Catching Up

Just though I would give a quick update. We got about a half a foot of snow today and I live about 25 minutes away from the barn. The roads were really bad so I didn't make it up there today but Ben had a fun day outside in the snow with his buddies. Tomorrow I'll probably goof around in the snow with him a bit.

We were supposed to go to the dressage show at my trainer's tomorrow but her driveway is downhill and when its snowy its hard to get up with a car nevermind a trailer so we probably won't bring Ben down there. Kind of a bummer but its okay, at least its not something big like an event.

I had a dressage lesson Thursday where we started Ben's changes. He got every change every time, even to his bad direction! He was a superstar.

The Area 1 Annual Meeting was last weekend and they decided on Fitch's Corner for the Area Championships again which makes planning next season much easier. I think I'm going to update the Eventing Schedule page again. I've also been putting some more research into the Novice 3-Day at GMHA. That is something that I would absolutely love to do. I think it'd be a fantastic experience for both Ben and me. It sounds like a ton of fun and a great opportunity.

Ben's been getting a little cranky lately, most likely due to too much dressage work. At this time of year, you either do a dressage school or you jump. There's no trail rides or walking down the street to the fields to condition because of the ground and the weather and I'm not going to jump that often so most of the time its dressage. When I do too much in a row he gets cranky and he needs a fun day. So today he got off and tomorrow we're going to play in the snow and then he should be ready to go.

In February we have two jumper shows at Westbrook. We are currently officially leading the standings for high/low jumper I just found out today which I am super excited about. In addition to those shows my trainer is holding her annual St. Jude's Jump-A-Thon. This is always a super fun outing, it will be Ben's first time going, because the weather was bad last year and I just rode my trainer's horses.

We do this to raise money for the St.Jude's Children's Hospital. You get pledges per jump you jump or just flat donations. There are four classes:

1.) Speed

This class is essentially a jump off class of a jumper show over a set course. Fastest time wins.

2.) Fault & Out

This class has a set course. You get two points for each jump you jump. If you knock a rail or get a refusal, you're done. If you go clean, you start the course again. You go as long as you can until you get a fault or time is up.

3.) Gambler's Choice

This class gives each jump a point value. The harder the jump, the more points its worth. For example, a small vertical is worth 20, while a skinny is worth 50. Last year the "joker" fence was a corner that was worth 150. You make your own course, with the goal to earn as many points as possible. You have a set time limit. You can jump each jump once each direction and if you knock it down you don't get the points.

4.) Slalom

This is everyone's favorite. The ring is split down the middle on the centerline. There are mirrored courses on both sides. Two horses on course at once. The one who crosses the finish line first wins. The winner of each heat graduates until eventually there is just two people left. The winner of that heat wins the whole thing. Mind you this is all done in a 20mx50m arena so things get interesting sometimes.

Its a lot of fun for a great cause, so February will be a busy month for us. Let's hope that the weather holds out for all of our plans.

Thanks for reading!

Hat Trick

I can't believe that I haven't written one blog post since the last jumper show! Not much has been terribly exciting, but seriously, it hasn't felt like this long!

Anyway, the second jumper show of the winter was Sunday. Ben and I tried our hand at three classes this time instead of just two. Remembering three courses is hard, but we managed to do it...barely.

It was a gorgeous day, only 43 degrees but beautiful in the sun. We got there, picked up numbers, learned courses, tacked up, and headed to warm up. Ben was awesome in the warm up. He was so calm, and going so nicely in the most gorgeous frame. His canter was to die for: calm, rhythmic, round, balanced, bent. I have been trying so hard to get him to canter nicely at home with no luck whatsoever. It's not on YouTube but I have a video that I can maybe upload later in the week just to show you guys how awesome he was being. I wished we were at a dressage show!

I warmed him up over some fences which he was great for. He was jumping fantastically and snapping his cute little knees up. We then had to wait around for about an hour before our classes started. One of these times we will show up at the perfect time where we warm up and go directly to our classes. I don't know how the hunter/jumpers deal with no ride times all of the time. I am not coping well! :-)

So our first course was outside, diaganol line, diaganol, outside line, crazy sharp left turn to a plank fence, then bending line to the last fence. The jump off was just the first five fences. Ben took a very good, hard look at the first fence. I don't know what it was about that fence but all of the horses took a good peek. So after we got over the uncomfortableness of that fence we rocked around the rest of the course, only momentarily almost crashing through and falling on our faces after the third fence. Oops. Somehow it stayed up and we finished the round clean. Ben made great work of the really tight turn even though I told him too late. He is such a good boy! We rocked the jump off except for one little super deep spot at an oxer and we won the class!

Here's the video of the first round and jumpoff:

The second course is the class we didn't do last time. It was a power and speed class which means instead of stopping after the first course, as long as you're clear, you continue on to the jump off portion without stopping. It makes for quite a long course! In this case the regular course was fences 1-7 and the jumpoff was 8-12. Besides almost pulling the rail off of seven because I made a terrible job of the super tight turn to the fence and the awkward jump we had over the last jump, we jumped clean and won that class too.

Here's the second course:

Our last class was the simplest course yet the one that I almost forgot! It was outside, short side, outside, outside line, diagonal, bendling line to other diaganol, back to the other diaganol. That was probably a terrible explanation, sorry! I jumped the outside line, which we had been doing perfectly in six, but Ben decided he wanted to try to make it five, then changed his mind at the last minute so we had an awkward jump there. I sat up, recovered, then realized I had no idea where we were going. Luckily I rememberd at about the last possible second and you'll be able to see my crazy turn I made my poor horse make! So we finished that up clean, rocked the jumpoff except for almost demolishing the last fence, and won that class too!

Here's the video of the third course and jump off:

So we pulled off a jumping hat trick and came home with three blue ribbons and a champion ribbon. We are currently leading the jumper standings for the series too, so I'm really excited about that. This was really just supposed to be a fun thing to do to get Ben out and keep his head in the game for the winter. I really have a blast doing it, and I can't believe how good my horse is at it!

Next up is the little dressage show at my trainer's barn in a couple of weeks where we will be doing USEA Novice A and USEA Training A. We'll be working on those tests today when I school him. Here's to hoping that his canter is as gorgeous today as it was Sunday!

If I can get a minute, I'll upload those flat videos and post them sometime later in the week. As always, thanks for reading!

*GASP*

The gasp is for my disbelief in the fact that I have waited this long to update on the jumper show, even though it went so well! What is wrong with me?

The day started out at about 8am at the barn. I scrubbed his socks clean in the 30 degree weather, outside, with cold water. Neither of us were thrilled about it but, it had to be done, you could hardly tell his socks were supposed to be white they were so stained. Yuck!

I pulled his mane a little bit more to tidy it up, trimmed the scraggly edges off of his forelock, clipped his bridlepath and fetlocks, and gave him a good groom. He looked pretty good for the middle of December. I never show at all in the winter so by this point, he is usually a huge hairy monster, that looks incredibly scruffy until March. Not this year! Between the showing, and the fact that I'll actually get to ride more than two or three days a week over the winter, we are staying nicely groomed... (We'll see how long this lasts...)

So we were off and arrived at about ten. When we called ahead to see what time they expected our classes to run, they told my friend Hanna that she would probably go around 11:30, no later then 12. So we signed in, got our numbers, I went and learned my courses, then we headed back and she tacked up and went to warm up. Ben just about had a heart attack when she left, because nobody was at their trailers around us either so I tacked him up and threw a cooler over him and took him down to graze by the warm up area. I figured that when my friend went in for her first class, I would bridle him and hop up. That would have given me about 20 minutes to warm up which would have been perfect.

Hanna went in to the holding area for about an hour, and they still weren't on her class. Now it was about one. So she went back out and warmed up some more, then waited another hour. Now it was about 2:30. She finally went in to do her first class, and I got on. I didn't bother to lunge Ben, because he seemed pretty calm and I wanted to experiment a little bit. He warmed up without a single buck despite the psycho mare in the warm up ring with him. I was very proud of his maturity!

The footing in that area was a little sketchy so the jumps were tiny in the warm up and I left them that way. They were maybe like a foot tall, maybe eighteen inches? I was only jumping 2'6" for my classes anyway so even those little fences were fine just to get him in jumping mode. Here are a few pictures of us warming up:

So we went back in to the holding area and waited and waited and waited some more. Hanna still hadn't gone in for her second class at 3:30. To pass the time we took some adorable pictures of Ben and Ella (Hanna's mare).

When Hanna finally went in for her second class, I was supposed to be two classes after that, so I went back outside for about 10 minutes just to get him moving again and popped him over two more fences. Came back in, it's about 4 now, I should be going in to do my class in about five, ten tops minutes. Turns out Hanna accidentally went in to the wrong classes.

So that meant another 7 classes until mine, not 2. I was absolutely not going to make my horse warm up again so we waited and waited and waited, until 4:30, when everyone doing the jumpers demanded to do a warm up even though they weren't technically supposed to. So everybody went in and started jumping jumps and being crazy. I just trotted Ben around the outside of the ring a couple of times to get him used to it and then got out of there because I was about to be run over by girls jumping on their crazy horses. So I was the only jumper who didn't jump every single fence before jumping the course. And we still pulled off a second place in our first class, and a first in our second class!

The first course was pretty simple, inside single, diaganol, outside line, diaganol, outside line, short diaganol. Felt like a hunter course! We went in and jumped around that clean, and then proceeded into our jump off because it was a Table IIb which means you jump your course, cross the finish line, trot or walk, then they signal you to start again, and you do your jump off before leaving the ring. We were clean in our jumpoff too, losing only to some girl who rides at the Hunt Club, on a lesson horse that was a little out of control... I'll take second and in control before first and insane any day!

Here's the videos of the first round. The first video is the first course, and the second video is the jumpoff:

The second round course was a little trickier. It's hard to tell from the angle of the video but fences 6 and 7 were completely out of line. 6 was perfectly in line with the brick wall on the inside. So you had to jump 6 and do some crazy little curvy line to 7 which you can kind of see in the video. We jumped clean around there too, and then did the jump off in 28 seconds, the only pair to go into the 20s and won.

Here's the video of the second round and jumpoff:

They combined the high and low jumpers for scoring so there was about eleven or twelve people I was competing against. I was pretty surprised at how many people came, these are usually quite low key shows.

Overall I was very thrilled with Ben because while we had a few rubs and sticky spots, he was listening, he was enjoying himself, and he was jumping well. Plus, this is the first time he and I have ever done anything like this and there's quite a few remaining shows to iron out the problems. My plan was to do the high jumpers for next time assuming this went well, and it did, however, if there is frozen ground/ice/snow there will be no outdoor warm up ring which means there might be one tiny jump in the holding area that everybody will be trying to use at once. Its not fair to ask him to go in there and jump 3'3" without sufficient warm up so I might stick to 2'6" if there will be no warmup. In March, I'll probably bump him up when we can get out again. Then again, if there's some weird January heat wave, then I'll do 3'3", but something tells me that's not very likely :-)

So we had quite a fabulous time and are looking forward to the next one. We might have a shot at end of series champions, and win a pretty tri-color ribbon and fleece cooler which would be incredibly cool!

Thanks for reading!

Woohoo! By the time we were done it was pitch black outside! A very long but rewarding day!

Clinic Report!

So, obviously I have been slacking off big time on the blogging front... Sorry about that! Life has been busy, I was sick all last week so didn't ride a terrible amount and after I got over being sick the weather was cold and crappy so I didn't ride much.

This past Sunday and Monday I took part in the Suzi Gornall clinic at my trainer's barn. Ben was awesome both days and I really feel like we learned a lot. His flatwork was great, especially Sunday. Very consistent in his frame which is something we've been struggling with for a while now. Monday his flatwork wasn't so consistent but that was his fifth day in a row of moderate/heavy work so he was tired. He got a well deserved day off yesterday and its starting to look like he's going to get another one today due to the rain... Depending on how cold it is I might suck it up and ride anyway.

Suzie told me that he was going around fine but he needed to have more push from behind. She gave me the great analogy that I should  have more of him in front of me then behind me. That really was a great visual. He gets complacent where he is, he needs to spice it up a bit. I didn't realize how ho-hum he really was going until I pushed him way forward and felt how much smoother and powerful it was.

After warming up at will on Sunday, we individually trotted and then cantered over three poles set on a 20 meter circle. I'm sure most people have done some variation of this exercise at some point in their riding and I'm sure everyone hates it as much as I do. But, I don't know why more trainers and more riders don't do it more often because it is the perfect exercise for adjustibility, which a lot of us work hard to achieve. We practiced on keeping straight on a bend, with the shoulders and haunches on the curved line, and lengthening and shortening our strides at trot and canter. I know that this will be going on my list for winter exercises.

Then we moved on to a couple of itty bitty jumps, one on each diaganol, that we jumped on a figure eight. We focused here on bending around the turns, and going for a deep, balanced spot. We discussed the difference between a deep spot and a chip, which is something that we all know, but don't really think much about, so it was good to have that thought in the back of our heads while jumping. Then the jumps went up to about 2'6" or 2'9" and we did the same exercise. I really had to focus on keeping my upper body up and straight, as I tend to keep my upper body too close to his neck. He's a little guy with a short neck! She also gave me the visual to ride every fence like it was downhill. I know a lot of people tend to pretend they are riding every jump uphill, but for me, riding a downhill jump makes me lift my shoulders and keep my body back. We ended on that note for the day.

Monday, the flatwork warmup was similar. Again, pushing him out in front of me and wanting him to want to surge out of the corners. She gave me the visual of doing a shoulder-in in the corner, then straightening, and having him surge forward, and go almost too fast. The idea was after he was surging forward on his own consistently, to then contain the energy by a light contact, so he still had the engine behind, but it would be propelling him up into balance, instead of out into a long, rambly trot. We then cantered over a couple of ground poles set five strides apart, then did the same exercise as Sunday, with the two fences on a figure eight. Ben and I had some serious issues bending around our turns. For some reason, our flatwork goes completely out the window when we jump. Its my fault, I know, but why it gets ten times harder to bend when we're jumping then when we're trotting or cantering a circle confuses me...

The fences were set at about 2'9" and 3'. Ben was jumping fantastically. She used the same analogy of raising my hands and keeping more of him in front for jumping too, which was helpful in keeping my body back in the approach to fences. At the end of the clinic, she told me that he should be jumping 3'6" courses right now because jumping these 'little' jumps weren't enough for him. (Last I checked 3 feet wasn't that little!) I should jump him higher progressively of course, but thats where he should be. Obviously, he can do 3'6" as shown in the gridwork video I posted a while ago but oxers and courses of 3'6"? I have full confidence he can do it, I don't know if I'm brave enough for that just yet!

She also asked me how often I jump him. I told her usually around twice a week, once at my lesson, and once at home. She said that that was a lot, and that instead of jumping twice a week over 3 feet or less, I should be jumping him once a week or once every other week over fences and exercises that would be beneficial to his training, such as lower, wider oxers, exercises over ground poles instead of a jump school, or occasionally jumping bigger courses. She mentioned that there is no use jumping those little fences if its not going to make him any better. Which makes a lot of sense. And honestly, I would love to just jump him once a week but at my jumping lesson, we jump about 18 inches high because the school horses work a lot and its hard on them to jump bigger all the time so even though we have our own horses, we don't jump bigger either. So obviously that can't be his only jump school, so I'll jump him about three feet at home once a week, usually doing some form of gridwork. I don't think the itty bitty jumps he does in the lessons actually count as jumping, but it seems like a waste if neither him or me is learning anything from it.

I also asked her about the ditch issues and she gave me an awesome visual. If I'm galloping along with 50% percent power in front, and 50% power in back, and I come to a ditch, and he peeks and drops back, then only 25% of him is still left in front and thats not enough to jump the ditch. If I go up to the ditch with 75% power in front, even if he sucks back, there will still be 50% left, and that is enough to jump the ditch. I think that schooling in the spring will be a huge breakthrough for Ben, but I do imagine that he will still be looky at ditches so that analogy should be particularly helpful to think about then. It also applies to any other spooky fence or water too. In general, its probably a good thing to think about in front of any fence.

I definitely learned a lot and enjoyed myself over the course of the clinic and I can't wait until she comes back again next year. This also made me super excited for the upcoming season!

A few other notes:

My Point Two vest came in the mail last week and I am so excited!!!

The first schooling jumper show is this Sunday and I recruited my friend to bring her horse and show with me because she used to groom for her hunter/jumper friends and actually has a clue to what's going on! I have been learning everything I can about how to do the jumper thing and I am super excited!

Ben's leg was sliced open and incredibly swollen last time I posted. After three days of cleaning the cut, cold hosing, and handwalking...okay fine walking on his back over his blanket because he was trying to bite me when I was walking him...his leg returned to normal size and now there's just a small, incredibly ugly scab, left on his leg. Also, the hair around it is incredibly silver because there's still AluShield spray all over his leg that will.not.come.off. I love the protection that stuff gives wounds without having to wrap it but I really wish it came off more easily.

I think that is all for now! I will certainly return with the adventures of how the jumper show went. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be jumping itty bitty fences which could be good or bad. Probably bad, because Ben will feel no need to pick up his feet... I guess we'll see! And if any one knows anything about this jumper stuff and wants to share any tips to ease my uneccessary anxiety, please do! I shouldn't be this worried, but I hate not knowing exactly what I'm supposed to do.

As always, thanks for reading guys!

Some Random Things...

Random thing #1:

Ben sliced his right hind open yesterday. This is it all cleaned up, it was a lot worse before I hosed it off. Its a little puffy today, so far he's still sound, seems like its sore though. I'm supposed to have a dressage lesson later this afternoon but we'll see how he feels about it a little later.

Random thing #2:

I may or may not have bought this shirt that came in the mail the other day. And I may or may not have experienced one or more of the incidences noted on it.

But come on, it's perfect right?

And those are both of the random thoughts that I have time for at the moment.

Apparently, I Don't Own A Horse, I Own A Kangaroo

Thought it'd be fun today to do a little gridwork. Set up a double bounce, two strides to a vertical. Kept the bounces super tiny, and started the vertical at 2 ft, then 2'6", then 3 ft, then 3'3", then 3'6". He didn't touch the rail once!

I didn't use groundlines today because Jim Wofford said not to at the Equine Affaire last weekend, and I'm not about to argue with Jim Wofford ;-).

He was SO good! I only got the 3'6" on video and I ran through it at that height twice. I'm just going to post the videos now because I don't have much battery left on my laptop:

And here's a still I took from one of the videos, ignore my complete lack of folding at the hip, I need to shorten my stirrups a hole or two which means I need to punch more holes in my stirrups which is a pain in the butt when you have double stitched leathers with nylon in between. I think I just won the award for longest run-on sentence ever...

Anyway, here it is:

Equine Affaire!

This past weekend was the Equine Affaire in Springfield, Massachusetts. For anyone who doesn't know what it is, it is a 4-day horse trade show with 4 different buildings full of horse vendors. There are also tons of clinicians representing every discipline doing clinics. Jim Wofford was there for eventing this year and he was really fun to watch.

We went Saturday and stayed over to go Sunday too. Long story short I bought way too much stuff!

This is off the top of my head so I'm sure I'm forgetting something but things I bought:

• A really nice, white squishy saddle pad
• Braideez braiding wire (tried these last night and they are so cool!) - http://www.braideez.com/
• A waterproof quarter sheet to ride in the snow and rain with this winter
• Ordered a custom embroidered jacket with Ben's show name on the back
• Ordered a custom figure eight bridle from PinkEquine with neon green padding for cross country (SO EXCITED!)
• A new neon green lunge whip that is awesome!
• A plain black fly veil for the summer
• New show gloves
• A new grooming brush
• A new dressage girth from Lettia. The pins are spring loaded so you only need one hand to tighten. Used it yesterday and I love it!
• New black dressage pad. It has white and black striped piping along the edge and looks SO nice on Ben.
• Jim Wofford's "Training the Three Day Event Horse and Rider." Already started reading it and have already learned so much.
• A new black leather halter originally $105 on sale for $35. It's so nice and is going to be his new show halter.
• Himalayan salt blocks for 50% off because Ben goes through one a month...
• I earned myself a cute free pink Smartpak hat by checking in to their booth on Facebook
• A waterproof helmet cover for riding in the rain with
• New hay bags for the trailer
• Anti-static blanket spray because Ben gets so static-y and he freaks out everytime I take his blanket off, poor thing!
• I got all my wormer for the year on sale too which is great!

I am convinced that there is more but that's all I can remember for now. And for the most exciting news of all:

I won a Facebook contest to win a Point Two Air Vest for 50% off! So instead of $675 it's only going to cost about $330! Still a lot of money, but I would never be able to find a deal like that anywhere else so I am very excited. I will probably get it in a couple of weeks.

I rode Ben yesterday. It's been getting dark here earlier and earlier so by 3:30 the sun was already beginning to set and thats when Ben gets really spooky. That combined with having two days off, he wasn't the greatest but we had a decent flat school. It's a little rainy today and it's going to pour tomorrow. I don't know what I should do in terms of jumping/dressage work over the next couple of days. I will probably jump today, flat tomorrow. Then I have a dressage lesson Thursday and a jumping lesson Saturday. This month is going to be relatively quiet for us. Next month we're doing the Suzi Gornall clinic the first weekend in December, then heading out to the first jumper show of the season on the 11th. I'm really nervous for that because I have NO clue what I'm doing when it comes to the jumper thing... Better start reading the rulebook!