Making Dressage Exciting

Just in case you needed some entertainment in your day, enjoy Ben forgetting he is an event horse for a second and going full on rodeo horse:

WarmUp Plans

For about a month now I have been attempting to come up with a warmup plan that really works for Ben. Not just for shows, but for everyday work too.

I've finally got a basic plan that seems to work very well. I use the same framework everyday but with different exercises so Ben doesn't anticipate and get bored.

I wanted to write a post on it so I had a place where it was written down and I could refer to it all the time. Plus, maybe it could help some people out in their warm-ups. That would be a bonus.

I start out by getting on and walking once around the ring on a loose rein, getting a feel for him on this particular day, doing a mental check of my position, making sure I know my plans and goals for the day, checking to see what part of the ring the scary monsters are in today, checking the footing in certain places, etc.

Then I pick up a light contact and work some big, loose 20 meter circles, encouraging bend and stretch. I work on making his walk steps shorter and longer just using my seat and legs. Once he's moving off of my leg fairly well, we move on to some leg yields, still on a pretty long contact. Once he is loose over his back, bending, moving away from my leg, reaching for my hand, engaging his hindquarters, I pick up the contact gradually and walk a few more 20 to 15 meter circles on the new contact. We do some walk-halt transitions in different places to get him listening and his back end up underneath him.

Then we start making smaller 10 meter circles and start with some leg yield head to the wall and leg yield haunches to the wall to get him prepped for the more advanced lateral work. When the leg yields are going well, we move into shoulder-in, counter shoulder-in, renvers, travers. We try to do this twice in each direction. I get lazy a lot, and just do all of the lateral movements against the rail. When I do them in the middle of the ring, however, it improves his straightness so much.  

Once we are doing that stuff well, I move back out to bigger circles and start posting trot. At this point, I'm asking him to be in a long and low frame. But still, he's in a frame, unlike in the beginning of our walk work.

So I do lots of circles and some trot lengthenings, just to get him thinking forward and establishing our half-halts. We also do some trot-walk-halt-trot-halt-walk-trot transitions. Then I start to ask him for a rounder frame and to put himself together more, and I sit the trot. Then we make smaller circles and work on the trot exercises I planned on for that day. I try to stick to my plan, but if I discover something that we need to address right then and there, I will tweak my plans to work on that.

Some of the exercises I'm a big fan of:

-Serpentines. 3 and 4 loop. Sometimes all at the trot, sometimes with voltes on the loops, sometimes with transitions over the centerline (either walk or halt), or sometimes with voltes and transitions. I love them because of the bending and straightening required. Doing the voltes really helps you to work out your crookedness before you have to be straight on the short sides.

-Loops. Such as from F to X to M and from H to X to K. Just like the serpentines, I will do these straightforward or with voltes. One in the corner before the turn to X. One the opposite direction once you get to X. Then another in the corner at the end of your loop in the same direction as the first circle. Love this exercise.

-Leg yielding with voltes. You start on the track in the corner, leg yield off of your outside leg, make a circle, leg yield, make a circle, leg yield, make a circle, until you are at the opposite corner.

At this point I'll also play around with shoulder-in, renvers, travers at the trot a bit.

Then I'll give him a walk break before I work in the canter.

I like leg yielding in the canter a lot. It requires a lot of balance and a nice quiet rhythm which is really good for Ben. Doing a half circle and countercantering to the end of the ring is a great balancer for Ben, although it would probably not be my exercise of choice at a show, because we haven't quite perfected it yet. Walk-canter-walk is really good for getting their butts up underneath them and getting a nice, powerful canter, although, again, wouldn't choose this for a show because it makes Ben cranky.

I usually choose two trot exercises and one canter exercise per schooling session. At that point he's going really well and would be more than ready to put in a really nice test. However, how he goes at home with this method is, I am sure, going to be completelty different from how he acts at a show with this method. I think it is a good start and when we get home this weekend, I will re-evaluate and see what needs work.

The Trials and Tribulations of Mane Pulling...

Today we are going to attempt to pull our mane. It is just something that is going to have to happen. Nothing else is working and it is the only solution. Going up to the barn around 2 today where I'll lunge Ben and do a dressage school. I'm thinking of working alot of serpentines, leg yields, changes of bend in the trotwork and then maybe working a bit on counter-canter or canter-walk-canter for the canterwork.

Then I will untack him, section off a small section of his mane to work on today (thinking of starting in the middle because I feel like that would be a less sensitive area. It's also thickest there.), linimenting his crest to hopefully numb it somewhat, and then pulling it. He needs to man up and get over it.

Now what will probably actually happen is that after the first pull he will flinch and when I go for the second pull, his head will be in the rafters, and he'll be backing up threatening to break the crossties. I will then give up and pull out the SoloComb and then cry for the two hours I am braiding him this Saturday.

But really, I'm going to try it. All I would have to do is pull it really well once and then if I just kept up with it there wouldn't be a problem. If I do about a 3 or 4 inch section everyday until Saturday, the thickest part should at least be braidable and the front and back of his mane is actually pretty nice. You should see how nice my first two, and last three braids look!

I will let you all know how it goes when I get home tonight. Wish us luck!

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Ben was a very good boy today, his canters were really fantastic. Let's hope he keeps this up for Sunday!

So I pulled his mane an eensy teensy little bit today. Got about 1/5 of it done. Of course thats the part near his withers that isn't that thick anyway. But it is certainly a start. He wasn't thrilled at first but I was only pulling out very few hairs at a time. Maybe 4 or 5 tops. He was shaking his head a bit but I just kept going and he got over it for about 10 minutes. Then he was done and I was fine with that. It was remarkably better than it usually is. We'll work on it again tomorrow and hopefully we'll have a semi braidable mane by Saturday.
Or a miracle, that would work too...

Heat Wave

It's hot up here. Really really hot. It's only 10 in the morning here and its already 95 degrees. Yuck! Hot, humid weather and horses do not mix very well.

Yesterday was about 90. I rode Ben for about a half an hour before I had to get off. He was fine of course, barely sweating and not even breathing hard, I was the one who was dying up there...

I always wonder how he gets so fit and I just don't. Aren't I the one who made him that fit? Hmm, things to ponder.

In other news, my horse has been most wonderful lately. It just makes me so happy to see all the progress he is making. When I first got him he was so green and had basically no real training. I couldn't walk once around the ring without him trying to start trotting. And then once we got that sorted out, I couldn't trot down the short side of the ring without him losing his balance and running on his forehand. It's just so amazing to see where he is now, all in the time of just a couple months over a year.

I had a jumping lesson Tuesday. It was fairly simple we just jumped two lines but it was very beneficial to Ben because it just got him jumping well and in a nice rhythm. Jumps were like 2'9"/3' which was also good for Ben because we haven't actually been jumping competition height much. We need more sand for our ring. It has a clay base so if it doesn't have enough sand its too hard to jump on. I have only been jumping at my lessons so we haven't done too much. Luckily, with all this hot weather, the ring has really dried up and its a little softer. It just needs a good dragging and then I can probably jump a bit on it sometime this week.

Anyway, Ben was really good for the lesson and I have a few videos that I'm going to post. There's only 10 days until Apple Knoll, I really have to get our butts into gear, it doesn't seem that close. He could use another two days of trot/canter sets on the loop. It should be dry enough now with all the hot weather.

I also need to figure out what the heck I am going to do with his mane. I can't braid it and I really hate leaving it unbraided. I just feel like that looks sloppy and like I didn't care enough to put the time in. People have mentioned roaching it before but I just can't bring myself to do it. I freak out everytime I have to clip his bridlepath!

I have tried every braid in the book: hunter braids, button braids with bands, sewn in button braids, dressage braids, scalloped braids, and plenty of hybrids between some of those but they either look like crap, or fall out, or both. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to let me know about them...

This is a video of a random lesson I had last weekend where we did gridwork:

Here's us on Tuesday jumping the outside line:

And jumping the outside to the diaganol. Enjoy our half tempi changes at the end, he didn't want to go straight after the jump...:

Mystic Valley Hunt Club Horse Trials Results

Well it went pretty darn well!

On Friday night, we went up to Mystic and walked the courses. They looked pretty good, stadium looked like it was do-able but might catch a few people out in certain places. Cross country was actually the same exact course I jumped at their schooling show last October so I knew that we could do everything on it.

I headed back to the barn, gave Ben a bath, braided him. Ben's mane is impossibly hard to braid. Its thickness is about the equivalent of three normal manes. He will not allow me to pull it, so thinning it that way is out. If I want to shorten it I have to use a SoloComb. So I have taken to thinning it with thinning shears. They work pretty well but Ben's mane is so thick that I could thin out handfuls of hair at a time and you can't see a difference. For a while I was thinning his mane for about 10 minutes everyday when I groomed him but now I have gotten lazy and the days the thinning does happen, its only for about 3-5 minutes. So I guess, in a way, what happened next is all my fault...

His mane looked the best it ever had and I had the fewest braids I have ever had. We usually end up somewhere around upper 20s, low 30s but I have had 38 at one point I believe. Well we only had 16 this time. I was ecstatic. And they actually looked good! So we made him all pretty, put his stretchy hood on, fly sheet on to keep him clean, put him outside. Yes, I put him outside. That's probably another reason why what happened next is all my fault.

Although, here's the thing: I could leave him inside and have him be all clean and pretty when I get there the next morning. But I would much rather leave him outside, have him nice and dirty when I get there, and behave himself at the show. As much as I would like him to look as nice as he possibly can, the quality of our performance is much more important than what we look like. When he is turned out overnight, he is a different horse at shows.

So anyway, I show up to the barn at about 6 am on Saturday morning, bring him into his stall, take his sheet off, unclip the hood, start pulling it off - uh oh... There's maybe four braids left in his mane. I wanted to scream and cry and throw myself on the ground and take the clippers to his mane right then and there. But instead, I put him back on the crossties and rebraided his entire mane in 20 minutes. And they still looked pretty damn good! That is until we got to the show and Ben started flinging his head around and shaking because he absolutely hates to be braided. Thats when my 20 minutes braids started to go flying. By the time we made it to the dressage arena two of the braids were completly out and the rest were flopping around all loose. But hey, what are you gonna do?

So we arrived at the show, I got my packet, and asked the woman at the secretary's stand where I could lunge my horse. She said if I did it before 9, I could lunge in stadium warmup. Well, my dressage time was 9:25 and I only wanted to get on my horse at 9:15. I was not going to lunge him for a half hour. So we walk back to the trailer and I decided that I was just going to lunge him in a corner of the grass field we were parked in. So I lunged him with side reins and he was so good.

My plan was to hop on and go right to the dressage ring, in order to avoid going into the warmup ring with all those other scary horses... So I just decided to warm up in the field where I lunged him. He was very good, we warmed up for 10 minutes, then headed over to the dressage arena. We checked in and went right into the ring to do our test.

It certainly had its good moments and there was no bucking. Unfortunately, there were not enough good moments and we ended up with a 45.5. Ew! The good news: four other people had scores worse than me so were in 12th out of 16th after dressage. 

I will save you the trouble of watching my test by not posting it here...

Next up was stadium. Did I mention that this day was the hottest day of the year so far? And that I was due for stadium at noon, right when the sun was at its worst? Luckliy we were jumping in our xc stuff because xc was 20 minutes after stadium, so I wasn't dying in my jacket!

The stadium course was a vertical, a pretty sharp turn away from the ingate to a forward bending line that was riding in 6 or 7, depending on how much you bent it. The bending line was a pretty upright maximum vertical to a pretty wide oxer. From there you made a sharp turn onto the short side to another oxer. Then you turned down the long side to another oxer, tight bending line to a very forward four strides to a vertical. Up the diagonal, vertical, bending line to a two stride in and out, vertical to oxer. The oxer on the out was maximum and the distance was a long two strides. Final turn down the long side to a two vertical line in a forward five. The course was a lot to think about. It tested riding forward distances while maintaining rhythm and control to make the turns that came up very quickly. A lot of people had trouble balancing these two concepts. They either rode two forward and missed lines and turns or didn't ride forward enough and ended up with ugly chips.

We went double clear. We had one short, deep spot at the vertical before the in and out and a couple of long fences but it felt pretty darn good and is probably one of our better stadium rides. Much better than our lesson last Tuesday!

Here's the video:

Then we headed over to the start box. There was supposed to be 20 minutes in between phases but they were running early so we decided to go. We only waited about 7 minutes. The time was really tight and most people were not making it. It was 400 mpm around a 2000 meter course in 5 minutes. Very tight. The course started out in a sand ring where the start box and the first fence were. The first fence was just a raised log with some hay bales under it. That jumped very well for us.

Then it was a gallop up into the field and a long approach to fence number 2. It is an ascending oxer and its quite small for a Novice fence but they fill it in with hay bales to beef it up and make it more like a hogsback. That jumped just fine too.

Then it was a decent sized up bank, a downhill log, to the ditch. The bank rode great. The downhill hill log jumped great, but downhill things get us excited and we thought it would be a good idea to buck on the landing. Not such a hot idea. I pulled him up in time and all was well, I just would have preferred he didn't do that! And then came the ditch. Ben doesn't understand ditches all too well and he is convinced that scary monsters live in them and he needs to jump three feet over them to stay away from them. Hey, at least he goes!

Upon landing I had lost my left stirrup. If I had cantered up to the ditch, I would have expected the above reaction. However, I came down to a nice balanced trot a bit before and just expected him to pop over it... Nope. So I got my stirrup back and we galloped down to the coops. Two huge coops, a very forward three strides apart. Ben is not a fan. We turned to them and I lost his shoulder to the left. We then went in crooked. I then saw the wrong distance and then I looked straight at the fence. I am sure we can all guess what happened next. Yep, he stopped. So we reapproached and had a much better jump through!

I was mad about the refusal but it was all my fault so I didn't let it get to me. Number 8 was just some ascending rails that jumped great and then we galloped into the woods to the water. It is a big log, a few strides into the water, than a couple of strides out to another log. He was so good! He galloped right up to the log, flew over it cantered right into the water, trotted through it, then cantered out and over the other log! It was awesome! Then we jumped a downhill hanging log with no groundline. The jump isn't big but where it is on the course makes it hard. Then we galloped on to the biggest fence on the course, a big, airy, maximum height and width table. He took off really long but it worked out just fine!

Then we galloped up to a drop fence. It is a small vertical situated at the top of a steep drop off. The drop is probably a good 3 feet. He was excelllent over that. Then we galloped up over a little log pile, up a ramp and off a bank, over a big bench that gives the table a run for its money as the biggest fence on course, a stone wall, and finally the hanging long, back into the ring over the finish. We were obviously over time because of our refusal but I honestly believe we would have made time if we hadn't had it. I was so proud of my horse, he was such a good boy. It was a great outing for the first event of the season! I think we ended up in 11th out of 16 which is not too bad considering we had a refusal. If I didn't have the refusal and made time, I would've placed 7th. Oh well, there's always next time!

Here's the xc video from the second part: fences 15 to the end:

This is the video of fences 1-8, including the ditch and the refusal (although you can't see the actual refusal just the reapproach). I have no idea why in the world it is so blurry so I apologize for that. The ditch is still pretty funny to watch despite it being blurry!:

Ben was pretty hot and sweaty after xc but after getting sponged and scraped he cooled down in about 5 minutes. He was very happy to be home and had a nice roll when I turned him out. He got Sunday off and then we had a pretty decent flat ride on Monday. Next up for us is Apple Knoll Farm schooling trials on June 19th!

As always, thanks for reading guys, I should be updating soon!

One Crazy Week...

So in a matter of one week I have managed to get sick and fall of of my horse twice. Good job Jamie.

In my defense, the second time I fell off was because I was sick. I shouldn't have ridden but I kind of had to... I'll get to that part of the story.

Well, in my last blog post, which was way longer ago than it should have been, I talked about all the awesome things that had been coming up. I had a fantastic birthday and my horse was amazing for the dressage lesson I had on my birthday. Then we were off to Jersey Fresh! We had so much fun! We drove down on Friday and got there about 11:30. We watched a few of the CCI** dressage rides and then we went out to walk the xc course. Jeez, those jumps are huge!

 CIC*** oxer

 CCI***/CIC*** brush table

 Standing next to the CCI*** jump into water

 C element of CCI***/CIC*** second water. It was a brush drop in, a handful of strides in the water to a corner that rode sticky for just about everybody, then out uphill to this massive narrow

CCI***/CIC*** trakehner

On Saturday we watched pretty much all of the cross country. It was a very exciting day and the courses rode pretty tough. Sunday was stadium day and we watched the CCI**, CIC** and CCI*** before heading home.

I got my puppy the Monday after we came back. He has been keeping me very busy. He comes to the barn everyday and he is now great friends with Ben, despite being a little weary about him at first.

Fast forward to this week. Mystic Valley Hunt Club Horse Trials is this Saturday, the 28th. It is the first event of the season for us.

On to the first fall of the week. This past Sunday, I was planning on hopping on Ben, doing a 20 minute warmup, and then popping him over a few cross country-esque things in the ring. We have a skinny wood coop and hay bale covers that look like bricks that I put out. I also laid out a few Blocks on their sides to make a tiny but cross country-esqe fence. We also have a beefy log out on our "loop" that I was going to hop over. We haven't had a chance to go cross country schooling and Ben hasn't seen a cross country fence since October, which is why I wanted to do this.

So I get on Ben and I'm walking around. A couple of the other boarders had their horses turned out in the grass field which is right against the ring fence. They thought if would be a fabulous idea to gallop around and buck and leap. Ben did too. I managed to stay on for about a good five minutes of various bucking, spinning, leaping tantrums until he bucked and twisted and I went off the side. I landed on my back and got a little bit of a "road rash" kind of thing going on but I'm just fine. By this time we had to leave to go horse shopping with a friend and her mom so I just lunged him to make him know he had to work still and then put him away. I planned on riding him when we got back.

Of course on our way back home I started not to feel fabulous. I had a sore throat and a headache and was in no mood to ride. It was feeding time anyway which means I would have had to wait to feed Ben before I left and my dad was at home watching my puppy. We had decided not to take him with us because it was a long drive to where we went to look at horses. Then it rained on Monday so there was no riding that day either.

Bring on Tuesday. I felt like crap. I had such a bad cold, I had been waking up at 5:45 am everyday with my puppy, and I knew I wouldn't be able to make it through the lesson. Of course, this was also my last opportunity to jump a Novice height course with my trainer before Mystic this weekend. I had decided not to go until the last minute, when I started to feel slightly better and then decided to go. So I groomed Ben really quickly and took him down to our lesson. The lesson went pretty well, we warmed up to jump, and then she put the fences up. We go around and start jumping our course. Ben was getting so deep into all of his fences and popping up over them. One of the fences he completely jumped with his shoulders. Yikes. Then we turn to the oxer, the second to last fence. The oxer is the biggest fence on our course. It is really wide and more like a low Training fence than a Novice fence. It is off a really tight turn. So tight, in fact, that I had to circle once because I missed my line the first time. So we get on the line, counting our rhythm in, last minute Ben decides he can't make it, this is going to be too hard, and runs out. Me being all sick and having my equilibrium all off, almost saves myself but then ends up overcompensating and falling off the other side and managing to get my hip clipped by a back hoof.

I now have a pretty little scrape to match the other side. And by pretty little scrape I mean like a quarter of my lower back is missing skin and it hurts to do anything. Anything except ride which is a really good thing.

So I got back on and we did the whole course a lot better! Ben just needed more go to feel comfortable jumping from the longer spot over bigger fences. He hasn't done more than 2'6" since November.

So yesterday we did some conditioning sets. The loop is quite wet and muddy so unfortunately we could not ride out there so we were forced to do our sets in the flat, boring ring. So instead of doing 5 minutes of trotting per set we did 7 minutes to make up for the lack of hills.

I started with 15 minutes of long and low walking, really stretching him over his back and loosening him up. Then we did 7x2x7x2x7 for our trot. Then we walked for another two minutes and did canter for 2 minutes, walk for two minutes, canter for two minutes, cool out.

He was sweaty and breathing a bit, but not too bad and he still had plenty of go. He cooled down in about 3 minutes. He got hosed off and he got his socks "pre-washed" with QuicSilver yesterday. I figured if I washed all the really deep down stuff out yesterday, it would be less work on Friday when I give him his bath. Of course, he immediately rolled and got them all muddy again but what are you going to do?

Today we have a dressage lesson and tomorrow we will do our little cross country stuff that I had planned to do on Sunday. On a normal basis, I don't like to jump horses the day before a show but Ben is certainly an exception. Plus the biggest jump is the coop and its only 2'3".

Tonight will be busy and I will be cleaning tack and packing up my trunk. Not as busy as tomorrow of course. I like Saturday shows because you have the rest of the weekend but I don't like being limited to just the afternoon of Friday to get ready for the show instead of all day Saturday to get ready for a Sunday show. The show is not far so we will be heading up there to walk the course tomorrow.

After 5 days of a cold I feel pretty good today with just a little bit of a residual cough.

Sorry for how incredibly long this post is. I really need to start updating more often so every post is not like a novel...

There will defintely be pictures and videos and if all goes well there will be a helmet cam video too! Thanks for reading guys!

SorrySorrySorry!

Apparently I'm a bad blogger...

Sorry guys, I've just been so busy and really just forgot about the blog!

I will continue to attempt to upload the videos from the combined test on the other post. Maybe if I upload them to YouTube first it will work better. I'll give that a try and hopefully they'll be up on the other post by later on today.

While not much has happened in the riding part of my horse life, we did get some bad news from our barn owner a couple of weeks ago...

In November, she is closing the barn so we have to find a new place to go. At least she gave us 6 months notice, which is very generous!

So we have been barn shopping quite a lot. On another fun and exciting note, I am going to look at puppies tomorrow! I have my heart set on getting a Jack Russell Terrier so I am going to look at a litter of puppies that just turned 8 weeks old.

So lots of exciting things! My birthday is in 6 days, I'm turning 16 so I can finally drive! For my birthday, my parents are taking me down to the Jersey Fresh Three-Day Event. We're going down on Friday and we'll be there for XC day on Saturday and show jumping on Sunday. I'm really excited about that!

Ben and I have been prepping for our first event of the season which is the Mystic Valley Hunt Club Horse Trials on May 28th. It's a really nice, low key event even though it is recognized, with nice open, flowy courses that are good for galloping and going forward. A really nice season opener. They never really have any combinations either and only a few of the fences are maximum height/width. I think if I had to pick the hardest things on the course they would be:

-The ditch only because Ben is slightly ditchy when he feels like it and the ditch is set basically in the middle of a field and you have just come off a log that you jump downhill so you are kind of rolling along. The ditch just seems to pop out of nowhere!

-The water. The actual water is not flagged which is nice because Ben is not a huge fan of it! The water is in the woods and you gallop into the woods and jump a beefy hanging log, turn a sharp corner, go through the water, go out and up a slope two strides to another log. It's a really fun combination but it is one of the harder things on the course

-The last fence. While this fence is really fun, it does not make for a good final fence. It is a decent size hanging log with a dip in it that makes the jumpable part really narrow if that makes any sense. It is also a drop fence that lands you from the grass cross country course into a sand ring where the finish line is. It is also where people are warming up just one ring over. It is actually a really looky fence, especially for the last one on the course.

Other than those few things, the course is pretty easy and those things actually end up riding pretty well. Dressage and warm-up is on sand which is always nice! Stadium is usually on their grass field but is not this year because of the late winter we had its going to be on sand. No complaints from me!

So that is everything that is going on right now. I promise I am going to try to be better about posting!

Thanks for reading!