I Made it

I'm just here to let everyone know that I made it from the UP to PA with three dogs in a little under 18 hours today. Go me, right?

That's right. Over 1K miles today... With three dogs.

Worth it? Hell yes. 

The Ken Borden Clinic

So, over the weekend, I bit the bullet and signed up for the semi-annual Ken Borden, Jr clinic in Rhinelander, WI... a quick three hour jaunt to the south. Of course, I was feeling a little bit broke, which was the one and only reason that I hesitated for a fraction of a second to sign up. But who needs money, am I right?
Anyway, I headed on south for my two rides on Delight.
I was the last rider on Saturday, so I had plenty of time to scope out the other riders and listen to Ken's teaching style again. Even better, I had along my own personal groom/videographer so I could spend more time watching and learning and less time knocking the layers of dirt off of Delight (thanks, Donna!).

I know it's silly, but I tend to think of clinics as pesudo-horse shows, in that I do NOT want to be the lowest or worst one there. I realize we're all there to learn, but I want the clinician to be impressed with me, at least a little instead of one more training level lesson. Petty? Yes. But I recognize that about myself.

As I walked Delight around the arena, I told Ken about what we've done in the last six months and what I'd most like to work on: the lengthenings. I don't think Ken recognized Delight from the spring clinic, and after reviewing my spring clinic video I can understand why. She's really filled out!

Tired pony says "Turn off the lights!"

On day one, we worked on mostly improving the quality of the trot using our canter. Delight has a great canter, but a much less expressive trot than what the show ring is going to ask for... And those darn canter walk transitions. We've mastered the walk-canter transitions from last time, but the canter-walk remins tricky for us....

Ken critiques my shoulder in

Pony say's NO to lengthenings

Temper tantrum turns canter depart

Which gets reined back into a decent trot...

Day two we worked on the lengthenings, using a half 8 m volte with counter bend to the lengthening to the rail... As you can see, she was not a fan of the counter bend....

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!

So I survived yet another Ken Borden clinic... and in doing so missed out on two days of rain here in the UP. I have not seemed to miss out on the first significant snow fall of the year, though, as we are under our first Winter Weather advisory.

Scott is super excited. In fact he spent all morning chasing each individual flurry as it slowly drifted down towards earth, yapping in his joi de vivre (or however you spell that). I can only imagine his response tonight when i kick his furry sheltie butt outside and there are millions of flakes to chase, not just the one or two. His fuzzy little head might explode.

Anyway, the only point of this post was to reassure you guys (like you care),that I will in fact update the blog with pictures and details of the Ken Borden clinic. There will be still shots from the video, and if you're really lucky I might even edit together a few less than stellar and stellar moments in video. Wouldn't that be exciting?

Indoor Day

Yeah... what I would give for an indoor (though, in all honesty, I probably would have given the horses today off anyway). This morning was icky. Pouring rain, lightening and thunder type icky....

I have a habit of lurking on the weather channel app, watching the weather and trying to plan my week accordingly. Which is why I wasted a perfectly nice day yesterday to go and get a load of sawdust to strip and rebed all three stalls instead of working any of the three horses. Now, all of the stalls needed to be stripped and I needed sawdust... the threat of severe storms in the following 24 hours spurred me into action when I might have otherwise waited til the weekend to restock. So I stripped my stalls and did my 80 mile drive to get a truck load of sawdust before work, then drove around the Kewenaw with my truckload of sawdust for a day before rebedding all stalls by flashlight last night.

But the horses had nice new fluffy bedding before the rain started, so it was worth it.

Dog Camp is hard....

 I woke up to a sheltie leaping on my head (why good morning Mr. Scott...) at the sound of rolling thunder in the distance. Both these thing were met with a strong desire to remain in bed by me and the poodles.
Inertia. It sucks...

But, I realized that horses were hungry, and I wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep with Scott flailing around anyway, so up I got. Off to the barn in my snowflake PJ's, new barn coat (with the hood up) and bright yellow rubber boots... I was a sight, to be sure. Stylin' UP style...

The horses were, prediciably, glad to see me. After all, I am the bearer of food and yummy yummy treats. And (though I may be giving them too much credit) they seem to know when they have to work, and today was not that day. Today, instead of being fed, brushed and kicked outside... their stalls were cleaned while they were still in them (only Tilly attempted a minor escape, quickly thwarted by hay).

At least the weekend should be nice, right?

Feed, clean, water... rinse and repeat. Horse keeping in a nutshell, right?
At least I know that my horses are warm and dry today....

Horse Buying 101: Heart verses Head

Easy...this is not about me buying another horse... even though I am now down to three horses (actually two and a half horses, really), so I do have room for one more....

Stop it, Alison. Stop that now....

One of the internet bulletin boards that I frequent always has a thread or two about buying a horse. It can start as a "Hey, critique this horse to be my next dressage... what do you guys think?" and inevitably dissolves into a "I LOVE THIS HORSE! WE'LL SHOW YOU MEANIES WHEN WE'RE PSG CHAMPIONS!".... because - say it with me now- every horse can do dressage. 

Right. 

Now the realm of buying and selling horses has so many rant-worthy topics, I could write a blog... But there's only so much that I care to rant about on any one topic, so I'll have to limit this to a post or two. So what buying pitfall am I going to focus on today?

Buying the horse based on a totally emotional response instead of buying a horse that fits the bill of what you need, rationally. 

We'll have the same relationship as Alec and the Black!

I get it, really, horse's are more like pets and sometimes there's a case of love at first sight. I'm just as guilty of it as anyone else... of course, by this point in my life I can curb that impulse when I see an absolutely adorable quarter horse, or flashy pony. I know that the horse has to be able to do what I want (and do it well) for our 'relationship' to work out, otherwise it's unfair to both me and the horse. So, let's take a little walk through memory lane and see when and where I lead with the heart verses head....

Horse #1: Opie.

Don't we all buy our first horse because we love them? Maybe not as adults, but let's face it, 99% of little girls are madly in love with their first horses, and I was no exception. Opie was a unhappy lesson horse that I felt special to be allowed to ride. She bucked, she darted, she bit (other horses), she kicked (again, only horses), but I loved her. My little 12 year old life would forever be incomplete without her. 

Did it work out? Yes, I did everything with Opie and loved her the whole time. As a matter of fact, I still love Opie, 15 years later... We did barrels, driving, pleasure (poorly), drill teams, trail rides, dressage- You name it, we did it. We were the jack of all trades, master of none. 

Should it have worked out? On paper, buying a green broke, sullen 6 year old quarter horse of questionable breeding for a young, newish rider with no real goals. In hind sight, I think that it was only the lack of any real goal that made our partnership work. If we didn't do well, we just changed tracks. 

Horse #2: Arlberg

Again, the young girls love for the horse outweighed the rational, intelligent side of things. Of course, a shifty trainer doesn't help. So in came the conveniently for sale Arlberg, a 15 year old AppendixQH (yeah, he had a QH great grand parent back there. The horse was 98% TB). 

This time I did have goals. I wanted to do Dressage, and had been told that my beloved Opie would never be able to do Dressage. I would need to have a horse like Arlberg, the polar opposite of everything Opie was, to start my journey in Dressage. And like all teenage girls, I treated Trainer's word as golden and immediately fell in love with tall, lanky, pampered Arlberg. 

Did it work out? Not really. On one hand, I found a new trainer who helped me improve myself and my new horse and earned some decent scores at shows. We even dipped our toes in to the recognized shows to play with the big dogs. On the other hand, my new Dressage Horse was crippled. As soon as the check cleared the bank, the bute wore off and Arlberg moved like any other used up former race horse, so we were introduced to the wonders of modern veterninary science. The other (major) downside of this  was that Arlberg really damaged my confidence. Where I felt invincible on Opie, I never knew when Bergy would 'explode' and run away. 

Horse #3: London

I'll admit, at first I did not love London. I didn't even like London. I distinctly remember the first time I saw him as a working student, taking him up for the trainer to ride and thinking "I'll never own a horse with a neck like that. Look how low it ties in!"

Then when Arlberg tore a tendon while turned out, my trainer more or less said "this is your new horse, don't even bother looking around". He met all of the rational criteria that I needed, and my trainer knew it. He vetted clean (lesson learned with Bergy!). We had the typical love-hate relationship often seen between frustrated beginners and their schoolmasters. I love and appreciate him now, even if he wasn't what I wanted at the time, he was certainly what I needed.

Horse #4: RC

OK, this one doesnt count. He was Opie's first baby and my first foal, of course I love him! But since I bred instead of bought him, I put up with all of his quirks (and probably installed a few myself). 

Horse #5: Delight

Delight's sales ad picture

This time I had a list. I was an adult. I was only going to look at young sport ponies with dressage potential. I looked at hundreds of ads. I called on one, vetted her and brought her home. I liked her when I saw her, but I like her more now that I've trained her. 

Horse #6: Chantilly

This horse I bought for resale, and to fine tune my training. I was actually looking at a different horse, but Chantilly fit my bill even better. I ruthlessly squelched the inner voice that argued for the flashier mare (chrome! so much chrome! and a belly spot!) in favor of Tilly's superior natural gaits. 

I guess the moral of the story is that it's easy to fall in love. I love all of my horses, to varying degrees. But both horse and rider are happier when their goals and abilities are in line with each other.

And for pete's sake, listen to your trainer!

So Long, Farewell...

So this weekend was two days of action packed excitement... Especially after less than a week to recuperate from the championships disaster of 2012 (a episode that shall go down into history, I'm sure).
So to lay down a quick timeline for everyone, I arrived home on monday night. Courtney came up to teach a clinic on Friday afternoon, Mom arrived with Delight in tow Friday morning (ish). Clinic/lessons all day Saturday, then both Courtney and mom left on Sunday morning.

And I took a nap.

The good news is that for my first time organizing a clinic, it went off without much of a hitch... Sure there were last minute changes, and next time we might have to do a Clinician Dinner afterwards so that everyone can chat with Courtney, but I'm going to call it a success. Yay.
I know that my two lessons on Delight and Tilly were eye opening. It's been, oh, a year since my last lessons with Courtney and in that time, I've attended one clinic. This is the downside to living in such an isolated place. But i have another two rides with Courtney in two weeks, so I'm excited.

Now on to the sad news.
London headed south with mom on Sunday. We all knew it was going to happen (well, except for RC), but it was still sad to watch him slowly disappear into the distance. RC spent the better part of Sunday scouring the pasture calling for London... Just in case he was lost. When I brought RC in for dinner, he was very concerned that London wasn't already waiting for dinner in his stall. Poor guy lost his best friend.

Today, RC is less concerned, only emitting the occasional whinny for London and trailing the mares at a respectful distance when turned out. He's slowly forgetting London.... But there was a tough day or two out at the farm.

Gone Country...

Today I took RC for a ride... in his western saddle and dressage bridle. Since I was sporting plaid breeches and paisley mud boots, we sure were a sight.

Side rant: I really wish that daylight savings time would come around again. I'm really irritated by having to wait til 8:30 or 9 for it to be light enough to ride and clean the barn.
Related rant: I really wish that the electric would get reconnected to my barn. How  hard is it for an electrician to stop by to give an estimate? Really people, I'm trying to pay you for a job, not just steal your time! It's next to impossible to function with no lights and a garage door that won't open and close at the push of a button any more. I know, this sounds like a first world problem (and it is, really), but it's really tough to get everything done during daylight what with lessons and my real job and all, not to mention figure out how I'm going to get hay and shavings into my barn...

Anyway, I decided to take RC for a ride this morning because Tilly got worked yesterday and RC needs the exercise... In his western saddle because I didn't want to have to walk all the way back to the house to get his dressage saddle (I actually locked up my saddles when I was out of town, crazy, right?) and let's face it, I'm feeling lazy.
I was a little worried, because RC was trotting oddly last night, so I started our ride with a trailride. London and Tilly were eating their "candy hay" (our square bales are mostly alfalfa. London loves them), so RC and I rode the fence line and even fixed a spot or two. Then I took him down and around the arena, which was too wet to ride in without worrying about pitting out my arena, and finally worked him in the grass below the arena. And we had a fun little w-t-c session.

Finally, I gave London a haircut so he looks like someone loves him, at least a little. He was so proud to have his mane hunter-short again, he had to lead Tilly and RC on a trot around the pasture when I turned the whole herd out.

And then it started to rain. So I went to work.