I have been severely lacking on the blog front lately so I apologize. I had all of these exciting things going on and the blog got put on the back burner but since Ben and I are making our Training moveup in just 12 short hours, I thought it was necessary to give you all a mass update.
Last I wrote we were going to the Sinead Halpin clinic which was AWESOME! She is a fantastic clinician and is super nice. She is one of those people who can make things click and she was very helpful in dealing with some of Ben's antics. Here is the video of all of the clips from that:
Then we were off to a dressage show where we showed Training 3 and First 1. Ben was very good and was almost too calm in out Training test! I ended up putting my spurs on for the First Level test and it was much better. Not that the Training test was bad I just had to chase him in the canter more than I would've liked. The First Level test went much better than I expected and I was thrilled. We ended up scoring a 60% in Training 3 (equivalent to a 40 in eventing) and a 61.7% in the First Level test (equivalent to a 39.3 in eventing.)
I unfortuantely have not uploaded those tests yet so I cannot post them here but maybe someday when life slows down I can get a chance to do that!
So here we are on the eve of the Training move up! I'm super excited and cannot wait to see what is in store for us on cross country!! We have a very early start tomorrow. Apple Knoll is two hours away and my dressage time is 8:24. It is also supposed to be 44* during my dressage test, by far the coldest temperature we've had so far this season so we may be a little... "up." I will be waking up at 3am and we will be leaving the barn with Ben in tow no later than 5am. Oh, the life of an eventer...
Next on the list was supposed to be The Ethel Walker School Horse Trials. If this weekend went well, we were going to go Training there. Unfortunately, however, they cancelled due to low entry numbers which I am extemely bummed about. So we are rerouting to Fall Mystic Horse Trials which only goes up to Novice so... that is what we will be doing. But never fear, I've already started planning next year's schedule... :-)
I am off to blowdry my dressage saddle. Yes, you read that right. It was such a gorgeous day today... until I got on Ben. That was when it decided to HEAVILY downpour. I just decided to stay on because by the time I got off and into the barn I would have been just as wet as I was anyway. Plus its good practice for Ben. Thank goodness for synthetic tack! Of course it is now saturated, as is my helmet, and if I don't want a cold, wet butt tomorrow morning at 8am, I'd better go do that now! And then I'm heading straight to bed to hopefully manage somwhere around five hours of sleep!
I will try to tweet regularly but my times are awfully close together (Dressage 8:24, Stadium 9:52, XC 10:22, plus I have to walk xc in between dressage and stadium) so I'll see what I can manage. (Link to Twitter: https://twitter.com/jfcx333) The helmet cam will be out in full force tomorrow so I will have that to share. I should be home early enough to get videos uploaded and a post written if I am not too exhausted.
Until then I will leave you with this picture of Ben and I the other day doing our last jump school before this weekend. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing with my elbows, but I love how Ben looks!
As always, thanks for reading and for putting up with my extreme lack of updates!
Ahh there are so many exciting happenings at the moment that I can't wait to share but I thought I should probably start with how the event went.
Dressage warmup started with me falling off. Yay! Actually, we hadn't even made it to dressage warmup yet. At King Oak, to get to dressage warmup, you have to walk down a long, gradual downhill. Ben always gives me a hard time about this because he can see the horses in the warmup moving at a distance and it freaks him out. He was giving me a particularly hard time about getting down there this time complete with leaping, bucking, backing up, miniature rears, and attempts at spinning and flying back to the trailer.
Neither of those reasons were why I fell off. Nope, that came when he did a full body shake (think like when they first get up from rolling). This actually made me fall forward onto his neck a little bit and then he took the opportunity to duck out from under me and trot his little butt over to the paddocks to make friends.
I retrieved my horse, we made it down to warmup, and the rest of the day went spectacularly.
THE END
Just kidding.
He actually warmed up pretty quietly for it being Ben at King Oak where he is notorious for being a psycho. (The last two times we were there we scored a 49.1 and a 49 in dressage, respectively.)
We went into the ring and actually put in some really nice trot work. The free walk was tense because I was just praying that he wouldn't start trotting. The canter transitions were exuberant because its Ben and it kind of affected out canter circles too so those scores weren't too fabulous. But his trot work got a lot of sevens and I was really proud of him. We scored a 43 which was probably an accurate score considering the canter. I actually liked our judge because down the bottom of our test she wrote: "Cute horse with a personality (as evident in canter)." Finally someone who appreciated Ben's goofiness for what it is!
So onward to stadium! King Oak's stadium is always maxed out and there was no exception this time. Plus its in a teeny tiny little arena with no real boundaries which makes the tight turns interesting. And there were more or less all related distances which are terrible for us.
Unfortunately Ben got a little overexcited going into the first fence which made us have an...interesting...line to it where he then proceeded to clobber through the top rail with his front feet. Cool. That was his second rail ever at an event, so not too shabby considering he's been doing this for almost two and a half years now, but annoying nonetheless. He then jumped effortlessly around the rest of the course so all was still good. The rail was stupid and annoying because that's his best phase, but then again, its his best phase so its not anything to worry about.
On to cross country! The cross country course looked really fun. It was long and gallopy. After the first few fences everything was maxed out until the end. The ditch had a nice, long, flat approach to it and was all the way towards the end of the course. I was slightly concerned about the water because it was a maxed out log beam stack, few strides to the water. Now the horses could clearly see the water on the landing side which worried me because there was a very similar scenario at Mystic this spring when he dumped me on cross country. And then I had to sit and listen to the announcer announcing all of the eliminations at the water as I was tacking up to go cross country. Sweet. Plus the ditch always worries me just because its the ditch. Although this particular ditch I have a vendetta against because he dumped me at it last year, although it was jumped the other direction this time. So I was slightly nervous but suprisingly neutral about the whole thing.
So out we went and Ben totally rocked it. Well, we went flying sideways leaping and bucking between fences two and three so I yanked him up for a minute so he could get his head back. And then he was awesome through the whole rest of the course. Our only other blip was at the ditch and I still couldn't even tell you what happened. I was riding forward to the ditch in the backseat with my eyes glued forward. Then I was staring straight down into the ditch. And finally I was somehow miraculously on the other side of the ditch, still on my horse, just sans stirrups. Hmm...
So my amazingly wonderful little ditch phobic horse some way or another totally saved me from meeting my demise in the ditch. I can't even begin to tell you how proud I am of him. That is a BIG ditch (the biggest he's ever jumped thus far.) And he totally caught me by jumping back up underneath me. It is quite the site to see on the helmet cam video, especially if you pause it...
We then of course had to snail crawl down the hill to avoid speed faults (surprise, surprise...) I've given up on trying to rate him. He comes out of the start box at his cruising speed and he is a gentleman about it most of the time. I hardly ever have to get in his face. He doesn't bolt or hang or run away, he just gallops along like he wants and has fun with it. He jumps well from that pace so I'm not going to mess with it. The only time he gave me a little bit of a hard time about coming back was after the bank down at 7 on the way to 8. And even then he got a reminder that I'm in charge and he was fine the rest of the time.
So with a 43 in dressage, a four fault stadium round, and a double clear xc round we finished the day in 11th out of 23 competitors. We were really tied for tenth but the other girl was WAY closer to the optimum time then we were...
So here is the on-the-ground video of all three phases:
Helmet Cam video of xc:
And link to professional pictures. I still come back in the tack too soon but he looks super cute. I also kind of hate the way both my Point Two and helmet cam look in pictures but the safety and the awesomeness of the helmet cam are worth pictures that are okay but that I don't love. Scroll down to Calder through Carlson in the third row, last column: http://www.flatlandsfoto.com/competitionphotos/2012%20albums/KO-090912/HTML/index.htm
Now for some other news:
- I almost got to have a private with Sinead Halpin this Sunday but since it was such short notice the only time available was 4:30. Considering the farm is two hours away we would be getting home really late and my parents weren't interested in driving that far and getting home that late. I'm bummed to say the least as that would have easily been the best opportunity Ben and I have ever had but what are you going to do? I'm lucky enough to have an awesome horse and the ability to compete in the sport I love.
- Next weekend I will be getting in touch with my inner dressage queen as I have entered Ben and I into a pure dressage show at Training 3 and First Level 1. Should be interesting! I picked those tests because it will be good practice for the extra cantering in USEA Training Test A because...
-BEN AND I ARE MAKING OUR TRAINING LEVEL DEBUT NEXT MONTH!!! As you can see I'm a little excited to say the least. We're making the move up at the Apple Knoll Farm Schooling Trials on October 7th. I am kind of nervous but mostly excited. I made the decision after he was such a rockstar at King Oak. He made all of those maxed out Novice fences look and feel effortless and I really think we are ready to rock it at Training.
I think that about sums everything up, sorry about the long post, and as always, thanks for reading!
It's been a while since I posted about more than event results or training stuff with Ben, so I thought I'd take a minute to talk about the inspiration I've gained from following the Burghley Horse Trials all weekend. I also just wanted to throw in that I decided to re-route to King Oak this coming Sunday instead of attending Town Hill this past weekend due to various reasons. That is why there is no event report from Town Hill!
Watching Burghley or any huge event just makes me want to get out to the barn and ride my horse as well as I possibly can. And Burghley in general coupled with the amazing comeback story of Sinead and Allison makes me want to get out there and rock it even more.
Watching the good dressage tests like Sinead's and Allison's, along with William Fox-Pitt, Andrew Nicholson, Clayton Fredericks' and company just make you want to go and ride every inch out of your next dressage test. Watching those people ride is like a free dressage lesson. They use every centimeter of that arena to their advantage. They prepare their horses for every transition. They sit quietly and stay out of their horse's way but man do they ride.
Ben is coming to that time where his dressage is starting to get better. Its more relaxed than it ever was and he can go pretty quietly and more consistently too. But I'm starting to ask him for more. Being quiet and fairly obedient isn't enough to score competitively. He needs to be engaged behind and through his back and really moving well like he does at home to be competitve at events. And I truly believe he can do that if I ride him efficiently enough. I tend to go in the dressage ring and just beg him with my body language not to do anything stupid. The quieter the better. But now I need to be slightly more demanding and ride my horse, instead of just hold him together. It'll be a long road, and it certainly won't happen in one event, but if he can start to go at events like he goes at home he is very capable of being extremely competitve in the dressage.
Again, watching the big names on cross country courses that huge, making it look like its nothing, is just a sight to see. They are all focus and determination and they ride every stride. Even though our results wouldn't show it, I think I ride my best on cross country. Ben is a hard ride cross country and he doesn't give you anything. You have to work for everything he gives you. I am slowly learning to ride. every. fence. like my life depends on it. Eventually, I won't have to do that but for now, I do, and that's okay. Every single cross country jump we clear is a learning experience for both Ben and me.
I haven't watched too many of the stadium rounds from Burghley but I have watched enough to know that those horses were exhausted. And yet, those riders (especially the five that managed to go clear) rode those horses as best as they possibly could to get it done. I tend not to worry too much about stadium as it is easily Ben's best phase but its still a wonder to watch the upper level riders make it look effortless.
Yesterday was Ben's day off so I haven't ridden him since Burghley ended but today we are going to go and have an awesome flat ride in preparation for this weekend where we will hopefully rock our dressage test!
As always, thanks for reading, and I hope this post gave all of you guys some inspiration too.
I am happy to report that Ben is completely back to his normal self as we had discovered that he had Lyme disease. He is currently being treated for it but he is already one million times better than he was a week ago.
Lord Creek was yesterday and it went very well. We had a very early 8 something dressage time so there was still a little chill in the air which certainly got to Ben during our warmup. I warmed up for about 45 minutes before my test and he had just started to relax a bit when we trotted down the centerline. As a dressage test in general, it was just okay, but considering how much of a nutcase he was being in warmup, it was a very impressive feat for it to go as well as it did. There were no major mistakes, just some minor bobbles here and there and we ended tied for 4th after dressage on a 31.5. Now, they were being very very very generous with the scoring. That is our best ever dressage score and very far from our best ever test. But I was still happy and we were in a good position moving forward. My favorite comment on the dressage test was "Try working horse for longer before test." If she only knew...
Then came stadium which is always a challenge at Lord Creek because of the terrain in their jumping field. We had a very exuberant warmup where many comments were heard from entertained spectators such as "That horse is very lively," "Somebody's ready for cross country," and, my personal favorite, "I wouldn't want to ride THAT horse!" Regardless, he was jumping amazingly and was certainly back to the old Ben we all know and love.
Our stadium round could have been smoother, slower (way slower), and a touch more controlled but it was still clean and he jumped decently for the most part. I had to lay off the brakes a bit because he was becoming thoroughly annoyed with me hanging on his face (see turn to fence 3 in stadium in the video at the bottom of this post.)
Cross country was just an awesome time. We did unfortunately pick up one stop at a particularly looky fence that I expected him to have an issue with. It was a brush box filled with corn stalks, and I mean filled. On top of that, there were walls of cornstalks on either side of the jump as well as a footing change. I rode accordingly, expecting him to look, but we did pick up a stop anyway. But we reapproached and jumped it fine the second time around and he jumped everything else amazingly. The ditch and wall was interesting because he saw it at the last minute, peeked, got a pop with the crop, and then launched over it all with a split second. I'm sure that was comical for the jump judges!
Again, we were flying and came in very very fast. The footing was slick so they only set the time at 325 mpm and optimum ended up being 5:55. Speed fault was 4:16 and even with the stop we came in at 4:26...46 seconds faster than the second fastest person in the division. Oops. Ben definitely likes to run. I can't wait to move up to Training and not have to worry about speed faults as much.
We ended up finishing in 5th place. If we hadn't had the stop we would've been 3rd but I was still pretty thrilled with the pink ribbon! He was definitely full of himself after that cross country run and I'm so happy to have my horse back. Bring on Town Hill!
Without further adieu, here is my helmet cam (Yes I did finally get it up and running!) Skip to 1:45 for the countdown and start:
And here is my on the ground videos of all three phases:
* This post is from last week, I was unaware that it never posted, sorry about that! *
So this update is going to be amazingly fast because its late and I have to get up early for a lesson tomorrow morning. However, I thought you all deserved an update because I have been absent lately.
I have been battling a subtle mystery lameness with Ben for the past week and half but it finally seems to have disappeared so Lord Creek for next weekend is on as of now. Which makes me really happy because I thought I wasn't going to get to go for the second year in a row because last year Ben bent his shoe the morning OF the horse trial. Horses...
Lameness was as subtle as it could possibly be without being sound. He would take some off steps and then some sound steps and the ratio of sound to unsound steps varied daily. He was better with bute so I gave him some for a couple of days and then gave him some time off and so far, so good. I have no idea what it was. He is still being a little "careful" with it, which makes me slightly uneasy, but there is no doubt that he is 100% sound, so I'm not sure what is making me feel that way. His stride just isn't as big as it usually is but then again, he had lots of time to lounge around on his own and get on his forehand. When I get serious about bringing him into an uphill frame he feels perfectly normal so I'm thinking that he's just being hard on his legs and being unbalanced when he's traveling on his forehand like that.
I shall see what my trainer thinks about all of this tomorrow morning.
As far as the eventing schedule for after Lord Creek, that is all up in the air at the moment because there are a whole mess of events in September and October and I have to choose between them all. There are lots of factors such as price, recognized vs. unrecognized, level of difficulty, and how hard the ground will be if we continue to get no rain, among other things. So I'm trying to figure the fall out so I can create a more concrete leg up for the fall season because we've been taking it easy for the most part this summer.
I will hopefully find a minute to write a bit before Lord Creek and I will definitely be around after that to share results.
I didn't start the day off too confidently when I picked the course map up and realized the ditch was fence number 5 headed away from home. I believe the exact words were "Oh s&*t, the ditch is number 5!" ;-)
But we're getting ahead of ourselves, let's start with dressage. Warm up was bad, then good, then bad, then the test was okay. He started off per usual, head in the air and checking everything out. Then he settled down and started looking really good. And then Lilly, his girlfriend, came over to warm up for her test. And then he wouldn't stop screaming his head off and was paying no attention to me at all.
I will say the test went better than I expected. He didn't call at all and once we trotted down centerline something seemed to click in his brain and he tried really hard to listen to me. To make matters worse cross country was running in the not-so-distant distance.
Both of our centerlines were decent although on the turn off the second one he fell on his face. Oops. Both out trot circles were pretty decent although the flies were really bad so that warranted some head flipping. The judge seemed to realize this was fly head flipping and not behavioral head flipping which was nice because we got sevens on both the circles.
Our trot walk transition was good but we get knocked all the time for being inactive in the medium after the transition and before the free walk. I hate to walk and then kick him forward because then he tends to jig in the free walk. We almost made it all the way down the diaganol in the free walk without jigging but Ben decided he NEEDED to jig the last few steps so that was an automatic four.
The transition from walk to trot was the only time Ben felt he needed to see what was going on over in the big field with the jumps in it (of course!) so that transition was pretty horrendous. Then for our canter transition Ben decided he needed to show everyone how smart he is by performing his transition a quarter of a circle early with zero input from me. I just rolled with it instead of pulling back and then transitioning again.
Both canter to trots weren't great but were okay and we got 6s on both which I was pretty pleased with. The right canter circle was pretty good and got a 7! That's new! His halt was perfectly square but he likes to add some sass and swing his hips to the left so that along with the fact that he needed to get another look at the cross country course meant we got a 5 on that.
I got a 7 on Rider and on Impulsion which I was very pleased about with some very nice comments from the judge about doing a good job keeping him on track and riding well. Overall we scored a 40 which is our best recognized dressage score ever. Just can't break into the 30s though! 0.1 points off! This left us tied for 9th out of 14 so I was pretty pleased.
The stadium course was really fun. It was a bit tricky which I LOVE because Ben rocks stadium so when the course is hard, Ben usually jumps a clear when others don't. He didn't disappoint this time and jumped clear to move up to 6th. We had a close moment at fence 3 when the rail literally came out of the cups and dropped back into them again... I had asked him for another stride, which he listened to, and he just couldn't get his knees up quite enough. Even if the rail fell, I wouldn't have minded because he listened to me instead of blowing me off which was nice! Number 7 was a very spooky fence with a brick wall filler and some fake flowers sitting on top of that right under the rail. Ben peeked pretty hard but I expected such and rode accordingly. I love how well we know each other.
Then came cross country. When I first walked up to the ditch on course I wanted to throw up. It wasn't huge or anything. Probably about three feet wide, I could just barely step over it with a little extra hop. It was probably only a couple feet deep. It was in a treeline so it was winged on either side. But it was a real live Novice ditch and I was terrified. But I sucked it up and trudged on and honestly, I felt pretty good about it after stadium. I talked myself down by forcing myself to stick to the plan.
Sometime between getting on and walking to the start box it started to rain pretty steadily. I was actually happy because the ground was a touch hard for my liking. I jumped one oxer really nicely in warm up and headed to the start box.
He headed out and over the first jump like a xc machine which hasn't happened in a while and I was very pleased with that! This picture is actually the back of fence one, I was having camera difficulties in front of it and my course walking buddies were leaving without me!
We turned to fence two and his head went between his knees and we threw in some bucking for good measure. That's apparently a new thing now... The cons of overly fit horses...
Fence two had some weird gentle terrain changes in front of it and then landed ever so slightly downhill.
There was some more attempted bucking on the way to three but I was ready for it that time!
Number three was very sketchy. I cut the turn a little too close to it, as it was a right hand turn after two. He looked a bit at it and we jumped like a deer over it sideways. But he went and that's the important part! My horse a few months ago wouldn't have done that, especially since this fence was actually quite sizeable.
Then there was a left turn to fence four, a hanging log, that I made sure we had a good ride to, because the ditch followed.
Then came the dreaded ditch... I cut the turn short, kept my eyes absolutely GLUED forward, kicked my feet up on the dashboard, threw in a growl for good measure and OVER we went!!! YES!!!
He got a ridiculous amount of praise and pats and I had a ridiculous smile on my face for the next three fences. Honestly he could've bucked me off right then and I wouldn't have cared, I was just so happy with him!
We galloped on to fence six a nice little cordwood:
Then we headed to this little log which had a sizable drop on it, I was actually surprised that we shared it with Beginner Novice:
Then came the water which he went right into (I guess we don't have water issues any more...), then a few strides to a tiny little ramp out which we wiggled A LOT to. He still has a hard time with fences out of the water, he gets transfixed on going through the water and has difficulty focusing on jumping jumps so soon out of the water. But we made it and that's one more good jump-out-of-water experience in the experience bank.
Then we made the turn to a nice red house that we jumped well:
Then came the very fun up bank, few strides, down bank which we got good practice with at Frazier last month, with a much harder version of this! He was really good although really flung himself off the bank again. If I trot and pop off the edge he just pops down quietly, if I canter off, he flings himself... silly horse.
Then we galloped a short way to a big, ginormous, airy oxer in the treeline. Again, the pictures never do big jumps justice, I should've had somebody stand next to it but it was most definitely maximum height. It was one of those awesome fences where you see the perfect distance about 10 strides out, your horse locks onto it, you feel how powerful they jump it, and you land perfectly and gallop on. Those don't come often but they sure are incredible!
A little ways on to 14 A & B, a bending line of tables. The first table was maxed out and the second was slightly smaller. It was an 8-10 stride bending line depending on how you bent it. I believe we got 9. It rode really well for us.
Then we went down a little decline to fence 15, a bench, but not before we spooked at a jump judge's umbrella... horses.
We then galloped on to the smallest fence on the course where I think I had the stupidest stop of my eventing career. The tree was in the middle to make the jumpable part narrow and he did spook at it but the log was 2'3", we should've been able to jump it. But I lost control of his shoulders and once that happens I'm screwed. So, smack, circle around, jump it no problem. Really?
Next jump was another tiny little log up a little incline that we jumped just fine:
Then came the next stupidest stop in my eventing career. Yes I really did have two stops at two of the simplest fences on the course after jumping the ditch, the water, the drop fence, the bank complex, the big oxer in the tree line, and the table combination just fine. This one was covered in brush which Ben is generally not a fan of. I planned to ride this one defensively for this reason. Of course I didn't expect him to drop his shoulder and run sideways 15 strides away from the fence, I expected more like 5... Again, once he gets his shoulder away from me, we're done. Smack, circle, jump perfectly. Ugh.
The last fence went well, except we got a little close and popped it.
I truly wish I could say that I cared about the two stupid stops but I truly didn't. He jumped the ditch!!! I'm beating myself up a little more now about the stops because there is no other explanation except that I stopped riding, yet again. One of these days I will learn that I have to ride every.single.fence. with this horse, he is not an easy ride. If there's a way out, he's going to take it just because he can. There were other people across the Novice divisions that had stops but I was the only one in my division. That being said, we were also one of only three that made the time. Sigh. I swear we don't feel fast, or out of control, or dangerous, or too quick to the fences, but somehow we are always WAY too fast. Can we even imagine what my time would've been if we didn't have two stops? I had 0:28 left on my watch when I crossed the finish line as it was!
So if we had jumped double clean xc we would've finished up 5th, but we didn't so we finished 10th. I didn't get a ribbon and I don't care. I am so unbelievably thrilled and proud of my horse that I can't even explain it. One day I will learn to do him justice and actually ride well for an entire recognized Novice course. Hopefully that day will be in the near future.
Next up is Lord Creek HT on August 19th. That's like home base for us so I'm going for some redemption and a CLEAR xc round!
I leave you with this video from Riga, its dressage, stadium, and xc all in one. Enjoy!
