Month: November 2017

VAULTING!!

Yes, it is insane. I have zero ability to do any form of tumbling or gymnastics on the ground. Doing it on a horse would be suicidal. But it looks like a lot of fun.

When I decided to get out of endurance and change disciplines, I began to look for lesson programs figuring I would likely just toodle around with Gem and learn something new on a lesson horse. The first thing I did was research vaulting facilities in my area. It is probably a really good thing there weren’t any near enough to me to make going for a weekly lesson viable. Who knows where this blog would have gone had there been one in my town. More than likely it would have ended with a post about me being in a body cast.

As the WEG 2018 tickets became available I knew I wanted to go on a day that had vaulting. Thankfully, that day also had show jumping too and I believe paradressage which is a discipline I am in complete awe over. Here I am barely able to function on a horse with 100% control of all my body parts and yet here is a whole class full of riders with disabilities out there kicking butt and taking names. Those riders deserve way more accolades than they receive.

Someday I would like to take an intro level lesson on a vaulting horse and get a feel for it. I could totally see me adding a draft horse to my herd someday and teach Dusty to lunge so I could practice. Well, until I fell off and broke something important that is.

Confession: it makes me irrationally angry when I see people riding a horse they barely scraped a saddle sized area of mud off of. This happened all the time in endurance and it drove me crazy.

Grooming to me is about preparing the horse for what is to come. It’s about massaging the muscles, making sure all dirt is removed and running your hands down every inch of their body to make sure nothing is amiss. It doesn’t have to take long, but it should be complete.

My typical pre-ride groom session can take as little as 10 minutes or as long as 30 minutes depending on how much time I have and how long I want to take. The steps remain the same.

1. Start with the rubber curry and massage from head to tail down one side of her body, return to her head, give her a huge neck hug breathing in deeply with her and then going down the other side. I apply pressure as I curry and watch her response
2. Next is the stuff bristled brush. Again I start at her head and work my way down one side, return to he head and go down the other. I don’t have a fancy brush, just a cheap one I got years ago when we moved to SC and realized I left all my grooming stuff behind at the barn in WI.
3. Time to pick her hooves. I run my hand down her entire leg checking for any wounds or areas of swelling/heat. Sometimes my mind likes to make up areas of concern just for fun. Then I pick her hooves and check for any length I need to rasp off and make a note if I think some No Thrush powder should be applied after the ride.
4. Her mane is then brushed out last. If I have extra time I use the comb in it as well. Her tail though typically gets ignored unless I find myself with a lot of time on my hands.

By doing the above I know every inch of Gem and if something is normal or not.

Post ride is a lot less. She is really low maintenance and our rides aren’t that strenuous. I brush her off with the firm bristled brush, pick her hooves, add No Thrush powder if I feel she could use some. In the summer I either hose her down if I’m at home or the barn or sponge her off if I’m out and about. I don’t ice or poultice her legs at the moment because we just aren’t doing enough to really warrant it.

And that is all. Nothing major but enough to keep her clean and ready to work.

So…I don’t really have one. I’m not one to idolize much of anything and I’m certainly not a celebrity follower for any reason.

However there are a few people I really admire. One of those is my Trainer. She may not be riding around Rolex but she deserves all the accolades in the world for putting up with Gem and me.

Trainer’s entire philosophy regarding horses and training is rooted in a deep understanding of what a horse actually is and what it is we are trying to ask it to do. Everything she asks me to do is explained not only in regards to the how to do it, but also the why which I find very important in my overall understanding and execution. She never drills and she never pushes past the point of being able to learn.

What I admire the most though is her flexibility. Gem and I aren’t your typical pair and when something isn’t clicking or going well, Trainer always has something else up her sleeve to approach the problem in a different way and yet still get to the same outcome. Sure there have been less than stellar lessons throughout the last year, but all in all we keep steadily making progress towards our own nebulous goals.

Outside of her training methods, her management ideals line up with mine very closely. Her horses get to live outside except for in the worst weather, she doesn’t remove all their whiskers, ear and leg hair, she believes in a forage based diet and her horses show this off by being exceptionally healthy beasts.

Beyond even that, Trainer is the nicest person I have ever met. She has never gotten angry or flustered with Gem’s antics and my lack of ability to deal with it. My scared nature doesn’t annoy her (at least not outwardly) and she handles Wyatt’s lessons well too. When KC went cross country schooling with me and Pilgrim lost his show, Trainer didn’t hesitate to jump in her car and drive over to the h/j show to flag down a random farrier all while our time was whittling away and then she proceeded to still send 2 hours on the course with us and only charged $60 for the entire 3 hour ordeal! I don’t know anyone else who would have gone above and beyond like that for a one time client that she will likely never see again.

Is she my idol? No, but I sure would love to be more like her when I grow up and I am so very glad I met her last year.

September 1998. My Aunt and Uncle used some sort of magic to convince my mom and dad to let me miss an entire week of school for a trip. I had never been allowed to miss even a singe day unless I was super sick, so I have no clue how on earth they managed it. Regardless, I found myself in the back seat of my Uncle’s F350 dually with the horse trailer and three horses being pulled behind as we headed towards Acadia National Park in Maine.

It was a trip of a lifetime.

18 long hours of hauling later we arrived at the barn where they had rented three stalls for the next 5 days and then we headed to our rental in the woods only a few miles away. The house was massive with 4 stories. I still remember the A frame construction, the kitchen being on the second floor and my own room on the 4th up a winding metal stair case. We were sharing it with a boyfriend/girlfriend couple who brought mountain bikes and a husband/wife team who brought their own horses, both couples were friends with my Aunt and Uncle and we rarely saw them the entire week.

Each morning we would wake up before the sun did and head to the barn. Most days we would not return until the sun had set again. The trails were perfection too. Wide open ancient carriage trails built by the Rockefeller family that wound around pristine lakes the color or turquoise, ran along ridge lines and dipped into valleys. Our rides were a mix of walking, cantering and long racing gallops. I wish now that I had a Garmin back then. I know we had to cover close to 250 miles that week.

A couple of days we either started or ended late. One day was spent up on Cadillac Mountain watching the sun rise. It is the first place the sun touches in the US each morning. The other day we ended early and went into Bar Harbor. Here my Uncle had bought us tickets to ride a glider plane. We barely squeezed inside the tiny cockpit and at first I thought about bailing. However soon we were soaring high tethered to the plane that would eventually let us go. When it did, my heart skipped a beat but our pilot knew his job and soared our engineless plane safely back to the ground after about an hour floating high above.

After that we went to a local seafood restaurant where I experienced my first lobster fresh from the ocean.

The entire trip was like a dream. A great horse under me, beautiful scenery and the love of my Aunt and Uncle. It is a trip I won’t ever forget.