Had another excellent showjumping lesson last night. And not only because of the knowledge gained, but also because of the chance to see friends I don’t normally see! Always a great perk 🙂
As in lessons before, we worked on getting Foster sharp to my aids. Go means go now, not ‘get up to speed when you’re ready’. Similarly, collect means come back to me now, and not when it’s convenient for you. It takes me a few attempts to get Foster listening, but when I finally do it makes a huge difference!
One rollback, and landing on the wrong lead like a boss
I expressed the need to jump fences that were a little higher (3′ versus 2’9″) because I have felt a niggling anxiety creep in every time I jump something ‘bigger’ these days, afraid that I will get him deep and underpowered to the base of the fence (PS this is a SUPER annoying new development, since we have been jumping 3′ forever, and even up to 3’6″ for a long time). So eventually we worked up to a 3′ mini course that incorporated both rollbacks and long approaches. I was immediately called out on speeding up to the square oxer, as my anxiety took over and I attempted to throw ourselves into the abyss.
It gets said over and over again, because it’s true: creating a quality canter is the key to successful jumping.
Which is to say, not much. After the show, Foster got a whopping 5 days off as a mini vacation for both of us. We returned to work this past Friday, and man oh man, is the pony ever lazy. 4 rides later, and he is still not going anywhere fast.
Two possible theories on why he developed a case of the slows:
1) The weather has been changing from the 80s to the 60s and pony doesn’t like it
2) Pony decided to start a winter coat during his vacation and is hot (but why isn’t he sweating more?)
In any case, I’m hoping Foster gets back to his less-than-lazy self, and give me and my poor calves a break. I do not enjoy pony-club-kicking, and I’m too old for that.
To help things along, I’ll be giving him a Bib clip sometime in the next week. Our next show is two weeks away, and if the past is any indicator, then that weekend it will decide to be 10 degrees warmer than usual, and I want to be prepared. Then depending on what the weather looks like in November, pony will probably get a body clip and I’ll decide whether or not to shave his legs off at that time.
When I was younger, the decision to move up was solely based on whether or not I could get around a course at that level. Our dressage was crap wasn’t pretty, our skills not confirmed, but I could get around a Training level cross country course without any faults, and that was the measure of success we held to.
Merry at the Ark Horse Trials
Upon my return to the realm of competition as an adult amateur, I decided I was fed up with the days of just ‘getting around’, and redefined success as a competitor. To me, success is putting in a dressage test I can be proud of, jumping around a show-jumping course in a non-scary and tactful way, and giving my horse a confident ride over cross country. That is not to say that mistakes cannot be made, but that at the end of the day I am not embarrassed of the way I rode my horse and that he is better for the experience.
Cross country is supposed to be fun! Photo by High Times Photography
Since I bought Foster as a just-turned 4 year old, I have had the reins for his entire career. No one else makes decisions about what he does or when he moves up, though certainly I try to be open minded to advice when knowledgable advice is given. Our first event was at the maiden level (video below), and we trotted almost the entire course, and racked up time faults galore, but I could have cared less. We campaigned at the Beginner Novice level for over a year and a half, as we struggled to find confidence and rhythm on a cross country course. When he cantered around a Beginner Novice track with ears pricked the whole way, and came in over 30 seconds under time, I knew we were ready to move up.
And now as I consider moving him up again, I pause. Foster has now completed 3 Novice level events, and proved he can rock around a harder Novice course and still come in with confidence and spunk. He has schooled Training height fences, and training combinations. His dressage is rocking along, and with some tweaks to my warmup, I hope to break into the 20s soon.
Training Jump, yay!
But.
I know that part of me wants to move up to Training so badly, because I’ve always sort of put it on a pedestal. I hated that I didn’t get to compete more at Training with Merry, and in my mind it is the first real test of a non-green horse. Training level demands bravery, fitness, and finesse in a way that Novice only occasionally hints at. And I am more than eager to prove my horse can answer those demands.
There are still elements of Training that he hasn’t mastered. He hasn’t seen corners, or chevrons. He hasn’t got confirmed lengthenings (granted, two separate trainers have commented that he may never have great lengthenings). So do I trust that when asked, Foster will answer the new fence-type questions?
I’ve been hoping and planning to move up to Training in the spring, but I feel at war with myself, trying to judge if he is ready versus trying to judge whether it’s my ambition just saying he’s ready. But if all goes well, we will conquer lengthenings this winter, and I will find a facility to expose him to more training cross country questions. The latter is tough, because I can’t think of any schooling facilities have corners and chevrons available to practice over. We’ll just have to do our best to prepare, and I will have to trust Foster to continue to be confident in his abilities and my riding. And if it doesn’t go well, we’ll come back to Novice without regret. Because at the end of the day, success is still about him, and not me.
How do you measure success? When do you decide to move up?
We spent the weekend with the husband’s family, participating in a 5k for the Race for the Cure and attending our first doggy birthday party. I think my canine nephew has more friends than I do, and I’m certain he has better birthday parties.
Drake at the doggy birthday party
Anyways, onto today’s musings. Just for fun, recently I’ve been playing with the idea of changing my eventing colors. *gasp!*
But why, you might ask? (I amuse myself by thinking people care)
Currently, my color is green. Green was an easy choice of colors when I started eventing, since I was on an Irish horse and we just weren’t the type to rock out pink or purple or some other ‘girly’ color (no offense if your colors are pink/purple/stardust/whatever, just wasn’t my style!). So I bought a nice green Tipperary chest protector, and that was that.
At the Fork on Merry, circa 2004. These old photos make me cringe!
Over the years, of course, I have started collecting all things green to go along with our color scheme. Green bell boots, green grooming bags, green saddle pads.. you get the gist.
Foster in our green gear, and the same old horrible white Eskadrons before they died
But now that I have a decidedly non-Irish horse, I want to switch it up a bit. I want to add navy. Navy and green, with white accents. The showjumping coat I recently purchased is navy, and I think it looks so pretty against green and white! Of course the designer in me wonders if having a tri-color scheme on a tri-color horse is a bit of a visual overload, before the eventer bit says ‘who gives a crap, I do what I want’. So I invested in a navy sun shirt and a super cute navy/green/white bonnet, and I can’t wait to rock out our new style at the next show!
Navy swag
Eventers out there- how did you come up with your colors? Has it been hard to find gear in your particular scheme? Non-eventers, what would your colors be?
For a change, here are a couple photos of my own horse. We could call this post ‘Artsy Fartsy Photos of Foster Where You Don’t See His Whole Face’. Or something like that.
Foster doing what Foster does best- being muddy (follow me on instagram @brittthebrit if you don’t believe me)
After spending Saturday night basking in the glow of our successful cross country trip, and partaking in Blue Moon and pub food (the best kind), our entire party attempted to get a good night’s sleep and prepare for the last and final phase of the event. The showjumping course consisted of a whole bunch of bending lines and a few rollbacks thrown in for good measure, and seemed like it would ride quite nicely.
When I got to warm up, it appeared to be a circus. Immediately while hugging the rail we encountered issues as another rider blazed up Foster’s bum and sent him (and myself) into a minor tizzy. I tried to regroup, and jump a couple fences, noticing that we didn’t have quite the energy I would have preferred to be jumping with. Since we were several rides out, I decided to let Foster walk around and conserve energy, and when the rider before us went in, we would do a quick hand gallop to get the forward momentum, jump a fence, and go in.
Just as started to put this plan into effect, disaster struck (mildly exaggerating here). I began my canter around the outside of the arena, and noticed a rider playing chicken with me on the rail. In my dealings with this rider (yelling ‘Outside! Outside!’ and attempting to pass on the right as ring etiquette demands), I failed to observe the dog sitting most sneakily just outside the arena. Foster, on the other hand, found the canine highly offensive and promptly threw on the brakes, spinning and throwing his head backwards with impressive velocity, straight into mine. Completely and literally sideswiped by the events, I sat there in the saddle, head in hands, trying to get a grip on the immediate headache that was pounding away under my helmet.
At this moment, J rushed over and offered me water and helped me get a grip on myself. She also, as politely as possible, mentioned that I needed to head over to the arena, and that if I didn’t, I could be eliminated. Great.
With that, I promptly decided I was not going to fall off, I was going to go forward, and in order to do that, I was going to proverbially light a fire under my horse’s ass. I went into the arena and determined to keep my leg on through the entire performance, come hell or high water, and that was that.
Of course we started out by bringing down the first rail. I needed to have him sit up as well as go forward, so that was my fault. Coming around to fence 2, which looked oddly huge, I did my best to lift his balance and get him really in front of my leg, which was successful, but lacked some of the preparation needed for the rollback to fence 3. Â I’m pleased with the way 4 and 5 went, and especially happy with the way the oxer-to-vertical 2 stride rode, since our habit can be to not have enough power into the first element and then have to scramble to get over the second. Turn right to fence 7, another bending line to fence 8, which he left long and got a little flat, bringing down our second rail on course. Rollback to 9, bending line to 10, and done.
Overall, I can’t complain. Half of my division had rails, so I was not alone in my mistakes. For my part though, it’s not the prettiest riding, as I sacrificed a bit of finesse in favor of the forward going ride, but I like the pace set in the video. I know with a bit more preparation I can focus on my equitation, so that will come. And again with fitness, I was still able to come under time in the showjumping phase, even though Foster had run up a mountain the day before. Many, many things to be happy about, and lessons learned for future shows!
Purple tail for the win!
Final Thoughts
As our first recognized show, I thought this weekend was quite successful. A 30 in dressage, double clear cross country, and 2 rails in showjumping leaves us in a great place to improve for our next outing. We both learned a lot, and I laughed a lot, along the way. Here are some of the tips, tricks, and mistakes I learned not to make from the experience:
Not even power cords are safe from Foster’s mouth. His stall must essentially be puppy-proofed for every outing.
Too much blue lotion = purple tail. Snazzy, but not part of our color scheme.
Give more time than less time for warmups, I’ll thank me later.
Helmet cams are awesome, but they have audio- try to say less stupid things next time 🙂
After dressage, it was clear that the pressure was not on to win, and my only goal was to get through what looked like a pretty tough course. Keep in mind that this was Foster’s 3rd Novice, and while we’d been schooling Training level stuff, I still felt daunted by the test of putting everything together.
Before I even got to warm up, I asked B to school me over some fences and basically give me a pep talk before going in the start box. B filled in as student coach occasionally on the dressage team, and I trusted her to give me a both words of wisdom and a positive outlook before going on course. I am so glad she was there to see me off (Thanks B!!!)!
There was a bit of a miscommunication/misjudgment of time leading up to my count down, and unfortunately my time had started before I reached the start box. Nonetheless, I hit the start button on my watch and away we went!
XC time!
The fences I was most worried about were #7, the brush before water, and #14, another big brushy fence as soon as you popped out of the trees that invited a left hand runout. In particular, I knew he would be tired by 14 since we had literally just run up a small mountain, and he might not have as much ‘game’ left to tackle the question.
Enjoy the helmet cam and the sounds of ABBA (Hi, my name is Britt and I like Oldies)! I would have included the real audio, but all you’re missing are lots and lots of ‘good boys’ and my making a joke about the people scurrying becoming roadkill.
Anyways, it turns out I shouldn’t have been worried. I’m proud of myself for riding every fence, and for Foster tackling every element with confidence. According to my watch and the video, we came in 31 seconds under time, which just thrills me that my occasionally sluggish pony can actually make a Novice time easily, and that we could both walk away with a spring in our step! So, so chuffed with my Fosterpants.
With the warmup time debacle, I officially came in with 7-point-something time faults. But who cares, we survived! Sunday, onto showjumping!
Because this weekend was long and certainly adventure filled, I’ll be breaking up this recap into sections. Trying to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome and all that.
Thanks B for the photos!
So we start our journey Friday morning, where J picked us up in her awesome rig to make the 4 hr trip down to Tryon. Minus one instance of yelling at rude drivers honking into our horses’ ears, the drive was rather uneventful. We settled the boys in briefly before hopping on to school some dressage. Foster had a lovely dressage school, and was attentive and extremely supple in the bridle, and I was definitely pleased with his attitude, and truly looking forward to dressage in the morning!
Then we headed out to walk the cross country course.
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YIKES.
From fence 2, it was immediately clear we weren’t at a schooling show any longer. Fence 2 was a tactical question, where the rider had to choose their approach carefully- a straightish approach that required a ride around another fence, or a more direct angled approach. From fence 3 on, the course was max height and held still further questions. A combination at 5A and B, four strides from a barn to a log but with lots to look at surrounding it. A 3’2″ (ish) brush fence at fence 7, two strides before the water. A half coffin at 12A and B, ditch then two strides to a fence. A hairpin turn to fence 13. A rather scary fence 14 that just beckoned for a run-out left. This course was going to demand an active ride, and had little let up in between questions.
I was pretty much terrified. So while nightmares of getting eliminated at the brush fence simmered in my mind, I did my best to ignore all and focus on dressage in the morning.
Luckily, a great friend and former dressage teammate came and visited me Saturday morning, which did a lot to distract me from visions of lawn darting on course. We were having so much fun chatting that I ended up running just a tad behind schedule for the dressage, but still had a nice warmup for the test. He wasn’t quite as supple as he has been the night before, and I think if I had given him 5 more minutes of good work I would have gotten the quality that I wanted. But he was relaxed, and listening, and I felt like he would put in a pretty good test!
And old photo of B and I from our IDA days!
The test itself did end up feeling pretty nice. As I was riding, I knew there were places where I was maybe leaving some points on the table, so I tried to make the test as accurate as possible. I was a bit bummed with the free walk, as it wasn’t nearly as nice as what I have been achieving at home, but otherwise put in a workman-like effort. I tried to remind myself to keep my elbows by my side and practice better equitation, which ended up paying off.
Attempts at equitation
As you can see below, there are parts that were super successful (8 on a canter circle! The work is starting to pay off!) and also- my first 8 on rider (ah, that’s me?!), and Foster’s first 8 on gaits (yay pony!). Also an 8 on the medium walk transition. For the rest, I feel confident that we can bring up the 6’s will soon become 7’s and the free walk will become an 8. The test as is earned us a 30, which is also a new best score for us as a team. Our first 70% dressage score since debuting at Intro when I first bought him!
Sorry for the video quality/don’t watch if you are epileptic!
Whereas at a normal show (i.e, no prize money), a 30 would land me near the top of the leaderboard, my awesome-for-me score landed us in a 3-way tie for 6th place. Sitting at the top were scores of 16, 18, 19, and 20 – a couple of these ridden by former professional riders who are now (I’m told, I don’t know these people personally) too scared to move up to Training. But, whatever! My pony put in a great show and now we were out to tackle the daunting cross country course!
Since I’m feeling particularly wilty today thanks to a very ill-timed cold, I find myself trying to get syked for the coming weekend. Catching up with friends! Pony time! Nice weather! All things to look forward to! And yet, still the little mean thoughts about embarrassing myself creep into my mind.
That’s when it’s time for a pep talk.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m obviously a visual person. While mind over matter is certainly a principle I subscribe to, the quickest and easiest way to regain confidence is to show myself I’ve done it before. Evidence that it has been done is proof that it can be done again. So here are some of the highlights of Foster’s career, my video pep talk for myself!
You know that feeling when you just had a really good lesson? To me, a really great lesson is a mixture of mistakes, so you can obtain the advice that makes the lesson worthwhile, and success. Too much success (not an often occurence!) and you wonder why you paid for the lesson. Too many mistakes, and you get disheartened.
To start with, Eliza hopped on and really loosened Foster up at the base of the neck, which is what we have been striving for over the last few weeks. Lots of changes in direction, and upward and downward transitions insisting that he stay soft and balanced. I was glad to hear (and see) that he was already improving from her training ride, which means I am able to replicate the concept on my own with some success.
Looking snazzy for his lesson in all black
Then I hopped on and we worked on transitions with the soft neck and balanced connection. Lots of very small releases kept him from getting on the forehand or becoming stiff in the trot and canter work.
Afterwards we headed to the covered arena (mirrors!) to run through the Novice B test. For the most part I was able to keep the quality of work the same, though it was a lot harder in the small arena- transitions come up very fast! I even got to watch a video of it all afterwards, which was super helpful in seeing exactly what she was telling us. I’ve got a game plan for every movement, and if I can replicate that ride at the show, I will be very, very, pleased!
Novice B test
As usual, for my own benefit, here are the main points to remember (yeah, there’s a lot):
Warmup: Get him loose in the neck (changes in direction), then collect/balance (transitions between/within gaits), then push forward into the show frame
Rider issues: Engage my core to keep him balanced (and at the walk- I let my hips swing too much!), and elbows by my side! No need to look like a durn duck. Keep the reins short.
Think shoulder-fore down centerline to keep him straight
Miniscule releases to keep him balanced (at canter too!)
Following hand in the free walk
Push more forward in the 20 meter trot circles to show a bit more brilliance
Prepare for every. transition. (Including turns!)
Sit into the canter to trot transition, even if it feels like crap
Stay a hair off the rail in the free walk to medium walk transition, leg yield to wall, using outside rein to keep him together
Leg on in the final halt, don’t let him go splat!
Phew! That’s a lot to remember! (Un)Luckily, our lesson with Doug for tonight was cancelled, so I’ll be practicing the above work instead to really cement it in our brains. Then another jump school tomorrow, light dressage Thursday, and off to the show we go!
Red on the Right 