Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you had a nice weekend! Doozy and I have been busy gathering the ingredients and starting prep work for a nice little fall season (touch wood for us) — you saw last week’s xc schooling already, and there’s been another lesson with longtime dressage trainer C.
Sadly I haven’t gotten around to writing about it, and without compelling media may not ever… But it was a good one, with Doozy really starting to understand the work. At least, ya know, when I’m under direct supervision of a coach who instructs as if by puppet mastery lol.
idyllic morning with almost a light chill in the air!
Regardless, it was a good lead up for our favorite combined test series at Thornridge! I really love this venue, the vibes, the schedule, all of it, and also was somewhat eager to prove that our less-than-stellar experience here last May truly was a rusty fluke.
Verdict? Mare was absolutely back on her best behavior this time, good girl!
less idyllic: pic taken from within pasture, taken of pony without pasture, oops fortunately he was recaptured without too much fuss or delay!
I opted to stick with Starter level (2’3) for the CT bc, to be completely honest, that height feels so comfortable and easy for us, and I really appreciate not stressing about it. We still haven’t accomplished much in the way of jumping in lessons, and I’m reluctant to push too many boundaries on my own at this point. That’ll likely come up in conversation at a lesson in the near future, wish me luck lol.
safely arrived!! also: when #hoarding pays off: she’s wearing an old stained trailer saddle pad bc somehow i legit forgot to pack a nicer one, oops.
Regardless, tho, I also opted to add a second dressage test to our dance card — with a request to ride the tests back to back, or close to it. Idk about you all, but sometimes I get halfway thru a test before realizing that.. Hm, but what if I considered being a more *active* participant in this exercise??
Plus, so much of Doozy’s tension seems to come from anticipation. She’s so smart, she knows what’s coming, and she just gets so fizzy when she thinks she’s being held back from the inevitable.
rode through the test twice in a row, back to back, trying to help her understand that it’s just a game
So I figured, we’d go through the first test and do our best, but realistically just do whatever Doozy was gonna do. Then, take a deep breath, reorganize, and go right back in and do it all over again. Like maybe if Doozy better understands the pattern, she’ll better understand why I make her wait to canter?
she’s got the ‘free walk’ trick figured out, tho!
Who really knows, honestly, except that I felt a lot better about our second test. Sure sure, it’s virtually indistinguishable from the first in allllmost every measure LOL, we are (for better or worse) extremely consistent.
But there were a few key moments in the second test that made me feel it’d been a positive experience to do two in a row.
trotting the other way, i swear i’m trying so hard to bring my shoulders back, sigh
For example, Doozy slipped into our right lead canter in the first test a fair bit early, tho it was close enough that I let her roll with it instead of fighting her back down then pushing back up again. In the second test she was more patient and waited until I asked (at which point, I naturally biffed the cue and we picked up the wrong lead, oops!).
trying to be better at cantering too
A few other times, it felt like I was able to soften and push my hands forward into the bend, and in the second test she was likelier to soften with me vs spurt off or fall out onto her outside shoulder as she had in the first. Down transitions seemed to come a little more easily as well.
remembering to salute, yay me
Overall, tho, the scores were very similar — with comments mostly revolving around tension, too quick a tempo, and the overall balance being against the hand.
video of first test, 40.7%
video of second test, 39.3%
we are remarkably consistent LOL
You can decide for yourself, tho, since both tests are on video, yay! IMO, I’m happy with both tests and believe both are an improvement on earlier tests this season, even if they’re still sorta objectively bad.
I swear Doozy is learning to soften her top line and come into a lovely contact in lessons, but as with all things with this mare and me, it’ll take the time it takes. And that’s all good!
click for full size. 1st test on left, 2nd on right
And anyway, it’s hard to argue when that same tricky tense beasty transforms into an easy, straight forward and fun horse to jump around!
anyway, onto the fun part!
Like sure, she’s still tense and all that for the jumping — but I honestly believe she just better understands it. Like it makes more sense for her.
And something about just letting her canter on in a rhythm is so much easier than the starting and stopping of frequent transitions or the “one jump at a time” type exercise we’ve done in lessons. Bc once she’s in a rhythm, all the bolting and chaos seems to melt away.
this course always features some slightly funny turns and angles, but doozy was aces despite some pilot steering errors
Anyway. I felt decidedly positive about the course after walking it in the morning. Nothing terribly technical, but a quite proper 3 stride uphill line, and naturally all the same eccentrically off-kilter terrain and turns we’ve come to expect in this charming little grass ring.
we had a funny little uphill 3 stride line so it was worth getting our shit together before approaching
And Doozy warmed up like a super star! Like, was hot and touchy and tense, but also just proceeded with trotting the X, cantering the small vertical, cantering the large vertical, like she absolutely understood the assignment. Good ‘nuff, let’s go do the course!
she’s got such a great stride length, esp when i can trust her to travel forward
And she just… did, lol. Literally every jump was perfect. No notes, good mare.
Well. Ahem, maybe a note or two for the pilot, uh, *me.* Namely: I was super careful to get deep into the corner past the in-gate for that weird off camber turn to the black and white vertical at 3 — the tricky ground often makes this an awkward jump. We got a good shot at it, tho, except that even with all that space I’d given myself, I hadn’t planned a good line to the next jump and ended up needing kinda a big readjustment to get straight to 4.
locked ‘n loaded!
Doozy made it over 4 just fine, but all that disruption meant that we landed too disorganized to make the turn to 5 (the far end jump). Like we allllllmost got there, I think if I’d asked Doozy to jump she would have, except that the combination was coming up next so…
Eh, I just accepted that we’d missed the turn — technically you’d call it a refusal but I don’t think Doozy ever really had a chance, let alone realized she was meant to get there — circled around, caught it on a lovely balanced stride, then proceeded in the perfect rhythm to walk up the 3 stride line easy as pie.
nailing the final jump, easy as pie
Final little arc to another left lead end jump, and voila — a beautifully jumped course! As far as I’m concerned, the only mistakes we made were my own, which is my favorite type of mistake. There are other nitpicky details beyond steering that I’d love to fix in my style of ride too… But ya know. That’ll be part of the future conversation re: lessons.
video of show jump round
And in the meantime, I remain so pleased with this critter, in the face of what could be understandable temptation to be frustrated by the flat work. But ya know. The sport is hard anyway. And we have extensively documented history that dressage is not exactly my personal strength… Plus, Doozy has proved to be a bit uniquely challenging for me overall.
But!! We are doing things!! And things are my favorite thing to do!! So, we persist lol.
I work at a consulting firm full of type-A geniuses, each a master of something—and everyone’s got an analogy for everything. It's like a sport: who can pull the most perfectly relatable client story out of their hat, fastest. My boss, in particular, is fond of saying, “If you’re resting on your laurels, you’re wearing them in the wrong place.”
arrived just in time to enjoy pleasantly subsiding temps + humidity
And ya know. I admit to spending maybe more time than was quite necessary basking in the glow of our wonderful Loch Moy experience last month… But. Eh. It’s been hot, I knew there was work travel on the horizon (happened last week), and let’s be real: we’re allowed to be adult amateurs who can sit back and rejoice after doing a “big thing” every now and again, right? It’s all good.
the helmet cam always makes evening look so majestic!
Tho I’m also trying to really learn and understand all the various components that help create wonderful positive experiences in the first place. Namely, for us (and me and my mental demons in particular), it seems to be steady consistent “bite-sized outings” where everything feels easy and routine and mundane and normal.
With that in mind, I spent some time calendaring the next couple weeks between planned lessons and other outings, with an intent to balance Doozy’s trailer schedule, and decided that last night was the night to pop back over to Tranquillity for a little trip around the xc course.
not a new jump, but a good one
By now we’re all kinda familiar with the routine, right? Tranquillity just makes it so darn easy to get out and do whatever needs doing. I actually decided to warm up in one of the outdoor rings too, more or less to try to keep myself as honest as possible.
It wasn’t a perfect warm up — Doozy definitely knew what was up and was distracted by other horses (and deer) milling about the property — but honestly it was totally fine, and she popped over the little x-rails setup in the ring as quietly as she ever gets. Good ‘nuff!
brief interruption orienting the uninitiated to Tranquillity’s inviting layout: we parked next to the two big outdoor rings along the driveway, warmed up in the third outdoor (spiral), then basically made a circuit around the various fields (notably, the hay fields only ever really have jumps on the edges if at all).
Then we were off for a nice little jaunt about. Just trying to find the jumps nicely, reminding myself to circle and get balanced whenever necessary, and trying to keep everything easy breezy.
We started with mostly logs, but honestly Doozy was jumping fine — if a little fast and excitable. Bc, erm, it mayyyyyy or may not have been our first proper jump school since Loch Moy LOL. All good tho.
oooh putting this together is new for us, tho!
I knew from last time that as much as I like putting little lines together, Doozy sometimes seems to do better with single jumps when she’s feeling too hot to trot. Tho, interestingly, on this particular night, we actually had our very best set of jumps after what was a nice long straight run (the above gif) — just like what we’d see at an event.
not a new bench either, tho got quite a nice little shot to it
So it’s not necessarily that she does better on singles vs related distances, but just that she does better when she has a fair amount of time to relax into a more forward rhythm and cover some ground. Which… Is hard to trust when the shorter approaches feel so choppy and explosive. But interesting food for thought, none the less.
ooh first time with this slightly larger ramp-y triple bar!
Anyway, in trying to process all that information in real time while also making snap judgments about whatever jumps happened to appear in front of us, I opted to finish the schooling with a little loop around three nice fences — two of which are familiar, and one that was slightly larger but also friendly, all of which would require some threading the needle thru the driveway trees.
basic brown boxes are always good to us, even when i take a crazy tight approach LOL
And it was good! Tho actually I opted to throw in a last minute circle before the second jump (the new-to-us triple bar) just bc I didn’t totally love our level of straightness and canter, and preferred to circle, do a simple change of lead to Doozy’s left leg (just in case she found the weird water cooler jump on the left side a little spooky), and make it all a little more clear.
walked over the little log bump
It obvi didn’t matter tho LOL, Doozy was fine, jumped it great, and then even jumped the final fence fine too even tho I turned wayyy too early through the trees and we weren’t at all straight. Oops. What a mare haha.
omg there was swamp water for once!! we just snarfled through it, no real schooling
We stopped by the water mud puddle on our way back to the trailers just for the culture, more or less. Doozy was skeptical, as is natural — this ain’t exactly the world’s most inviting water complex. But she figured it out like the clever biscuit she is.
In a way I’m kinda grateful to just have helmet camera lol, bc it hides so many imperfections and really just showcases the feelings and vibes of a ride. Which, ya know, are what core memories are made of, right?
Like I could totally feel throughout the ride when my hands were misbehaving, or I wasn’t riding as straight as possible, or whatever other flaw you can imagine. But. Eh. That’s what the practice is for, I suppose! One little nibble at a time lol….
I’ve said from the very start with Doozy that the plan was always to ‘take it slow.’ Charlie taught me many, many lessons — more than a few of which I was not quite ready (or entirely willing) to learn. Chief among them: there isn’t some magical destination which, upon reaching, aha - we have unlocked fulfillment!
another lesson without compelling media, sorry guys!
Going bigger, higher, faster is not necessarily a reward unto itself, it turns out. Especially when the dogged pursuit means rushing through or under appreciating what should be special memorable experiences. For example, like when I’d walk away from a horse show feeling frustrated bc it wasn’t “good enough” for our move up plans, when actually in reality it should have been a happy and fun day and literally nobody robbed me of that joy except for myself.
In fact, it’s easily arguable that this overall approach is what ultimately took a lot of the fun out of competing entirely. If you only want one thing, and you ‘fail’ at that thing… it’s hard to not feel like, well, a failure, ya know?
did remember to nab pics of our new stirrup leathers tho — Henri de Rivel nylon lined in chocolate, paid ~$55 at Dover. first impressions: they feel great under the leg — flat, smooth, and unobtrusively easy to put my leg where i want it
So with Doozy, I’m really trying to do things a little differently. Tho, human nature being what it is, it’s also been easy to subconsciously slide into old mentalities and thought processes.
Like when Doozy finished the season so well last year, and was out and about starting to jump bigger things in clinics, it felt natural to assume that, well, we’d probably move up to BN at the beginning of this year’s season — and maybe even finish the year at N.
it’s a tougher leather with exposed nylon backing, compared to a very soft leather encasing a nylon core on pricier styles
It seemed like a reasonable idea at the time — bc doesn’t it always?? But obviously we all know by now how very vastly differently this year started out for us. And real talk? I’m kinda a little grateful for the interruption and reminder to think through what it is I really want.
Bc…. What I want is to have fun at horse shows, feel confident about what we’re doing, and not feel like I’m betting quite so heavily on the good will and nature of my horse to carry us through sketchier moments.
i loved these Passiers and perhaps 5 years is a reasonable life span for that style (paid ~$85 new on ebay in 2020), but they are well and truly dead. maybe the tougher HDR leathers will last longer?
In fact, reading back through this post of Charlie’s second season opener (which I linked to in an unrelated post a couple weeks ago) really drove home that… While that experience was well and fine for that era in my riding life, I’m really kinda trying to go for something, erm, a little different now haha.
anything for Ms Princess, who had to have another saddle check (just 6 weeks after the last flocking) bc we are having a recurring problem likely related to our codependent crookedness… her back looked all clear after our lesson tho!
And. Obviously, Doozy is not Charlie. I got lucky with him in so many ways, I got away with a lot haha. Not quite sure the results would be the same with this funny little firecracker mare lol.
anyway, the rest of the pics are from hacking out. can you believe this is AUGUST grass??? unreal
She is an exciting horse tho, and I’m excited with the progress we’re making on this new and different approach — this rigorous dogged pursuit of…. wait for it… the fundamentals.
We finally had another lesson with event trainer Woodge this week (recall she was traveling for her own competition last week and so we snuck in a reunion with dressage trainer C), yet another session of “remedial trotting.” And guys, Doozy was brilliant omg <3
doozy likes marching me straight up to these clusters of mouth-height tall grasses lol
No media, obvi, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Which, natch, is up to you haha. It’s hard to go from earning 50% on a dressage test to swearing up and down that a horse is fantastic on the flat, but here we are lol.
woods are still full of (suspicious) ferns! they cut a new high trail too — on soft loam vs the rocky stream bottom, so we actually got to do a few little log jompies omg, and doozy was super chill about them!
We stayed almost exclusively on a 20m circle for the full lesson, and only ever did sustained walking and trotting (a few bits of canter snuck in, but only temporarily).
The circle had jump standards with poles at 3o’clock and 9o’clock (ie bisecting the circle, and we essentially carved a horse-width sized track into the footing. Noting: the width of our track should be equally narrow all the way around, not just where the poles were.
i love how her hacking confidence keeps growing <3 <3
The focus was all about posture — both mine and Doozy’s — while maintaining inside bend and outside shoulder control. Which actually felt like a really really complementary next lesson after riding with Trainer C last week. Like we kinda put the ‘yin’ and the ‘yang’ together finally.
happy marching across hill and dale, away from and back toward home!
And Doozy was so good — was able to have moments where she really felt on the aids, stable, balanced, could do thoughtful balanced serpentine changes of direction inside the 20m circle at trot, could shift down to a 15m circle over just one of the pole exercises while Woodge adjusted the other, and basically just settled into trotting over the various pole configurations like it’s easy and boring. Good girl!
oooooh the butterfly bush is blooming again!
The pole configurations included going from single poles at each end, to sets of two poles (at trotting distance), to three poles (still trotting), to one side actually having a little cross rail — which was SUPER EXCITING the first time, but boring thereafter — then back to finishing with four trot poles on each end.
Not groundbreaking stuff, guys. But it was incredible to feel the difference in how easy it was for me to sit tall and still with long legs, shoulders back, and hands together and down when Doozy was so secure in her own balance and posture. It’s really clear how much we feed off each other’s instability in the chaos lol.
i love riding out with friends, but sometimes going solo is nicer for letting doozy power walk to her heart’s content
And funny enough, more than once (more than three times, if we’re being honest) Woodge asked what I did differently in a moment of softness… and all I could do was just shrug like, “I dunno, Doozy just got it?” Again it really felt like the pieces we’ve been working on since riding with Trainer C were super complementary to the approach Woodge is taking with us, which may or may not inform my scheduling choices for the foreseeable future.
Regardless, and kinda back to my main earlier point — It’s exciting to see where Doozy is right now. And liberating in a way to remind myself that there’s no clock, there’s no rush. The reward is in the positive experience, the horse that “gets it.”
And it’s giving me an entirely new and unfamiliar — but GOOD — kind of rush when I click “submit payment” on entry forms. Who knew that was even an option LOL :D
Happy Friday, y’all!! It’s been a long week, and I’ve been out of town for most of it. Nothing new and exciting going on, so let’s close things out with a fun collection of some of my favorite Charlie videos, in no particular order <3 <3
a brief horror vignette
killer charles finally free after the heel grab from hell
killjoy charles, not participating kthxbai
Most Saintly of Charles
just charlie himself, playing with anything and everything
no blanket was safe within his reach
still steady despite a conditioning ride gone awry!
Happy Friday! We finally — finally — made it out for another lesson with longtime dressage trainer C this week, much rejoicing!!
For the last couple months we’ve kinda been focusing all our resources on lessons with the new 5* trainer. Not necessarily bc one is better than the other or whatever, but actually bc I kinda wanted to see what would happen if we hunkered down with weekly lessons in one ‘program.’
always with the #snacks
Verdict? It turns out, there is no silver bullet, no Disney FastPass. The process takes the time it takes, and no one single method is the only “way.” We are loving the process, tho, the lessons are energizing and productive and I look forward to where they take us.
But ya know, I’ve also always loved riding under the guidance of a variety of perspectives (provided they are complementary v confusing to the horse). So when scheduling conflicts arose this week, I leapt at the opportunity to get back on the books with dressage trainer C, who hasn’t seen Doozy since our ill-fated CT at Thornridge last spring.
farrier used a new substance under the clips this cycle — it hardens like epoxy, tho apparently isn’t sticky and doesn’t need all the same rigmarole. the idea is basically to “minimize the damage” from just being a thoroughbred existing in summertime
And it was honestly a great lesson! Nothing new, nothing “ground breaking” per se, but in a weird way, it feels like with Doozy I’m somehow hearing some of this stuff with new ears. Understanding the mechanics on maybe a deeper level.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re very VERY much still in the kiddy pool haha. But thinking back on my riding history, especially as it pertains to dressage… Well. Realistically Isabel was the first horse I ever tried to do “dressage” with, and let’s be honest here — I really got lucky with her. She was talented and game, and we could be successful even with my limited education.
it comes in this cool little tube, applied by hand before he fully finishes the shoe with a few more hammers on the clips, clinching the nails, last few rasps etc.
Then with Charlie, obvi we had a few good years of working on continuing that education, pushing our boundaries etc. But frankly, the work never came easily to him. And in his early days I was in such a rush to get him moving up the levels that I definitely skipped a few steps. Then by the end of his riding years, after we’d been through so much together, I was decidedly disinclined to pick on him, push him, or drill him through work he didn’t love.
So, yea. Maybe it makes sense why it feels like I’m still kinda learning some of this stuff “for real” now with Doozy. My sweet young mare whose first and foremost job is to help me continue learning and expanding my education in this lifelong sport.
anyway. back to our scheduled programming: #snax at the trailer, apparently tail-less
In our lessons with Woodge this year, we’ve been laser focused on lateral balance — straightness, suppleness, bend, etc. With my understanding of the approach being to start with outside aids and control the outside shoulder while working on that inside bend. And as such, we work almost entirely on small circles.
In this lesson with trainer C, she wants the same outcome, the same lateral balance and flexibility (bc you can’t have the longitudinal balance without the lateral), but we took a bit more of an ‘inside to out’ approach in this lesson.
mirror selfies!! this is one indoor i *never* mind
Really really focusing on making sure I could always see an inside eyelash no matter what figure we were riding or where we were on a circle or on the rail or whatever. Again — this isn’t exactly a new directive, but our results this lesson were fantastic. Crazy how continual practice actually moves the needle like that LOL!
We spent almost the entire lesson working on getting that whole-of-body inside bend in both directions, using sweeping circles to find the bend, then straightening onto a quarter line (without losing the bend) and going instantly into a leg yield to the wall. Again and again, rinse repeat.
paying the meter before getting started lol
For my part, I tried to stay very conscious of my posture: sitting tall and with weight traveling long down my inside leg like rebar for Doozy to form around, holding a steady post and hands hopefully not going too wild.
I had a recent discovery about our leg yields too, actually. I want to get super pretzel-y and feel like I’m “doing something” to create the leg yield. But strangely, with Doozy — hell, maybe with every horse and I’m only just now figuring this out lol — it turns out that our best leg yields come with almost the absence of a direct aid. Almost like a quiet opening of the door to the outside, and she goes.
(Provided, of course, that I’ve got myself seated and balanced where I belong.)
ooooookay so indoor screenshots from the wall-mounted helmet cam are… not persuasive haha. watch the video if you’re curious
None of this happens in a vacuum, right? Like we have spent the last 3 months working weekly with a trainer to establish clear consistent outside aids with the horse. Both Doozy and I are benefiting very much from that work — esp with consistent supervision and eyes on the ground.
It makes sense, then, that in this lesson where we worked on refining the inside aids, we’d see the cumulative effort come together into a really nice result with the horse.
video makes more sense than screenshots i promise
Doozy, for her part, was super for this ride. Really really trying, really staying with me. Even when we started up again after a break for our next little work session — the part recorded in the video above — I felt like our tempo started a bit fast and somewhat less consistent, but it doesn’t look that way at all in the video.
Well, ok, you can decide for yourself LOL, but I thought she looked super workman like and way steadier than it felt.
doozy was a very good girl tho <3 <3
That last session of work continued with the same themes — sweeping circles to the quarter line for instant leg yields to the wall, then back onto the circle. Only now we intermixed transitions into and out of canter, a couple times in each direction.
It was kinda funny to me bc this is almost exactly how I’ve been schooling canter at home — just quick hits a few times in a ride, a circle here, then trot, a circle there, then trot again. Mostly to help Doozy stop anticipating and learn how to trot nicely even after a canter. So it was super helpful to keep this approach going in a lesson too.
lots of pets for a good effort <3
Also just a fun lesson overall, too. Let’s be real, there’s a reason why I’ve been riding with C on and off for ten years at this point (hard to believe, but that’s the truth!).
My absolute favorite era of riding was when I was consistently working with 3 distinct trainers on a routine basis each month. A lot of that was circumstantial + geographical luck (whether I realized it at the time or not), and it’s been extremely difficult to replicate the same alchemy again… But maybe with Doozy there will be a new era upon us?
Happy hump day, y’all. How about a nice selection of printed pro pics from Loch Moy, yes? Pictures chosen on the strength of just how damn happy I look, like I’m actually having fun competing — even if we aren’t exactly doing it ‘picture’ perfectly.
pictured: so proud of this little mare
absolutely cruisin’ around show jumping in 77 seconds omg haha
yes yes one day i’ll learn to put my hands down, but omg look at us lockin’ on and going to our fences!
wheeeee jompies!!!
what a mare <3 <3 already looking forward to the next time!
