Show Season Has Arrived!

Show season is finally here! Ben and I will be attending a combined test at Mystic Valley Hunt Club tomorrow and I am rushing around doing a million things because it actually crept up on me a lot more quickly than I expected it would!

However, before I talk more about the combined test I should mention that we attended the last show of the jumper schooling series at Westbrook Hunt Club at the end of March and Ben placed first, first, and third, earning him Champion of the division and Grand Champion of the series!

He won a very nice cooler and a very fancy ribbon. Hopefully his good behavior at the jumper shows translates to our eventing season.

Here are a couple videos from the jumper show:

Class 1, 1st place 

Class 2, 3rd place (we had the fastest time but had a rail that was completely my fault)

We'll be doing Training level at the 2-phase tomorrow and we've been really working hard on our dressage so I am optimistic that we can put in a decent test. Being the first show of the season my only goals are to put in a calm, accurate dressage test and jump a nice, rhythmical stadium round. 

Something I've been recently working on with my dressage trainer is really riding the test. For so long dressage was just about surviving for me because Ben was hot and spooky and would occasionally just start bucking so I didn't dare ask him for any more than he was giving me when he was having a rare sane moment.

Now he is much more well behaved in the ring and I think I can start to ask him for a little more. I need to have the courage to change what is happening if it is not correct. If he's not bending enough, I need to make him bend more. If he needs to go more forward, I need to make that happen. I can't just accept what he gives me anymore and excuse it with, "Oh well, at least he's not bucking!"

There is a little video of him schooling on the flat a few weeks ago here.

I have a dressage lesson this afternoon and then I'll be washing socks, trimming whiskers, and braiding. Unfortunately, it's not warm enough yet for a full bath so he'll definitely be a little dusty! 

My times are pretty early which means I should be home by afternoon time and I will hopefully be able to write you guys a same-day report!

In Which the Connecticut Supreme Court is Ridiculous...

Hey everyone!

I don't know if any of you guys have heard about the ordeal that is currently going on in Connecticut regarding the horse industry, but if you haven't you can find out about it here.

Long story short, there was a minor incident at a Connecticut farm quite a few years ago where a young boy was bitten by a horse, and ever since the family has been trying to sue the farm and get horses classified as "inherently vicious."

Because, you know, prey animals are usually vicious creatures. *Eye roll*

Anyway, the Connecticut Appellate Court ruled that horses were inherently vicious and the Connecticut Supreme Court has voted to support this ruling. This can have some serious impacts to the horse industry in the state from making horses un-insurable to hurting therapeutic riding programs. 

There is currently a petition on Change.org to overturn this ruling and it is very close to its goal; we only need 447 more signatures. If anyone is interested in helping out the thousands of horse people in the state, you can take a minute to sign this petition here: 

https://www.change.org/petitions/ct-supreme-court-overturn-appellate-ruling-that-all-connecticut-horses-are-inherently-vicious-docket-18949

Thanks so much for taking the time to read about it! I'll be around with a proper post soon (spoiler alert: a cute little brown horse may or may not have been Grand Champion of the jumper series...).

Getting Closer!

I finally feel like we are actually approaching spring! The sun has been shining a lot more lately, the snow is mostly melted everywhere, and I got to go on a little hack on the grass track at the barn. Not to mention that the first show of the event season, a combined test, is only a month away!

While we have been stuck in the indoor for the last few months, we have had plenty to work on and I haven't been bored at all this winter. We're still taking regular dressage lessons and Ben has improved leaps and bounds over where he was last fall. He is so much more responsive, is starting to take weight on his hind end instead of dragging himself around on his forehand, and his canter no longer resembles a runaway freight train. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how our dressage tests go this season. 

While we have been having a pretty quiet winter, I did take Ben to a couple jumper shows at the Westbrook Hunt Club over the past few weeks and he has been fantastic! The first one I took him to he placed third, second, and second and was Reserve Champion. The most recent one I took him to, about two weeks ago, he won all three classes and was Champion. He is also currently tied for first in the overall series standings after only attending two of five shows, so if he behaves himself at the last one this Sunday he has a shot at taking Grand Champion. 

Here's some videos from the shows (for some reason, YouTube will not let me embed the videos, so if you click on the links below, they will take you to the videos):

First show, 2/16/14, first class (timed first jump off, third place)

First show, 2/16/14, second class (power and speed, second place)

First show, 2/16/14, third class (timed first jump off, second place)

Second show, 3/2/14, first class (timed first jump off, first place)

Second show, 3/2/14, second class (power and speed, first place)

Second show, 3/2/14, third class (timed first jump off, first place)

I've also updated the 2014 show schedule to reflect what I know so far about our season. We'll attend the last jumper show of the winter on March 23rd, then we're going to head to the Course Brook Farm Combined Test on April 19th, at Training as long as we get a couple of at height jump schools in before that, otherwise we'll just do Novice. I'm also hoping the weather/ground will be good enough to get in a xc school there as well. 

The first full event will be King Oak on May 11th, at Novice. I'm currently trying to decide between Mystic Valley Hunt Club or the Stoneleigh-Burnham Schooling Trials for another Novice run at the end of May. Assuming those two outings go well, we'll head to Larkin Hill in June to contest the Training/Novice and then hopefully run Training at Riga Meadow in July. That's as far as I've gotten at this point, and I have many backup plans in case Plan A doesn't work out for whatever reason. 

I can't wait to get back into the swing of eventing season so I actually have some more to write about and can get back to blogging more regularly! As always, thanks for reading!

Is It Spring Yet?

Winter can be over at any time now. It seems as if it's either incredibly cold or snowing or sometimes both at the same time. Having an indoor this winter is of course great, but I think Ben and I are both looking forward for the weather to break so we can go on a hack, or even just ride in the outdoor arena.

There's currently about 6-8 inches of snow on the ground outside and its still snowing, so I have to skip my barn trip for the day. I'm sure Ben will be perfectly okay with this as long as he still gets his food delivered to him.

We've been continuing to work hard on our dressage and he is really coming along. He's realizing that it is a lot easier to do what is asked of him instead of throwing a temper tantrum. He is also consistently forward which is such a nice change. 

He is absolutely nailing his walk-canter-walk transitions and has even had some stellar halt-canter-halt transitions. He picked this up in about two days once my dressage trainer fixed my position. Go figure. I've been struggling with his walk-canter-walk transitions with mixed success for literally years, so to have them down now is a great feeling. 

We were supposed to head to a jumper show yesterday, but I decided against it at the last minute as I may or may not have severely procrastinated writing a big paper for my Marketing course that was due last night at 11:59pm. I just couldn't justify sitting around at the show for hours waiting for my classes to start when I could have been home making sure my work was in on time! There's another show in a couple of weeks and assuming the weather is decent enough we'll head to that one instead. 

I've been counting down the days until the first event of the season (97...) but its not coming fast enough. I would be happy if it would just thaw out enough to start on hacking and trot sets!

I've been trying to keep Ben in consistent work as much as possible but its been too cold to ride a lot of the time and last week he threw a shoe so we've been lucky to squeeze in a few rides a week on a regular basis. We should be back in business now if it would stop snowing!

He's getting quite chubby from sitting a little more than usual but he's still having a blast playing around outside with his buddies:

A Little Inspiration

You all will be happy to know that keeping up with my blogging is my New Year's Resolution. Let's see how long I can keep it!

The past few months have given me a lot of time to reflect on my riding, particularly at competitions. Obviously, something in my riding needs to change to achieve the double clear cross country rounds that we used to consistently get so easily. 

Don't get me wrong, I think we ended the 2013 season on a great note. But it was Beginner Novice and we still had a stop. I feel like recently I have been right on the brink of finding the one thing that needs tweaking in order to finally get back to the bold, confident cross country rounds that we used to have. 

I got to thinking about the one most important thing necessary when riding, particularly in a discipline like eventing, and that is forward.

Ben is not a lazy horse. In fact, I often have to worry about speed faults. He moves quickly, he moves from his hind end, he covers a lot of ground with his strides. He may be physically forward, but I don't think he is mentally forward. He is always looking around at everything else and preparing to slam on the brakes if need be. He needs to know that this is not an option. He needs to have one, singular focus, and that is the path right in front of him: straight to the jump, straight over the jump, straight after the jump. Jump judges, spectators, dogs, decorations, invisible monsters, and the like should not matter.

So then I began thinking about how to achieve this mental forwardness. Well, how do you achieve forward? You put your leg on! Duh! I never use my leg aid on xc, because I was always convinced that because my horse was going fast, he was going forward. Not true.

Another thing is that whenever Ben tries to stop to look at something he goes sideways first, and then stops. I always attempt to correct the sideways movement first but I never put my leg on to tell him to keep going forward.

Lately I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos of hunter trials and also the European Pony Eventing Championships. These kids are quite incredible. They start off guns blazing, constantly driving forward. The horse are trained to land and gallop on. The horses never think about stopping. The riders don't worry too much about distances, they just gallop strongly down to the fences and a distance comes to them because they have the energy to safely jump from any spot. 

Now, not every horse needs this kind of ride and not every horse will tolerate it either. Ben, however, needs this kind of ride. He needs to know that the only option is up and over. I need to put my leg on and actively use it, because he is trained to know that leg on = go forward. Why did I never think of this before?

Here's a couple videos that demonstrate a bit what I'm talking about:

So obviously I won't know if it works until we get out there this spring, but I definitely am hopeful about this and I really think he just needs an overall more aggressive, active ride instead of me passively sitting there waiting for him to do something bad. 

Only time will tell!

(Can we tell I'm already getting cabin fever and its only January?)

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

The horse department of my life has finally settled down enough after a whirlwind of activity over the last couple of months which means I can finally sit down and write all about the new and exciting stuff that's been going on!

About a month and a half ago I moved Ben to a new barn. I absolutely LOVE this barn. For starters, it is considerably closer to my house so what used to be a 30 minute trip one way is now just under 15 minutes. I don't even have to get on the highway to get to my boy now!

Its also full board which I have never truly had and it sure is nice not to have to muck a stall and scrub water buckets every day. His stall is 10'x15' so he has plenty of room to hang out and he's turned out every day in a big grass field with a couple of buddies that he adores, one of which is a huge Percheron that has adopted Ben as his own.

There's also a huge sand outdoor, an indoor which is probably the greatest thing I can imagine, a grass field adjacent to the outdoor that we're allowed to ride on, a grass track that runs around the paddocks and is ideal for trot and gallop sets, and access to two sets of fields, hills, and trails, one which is right out the back of the property and the other which is a short hack down the quiet road. Its like an eventer's paradise!

I've also started riding with the dressage trainer there who is incredible and has helped me with more than I could ever dream of in just three lessons. Its also great having a whole group of incredibly awesome people and horses around as there is always somebody to ride with, something I've also never had before. There is a lot more motivation to ride in 25 degree weather when you have other people to commiserate with!

To top it all off, Ben is the happiest I have ever seen him. He's never been turned out in a group, which I think he really enjoys. He loves to play and I think being allowed to goof off and get all of that out of his system during the day makes him much more agreeable when its time to ride him. He went from being this lazy, stubborn, cranky horse on the flat to a lovely, forward, sensitive, responsive horse within a day or two of being at the new place. His leg yields are great, his canter has improved leaps and bounds, and he seems quite happy in his work.

We've been keeping things pretty low key since we moved here, mostly working on our dressage, though we did venture to a little schooling jumper show for fun, and are planning to attend a few more throughout the winter.

I am so looking forward to spring, when we can utilize all of the facilities to get him super fit and ready to event. I also can't wait to see what his dressage looks like in the spring. 

I've been mapping out a tentative schedule for the 2014 season now that the USEA calendar is out but it'll probably be a couple of months until the schooling show calendars start to come out so there will be nothing official until then. As soon as I have a basic plan, I'll update the 'Eventing Schedule' page at the top of the blog.

Thanks for reading!

Course Brook Horse Trials Results

Well, I always say better (really, really, extremely) late than never, so here we are a month and a half after Course Brook with no result post in sight! Sorry about that!

Course Brook ended up being a very perfect way to end the season. As previously mentioned, we had decided to run Beginner Novice there, which I think was absolutely the right decision. We had a not-so-great dressage warm-up on slick grass on a slight hill. Ben is still getting used to feeling comfortable doing real dressage work on grass, especially if it is not level. I ended up making the decision not to canter at all in the warm-up, as I figured it would make things worse instead of better.

We then went in to our test which was very average. He was quite lazy, his trot to canter transitions were slightly horrendous, his left canter was more of a 'tranter', and he wasn't as steady in the bridle as he can be. It was still fine, however, it just needed a little more get up and go as a whole. Apparently, they are much more lenient about these things at Beginner Novice because we were in second after dressage with a 35.2!

I have never in my entire eventing career with three different horses, Beginner Novice through Training, ever been in the top three after dressage at a recognized event so I was quite excited to say the least!

Stadium was very soon after dressage, less than an hour actually. I had decided to just do dressage in my jump tack and head right over to stadium which worked out just fine. We had a pretty good warmup and then went in and jumped a lovely double clear round. He was very confident and bold which was exactly what I was looking for. 

Cross country warm-up went very well and was great for both Ben's and my confidence. He was extremely wired on the walk to the start box and it turned into a bit of a rodeo a couple times but we managed to keep it together. He was great out of the start box and over the first fence. He got a little close to 2 and 3 but was straight, forward, and did not balk at all. Number 4 was in the middle of a field so he was a bit more looky, but he still put his eye on the fence and went right over. 

I would say, on average, that it take Ben about 5 fences to really get into a rhythm on xc. During these five fences anything can happen: he can wiggle, spook, stop, buck, go sideways, etc. but usually after that he is an angel. He jumped the first four fences like a pro but we could just not quite make it over the fifth one without him doing something stupid. He saw the jump judges from a ways back and went sideways and stopped dead. After about 30 seconds of coaxing him on, I got him to trot and then canter ahead towards fence 5. As we got to it, I knew he hadn't locked onto it at all as he was too busy gaping at the jump judges so he did end up having a stop there. It was a tiny hanging log of all things, but it really doesn't matter what kind of jump it is if he doesn't even look at it!

We re-approached, he jumped it fine, and then we were on our merry way finishing the rest of the course clear without so much as a look or a spook or a sideways step. I did a lot of trotting in the woods, as I wanted him to slow his brain down a bit and really think about what he was doing, and I think it worked pretty well. We still ended the day in 7th place which I was pleased with and our Junior placing actually ended up qualifying us for Area Championships at Beginner Novice. This was all very exciting until I learned that they moved Area Championships from Fitch's Corner to GVRDC which is six hours away, so I will not be attending unfortunately.

I thought our experience was a great way to end the season. Ben seems to have gotten some much needed confidence back and we both had fun. We have our homework to do over the winter and then hopefully we will be back at it very successfully in the spring.

Here is the on-the-ground video of all three phases: 

http://youtu.be/wx6uYeuSg-Y

And here is the helmet cam of cross country. I went to cut out the spooking as it was just unnecessary, boring footage and I accidentally ended up cutting out the stop by mistake which is unfortunate as I like to go back and watch those things as learning tools. But the rest is all there so enjoy:

http://youtu.be/wx6uYeuSg-Y

Finally, I have some exciting news to share which I will write about soon but this post is already far too long. As always, thank you for reading and for putting up with my severe procrastination in writing my posts sometimes!