I tried to explain to my boyfriend how much clipping sucks, but he doesn't have boobs, so he just can't fully understand.
Don't laugh! It spooks him!
I'm going to go stock up on peppermints quick. I can tell this is going to be a peppermint kind of day.
You're bad! You're just a bad horse!
I mean, I think I almost got frostbite in that lesson, but it was still fun.
You need cooking oil to loosen up this jaw. A little Pam would go a long way.
I don't know what's in this applesauce, but I'm never eating it individually packaged like this again. It doesn't freeze!
Yes I have to beg my seventeen year old horse to stand in the crossties. Otherwise he's like, "Fuck these crossties."
This horse had the brain of a mountain goat. As in, he would climb out of the dressage ring and go bolting up the side of a hill.
I have lots of things to write about, but my computer finally heaved its last dying, million year old breath and I just got a new lap top this afternoon. Yay, usable technology! Hopefully I'll be all caught up on the not so exciting but oh so ground breaking rides by next week some time. Bobby gets his second trainer ride from BM tomorrow, so there will be much rejoicing...from me. Probably not so much from poor BM and Bobby.
It has been quite the last few days in Bobby and Carly land.
My old roomie from college, J, was out in Rochester last week so of course we had to make a day work out where she could come and ride Bobby. She hadn't seen him since he was sent off to the track, so seeing him with several more inches and all different muscles was fun for her. She also got to hop on him after I warmed him up very quickly, and I was really pleased that he marched right off for her in much the same way he would have for me. I also never get to see Bobby from the ground, so that was a fun switch.
The following day, I had a really good jump school on him where he clocked around a small 3'3" course like a complete pro, jumping out of his skin, but totally with me every step. We followed that with a short but intense dressage ride Saturday, and then had Hubby out Sunday to video some more jumping for us.
And that is where shit hit the fan.
Or shit just hit my head. Really fucking hard.
Bobby had no brakes for the ride. I do grid and pole work in his egg butt, but I do course work in a slow twist, and that's what I had in Sunday. I had absolutely nothing to work with when it came to speed control, and for whatever reason, Bobby was on fire that day. Among other jumps, I had a one stride of 2'6" verticals spaced at 18'. That's a collected distance, but we were putting one stride in 15' earlier in the week with no issue.
Bobby kept bouncing through the 18', until I finally felt like I had him strangled back enough. He got in too short to bounce but too long for the one stride, and went plowing through the second jump. I got thrown forward and was only saved from falling over his shoulder by the crown of his skull slamming directly into my face and knocking me back into the saddle.
he looks completely unconcerned with the entire situation.
It was instant, exploding pain throughout my entire head, but I stayed on and had Hubby knock everything down to ground poles. I trotted him through the course a couple times where he trod on every single one of the jumps before jumping off and longeing him over a vertical both ways just to say I got him to pick his feet up.
When in doubt, return to ground work.
The blow to the head ended up being a concussion, diagnosed after I tried driving to the pet store to get cat food and not being able to get my eyes to focus. So I sat on the couch for a week in a semi comatose state with a never-ending headache and loopy fucking vision. I went to the barn briefly yesterday, and finally got back in the saddle this morning.
I set up a 2' vertical on the quarter line that I was going to circle over whenever our canter felt right. Bobby was reasonably good to warm up, and once I got a really good canter going, I turned him in for the jump. To the left, he launched. To the right, he slammed on the brakes after coming up to it from a perfectly good distance. Around again from the right, and he charged it.
At this point, my head was starting to ache again. BM was sweeping out the tack room across the aisle, so I called out to her and asked if she had any interest in putting in a training ride.
"Right now? What's he doing?" blubber sob "I can't jump this horse. I don't know what to dooooo."
"OK, well I have sweat pants on under my Carhartts." sniff sob "Can you get on him tomorrow?"
"Can you give me five minutes, and I'll run home and change?"
"Yessss." sob sniff blows nose pathetically
I'll point out here that one of BM's best attributes is her ability to manage emotionally unstable horse people like myself.
I got off while I waited and put my helmet away because my head was really hurting at this point. When BM came back, she proceeded to explode Bobby's brain on the flat for almost an hour before even turning to a jump. BM is really good with nitpicking the biomechanics of both horse and rider. She narrated what she was doing and what she was feeling, but it was a lot of information to take in. I'll try to recap what I remember.
He's stiffer to the left because he's tight along the right side of his back. He needs to loosen the right side up in order to bend left.
His hips get disjointed and she had a hard time controlling his shoulders because of it.When his hips aren't connected to his front half, the hind legs aren't pushing, and the only thing to do is fall on his forehand which is awfully convenient for him because he doesn't like to carry himself.
He likes to go lateral instead of bending. He likes to just randomly throw in a leg yield and hope he can get away with that instead of lifting his shoulders.
He hangs so badly on the left rein that he's not filling the right/outside rein--another reason he's not bending as well to the left. He needs to be booted into filling the outside rein,
He does better with a bumping inside leg to bend around than one quick aid.
He doesn't want to step under with his hind legs. Lots of shoulder in to force the hind legs underneath him.
"His canter is great. I love his canter."
The counted walk will make him pay attention to every part of his body.
The shoulders have to lift and expand. No one is allowed to hold his head up for him.
Probably the biggest reason he can get so strong over jumps is that he prefers to plow along on his forehand.
There was so much more, but I can't remember all of it. It was some amazing stuff and I'm not doing any of it justice.
Bobby was whooped by this point, but she made him persevere and move on to jumping. The very first time she came to the same 2' vertical I had been "jumping", he pulled the same shit with her. He threw his head up and charged right at it. BM said it was funny because he waits until only a stride or two out to do it, and then he runs at it, but still sticks in an extra step if he can. "I've never met a horse that wants to bolt to the base of the fence."
ponying a broken pony while cooling out
She had me put up a tiny X and then basically just looped the reins at him and flopped along to it to see what he would do with zero input from the rider. He did the same old shit, so she made him quietly trot it a few times before moving back to the canter. She tried to get him to move up to take a longer spot a couple times which at first he completely bungled through, but finally something clicked in his head. She also kept him on a circle the entire time. "No straight lines while jumping for awhile."
Once she got his head screwed back on over the 1' X, she moved back to the vertical on a circle. He started out rude again, but she got him settled down. "You need to be very zen in your mindset when riding this horse. Just think about your breathing. Don't think about the reins, or the jump, or him flying at the jump like a lunatic. Stay calm. This is fixable. We can make this horse lope the jumps."
She had me get back on and take him over the X myself. I did it at the trot first and he was a gem so I came back around at the canter. Also a gem. We quit there because he was soaked and my head was pounding, but it was the perfect spot to stop.
finally cold enough to bust out the super heavyweight
Her assessment was, "He's got a few quirks, but I have some ideas for him." A few quirks is putting it nicely, but we're going to try to work something out where she can put a training ride on him once a week for awhile. She said he doesn't look like such a difficult horse to ride when I'm on him, and that I'm not doing anything wrong on the flat per se, I just need to make him work harder and me smarter.
It was also good for the first time to have someone tell me that Bobby can in fact be a perfectly good show jumper. Every jumping lesson I've taken on him--and admittedly it hasn't been many--have been about how can I survive his jumping style and work with him. BM wants him to do his job correctly, and that doesn't mean me clinging for dear life while he kind of, sort of slows down enough not to make people cringe.
Fingers crossed this works out. This horse is hurting my brain in more ways than one.
We're horse people, and there is nothing horse people love more than pictures of our ponies doing awesome things with us. I'd assume almost all of you reading this are bloggers, and chances are you're also running some other form of social media, whether it's an instagram, twitter, or your horse's own personal facebook page. We love to share those pictures with people on what we're doing with our horses and brag about everything we accomplish.
a friend from college came to visit bobby and i which meant of course we had to get a selfie
There's nothing wrong with that, and people wouldn't follow along on our journeys if they didn't enjoy sharing in the process. I have to wonder though, if all this sharing isn't having an impact on how we go about our rides.
It can be easy to want to push yourself farther than you want to keep up with what others are doing with their own horses. There are times where I've felt almost obligated to do more than I might necessarily want to just to stay relevant and interesting in the blogging world. Certainly that could speak to my own insecurities (Neurotic hot mess? Me? Nooo...), but sometimes I get a sense that social media forces us to push harder and reach farther not just for ourselves, but to get content that's worthy of sharing.
only selfies with bobby involve him heavily mugging for treats instead of posing
There are plenty of good things about being so involved in social media. In a way, it holds you accountable for your actions, and that certainly should make you strive to be the best you can be in all aspects for your horse--not just riding, but also horse care. Following along with other people can also expand your knowledge of things in the horse world you might only be remotely familiar with, or thought you knew all about but discovered there's even more out there to learn.
But what happens when beating out the competition becomes more about beating the online competition than those you're actually competing against?
Have you changed your goals or any aspects of your riding or what you do with your horse for social media?
I was going to get this out yesterday as a follow up to my flat work post, but I was too excited to finally share my breastplate makeover. The conquering of such an ugly piece of tack wins over jump media any day.
Well, most days.
Or on that particular day.
Anyway, as I mentioned in my last riding post, I've been focusing a lot more on jumping with Bobby because it's something he really likes which means it doesn't bring about random bursts of anxiety driven temper tantrums. That's a win in my book.
Jumping days are split into two different categories: grids or course work. Since one of my main goals this year is to get Bobby jumping straight down the middle of the fence, even our course work gets catered to that.
So. What have we been doing? Sounds like a good time for Paint Skillz!
The trot poles were tricky as our arena is very long but not very wide, and the turn into them was pretty tight. Bobby likes to suck back before entering a maze of ground poles, so getting him to carry enough momentum through the turn and into the poles proved tricky. We worked over the single canter pole several times because it's important to be able to canter a single pole without leaping it like it's a Grand Prix jump. Once we got some control there, we did the one stride multiple times. I ended up using a pole on the ground to the right in front of each jump because that right drift was working hard. The guiding poles worked great though.
random trot page break
We also worked on a set of three bounces. Bobby was a tool that day and wanted to fling himself into the bounces before spazzing out that he was then in the middle of bouncing and had gotten himself in trouble by flinging himself into a line of bounces. Well, duh, son. I had to take a long w/t break to get my mind back in a good place because I was very, very close to bawling my eyes out during this ride. Eventually though, I got him under control and he was able to jump through like a normal horse both directions because listening.
More grid work before a course work recap? Well okay then!
We did this grid over the weekend. Bobby's never jumped with poles winged into a V before, so I started off with them pretty wide. He ended up not bothered by them at all, except, you know, they kept him super straight all the way through. Yay! The real problem he had was focusing on his feet for the two trot poles before having to pick up the canter for the bounce which also involved brain cells. It was definitely a full brain work out for poor Bobby, and I kept the two oxers low so we could do lots of repetitions through it...which means I have all sorts of different media for one grid!
Helmet cam:
Slo-mo:
Okay, I didn't say they were high quality videos.
And finally, one more "grid" day--yesterday!
We did the warm up exercise from this Grid Pro Quo with Boyd Martin. I set the 15' distance with two poles on cavaletti blocks, and set up five 5' wide trot poles down the middle of the ring. I'm guilty of letting Bobby plod a bit while warming up before jump work, but I really got after him to get going right off that bat yesterday morning, and as a result he was able to power through the trot poles like a total pro. That was a big win as it directly correlates to flat work...but no one tell Bobby that!
For the two poles, we started off doing the one stride first. That was pretty easy as Bobby is now pretty easy to package up at the canter. I honestly wasn't even sure how a bounce stride was possible for 15', but we came around at a fucking solid clip and went for it. I had to really leg Bobby on in-air over the first pole, but hot damn, we did it. I brought him around again to do the one stride, and he was like, "FUCK YEAH, RACE AT THE JUMPS!!! BEST IDEA EVERRRRR!!" So I halted him between the two poles which was a feat in and of itself. It got his brain back in tune though, and we were able to do the one stride again upon re-approach.
From the other direction, he also got the one stride fine, and then we galloped up to it and still barely got the bounce distance in. Really, Boyd. I'd like to see this one on video for proof of "ease". He came right back for the one stride again, and we finished the ride working on really opening up the canter and bringing it right back down again. That's right, extra flat work at the end of a long ride with no tantrums. Because jump tack and jump exercises. Suck it, Bobby.
For course work, this is what we last worked on. He was great for the singles--almost all our poles are striped, so I made sure we hit the middle stripe each time--and I was feeling like I was on point with my riding. Sitting tall, shoulders back, leg on, and holding my reins steadily and low--you know, not chucking them at his face three strides out before flinging them up in the air and grabbing him in the mouth as he takes off. Say whaaaat.
The first time through the bending line, I completely stopped riding the second we landed from the first jump. I tipped his nose in the general direction of the second jump and he went, but it was fast and sloppy, and I was sloppy in the air. I gave myself a mental slap and made sure I sat the fuck up on landing and rode all the way up to the second jump. WeI had no issues after that, and we did a meandering course to finish up while chanting, "Low hands, steady hands. Leg, leg, leg."
I plan to start putting fences up to height (3'3"-3'6") this week as the weather finally warms back up enough that it's not too cold to breathe. Gotta love the limiting factors of living on the East Coast.
When Bobby got adjusted last month, Chiro told me that I should be riding in both my jump saddle and dressage saddle with a breastplate. Bobby's withers are so reminiscent of pyramids that Chiro said no saddle is ever going to stay in place on him without a little help. So I put our favorite tack ho on the job, and she found us a cheap polo style breastplate on ebay that I immediately bought for a whopping $14.
The leather quality was good enough for $14 (and I'm not even remotely a tack snob), but even I had to admit the color was pretty garish. My Micklem is brown, but it's dark enough that it's not too distracting with my black dressage saddle. This thing...
"HELLO I AM A BRIGHT RED BREASTPLATE!!!!!!!"
Obviously the only solution was to dye the thing myself. After an approximately two second perusal of Google, I decided it sounded easy enough to be well within my capabilities, and my crafting abilities are on par with my desire to own leather that costs more than my monthly board payment.
I got on Amazon and typed in "leather stripper". Step One: Remove as much of the horrible red coloring as possible. Amazon happily led me to a deglazer by a brand I'm very familiar with, and then sent me on an easy peasy click trail that produced black dye and a leather finisher. I also added in an extra package of daubers that fortunately I didn't end up needing since they still haven't arrived.
Total Cost (including useless daubers): $28.17
When I finally got all of my liquid goodies in the mail, I set up shop in the garage. At this point, of course, the weather had decided it was finally time for winter, so I wasn't able to do it in the warm outdoors. This also meant I had to crack a window to not die of noxious fumes. Deglazer is acetone--nail polish remover, folks. That shit stinks.
I clamped the breastplate between two saw horses for ease of handling, and then began experimenting on the underside first in case I thoroughly screwed up my $14 strap goods.
You can't really tell how much tackiness or color the deglazer took off, so here's what it looks like with a first pass once I got to the front side:
Once I'd rubbed down/off the inside, I applied the first coat of dye. It went on very easily, and the smallest dab of dye covered pretty much the entire back side of the chest piece.
Although the dye is nice and shiny and pretty when it first goes on, it dries very quickly to a dull matte black.
With a quick rub down with a soft rag to get that off though, it shines back up again. It does not, however, when you're a bright red breastplate, instantly become a more socially acceptable black breastplate.
I got the color I would call mahogany (which was what this was originally listed as):
Obviously MOAR DYE was needed. I ended up doing three coats. It probably wouldn't have killed it to do one more, but between actually painting on the dye and waiting for each coat to dry, this was already well into taking the full day. I have zero patience, and when I start a project, I want to see it completed from start to finish as super quickly as possibly like right now why do I have to wait so long.
So after three coats, I cleaned off my dauber that had come with the dye, dampened it per packaging instructions (rendering Google useless. The instructions for each step are listed right on the boxes. An idiot could do this project.), and smeared on the resolene to seal the leather.
When I first put it on, I was like, "Wow. That is so bubbly. I must have done something wrong. Let me try that again." I wiped it off...and all the dye came with it!
And that is why we practice things on the parts that no one is ever going to see! Much too interested in instant gratification to go about re-dyeing the inside, I just slathered the resolene back on as-is and let it dry to see if the bubbly nonsense was going to affect anything. It didn't look too horrible when it was dry, so I went ahead and did the rest of the breastplate.
The finished result kept a little bit of the shine, but also came out a little splotchy looking up close. After a good once over with my Higher Standards conditioner, it evened out quite a bit (which I neglected to get a picture of). I don't know if the splotchiness was from my sloppy use of the resolene, or if I messed up somewhere else along the lines, but like I said, once it got a good once over from the conditioner, it did look a lot better.
And from a distance?
It actually looks quite alright!
Add on that brand new purple dressage pad that I bought myself for Christmas, and a black dressage bridle down the line, and we'll be the most styling dressage riders at our barn*!
*A barn where only one other dressage saddle resides, and it's owned by BM who never uses it...
My last ride recap was well into last month, and it was the final post in a series where all I could write about were all the naughty things Bobby was getting up to. Since then, I've revamped the program and we've come out the other side in a very different place than we were before.
I did one ride after that last post where I attempted the Tough Love attack. I got after him with Mr Tappy when he pulled his shit, and Mr Tappy was relentless in his corrections. That did...nothing. Bobby wasn't any worse for it--he didn't freak out even more because he was getting spanked--but he didn't take the lesson to heart. He didn't acknowledge it at all.
So I scrapped dressage rides. He wasn't acting up during jump schools (another vote for the lack of work ethic there as jump schools are fun work), so that's what we did ride after ride. Recap on those rides, and more recent ones, will come tomorrow, but first I want to write about the dressage work we've done the past few rides.
It's been sane, and lovely, and totally without dramatics.
The first dressage ride back I did on him simply because I ran into BM teaching make up lessons over the holidays and didn't want to interrupt. I'd trotted Bobby around in the indoor quickly while Hubby was dragging the outdoor for me, and he grabbed some video before we headed out there.
strange formatting due to my wonderful, wonderful phone.
You will note that he's wanting to duck behind the vertical. I tried the fancy Herm Springer bit on him that day because it's fancy and I really want him to like it, but he really does not. Oh, well. it was back to the boring egg butt after this ride.
He was quiet and calm during the brief time we were inside, but that wasn't much of a break through. In the rides where he was being a nutter, he started off fine, but once asked to continue working, that was when he'd have his melt down. The big test then was to see how he would take to having to restart his work after moving from the indoor to the outdoor and having a break between the two.
The footing was a little slimy, so we never made it to the canter, but we did quite a bit of trot work, including firing off a few lengthenings which were sure to rile him up in those earlier rides in December. He remained cool in his work, and we finished with absolutely no theatrics.
I was--and am--still firmly set into doing more jump rides than flat rides, but somehow we ended up doing two more flat rides in a row before getting back to over fence work. For both of those rides, he continued to go to work and not make a fuss.
I've come to the conclusion that my posting throws him a bit off balance, and honestly I'm better at managing my ride when sitting the trot anyway. Trainer was a staunch believer in the sitting trot, and that's pretty much the only way we rode in her lessons, so that's what I've switched to doing the past several flat rides.
Also, because he does better right off the bat, and his meltdowns were coming after being asked to go back to work, I've made our flat rides short but intense. From the first step away from the mounting block, he needs to perform to the best of his abilities.
The walk needs to be long and forward. The trot needs to be uphill, collected, and forward. He needs to lengthen and shorten his stride at the touch of my legs or the slightest pressure from my seat. The canter transition needs to be quiet, the connection maintained, and the step easily adjustable.
And then we're done.
Sometimes I'll cool him out with some stretchy trot if I feel he's in the right sort of mood. When we do get to do this, he drags his nose along the ground, but only for a few strides at a time before he loses his balance and gets quick. That's strength work, and we'll build on it as the brain catches up.
He's no longer bucking or cross firing in the canter. He's not evading the contact, or trying to get out of the correct bend. The lateral work is uninspiring, but it's quiet. He takes a correction and moves on. If I need to push for more, I can do it, and he gives it.
I'm also heavily praising him for these rides. I stuff handfuls of candy or sugar cubes in my pockets, and he looks for his treat when he knows he's stepped up to the plate. Maybe he was feeling insecure before and he needs this sort of "Do your work well and get rewarded extra well" confidence boost. I don't know, but this new approach is working for now.
Going forward, I'm going start incorporating ground poles so we can work a little longer during each ride. I'm hoping these jump-like objects will keep his brain distracted from adding on more time to a flat ride. Of course, they also have the added bonus of stretching out or compressing his stride and making him focus on what his feet are doing. My barn also has stacks of cavaletti blocks, so I'm excited to use those, too.
We'll see how long this lasts, but for now, it's a good plan and it's working.
No, there is no posted sale ad up for Bobby at the moment. I did, however, want to write a sorta specific post on what's been going through my mind lately that a for sale ad has finally been put on the priority list, even if it's just a footnote at the end of it.
*This game plan didn't work out? We've already tried this, this, and this? OK. Time to look into selling the horse.
I don't think it's an unfair plan to have in place for anyone involved.
No one is allowed to say I haven't put in the time or haven't tried to make this work. I've ridden Bobby in a riding horse capacity for the past five years. We've had long spans and short spans of problems, and eventually they get resolved enough that we're able to take one mincing step forward. Sometimes even two steps! This is not the first time selling Bobby has been put on the table.
Through all of it, I've been pretty ambivalent to the role Bobby's played in my life. I love horses. I enjoy riding. I like competing. I like doing well at shows. Bobby has taken me to a lot of firsts in my showing career, and while I appreciate it when he saves my ass over a jump, or steps up to the plate when my confidence is lacking, I find it hard to give him the credit he probably deserves. He's half of the partnership that gets the job done, and yet, to me, he's nothing more than the horse I'm sitting on when it happens.
It was hard for me to make the switch from losing Red who was beyond a doubt my heart horse to working solely with Bobby, and Bobby has always been so much less than Red. I probably have some underlying daily resentment that I ended up stuck with this horse instead of still being able to be with Red Pony. Maybe no other horse will ever be good enough for me.
#crazyhorsegirlproblems
That's for me to work through though. Bobby is not your horse to sell or to keep. It's not your situation to live with day to day.
Thank you to the people I've exchanged ideas with who have been tactful and supportive, yet willing to have a little back and forth on the situation. I appreciate being able to bounce thoughts off of people who aren't judgmental bitches. (Pretty much all of my blog friends are these people, whether we've talked about this or not. Thanks to all of you for also not being judgmental bitches!)
Bobby is doing...pretty well at the moment actually. It's not as if he's being ignored or abused just because he enjoys throwing epic fucking tantrums for no apparent reason. I treat him with respect (okay, well, minus the whole costume thing...), he gets attention, he gets praise, he's not ridden hard and put away without so much of a backwards glance. He's being treated like a well cared for riding horse and is going about his daily life blissfully unaware he might end up with a new home this year.
So that's that. We got two inches of snow last night and are expecting another two today, plus the predicted high is barely supposed to reach double digits, so today is the perfect day to get caught up on what we've been doing, what's worked, what hasn't.
It's positive stuff. It's nothing that erases the plan to reevaluate in the spring or summer and sell if that still seems like the best option, but it's enough to put me in a better mindset going forward.
