New Niche for RC?

So the Dressage bulletin boards are just abuzz with the new "Rider Tests" for Training, First and Second levels.

Evidently these tests will be added to the shows so that the rider, not the quality of the horse, will be judged.. no scores for gaits or submission.

"How can we compete against THIS!?!?"
"Oh... we're not? Whew"

Which is all well and good in theory, but really, how does one separate the horse from the rider... especially in dressage? There's always a huge outcry of "they just won because their horse is fancier"... which I find is true only in rare cases. Because, let's face it... don't we do dressage to improve our horses' gaits? Ergo, the better rider will be on the 'fancier' horse because s/he can get more suspension and cadence out of that horse than a weaker rider. Conversely, a horse with natural cadence and suspension will look less talented/frustrated/uncooperative with a poor rider, where a talented, more advanced rider may make the horse look brilliant.  So we can conclude, in the end, that dressage scores aren't based solely on the quality of horse that you're riding but the quality of riding that's occurring. Makes sense, right?

Now, I rather like the idea of adding what is effectively an equitation class. I want to know what position mistakes I'm making and this could be an effective training tool. The training and first level tests are well written and more challenging than the existing tests (which would be perfect practice for the championships, am I right?). The second level test is written a little bit like the author has never actually ridden a dressage test, but no biggie.  And, in my opinion, if you have more horse than talent... just skip this class.

Of course there's some internet squawking about using these rider tests to initiate a 'qualifying system' to prevent the unwashed masses from moving up the levels before they are ready. This is America, Land of the Free, where we hate it when people try to tell us what to do. Just look at the ruffled feathers over the helmet rule when it was imposed. Now no one thinks twice about trotting down the centerline in their helmet.  Moral of the story: Change is hard, right?

Of course, I'm not undualy worried about a qualifying system. I have scores in the mid to high 60's through third level, and if that's not good enough, Delight's tearing up the levels earning high 60's to low 70's. We can qualify, no biggie.
But what of people who have done their time in the trenches, so to speak, and don't have a TL-2nd level horse available? Will they get grandfathered in? Would that be fair? Life is so hard...

Obviously, the biggest question here is how fair would it be for me to ride RC in these classes? I mean, this class was designed for him! A horse with average gaits who is easy to sit, obedient, calm and very well schooled... We could rack up some serious points in these classes.
And are there any year end awards for this?

That's right. Just send that ribbon this way....

"Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore'..."

OK, I know it's been a while... But I've been busy.
I mean, I too some students to a show in Wisconsin (which was successful yet exhausting), then had a week long soaking rain (in which London has sulked for another week because his Highness got chilly) and then I caught the flu (or a cold, either way it's not my best weekend).

12 first's, one second, Open high point and Jr/YR high Point

But I'm back. Kinda

I took Tilly out for a ride this morning since she's been so terribly neglected for the last week or so. Of course, she kind of like her rain soaked work free vacation. It gave her a little time to relax and reflect.. and grow a new winter coat. She is now a puffy pony version of herself...

So during my ride, where I attempted to convince Tilly that what she really wants most in life is to be the bestest Dressage Pony Ever, I became increasingly aware of my least favorite of the local fauna.

The crow.
Uh, your title says raven. Crows are not ravens.
Fine, you find a literary reference to crows. Have at it....
... I see your point. 

I mean, who likes crows? They are loud, ugly and - let's face it - creepy. This one chose to settle down in the corner of my arena to eat what I assumed was some sort of disgusting carrion. I was wrong.
As Ponita and I careened by the crow in what is becoming a working canter, I notices that the crow was not, in fact, eating a piece of road kill. the crow had chosen to bring something even worse into my little dressage haven.

the crow was picking apart a wasp's nest.

The wasps were not fans of this.

Tilly and I exited stage left... And I dearly hope that the crow flew off taking it's dinner with it. Otherwise, I might need to go buy some wasp spray.

The Fall

 I know, that title got your hopes up for an exciting post about me parting ways with one of the ponies, didn’t it? Well stop that. Stop that now.

Also, thanks for the vote of confidence.

I was actually referring to the changing of the seasons; what with labor day come and gone, the warm days of summer are waning, giving way to the icy grip of winter.

Stop being so flippin’ dramatic. It’s autumn. Suck it up.

Fair enough. It’s just been one of those weeks, you know? You may have noticed that it’s been a while between posts… That’s because I have had absolutely nothing nice to say in the last week. I’ve been cranky and tired and my horses are trying to self destruct, evidently.

In the last week alone…

London has tried to off himself on something out in the pasture, during the day. He came in Wednesday with a two inch gash on the inside of his right forearm above the chestnut and three punctures on the inside of his left forearm. I walked the pasture up down and around looking for a stick or fence post or one of RC’s lost shoes (I swear they end up in Narnia). Nothing. There wasn’t so much as a a twig that London could have used to hurt himself.

Note the one bell boot on RC. Protecting that last shoe...

RC lost a bell boot and a shoe. Off of different feet… Explain that one to me. I had been so proud of how long he’s gone between lost shoes, even though he did lose a bell boot last shoeing cycle- but he kept the shoe, which was the important thing (and had to wear the Pink Bell Boots of Shame and Sparkles until I can replace the cheapie black ones). Of course he’s due to have his feet done in a week, so if it were any other time, I’d just say screw it and let him go around one shoe short of s full set (it’s a metaphor for his life…), BUT I have a student who would like to take him to the schooling show in Wisconsin this weekend. Who hasn’t ridden him since the last schooling show…. Which is a whole other source of stress for me.

Tilly has developed a girth gal, so she’s had a few days off until it disappears and I can stop feeling like a terrible trainer. Poor pony…

In retribution for the girth gall, Tilly evidently then decided to give Delight a haircut. A week before the schooling show. She chewed off half of Delight’s mane at the unbraidable length of ½-1” long. For half of her neck. There just isn’t time for that mane to grow back to a neat and braidable length before the championships. So I roached the mane off of my sport pony.

Look at the damage Tilly inflicted...

I’m going to repeat that so that everyone can absorb the true horror of what happened.

Immediately post roach.... I'm tearing up.

I roached the mane off of a Dressage Sport Pony.

The shot that explains why just doing hunter braids wouldnt work.
Look at how much pulling that mane would require.

I need a drink. And might possibly cry. I felt a little like those women on TLC’s What Not To Wear who have their hair cut for the first time in 35 years and can’t handle the change.  I just have to keep telling myself that by next spring she’ll have her annoyingly full mane back for that I can show her in lovely little braids.

Of course on Friday and Saturday, a cool front blew through and it rained – Poured, actually. So no riding. I needed some saddle time!

The whole herd takes a run...

But when I turned the horses out in the 50 degree weather, they had a grand ol’ time, which was fun to watch and made me smile again.

Name this move.... RC style

"I'mma Cutting Horse!"

The boys... 

"Whoa. No one saw that..."

My favorite part of this picture is RC just out of frame...

Of course, when I brought the horses in for dinner I discovered that during all of their fun and games, 

London lost a shoe.

Why of course he did.

That Arena Project

So, us dressage people seem to be a tad anal about our arenas. I mean every dressage arena ever has to be the exact same size with letters not-so-randomly strewn about (seriously, who chose the order for the dressage letters?) and evenly spaced so that an arena is an arena is an arena no matter where it is. 

So this summer, I've installed (actually hired out the job) to making a nice big flat riding area for my ponitas. Because, as it would turn out, its quite difficult to really school accurately when just out in a big field. 

The dirt work starts

Woohoo, flat and level!

Finished with the dirt work

Adding markers for letters

Obviously i still need to put up the little white chain that won't actually contain a horse in the arena and letters, but isn't it a huge improvement?

And I really had nothing interesting to post anyway ....

Artificial Aids

So,we all know our basic aids, right? We have our leg, seat, weight, hands, and voice... Then a few artificial ones: whip, spur, double bridle, etc.
I take pride in how quick off the leg my horses tend to be. I like it when you close your leg, the pony GOES with a "yes ma'am" instead of taking a kick-kick-kick-kick-roll-into-the-pony trot kind of transition.
It's all about standards, right?

So, why bring all this useless garbage about aids up? Because I have had to up the ante with RC to keep him fun for me to ride while he's still giving lessons to the kids. Introducing spurs.
Now, RC is a solid guy. He knows his job, he's safe and dependable, and he's fun once he gets going. The downside to Mr Safe and Dependable is that with a few beginner/novice lessons a week, he tends to revert to his western pleasure mode... Which can be fun, but I expect my horses to be powerful and forward and quick off the aids.
Not any of that shuffling around the arena, pretending that he's being forward and obedient when really he's humming some little ditty to himself and tuning me out. So out come the spurs for a little refresher on what 'off the leg' actually means.

I think that my leg is pretty good. I mean, I don't 'accidently' bump RC with the spur, or flop around like a dead fish. It's that attention to details that really makes one a trainer, instead of just a rider. Keep this fact in mind...

Well, my attention slipped a little.

I had a great ride on RC (even got some nice changes!), untacked and bathed him, put him away and grabbed the next pony to work.
Deli's turn.

You know where I'm going with this... I forgot to remove my spurs.
Now, Delight is a very forward thinking pony. I have never had to use the whip or spur to get her forward. I've used the whip to activate a hind leg or encourage her to give through her ribs, but not to drive her forward. I have never used spurs on Delight.

Until yesterday.

Delight has been a little sticky to the left in the last week, so while doing some 10 m circles to changes of direction, I added a little more leg... and incidentally, spur. Delight responded to that little nudge with a rounded POW spur like I had just jammed a cattle prod into her fat little belly.

She leaped forward in one of those both-hind-legs-bunny-hop type moves, then dropped her head and neck out of the frame and gave a few good bronc moments while I held on using only sheer will and ab muscles that even I didn't know I had, since I didnt want to A) hit her with the spur again or B) clamp my legs which has proven to result in increased leaping and twisting.

After a very active 45 seconds, I hopped off Delight (voluntarily) and removed the offending spurs. We had a nice little ride after that....

Lesson learned: Always check your boots. Especially when riding La Ponita.

When Your day Starts With...

Shit. 

Yeah, literal shit, not just "I hate Mondays" type shit. 

Alison, you live on a farm. With horses. You are quite familiar with 'literal shit', as a matter of fact you spend your mornings literally moving 'literal shit'. 

Quite right, italics voice, however, this day started off a little differently. I poured myself out of bed on this fine Monday morning (insert appropriate 'I hate Mondays' look here), pulled on my wonderful bright yellow muck boots (first good choice of the day) and headed out to the barn to feed, turn out then clean only to step in THIS as soon as I entered the barn:

This is not the actual pile I stepped in.
This is a borrowed image representing the actors portrayal
of the incident because my camera was out of battery

 All over my aisle mats... cow manure!
One of your horses could have gotten out and left that mess, you know. 
No. No they could not have. For one, all four horses were happily chowing down in their respective stalls, for the other all horse people are some what obsessed with the bodily functions of their horses...
Are they pooping enough? Too much? Has the consistency changed? Do they need to be wormed? Are they dehydrated? Sick? Is there and impaction? Oh god, it's colic!

Moral of this story is that horse people know their poo.

This, for instance, is horse poo.

What was in my barn aisle was NOT horse poo. It was cow poo. Which means that at some point last night, a cow moseyed into my yard, infiltrated my barn, was herded out and headed home all without waking me or my useless useless dogs.
Comforting.

Now, what kind of person comes to their neighbors farm in the middle of the night to collect their wayward livestock and doesn't come back to clean up the mess left by said livestock? Sigh.

Fortuneatly I had stellar rides on RC, Delight, and Tilly that afternoon, so my day wasn't bad at all.
Though I could have used a nap...

Tilly's First Schooling Show

So, this past weekend was Tilly's first show! And since I'm updating my blog, obviously she didnt kill me, so that's already a successful outing, dontcha think? Anyway, this might be a picture heavy blog since it's the Monday after a horse show, and typing a coherent, compelling story might be beyond my grasp today. 

The tack room, complete with guard poodles

Of course, when we got to the show, we were the only group with a tack stall, which I promptly filled with saddle racks, shelves my saddle pad rack, a mat on the floor, and all of the other odds and ends required at a two day show for three horses. Oh, and the poodles settled right in...

Tilly, wide eyed and wondering where I've brought her

Of course, Tilly hopped off the trailer pretty wide eyed. She was quite talkative all Friday, answering ever whinney she heard. Annoying... but in the grand scheme of taking a young horse off the farm for the first time, bearable. Of course, she was much happier with food in front of her (she's not quite the power chow hound that RC and Deli are, so there's some room for improvement). Friday's warm up was pretty exciting in a large unfenced arena. We did a few laps with her head in my lap and her tail over her back, but after some not so subtle maneuvering on my part, her little brain engaged and she realized that she has to do the exact same thing in this arena as in our arena at home.

"Uh, excuse us, but we're adorable. Why waste time on a pony?"

Saturday morning rolled around way too early for my taste, with a 5:45 start for my crew. Of course I was sleeping in my trailer, so I didn't have as early of a morning as my students... but it got COLD in my little tin can.  Good thing I had two blankets and two little poodle spaceheaters to help get me through the night. And Ellen brought me a giant cup of coffee first thing in the morning. That helped too.

Tilly's first braid job. So far she's unconcerned.

After my student's got through their morning rides, I rushed back to the stalls to get Tilly braided for our 1pm classes. I was a little concerned about it since she was having a difficult time standing still and focusing on anything with all the excitement of the show, but she tolerated my braiding pretty well with only minimal shuffling back and forth.

Tilly's braids: Final Product

After we got braided, we walked over to watch the jump arena before  getting tacked up and ready for our class. Oh, and I still had to learn my test. No biggie. Intro B is only like 9 movements, right?

The first picture of me riding Tilly, ever. 

So, we had a few issues in the warm up arena, like horses passing us, naughty horses lunging just out of the arena, other horses hollering, and a paint. Tilly was confused about that color pattern, though less obviously racist than AT is, so it's all good.

 Saturday's tests were Intro B followed by Intro C, almost immediately.  Tilly was pretty good. Obviously our connection could use some help and we have a few balance issues in the transitions, but we scores a 65% and 66%, respectively.

 Now, there are times in life when you have to stop yourself from saying something super douchey. I had one of those moments when picking up my scores on Saturday. Intellectually, I knew that there were issues. Of course she's not perfect. This was her first show, she was a little tense and looky at the judges trailer and we got hollow in the transitions.... yadda, yadda, yadda, excuses, excuses, excuses...
But as I looked up my scores I had to stop myself from being disgusted with only a 65% in front of my students. "Oh. 65. ugh.... I mean, good pony!"
Way to be an asshole, Alison. Way to go...

 By Sunday, the Tillner was all settled in and had her game face on. We scored a 70% and Intro C and a 65% at Intro B. I'm much happier with a 70%, than a 65%.... But in all honesty, I'm thrilled with how Tilly behaved all weekend. There was no silly young horse shenanigans or losing her little pony mind over seeing something new.

 What a good Pony!!!

 Tilly was looking for her post ride treat.... I was trying to memorize my second test in the ten minutes between my two test.

The poodles guard the ribbon wall after a successful weekend at the horse show!

More pictures, thanks to Kate!

Awwwww Pony trot!

Warm up waiting for the bell...

Free walks... We earn 8's

'Fluffing' my legs after our final halt-salute....
Sure looks like pony is about to get a spanking