A Show Recap: Carolina Horse Park and making time (finally!)

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Britt

All braided up and showing off his not-so-fuzzy face!

The show Sunday was a success in many ways. While we did have a bit of a colic scare (not Foster, but his trailermate, Jasper) the supportive community of eventers around us helped us find a vet and eventually send us home safely. We are so glad he is okay and ready to fight another day! We were busy all weekend, seeing lots of familiar faces, including that of a Connemara gelding that my family used to own and breed many moons ago! It is so refreshing to see horses end up in forever homes with wonderful people, and at 18 years young, this guy is going strong! I know because he beat me this weekend! I look forward to seeing this pair again in the future!

Foothills Waterman as a stud at our farm, and this weekend at the show!

Dressage
While there was some tension in our dressage test, we still somehow managed a 32. But the test looked like a giant 7 with a couple 6’s thrown in for the more tense moments, so maybe it didn’t look as bad as it felt. Positive moments included ~~relatively~~ straight centerlines, definitely straight movement down the long sides of the arenas (instead of haunches in!), and a fairly good free walk. We also got straight 7’s in our overall marks, a first for us as a pair! We will continue to work on getting a more active trot and correct transitions, but as always, it’s a work in progress.

Such a ham!

Showjumping
In our warm up, Foster felt really behind my leg, and I was experiencing an odd shooting pain in my right ankle. As a result I kept the warm up minimal. Luckily Foster’s motor and my ankle started to improve as we started our round, and he put in a solid effort to finish with all the rails up and only 1 time penalty point. The first 4 jumps included two serious rollbacks that we lost a bit of impulsion to, which is I think where we didn’t make time. His spots were also not perfect, but at this height I’m not terribly worried. However, I am pleased with my pony for cantering the first fence (no more first fence syndrome!) and getting through almost double clear.

Cross Country
Cross country was definitely the highlight of the show! The course was very nice and inviting, with lots of room to gallop towards the end, and included a sunken road that was so much fun! Foster had a bit of a spook into the water (which is itself quite spooky, being in the dark with an odd reflection in it) but went through the flags and cantered out. I can definitely say that Foster figured out how to gallop, and I finally felt him kick it into gear and feel ~~like Superman~~ confident coming to all the fences. My 1 minute warning beeper went off at the second-to-last fence, and we came in 34 seconds under time– a huge improvement for us! Also… we didn’t get lost!

The ORANGE fence I missed at the last show!

The sunken road

Overall, I am very very pleased with the results. We came in 3rd out of 17 riders and I definitely feel like that he is prepared for Novice- if only we didn’t have to wait till next year to try it! Next weekend we will be heading to the Fork to school their Novice cross country course and I feel like Foster is going to eat it up! So forgive me if I’m a bit quiet this week, and I will post the showjumping video soon and talk cross country on Monday! Congrats to all of the competitors this weekend and thank you to all of the volunteers that put on this great show!

PS if you want to see our photos (thank you High Time Photography!) click here!

Back at home and taking a couple days off!

Learning new tricks

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Britt

This weekend was was one the most beautiful weekends this year. If you have never experienced fall in the Carolinas, you are missing out. The colors on the trees were stunning, and at a lovely 65 degrees, well, you get the idea.

Gorgeous.

Saturday my best friend Nikki came out and gave me a lesson on Foster. Nikki is a lovely rider that traded off with me as student coach in our Dressage Team days, so I knew she would give me great advice. I gained a couple very helpful visualization tips to help us with dressage, aiming to reduce the bracing in the upward transitions as well as lift Foster’s back and increase his swing through the walk.

After about 20 minutes or so of dressage, we switched up tack and played around with fences. Nikki has a good idea of what we have been doing, and went ahead and raised the fences so we could really have some fun. Ranging from 3′ to 3’6″, the course we did included a triple combination (one-stride to a two stride with a 3’6″ oxer) and a heck of a tight rollback to a 3’4″ish chevron fence. I was so proud of my boy for handling everything with good grace, and got another excellent visualization tip that will better my equitation over fences. Nikki then hopped on Foster and hopped over a few fences, giggling over each one as she did! Having not jumped in years, it was great to see her have so much fun!

What are you doing with me today??

After all the fun Saturday, we kept it easy Sunday, with a long and low session that went really well. Then Foster got his bath and out came the clippers! I did a simple trace clip on him, switching it up a bit from last year in that I used more curves than angles.

Foster’s clip last year, more of an Irish Clip with angles

Tonight we will do a not-to-demanding dressage school and tomorrow he will have off. With all these great tips up our sleeves I am really excited about the horse trials this weekend! At the very least I can say we are prepared for success!

I’ll be tidying up the clip job tonight and will be sure to post photos tomorrow!

A Show Recap: Portofino Horse Trials

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Britt

Hey there.

At this point in time, I will admit that I am a little too brain-dead to go into a full blown diagnosis of our show on Sunday. After an exhausting weekend filled with Michael Buble:

Buble, Box Seats, and Big finales- oh my!

and an engagement shoot for a friend:

A preview from the engagement shoot

by the time Sunday rolled around I was straight up exhausted. So I decided we were just going to have fun and see what happened, with our fingers and hooves crossed that things went well.

Well, we had truck issues getting to the show and a very kind friend ended up bringing the ponies out to Portofino for us. So I went way out of order, but luckily the show management was willing to be flexible and let things happen as they may. Thank goodness. Foster felt super relaxed in our warmup, so I rode around for 20 or so minutes before going in the arena.

I have watched the video plenty of times and hashed it all over in my head, but here’s the short version: In hind sight maybe I should have focused on getting him more in front of my leg, but whatev’s. I see plenty of things to work on (I smacked myself in the head when I saw my reins getting long again, what is WRONG WITH ME?!) and some bracing stuff, so all in all, not our best test, but not our worst. So frustrating that again our walk wasn’t up to par until the last couple strides, but good enough to get a 7.5. I think I was being a bit conservative because of the last show when he broke. Anyways, here’s the video, which speaks for itself.

Show jumping was catching a lot of riders out with refusals and what not, so I just decided to go in relatively aggressively (again, Foster was completely blase’ through our warmup but just in case) and get er’ done. He got in a bit deep in some spots and cross cantered a ton (where did that come from?) but because the footing was a bit deep I knew if we stopped we’d never get going again, so we persevered. Clean and clear, but not pretty. Oh well.

I had a tired, hot horse by the time we got around to cross country (PS what is up with the temperature going up 10 degrees on show days?!?) but felt pretty good about the course. Trotted over fence 1 as per our game plan and attempted to rock and roll, but unfortunately never got up to speed because Foster wanted to look at all the funny terrain questions (oh-mah-gerd what is the patch of sand doing there?! and Oh snap! there’s a pile of junk beside fence 3! ahh!) but was a good boy all in all. He hopped over the Novice sized (oh yes, 2’11” fences on a BN course!) fences easily. Not that he shouldn’t have, but still. Here’s the video of our cross country, in which I yell about a certain ‘outrider’ who was wandering around my fences as I was trying to go go go! So I (IMHO) politely was trying to tell people that she was being a distraction and needed to get out of my way! Sheesh!

We ended up 3rd out of 8th, on a 34-point-something dressage score and 5 time faults. I’m pleased and think we are very close! Entry is sent in for another horse trial at CHP on the 10th of November, where we will do our damnedest to make time on both SJ and XC!

Until next time.. keep kicking!

Inconsistency

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Britt

Last night I had the most amazing jump school. I took advantage of having the light still and decided to hop over the 3′-3’3″ fences as originally planned for tonight. For not having jumped anything bigger than 2’9″ in a while, I thought Foster was an absolute champ, and felt forward, straight(ish), and jumping in good form.

Well, I don’t know what happened over night, but when I got out to the barn this morning to school our test, I felt like I had gone from this:

giphy (1)

to this:

Horse Fail GIF

I was sliding all over the place, my fingers were numb, I couldn’t feel my legs- in short, I was spaghetti all over my horse. Poor Foster put up with my ridiculous monkey business for some time, before I realized that I hardly had the coordination to sit, much less do work. Nonetheless we somehow managed to finish with 10 minutes of respectable trot work, but the goal of riding through my test eluded me.

One of the reasons I know I felt like this was just from being a weenie in the cold. I am aware that I have relatively poor circulation in my hands and my pinkies go numb quite quickly in frigid temps, and while this morning did not necessarily fit that bill, it was much colder than what I have been used to. Not a great excuse, but still.

I suspect my breeches were also partly to blame, as they are ones that I haven’t used all year and felt I didn’t have the grip I needed in them. Sunday I will be riding in my new Kerrits Full Seats, which the reviews claim to be sticky sticky sticky. So hopefully that won’t be an issue at the show! Maybe I should practice in them tomorrow… hmm..

Oooh, pretty!

Lastly, I know there are simply days in which I am better coordinated, and vice versa. Do any of you have days like that? I would love to know if I am not the only one!

For now though I will put it from my mind- we were given last minute tickets to go see Michael Buble in concert and I am so excited! So I will leave you with my favorite Buble (and Drifters) song 🙂

A show recap: Carolina Horse Park

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Britt

Well, if we were searching for redemption, we found it… and then lost it. Lost it in a way I will share in a moment, and in a way I can sum up in one quote:

“The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.”

But let’s start at the beginning- thanks to Ali, Foster was able to get to the show grounds the day before and we had quite a nice schooling in the dressage arena, although I noticed he was getting a bit tense in his neck and starting to go crooked again. During dressage the next day I continued to feel this, but got on with it, since you can’t fix everything in one day. We put in a decent test, with some tension and crookedness but otherwise pleasant enough. I was a bit disappointed that we broke in our free walk (normally a solid 8) but happy that we received a 7 on our right lead canter depart and circle, which has been our pain point in the past couple tests. After discussing with a few equine people much smarter than myself, I am going to get his left hock injected again and hope that solves the crookedness issues that are starting to creep back into our work.

Right lead canter yay!

In show jumping I did my best to go in with a get-er’-done approach to the first fence, which he went over quite confidently and then move on with the rest of the course. While he almost jumped me out of the tack over fence 3, he put in a nice round and I am oh-so-proud of my spotted pony. I thought the energy was much better than our last show, and was surprised to hear that we received 19 time penalties. For this level, I thought a forward canter should suffice, barring a few trot strides to allow for simple changes. The time penalty issue seemed to be prevalent for many of the competitors though, so I don’t count it as a loss.

Whee! Foster thinks he’s ready for 2’11” fences!

Cross country is where things fell apart a bit. Foster was a total star and went over the first fence quite happily, and I had the most fun on cross country that I have had in a long time, cantering all the fences without hesitation. Maybe I was having a bit too much fun even, because when I landed from fence 9 I started looking for 10 and didn’t see it where I thought it would be! In the 30ish seconds that followed, I brought him back to a walk, and then a trot, wandering around looking for what I thought would be an obvious obstacle in the middle of the woods- it was bright orange for Pete’s sake! In any case, I laughed it off when I spotted it, hopped over it and carried on our merry way! Just a minor pilot error, and one that I will be laughing about for a long time!

(and no, I couldn’t hear her tell me to turn right! oops!)

So while we didn’t finish where we wanted to (a whopping 40+ time penalties will do that I guess!) I am so pleased that Foster put in nice jumping rounds and did his best. I desperately needed a positive experience after being so bummed about the last show, and this competition was just that. Still more to work on, I know, but nonetheless proud of my boy for redeeming himself and not being phased by his passenger’s nonsense from time to time!

On a more serious note, I have several family members who could do with prayers and positive thoughts sent their way. As great as horses are, our loved ones come first! So if you are reading this and have a moment, please send a quick prayer our way. Thanks for your support!

No news is good news, right?

Posted on September 27, 2013 by Britt

Not much going on in the horse world, as I’ve ridden only once since the last show. While that ride did feel great, I don’t feel over the hump yet. I realized that in my journey to straightness, I have been working less on really bending through our circles, which was highlighted in the judge’s comments. So we worked on plenty of figure-eight’s and balanced transitions incorporating bend. He felt good. Maybe we ~~don’t suck~~ aren’t so bad off after all.

Tonight I may attempt jumping, and see how it goes. The quest to create the scariest jumps ever has culminated in a new monstrosity in the arena, in which the chevron jump had a love child with some barrels and the mixture of plastic and oddness is something I didn’t want to tackle right before the competition. So we will see how tonight goes!

Otherwise we have been busy (as usual) around the house getting the myriad projects I want done accomplished before all of our guests come in a few weeks. Even still, the to-do list is daunting:

Spray paint the doorbell cover to match new hardware
Spray paint the light fixture by the door to match as well
Install new fan in the sun room
Finish painting Carolina Room and hang curtains
Buy new chair for living room
Buy bed for Carolina Room
Paint the annoying piece of wall I missed in the guest bathroom
Figure out why the DVD player doesn’t work in the guest bedroom
Make-over the side table to match the dresser in the Carolina Room
For that matter, paint the darned feet on the dresser!
Get the weed-eater fixed
Apply lattice to outside of sun room

And so on and so forth…

Maybe it doesn’t seem like a huge list, but considering that the husband and I both have 9-5 jobs, a house to keep clean, and oh, not to mention my time consuming horse hobby, finding the time and energy to tackle these projects has been tricky!

Enough with the whining I suppose, let’s get to work!

A show recap: First Jump Syndrome

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Britt

I’ll start off by being honest- I am a bit dissapointed in the way the show went for us yesterday. However the silver lining to this is that there is plenty of room for improvement, and I am prepared to make changes to our approach and try again next time. Fair warning, this post will be long as I try to recall what happened, and if you don’t want to read look for the pro’s and con’s after each phase.

Dressage
I seem to be in the habit of not leaving myself enough time in dressage warmup. This time that was partly due to the fact that I have a nervous bladder (TMI sorry!) and my constant running to the ladies room ate into my warmup. But my warmup (15 minutes total) also included surveying ring stewards in hope that someone could direct me as to when I was going into the arena, or what horse I was following, and even some confusion over having two #15’s floating around.. crazy. Foster of course also chose this particular show to miss his best friend, and the hollering and distraction were not helping us in the short time we had.

Granted, I thought when we got into the arena (aside from yelling down centerline) that maybe he has found his game face. I felt like I rode a fairly accurate test, but the judge nailed us on several movements in the second half. It is interesting to note that I sat the first half of the test and when I thought he was relaxing a bit I started posting, and the scores went down noticeably. Otherwise, I know that there is some resistance in his right lead canter, but his depart was clean and on target- did that deserve a 4? I don’t know. This was the first time in some while where I got a test back and was surprised by the results, and not for the better. Normally I can pinpoint our weaknesses and have a good idea of how a test went, and see the judge’s comments reflect what I felt. This time though, the tension was obviously more prominent than I thought.

Our test.. off to a good start before falling apart!

So from the dressage phase:
Pro’s: 8 on his free walk, which remains consistent, and apparently my sitting trot is passable
Con’s: Too short of a warm-up, tension, and resistance in right canter remains

Showjumping
After dressage was show jumping, which was a good test as it included bending lines, roll backs, and a two stride combination. We had a frantic warm up, not by any fault of our own but apparently by sharing the warm up ring with some crazies. I won’t go into too much detail, but I was the only one yelling inside/outside for passing, and calling my fences, not to mention keeping my horse’s feet on the ground. One woman almost grazed Foster’s flank as she came cantering up behind us, and I has never seen so much bucking, running, and legs flying about as I did in that warm up.

So while Foster behaved (thank goodness) in the warm up, I think I was a bit rattled going into the ring. Enter first-jump syndrome. As soon as I entered the ring I felt the tension in my arms and likewise him become resistant on the bit. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when we had a pretty dirty run out at the first fence. After that though we had a good forward canter through the course. I did get lost from 3 to 4 and lost a bit of momentum, and upon entering 4a and b he ended up chipping in, but I’m not too upset. He left all the poles up and that was that. Here’s the video, which catches us after his run out at fence 1.

Pro’s: Mostly forward canter, clear round that improved as it went on, my leg position and staying up through landing
Con’s: Dirty run-out and allowing my nerves to get the best of me

Cross Country
Thank goodness our cross country warm up was nice. I kept it brief, but took advantage of the quiet and jumped a vertical that had feed bags under it, which we would see on course. He went over everything and we headed to the start box. Out of the start box we had a quiet canter, as I was debating trotting him into the first fence. Because he wasn’t rushing I decided to try cantering it, which ended up being a mistake. Enter more first-jump-syndrome. Another dirty run out left, and we circled back and trotted the fence and went on our way. I brought him back to a trot a couple more times, but he cleared everything just fine. We had a great time on some of the longer canter stretches, and I was able to ask him to move out a bit. I’m not sure that he figured out how to really canter on, or if he just didn’t have gas in his tank, but it was fun anyways.

So we came in with another 20 points for the refusal and 29 time penalties that came from the refusal and trotting some of the fences, but all in all I am OK with his performance on again, a tougher course for the level with several technical and terrain questions.

Pro’s: Improving as the course went on, Making better decisions after fence 1
Con’s: Another dirty run-out, trotting fences and therefore not making time, or even close to it!

So again, it was not quite the weekend I wanted it to be but it was a great lesson in how to approach the next show. I will be sure to give myself more time to warm up for dressage, and trot into the first fences confidently (and with bat in hand) and attempt to nip first-jump-syndrome in the butt! And as always, continue to work on our ‘zen’ and battle tension wherever we can!

Video Critique: Dressage

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Britt

Over the weekend Ali kindly videoed me in lieu of having a lesson. While there is nothing that can take the place of professional advice, it was extremely helpful to have a visual on what our flatwork looks like. The video mostly speaks for itself, but here is a partial critique of myself anyways.

I found watching the video that I was surprised- a few things looked better that they felt, and others the opposite.

Our canter lengthenings leave me with the most frustration. If I feel him coming apart I tend to lower my hands, and I let my reins get long (something that seems to happen throughout the ride). I would also like to see a more precise transition from working to lengthened canter. In the future I think I will practice these after the lateral work to help him swing through his back and get the engine going.

Reins getting a little long in the trot, but happier here with my leg-hip-shoulder alignment

Reins getting a little long in the trot, but happy here with my leg-hip-shoulder alignment

This is better

The lateral work is better than I expected, though the challenge to keep him supple and maintain energy throughout the movements still remains. I am however very pleased to see on video how straight he is moving! Also with my position, my hands tend to be better at the trot but I think I could benefit from a more flexible elbow, shorter reins and lifting my hands slightly to maintain the bit-to-elbow connection. I left out the shoulder-in left in the main video, here it is below:

Leg Yield: Foster is mostly straight, me, not so much

Stepping under in the Shoulder In

In general I will be focusing more on my elbows and trying to wrap my leg around his barrel more. Watching this also really makes me want to pursue getting my knee blocks adjusted to help me keep a longer leg without getting into a chair-seat. Plenty to work on, for Foster and myself!

Compare this to when I first got him- he’s growing up!

On the Glories of “Coaching”

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Britt

I have always loved teaching. Part of this is what led me to tutoring for 5 years, one of my many jobs to sustain the horse habit in college. And then while on the university’s dressage team, I had a few opportunities to coach at shows when our real coach was unavailable. While I cannot take much credit for my teammates’ successes, I found it truly rewarding to be able to help in those stressful 10 minutes before a test and was always super proud when they did well.

Representing NC State at Nationals with the Intercollegiate Dressage Association

Since college I have had few chances to ‘teach’ beyond giving my sister lessons when I return home, and a brief stint of giving lessons to a fellow-boarder before she officially retired her old gelding.

Saturday though I had a chance to not coach, but support Ali as she battled her dressage demons. It was a showdown in the little white box, and I was there to give a few words of advice, but mostly encouragement as she and Baron faced their fears. Ali is a beautiful rider and Baron, a very good boy, so it was no wonder that they brought home a blue and a red ribbon and some amazing scores! 28.2 and a 31- not bad for someone who refers to dressage as ‘the sand box’! I haven’t seen that many 8’s in a long time!

Ali and Baron- a great pair!

While again I make no claim to their victories, it reminded me how extremely rewarding it is to help someone succeed in this sport. Every horse person deals with trials and tribulations from time to time and it is important to lift someone up whenever possible. Since we are normally competing in the same division, our opportunities to help each other at shows are slim to null, so it was great to cheer them on from the sidelines. Go Ali and Baron!

Showing off his acheivments!

Fly Sprays: Canned Cancer vs Essential Oils

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Britt

Fly Sprays: Canned Cancer vs Essential Oils

For all of us equestrians out there, fly spray is a summer staple in your grooming kit. Every year as the temperatures rise, we shell out the dollars hoping those pesky flies, and more villainous horse flies, will give us enough peace to enjoy our rides.

I stumbled upon this link from EventingNation’s blog, and was surprised to see some of the information linking fly spray chemicals to cancer. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, as it seems most chemicals these days are at least slightly carcinogenic. But as my husband and I both have close family members with cancer histories, this article has made me think twice about the brand I use.

Passing along to other equestrians, as it is a well-written article and might make you think twice, too! If you have any good experiences with ‘essential oil’ based fly sprays, or other bug-repellent techniques (such as supplements), please share below!