panic-XC mode. Yes, I know they were wee tiny cross rails that we can walk over. I didn't anticipate just how bad taking a green horse XC would kick off the panic function and let all the fear gerbils have a party in my brain.

I mean... Courage does open space and trails, no problem. He's been exposed to all the cross country elements, no problem. He jumps, no problem.

Clearly, I am the one with the problem.

Sigh.

Totally unconcerned

I pulled him out of his stall and put tack on. I had a whole new (normal) horse. He was all "O HAI PLAYING JUMP JUMP I AM THE BEST AT THIS". Seriously. Total 180. We walked out to the jump warm up on a loose rein with no antics and no screaming.

We wandered around warm up.

We watched other horses go by.

I did some walk/trot transitions with him and tried to incorporate the little bit of terrain into my riding plan, but mostly I was in full-on brain panic mode "AHHHH GOING TO DIE DO NOT WANT MORE BROKEN BONES AHHHH GIANT SOLID XRAILS OF DEATH."

No.

HULLO JUMP JUMP WORLD

I can't explain it. I am terrible at emotions and this was a straight-up gut response to fear of bodily harm. Between the deer leaping last week and my on going XC issues, it wasn't pretty. I trotted and cantered over the baby cross rails in warm up while redheadlins said things like "LEG ON" and "DON'T PULL" and probably muttered a string of well-deserved expletives about why the hell she spends so much time helping us if I'm going to show up and not ride, but she's too nice to say those things out loud.

always duck when you re-present

Anyways. It was finally our turn to go. The first jump was going down a slightly inclined plane. Not even a hill. I'd walked the course a couple times with Alyssa and we'd talked about how we needed to ride positively, blah blah blah.

I'd like to say I'm writing a book called "Pulling Your Way to Success: The Way Ammies and Green Horses Don't Get Around XC", but the truth is I just had total brain freeze, took my leg off completely and pulled all the way to the fence.

obviously he was terrified

Shocker, he stopped.

We circled around and hopped over it. He landed cantering, so I pulled some more, though I did manage to kick just in time to get him over #2.

Because this was going so well.

We walked our terrain change (crossing a road) and said hello to our fans, but I never really got him in front of my leg. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

He didn't think it looked dangerous, but I said it was

We made it over the next jump or two, but then we had to turn the corner and head towards a field of cows, which is something we are not the best at yet. He took a hard look at the cows (since SOMEONE was neither steering nor kicking), then decided against the jump.

Oh, and he slipped, which was all "DANGER COURAGE ROBINSON DO NOT ATTEMPT". I presented twice and then was like "screw it, not fighting him over a crossrail and BRAIN PANIC WE WILL SURELY DEER LEAP AND DIIIIIIIIE"

pull, pull, pull your horse slowly to a stop

And yeah, I wish I was exaggerating.

So we skipped the jump. We made it over the next one, then the course doubled back on itself. Here's the thing. If you take a smart, older OTTB and tell him that the little black cross rail is dangerous and then don't ever bother to kick and just let him camp behind your leg, you aren't going to "trick" him into jumping the X the other direction on the basis that he doesn't know it's the same jump. He totally does and you are an idiot.

So we skipped it again.

merrily, merrily, merrily he will bail you out

Not my proudest moment. On the other hand, we were (obviously) not in contention to win and we are trying to accrue calm, positive experiences. Maybe next time we'll go for calm, positive and SUCCESSFUL or something crazy.

So anyways. We trot/cantered the rest of the course and he was a total star even though I continued to not kick and usually pull. I don't know why. I can say quite authoritatively that riding backwards isn't incredibly useful, but I think I'd already done that survey before.

So there you go. If in doubt, kick instead of pull.

I guess I'm not sure where that leaves me. In hindsight, I probably should have put redheadlins in the tack for the weekend because she would have gotten him around and I could have seen him do it and maybe calmed down. I didn't do that and I can't change it.

I'm really frustrated with myself for my total inability to just get out there and ride like I know I can. Courage showed up and did great. I'm not sure what more I could expect from a green horse who was totally guessing on what he was supposed to do... like if I ride completely opposite of how I do at home, is he then still supposed to do the same thing or change?

dat ass

It's a fair question. We'll be addressing it this coming weekend. I signed him up for a cross country clinic at the facility and am practicing my kicking skills in the mean time.

PS If you're asking "wtf sprinklerbandit, don't you want to do hunters? If you suck at XC this much, maybe it's time to give it up. Why are you still trying?"

That is a good question.

I don't know.