Eight

Ginger turned eight a couple of weeks ago, which means A: I wrote this and forgot to post it, and B: I've owned her for 4 years now. Time flies!

Almost got her summer coat!

As always, for a moment I was slightly disappointed that we haven't achieved very many of my original goals with her. That feeling lasted for just a moment though, because I'm really pretty happy with where we are.  The journey has proven to be much more fun than all those big dreams I had. I don't think there are enough words for all that I've learned from owning her. Some good, some bad, but the journey has proven to be much more fun than I ever expected. The big mare is all about being your best friend and  keeping life fun and interesting, and who doesn't need a friend like that?

Her other bestie, Bridget

Happy Belated Birthday, Ginger!

(Bridget's B-day isn't until the end of July so I have lots of time to forget it as well - wouldn't want to be the bad 'mom' and forget one but not the other!. Plan on celebrating some time in the fall ;)

One More Time/Lesson Recap

I know a lot of us out there struggle with getting down on ourselves and our riding. Horses can be tough, and the industry surrounding them even tougher.

Shout out to Grain Before Groceries for her wonderful post on dealing with fear and confidence issues. She linked to another post which really hit home for me. If you're dealing with, or have ever dealt with anxiety and self doubt in your riding, I'd totally recommend reading it. I think "Always one more time" might be my new mantra when the going gets tough.

Feel free to get lost in the above linked sites, the rest of my post today is just a nerdy in depth lesson recap. Nothing to see here, move along. :)

Shiny ponies!

Bridget showed up with her 'not playing this game' face on. So we had an inverted, pushy, quick, and uncooperative pony. The good part? I got to see how S handles that! I'll recap the two recent clinicians quickly as well so we can compare:

Dressage lady: To sum it up: MORE. Take that energy and make her work. More contact, more forward, more off the leg, more balanced. Result: Brilliance in the moment, but eventually pony shut down and refused to play anymore. I will save her ideas for show situations where addressing the issue directly isn't an option.

Cowboy: Take away her power. No outside rein, minimal contact on inside. Circles, lots of them, smaller/larger to regulate speed as needed, focusing on pony tuning into my legs and seat and relaxing into self carriage. Result: It worked, and I liked how non confrontational it was. but pony is fit and it took almost an hour of trot to get there with any sort of regularity. Sidenote: since it was the first time using that exercise there is a good chance she might 'give up' sooner if I made it a regular part of our warm up. Or learn to evade me by popping out through my leg ;)

Ginger wonders why Bridget must always be the rebel

S: A happy medium. Keep your outside rein, ride inside leg to outside rein, but use circles to your advantage. Leg on, make her work, but supple her left and right. Reward good behaviour and focus by letting her trot out and forward down the long side. Lots and lots of transitions to halt, and back  up when she gets heavy in my hand or on my leg. Results: The winner, although I may alternate with cowboy program to prevent a backslide from too much nagging and too many downward transitions getting her thinking backwards again.

Lesson set up like so to start and then we raised the poles before and after the cross rail on the center line, canter poles on the long side...scroll down for a drawing of layout and pattern we rode

The rest of our lesson involved a simple gymnastic on the center line, and two canter poles set a stride apart on each long side. Bridget got super excited by that, so we spent a bit of time trotting the center line gymnastic, then halting and backing at the fence, then doing a 180 degree  turn on the haunches and trotting back out over the centerline gymnastic again. I liked this exercise because it got her nicely balanced and thinking. Once she settled in and stopped attempting to rush, we added a leg yield to the wall after the center, then circle at a trot and up the center again. Finally we ended by going over the centerline gymnastic, leg yielding to the wall, then cantering large around the ring utilizing our canter poles on the long sides. S kept it real by setting them slightly long for Bridget, then shortening them up. This is all in an effort to teach her she can have an adjustable canter. It totally messed her up at first,but she is smart and I felt like she was getting the idea by the end of the ride. It will be many hours of building the strength before we have a respectable canter, but the pieces are slowly falling into place.

May Goals

I don't think I set any April goals, so consider them met! Yay me! Go horses!

After all that hard work, I'm going to remain super disciplined and set goals for May.

-Weekly lessons. I've been good about this, but lately we're all working and busy so it's a bit more of a challenge.

-Bring a goal to each of my lessons. I've been terrible about showing up and only having a vague idea of what I'd like to work on.

-Pole work/gymnastics. Again, lazy me is great for setting up single poles or jumps and not really making the pony work. Also good practice for me to set a pattern and remember/ride it effectively.

-More discipline. Not of the whips and spurs variety, but of the 'looking to be better' mindset. Baby pony is not super green anymore and it's time to start expecting immediate, balanced transitions from halt/walk/trot every time. Also moving off my leg immediately in lateral work, and practicing self carriage and 'honesty' rather than me babysitting every stride. Canter remains a work in progress...

-Pony needs to work harder at the canter. We have one at last, yay! But smart babies think that means it time to run around really fast and inverted on the forehand, objecting greatly to any contact. Work on balanced transitions up and down and try to carry that balance into a few strides before and after the transitions. Build from there!

-Prep for a show. At this point, I'm not sure the mid May show is a go - some people in line ahead of me for the trailer ride/coach help have opted in at the last minute. Still, we'll prep as if we're going because of course things change and there are more shows and other people we can go with.

-Don't stress over Ginger I am awesome at beating myself up for 'giving up' by not riding or focusing on her. She's happy, she gets plenty of attention, and she's healthy. I need to let go of the guilt - pretty sure her feelings aren't hurt by my riding Bridget so much  :) She'll be there when or if I'm ready, but I'm going to try not to pressure myself to make any decisions. Time, we've got lots of it!

Finally...that job I mentioned may just interfere slightly in my current plans. If I end up going there to work, I will need to find a house and a barn (and a coach) preferably before June 1st. I'm happy here, but $ are useful.  I'll add making a decision this week and planning appropriately to my list of immediate goals.

Thinking

I mentioned the not so nice auditors at this past weekend's clinics. I've been thinking a bit more about it. 

The vast majority of the negative comments were things like "Person x is going to get hurt" "I wouldn't trust that horse" "One time I saw that person get bucked off that horse - she is over horsed for sure" "Person y is going to ruin their horse, the horse looks mad". followed of course, by all the 'advice' they have for how they'd fix whatever issues they were seeing and and how person z will never be safe unless they follow program A, B, or C and ride only on a Tuesday afternoon while wearing green. A little obnoxious yes, and maybe part of it was them wanting to pump themselves up a little, but I know these people who were auditing. Their comments were way more reflective of themselves rather than the people they were criticizing. I think they were simply putting their own anxieties out there on those other people, rather than intending to be as harshly critical as I first felt they were being. Which makes me feel less angry about it, and more just kind of sad - after all,  I was at rock bottom and nervous to ride and had zero confidence in my own abilities not so very long ago.

My next thought: Oh my goodness is it WONDERFUL to own Bridget. Let's be honest, I didn't go talk to anyone about anything, my riding hasn't magically got any better technically, I haven't followed any special training program, I haven't even really worked that hard. What I did do is admit there was a problem and found the right horse for me as I am right this instant. That's it. The difference in my confidence and riding is obvious by my initial "WTF are you doing/ talking about?! Everyone is doing great and it's all under control" reaction to this weekend's auditor comments. I'm excited to go to clinics and look forward to being challenged. Rather than feeling physically ill the morning of clinics and events, I feel confident that in even if we do end up completely out of our depths in any given situation, we're a team that can get through it together.

Recent ridiculous outtake of our little team. I am so happy. Bridget not so much ha ha.

Next thought: NOBODY on that rail better talk bad about Bridget. Even when she is being very bad! Somehow this pony has grown on me to the point where even hearing the tiniest bit of 'advice' would have brought that peanut gallery a world of pain ;)

My further thought: I bought Bridget as a confidence booster trail riding pony. She's green, she's pushy, she's not the best example of a Sec D, she's not even overly nice to be around. But I felt good with her and that's what mattered and continues to matter. My plan was to take a time out from being 'serious' about riding, and just trail ride with my friends. Eventually I'd get back to riding and lessons on Ginger and sell Bridget on to a deserving home. There's a bit of a wrench in that plan though - Bridget continues to step up and surprise me. Trail riding pony actually looks kind of cute in our lessons. She also really likes to jump. I've got super attached to her. I'd like to think she's attached to me. There's no reason we can't do all the things I wanted to do with Ginger. Maybe we won't be as competitive. I'll be that short round person on the short round pony. But we'll both be having fun.
While I'm not at the point where I am ready to find Ginger another home, the option is swirling in the back of my mind a little. Maybe a lease, maybe a perfect placement with someone I know. Or maybe I'll just have the nicest pet horse ever :)

And the reason you don't get more candid shots of Ginger, She is a velcro horse pet and they all look like this. I'd have to go undercover and I'd need a zoom lens to take pics to prevent her seeing I was there and coming to say hi!

Or this. Hi Ginger :)

Brown Boots!

My much awaited boots finally arrived yesterday afternoon.

I ordered the Ariat Heritage boots in sienna, which is a nice dark chocolate brown. My hope is that the non black color will be slightly more trendy for when I stop on the way home from the barn or inevitably get sidetracked going to or from the barn. Am I dreaming in thinking they'll be a little less "obviously I just got back from riding horses" looking?

These boots are intended to replace my Mountain Horse Richmonds which I hate with a vengeance. I even went back and read everyone's reviews on those boots, and remain convinced I got a different style or a fake pair or something. The leather is so stiff and awful. I've been wearing them a minimum of 5x a week for the past 8 months, not to mention for showing and lessons (at least 2x a week) for 2 years prior. And those boots STILL look basically new, and they look good on me, but they still give me the most horrible blisters if I even think about wearing them for more than an hour or so without vetwrap. They also stretched over time and are huge around the calves - like I can keep my keys, phone, gloves, whatever in there while I ride.  A few months ago, G was like "Ouch!, where did that nasty blister on your heel come from?" My boots. "Oh yuck, look at that scar on your toe" The boots. "AND the ones around your ankles?" Yep. At least they finally dropped and stopped rubbing the backs of my knees a few months ago? Tragic boot saga somewhat shortened, G offered to buy me a new pair if I was going to be too cheap to do it myself. Yay! Maybe I can wear sandals some day again ;)

First impressions of my new Ariats? The footbed feels great, although I agree with the reviews that say to size up half a size over your normal. The color is exactly as it appears in their photo. The leather quality and zippers are way better than the Mountain Horses. Don't get me wrong, they're still not super soft or anything like that, but I feel like they'll break in quickly. As a short person, they are definitely too tall to just walk around in all day right away, but I feel like they will fit perfectly once they drop.

What I don't like? The calf is shaped a little funny - super slim and flattering through the ankle, then it's almost slightly big right through the biggest past of my leg, then really slim and almost too tiny around the top. It's a bit of an exaggerated/odd profile that makes the outline less smooth than I'd prefer. These are wide calf boots though, so tinier people than me might not have this issue.

Verdict: Decent boots for the price, and my inital impression is a good one.

Cowboy Clinic Recap

It was COLD out there! After a fun morning auditing the ground work portion of the clinic (must buckle down and do more groundwork with the Midge) I popped up the road to grab Midge for our after lunch riding session.

As soon as I put Midge's halter on, I knew we were in for a mare/evil pony kind of day. She definitely woke up this morning on the wrong side of the bed. She was not super interested in standing still to be tacked up, so we had a discussion about that. She was super spooky and 'up' on our short hack down the road. We had a chat about that. I tried not to have visions of a repeat terrible clinic, but  by the time I got to the ring and was attempting to ride a super spooky,quick, pushy, giraffe, generally pissy pony I was getting more than a little worried. I was also kicking myself for not learning my lesson from the last clinic and bringing a longe line with me!

I did get new pics, but am waiting for them to be sent. Here's an old one of Cowboy and Bridget

Beyond not forgetting your longe line, there's definitely something to be learned from all the above. When Midge gets outside her comfort zone (overnight stay at a strange barn, new arena to ride in) she reverts back to all those bad habits we thought we had a handle on and that all basically boil down to her being being very pushy. That of course means I haven't adequately addressed the basic issue. I can't ignore the little things because they're going to escalate to bigger problems every time she's feeling overwhelmed. I want the same (cooperative!) pony anywhere and everywhere I go.

So, what does a cowboy do with a generally uncooperative and pushy pony? Put them on a circle of course. Take away the rider 'handholding' and make them work! In this case I was instructed to drop my outside rein and use only a light inside rein to tip her nose in slightly. Midge was expected to quietly trot around a 15m circle and just soften in my hand and around my leg and look after herself. Genius. By just using an inside rein and putting her on a circle in trot, we took away Midge's power as well as her desire to tip her nose outside and look for more interesting things. If she got quick or tried to run out through my outside leg, my inside rein got stronger and she had to circle smaller and yield her hindquarters a bit (think one rein stop but not actually stopping, more using it to spiral in and then releasing and leg yielding back out to the circle). If she fell in, she met up with my inside leg, but no outside rein there to hold her up. And tiny circles are hard, of course. So simple, so effective. It really got her more honest about looking after herself and just doing her job. By the end she was trotting nicely around in a perfect 15m circle, coming from behind and in self carriage.  Off my seat and leg. Wow. Midge was pissed at losing the fight she wanted in such a non confrontational way, but I was pretty happy! This goes against every 'inside leg to outside' rein dressage lesson I've ever taken, but it was exactly what we needed in the moment, and a tool I will be using again.  Our homework is to build up to a canter using both flexion and counter flexion. Cowboy is all about giving your horse a job ( trot a certain sized circle at a certain speed, canter a straight line, whatever) and having them be honest enough to keep doing that job without any nagging until you say otherwise. Yes, please, I want my horse more like that!

Next up, we were given poles set in a 10`square box and practiced circling in the box. That`s not an issue for Midget ponies, so we moved on to just keeping her front legs in the box, and her back legs out, then sidepassing around the square. Fun test of your lateral aids, and again using my reins was discouraged except where completely necessary. Midge was really wanting to pick a fight and give up/suck back to the right, but we got it done pretty well after a bit of a discussion.

We finished with our square built of poles. The next exercise was to straddle the pole - (ie left side of your horse outside the box, right side in the box. Harder than it sounds, and we gave Midge many pats for leg yielding in and quietly standing staddling the pole.

Clinicians feedback: Midge is a compact, powerful horse with a lot of opinions. Her default with anything new is to sulk and say 'I can't/won't do that'.  I am not a giant person. I need to take her power away from her. I need to work smarter now before she figures out she's physically stronger than me and makes my life miserable in the future by learning to be heavy in my hand and on my leg. Funny how she went from sucked back and dull a few months ago to too hot/strong and forward now, but as he explains it makes perfect sense - she's trying to make her life as easy as possible and horses commonly go from one evasion to another in an attempt to lessen the pressure when the previous evasion stops working for them!

Random to break the text

While I'm disappointed Midge didn't bring her A game, (and I freely admit to being a little embarrassed after talking up all the good work she's been doing) it's always good to have worst pony show up on the day you have great help available!

Final thoughts: I really, really appreciated this lesson. Bridget brought her worst, exactly like in the second day of the dressage clinic, yet unlike the dressage clinic, this time pony had to work more mentally than physically and we got some good results. I'm left feeling like we made the best of a bad pony day, and more importantly, that with continued effort, pony might think twice about bringing a bad attitude in the first place. I feel a lot more confident about handling our worst case effectively. I like how this was all achieved with common sense - making her work honestly, taking away her opportunity to bring a physical fight, and rewarding her immediately for the right decision. I know most, if not all, the above isn't groundbreaking stuff and is just common sense and exercises a lot of trainers use. It was a great and timely reminder for me though! I find it's easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of micromanaging everything and 'riding every stride' and always being 'busy' actively giving some kind of correction or encouragement. I like how cowboy expects his horses to just do the job and the default for the rider is to just quietly be there.

As for the peanut gallery, I have some thoughts there too...why oh why do people have to be so very insecure. The negative commentary about every horse and rider there was distracting and really off putting. In between trying to diffuse it with compliments for all the riders, I tried to keep to myself and just watch and learn. No one is perfect. The people being talked about are you know, actually riding their horse in a clinic in an effort to learn. How can you say anything bad about that? I don't condone nasty gossip or put downs at the best of times, but at a clinic? Yuck, it reflects so poorly on everyone. The power plays and games are unbelievable and so unfortunate. The clinician obviously couldn't hear, but I'm going to say something to the organizer - while I don't think the majority of riders were aware they were being talked about so harshly, it made the auditing section kind of a miserable place to be.

 

Midge got a new rain sheet. She's camped outside this weekend in the rain, so I needed one ASAP and found one that's  do-able at the tack store. Going to take CobJockey's recommendations for cob friendly sizing and find a better  fitting one online - as you can see this one works, but the drop is pretty long on her,

The Three Hour Tour*

*Except rather than a nice desert island, Bridget finds herself back at the boarding barn she hated so much from our last clinic outing :)

As the title would indicate, rather than trailering in for our clinic, I opted to ride in the day ahead and enjoy the sunshine. I was expecting about a 2-2.5 hour ride, based on walking most of the 13km/8mile distance. The ground is good in places, but the majority is pretty rocky for a barefoot horse so walking is best. Not to mention Midge has a big day tomorrow so we don't need to tire her out! I heard a rumor the other riders in my group want to mostly work on problems at the canter, so Midge will have her work cut out for her if she wants to keep up with the big horses!

Lots of miles along this hydro easement

A lake

So many huge puddles along here- come riding with me if your horse has an issue with water :)

I ended up running into a few other riders on the trail who were headed to the same general area I was, so had the unexpected treat of some company. Can I just say one more time how lucky I am to have Bridget? Three other horses she's never met, two dogs tagging along, and she was totally chill with the whole thing. We rode with them for a couple of hours. They were very slow, hence the reason my ride ended up closer to 3 hours - but we were in no rush and company is always a treat! When they opted for the loop home and Bridget had to continue on her own I half expected some dramatics, but there was nothing...she was perfectly content to continue on solo even though we were far away from home on a 'strange' trail.

Finally some softer ground

She rolled into her weekend home happy and fresh, barely sweating at all and no worse for wear. She settled in without a peep, so hopefully that's a sign of how she'll be all weekend. Since we are sans Ginger and her drama this time, I'm hoping Bridget won't worry as much about her missing friends as she did at the last clinic.

Sneaking up through a clear cut to hook onto a logging road

I'm looking forward to my ride tomorrow! I kind of like our cowboy clinician - he's growing on me and is the polar opposite of the dressage lady we had last time. He's super encouraging and positive and has a 'get it done the best you/your horse can' attitude. His resume includes stunt riding and training horses for/in the movies and TV, as well as some rodeo stuff and a whole lot of starting baby horses. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's going to be a bit different than out last clinic lol

Finally, follow this road down to the city limits and our temporary accommodations

Good And Bad

The good: Midge was AMAZING in our lesson yesterday. She's really stepped up and is bringing her game face to every session in the ring.

Sorry, no pics of the actual lesson

 The bad: I need to focus more on slowing her down and steadying her. Bigger strides rather than faster. We have the forward so no need to do the forward at all costs thing anymore.

The good: Once I focused on sitting up and slowing my posting we had what felt like a really nice trot.

The good: Really excellent balanced and immediate canter departs. Pony can easily canter 20m circles now on either lead.

The bad: She gets tired quickly and things get inverted, rushy and leany. I need to do a balanced transition back to trot before that happens.

The good: Pony is fearless over the jumps and into grids and we had some really excellent run throughs

Giant carrots for all the good ponies. Ginger inhaled hers, Bridget chose to nibble it like corn on the cob

The bad: Yours truly needs to work on her skillz. We set up a small grid and cross rail on the center line with the goal of trotting in and cantering out, circling on whichever lead she got. Too much going on at once for me and after mostly failing to get a canter in a good spot, baby pony got really forward and excited jumped me out of the tack not once, but twice. She's quite enthusiastic right now and took my canter cue a couple of strides out as her cue to jump and left really long and got me by surprise. The second time it happened we had added some poles in front to help her out, but she took a flying leap over those and turned the little grid into a spread.   The wheels started falling off for me after that because I was down on myself for catching her in the mouth twice. I was so focused on just staying out of her way that I was failing to ride effectively and not getting the job done.

The good: S was happy to hop on. And immediately got surprised by the pony power and left behind over their first run through lol. She's a great rider though and followed up with a couple of nice trips on a wiggly green over enthusiastic pony :)

Extra fresh grass for good pony

The good: Jumper turns? What, since when does Midge know how to do that? Riding off my outside aids for the win!

The good: Watching someone else ride my horse and being pleasantly surprised by the changes since the last time. Midge is almost looking fancy, which is completely unexpected to me. I see the pictures and assume we caught a good moment - neat to watch in person and see there is much more good than bad right now! She's not an overly sporty pony and to be honest, not a great feeling ride. These cobs are tricky though, even the plainest ones seem to have surprising athleticism and presence. Don't get me wrong, she's still super green and we have a ton of work ahead - it's just neat to see glimpses of what the future might hold :)

My previous suspicions re: Piglet proven correct. Why roll in the pasture when the manure pile is accessible? :)

West Coast Spring

I'll let you in on a little secret - I love the sort of rain we get in this part of the world. Don't get me wrong; warm, sunny days are hard to beat, but there's something to be said for a quiet west coast rainy day, particularly in the spring. It's so fresh, and the smell is amazing with all that new greenery filling the air with oxygen. I'm more than content to put on my best rain gear and head outside, even though by now I'm certain there isn't any rain wear invented that can keep me totally dry all day!

Sadly for me, no one else was feeling the love and my lesson was cancelled.

Bridget says "nope, not going out there!"

As do the barn cats 

And Ginger

Ginger's rain sheet obviously not a go for the Midge lol - I see some shopping in my future if I have any hope of keeping her clean. I have my doubts that even a smaller size in this brand won't hang below her hocks and knees - sorry Midge, looks like a career as a blanket model is unlikely! 

And...this is why the blanket was considered - a break in the weather and everyone else ventured to the pasture. Midge opted to stay behind and dig through the composted manure looking for who knows what. I suspect the black dirt I am currying off of her can only come from this place too - no mud or dirt in the fields at the moment! Piglet - I can only imagine her joy when that compost gets spread in the pasture lol.

Rolling Along

Since our last update, Midge has been out for a long trail ride, as well as a short ride to the ring with a buddy yesterday. She also had a couple of well deserved days off!

I notice we're still struggling a bit with sharing the ring. It's not dramatic or bad, but she's constantly monitoring where the other horse(s) are, and like the jumps, there's a definite pony magnet effect happening. Hopefully our clinic next weekend (in a group setting) will prove useful helping with that or at a minimum give us more miles with other horses in the arena. I'm planning to ride in the day ahead and camp out, then ride home the day after. That's a few miles for the baby pony so she'll have a pretty relaxed schedule this week. She'll have today off, then I have my regular lesson tomorrow then will give her Wed/Thurs off to charge up the batteries! Ginger may have to get called back into service lol.

Overall though, I'm still super pleased with little Midge - she's way more consistent, and these days it all feels way less green than it has been.

In other news, I have a potential job lined up in a nearby town. It would mean more big changes, but it is a good compromise - I can keep my 'real' career and come home weekends and holidays. G could visit me on his days off. To keep it horse related, the area has a couple of excellent coaches and boarding options, and coincidentally hosts the show series I was going to travel to this summer. Obviously, I'd rather stay home but I'm not getting many hours at the job I'm at. We're OK with that, but I do love being financially independent and am easily bored if I'm not working.  I think I'll be happy whichever way it works out, but if I'm honest I'd really prefer to stay home and somehow magic up some more hours delivering the mail! :)

Go Bridget Go

Just a couple of pics and a tiny video of Bridget jumping. Enjoy!