This first video is from the CT in June where I entered Gem in the amoeba division with Intro test B and 18″ fences. It was my first ever horse show and my nerves were raging. Gem had put down a tense, but respectable dressage test and now we were entering the jump arena. All in all it went pretty good. We went clear around the wide open course at nearly a walk. She walked over at least three of the jumps, but they were flashy jumps and I was just proud we finished. We finished 4th out of 9.
The next video is from the 18″ round we just did. Personally, I think there were some areas of improvement and some where we got worse.
We did speed it up a bit and she got to canter between some of the fences, but the general picture looks more tense on both our parts and less put together. While my jumping warm up was the same for both, check brakes and hop over a cross rail a couple of times, she didn’t get the entire dressage warm up at the jumper show and maybe that played into the tenseness a bit. The atmosphere was a lot more charged too. There were a ton of people at the h/j show with lots of crowds waiting by the gate versus the much more open and relaxed vibe of the CT.
Nine months ago that statement would have been a bold faced lie. I hated jumping. I was scared of even a 12″ cross rail. Two feet made me curl into the fetal position. Gem was in full agreement with this as well. To put it mildly, jumping was not my thing.
Now? Holy crap guys, I love it. Deep down, LOVE it. I love everything about it and the more I learn the deeper I fall. There are so many tiny intricacies about this sport and I am finding myself not so patiently waiting for the day I can unlock the secrets. I always thought I’d feel this way about dressage, but in reality I liked it only slightly more than Gem which isn’t saying a whole lot.
This was completely solidified during my lesson Sunday morning. A lesson I attempted to wuss out of when the weather was 41F and raining.
Trainer wouldn’t let me bail
Once there though I quickly forgot about being cold and wet in favor of the permanent grin that was plastered all over me face from start to finish. If this is what riding was supposed to feel like these last eight years, I’ve been seriously missing out.
So back to the lesson.
Gem was a saint. In fact she even walked up to me in the pasture. This is a good thing, true, but also then put me in a bind because I had planned 40 minutes to catch her and now had to waste that time waiting to leave. In the cold rain. No way was i going to put her back out and try again later.
This sweet innocent face. Ha!
The lesson began per usual working on the flat. Trainer likes to see how rideable Gem is being to determine what we work on. It also is a sneaky way to work in the boring part for Gem without her getting too annoyed.
Sometime about two months ago things clicked for us. It began right around the time I began riding her two days a week at home working on short, but productive flat work in the dressage saddle. Gem was so light and responsive on our flat work Sunday. Everything was just so much easier. Bending actually occurred. She remained steady in her pace and rhythm while I got to play around with inside leg for more bend and a steady outside rein. I was grinning and Trainer kept telling me how happy she was that Gem was being so darn rideable. It felt like a completely different horse!
Then we got to the even better stuff. All our work to date has focused on getting Gem to just slow the poop down and now here we are nine month later and more often than not we can actually move on and learn new things. It’s getting fun folks!
Sunday that new item was working on bend over the jumps. To date we were just happy to make it over a fence and my focus was straightness before and after and worry about getting to the next fence later. On Sunday though Trainer set up a simple exercise to get us bending over the fence. A new skill that we had never been able to do before since Gem required so much leg to just go over the darn thing.
I completely failed at getting a decent shot of the exercise. The ground pole to the left right in front of the straw bales was one set point for the circle. Opposite of that one and off screen to the right was an identical pole which made up the other set point for the circle. I had to keep Gem bending throughout
So Trainer set two ground poles up in the far end of the arena making a 20 meter circle. The goal for me was to keep Gem bent over the entire circle instead of going straight over each pole and turning after. We did this at the trot. The first few times I was still hitting the pole perfectly straight and then turning, but I finally figured it out.
On Gem’s part, it took her a while to figure out her feet while going over the pole and keeping the bend in her body. Trainer wanted me to focus on adding as many steps in as possible between the two poles to get Gem to rock back and move over them instead of trying to reach out and take a long spot. It took a bit but it was so fun to be working on minutia type things and not fighting her zooming around and constantly be hearing “slow her down, slow down, slow down”. Instead I was hearing “add more strides” and “a little more inside leg” or “hold that outside rein steadier” Fun, fun, fun!!!!
My grin was about as big as ever. And that was before Trainer made it even better.
Trainer setting up the cross rail. She made the circle larger so that we could alternate between going over it and making a flat 20 m circle beside it still using the other ground pole
Trainer changed out one ground pole for a cross rail and moved it out closer to the rail. The exercise was to go over the pole, cut inside the jump to create a 20 meter circle, go over the ground pole, then go over the jump, get her back to trot before the ground pole and repeat the same sequence again. Key points were to make sure she stayed bent the entire time including over the jump. “Bend her in the air” was said about two dozen times.
And oh my word was it FUN! And hard. But mostly fun. My legs were shaking by the time we had done this both directions. Gem never said no to the cross rail either which got me in trouble a bit. It’s so hard to trust her when I have so much history of her saying no, but she was being good and Trainer told me I needed to reward that by giving her a better release. The best part was that I could feel her bending in the air and then she would land in canter on the correct lead. She also came back to trot before the pole each time without running away with me as she did when we did the grid work before. So much progress!!!
The final time we did it Gem picked up a beautiful left lead canter and Trainer told me to just ride it. We made 4 or 5 laps in canter which is the most I’ve ever done in a lesson and I was giddy with happiness by the end.
I could have finished on that, but the course from the show was still up and Trainer wanted to work on fences 1-3 since I sucked at those. She made them all 2′ verticals and had me ride them like in the show but add our new cross rail as fence 4.
I went into it and we did fence 1 fine and actually made the turn to 2 with bend and an even pace but then she stopped at 2. She hopped over eventually and then we made it to 3 and she ran out. I circled her and she popped over and did 4 no issue.
Sigh. It is so hard because I want to trust her and believe she will go over so I back off a bit and give a big release like Trainer told me to when we were doing the cross rail except now she was taking advantage of that as an excuse to say no.
Back around again and this time I rode her aggressively over each and it went really well. Trainer even told me to keep her cantering after fence 3 and we took fence 4 from the canter! Our first canter fence!!!! Gem was a bit awkward with her legs since we haven’t worked on this before but we did it and I liked it!!!
Ah!!!! I’m enjoying jumping!!!! What is the world coming to?
Bay. Black points. Small star. No other white. Basically, my Gemmiecakes.
Dusty says it is boring, but I love a shiny bay butt with some back points. White annoys me solely because it is impossible to keep clean here in the red clay world of the southeast and I am nothing if not a keep it simple, low key horse owner. My horse lives outside, gets to keep all her hair and maybe gets a blanket thrown on a few times a year. I make sure to groom her before every ride, but the dark coat goes a long way to help hide a lot of dirt.
Having said that, color is my least important factor in purchasing a horse, so who knows. I may find myself owning a palomino (my least favorite color) some day. Stranger things have happened.
With Gem nearing 20 years old (will the mare ever calm down!?!?!) the thought of my next partner is always lurking in the back of my mind. Gem was purchased off a single line, no picture ad that read “Bay Arab mare 10 years old” Yup, that was smart. My next horse will be more heavily researched, trialed and trainer approved. And while my next purchase is several years off, it doesn’t stop me from drooling over the flood of horses always on my FB timeline from various local horse groups. There is a slew of horses always for sale although most are over priced, under trained or OTTBs. None of which I am looking for.
Then one day I spied this farm. Somehow they got shared on the SC page even though they are up in PA. I’m sure Trainer would give me a very quick NO on any of these beauties, but I don’t care. I want them ALL. Now please! Thank you very much. They specialize in driving and riding horses with a lot of draft crosses and purebred Dutch Harness horses.
My favorite is already sold, but I want to take a minute to drool over Porter again because wow….
Porter’s ad. I don’t want to steal any pictures, so click on the link to see it.
Of the currently available horses, I’d say my favorite is Cooper. He does it all, is much more reasonably sized at 15.3 and if I pretended really hard I could maybe, possibly consider affording him.
This farm is on my short list of places to look at once I am truly in the market. They seem to produce well rounded horses that are at home out on the trail and in the arena with solid brains and good conformation. Only a few years until I can shop for real!
In general, the hubby is very supportive and understands my need for an outlet from work and home life. he is an ultra runner, so he understands the need for conditioning and training that is involved. I think he understood endurance a lot more than this new jumping/eventing thing. He could relate to the love of the trail, the speed and the distance. He supported me being gone all day out on trail and tagged along to the hunter paces I used for conditioning. He was present for my 100 as well.
This new discipline bores the crap out of him and I get that. I mean, we arrive 4 hours too early for my class, he stands around trying to entertain a toddler when there is nothing present to do it with, and then he watches me go for 2 minutes. Plus I’m kind of a nervous bitch the entire time.
The money suck gets to him every once in a while. Lessons, shows, tack, gear. It all adds up on top of the every day maintenance costs of owning a horse. But he gets it and doesn’t complain. Mostly because he knows how cheaply I do this and that it could be a lot worse.
Parents
They don’t get it. They aren’t animal people. They aren’t horse people. They love living in the suburbs close to everything and have no ability to understand my need to be on land in the country. They try though. If I ask for a specific horse item for a gift, they try their hardest to get it even though they have no clue what they are buying. Mom and dad even came to my CT in June and stood around waiting to watch me go. It made the entire day.
Friends
Pretty much all my friends are horse friends. Moving to a new state as an adult made making friends pretty rough. The only way I met people was through riding, so that is who I am surrounded by right now. All my friends think my riding is great 🙂
Ok…be prepared for a very boring entry. Ready? Here we go:
None.
I’ve fallen off Her Royal Highness more times than I can count. Most of those times I have landed on my feet. There have been two times I can recall my head lightly bumping the ground resulting in getting a new helmet and one time where I bruised my butt pretty badly. Thankfully though with all the tumbles I have taken I’ve been able to get back on and continue riding. This is really important since the majority of my “emergency dismounts” have occurred out on the trail far from the trailer. It would have been bad indeed if something more serious had occurred.
Since we are on the topic though, I’d like to take a bit to discuss riding safety beyond the typical “wear a helmet” conversation. (Seriously, though. Wear your helmet.)
I ride alone most of the time. Not because I am that antisocial, but because I like to ride at the butt crack of dawn or late at night and normal people seem to want to ride at a more cozy time such as 10 am or 2 pm. Go figure. My background is in trail riding including endurance and hunter paces, both of which occur at speed over varied terrain, and that meant that I needed to condition along the same lines.
When out on the trail alone, especially on days I wanted to get 20+ miles in, there were some key things that I always made sure I did to make it as safe as possible:
Wear my helmet
Make sure all my tack fit Gem appropriately and was in good functioning condition
Have my cell phone on and charged
Have a “grounds person” aka Dusty around or if he isn’t able to be present then create a plan and stick to it. If I can’t stick to it, then update him via text
The first three are self explanatory, but the last I feel is very important and very often ignored. Just like a lot of cross country places required a grounds person for you to jump, when I went out alone on the trail I always tried to make it at a time Dusty and Wyatt could come and either hike or play in a creek/mud pit while I rode. This way, even if I was 10 miles from the trailer, if I got hurt (and remained conscious) I could have texted or called him and he would have been with me in a few minutes. While I never needed to take advantage of that, it made me feel much more comfortable knowing he was at the trail head.
One time I was riding a new system and got horribly lost. Gem and I were 15 miles into the ride and turning around was possible, but would have put us at 30 miles without food or water and that idea made me a bit sick. Thankfully Dusty was there hiking with Wyatt and the dogs and when I hit a service road, I called him and he looked at the large trail map (the paper version I had with me was awful) at the trail head and was able to talk me to an access road which he drove down to meet me.
I know this isn’t always possible to have someone waiting for you to finish. In that case, I always pre planned my ride. I then told Dusty which trails I planned to take in which direction (red going clockwise to green then back to red going counter clockwise etc…), the length I was planning on, and the time frame I hoped to finish in. I then texted him once mounted so he would know I was off and going.
I’ve read so many complaints about how this isn’t practical because the trails are sometimes blocked or you change you mind or your horse isn’t up for it so you go a different route. All lame excuses for sure. I mean, we all have cell phones, right? It takes 15 seconds to send a text saying “not feeling it, changed from green to yellow” or “trail blocked have to re route to blue”. Sure your person may not be sitting on pins and needles to read it, but if you fail to return in a reasonable amount of time, at least they have a clue where to look for you.
I’m new to the entire arena based riding, but I’ve still kept a lot of my paranoia with me. I don’t ride at home when nobody else is around. I take Dusty with me when I ride at the barn outside of a lesson. I no longer feel the need to text him my every move, but I do make sure he knows what my plans are even when I’m going to a lesson or out with a friend. I feel safer knowing that if something were to happen at least he would know where I was and when to start worrying.
After the semi ok, but not really great cross country schooling, I’ve had a hard time not thinking about the immediate horse future and the long term goals.
I’m not stupid and I don’t have rose colored glasses. I know Gem isn’t the perfectly right horse for me. I know most would have walked away a long time ago. This is supposed to be fun, so why torture myself?
As Gem ran circles around me Saturday morning in her pasture, the thought solidified in my brain. I’m going to lease her out to an endurance rider for a few seasons. Let her return to the trail. She is way too young physically and mentally to retire, I fully believe she would hate it, yet I don’t really want to do this with her any longer and I can’t return to endurance at this point in my life.
There. Plan made.
But then I got to the show and Gem patiently let Wyatt pick her hooves clean, brush her out and fuss over her. She carried him in warm up with others trotting and cantering by without putting a single foot wrong. She was careful and calm during his class even walking past the scary hay bale jump.
As I stood waiting my turn, she napped. Her head would bob and then snap up as she woke up. No screaming. No pawing. No moving all around. Horses crammed in front and behind us and she didn’t take notice.
In warm up she was relaxed, listened to my aides and popped over the cross rail without hesitation.
In the arena, she fed off my nerves and poor judgement and held me accountable but wasn’t dirty or mean. She got the job done.
I watched all these other people kick my butt on lesson horses. Little 8 year olds in pigtails who cantered the entire course. I thought how nice it would be to have that. To get on my horse, canter easily around pretty much being useless except for steering cuz a monkey could pilot it without issue, and then gather my many ribbons and go home.
Then I went in on Gem and my entire perspective changed. Was it easy? Nope. Did I look like the worlds biggest slow poke idiot? Probably. But here’s the thing. We did it. Together. And the feeling of accomplishment that flooded me when we soared over the final jump in each round is irreplaceable and unmatched.
Sure I would likely be jumping higher on a different horse. Yup, I probably would still be heading to a HT in December. But you know what? My lower leg position wouldn’t be as solid. Gem has taught me that. My hands wouldn’t be as relaxed. Gem taught me that too. My eye wouldn’t be as good at looking for a path many, many strides in advance. You guessed it. Gem taught me that.
I’d be a lot farther in my riding, but I doubt I’d be as good (relatively speaking) as I am currently at it. So Gem stays. For now anyway. Until she pisses me off again. I’ve been threatening to sell her for near on 8 years now. I doubt she believes me any more.
Most of my day to day rides occur at home in my front pasture. We rent a small farmette and have access to one pasture with potential riding in the hay field however the guy who maintains it doesn’t really and it is way too overgrown to safely ride in. Plus it is a 5 acre open field without any fencing and borders a busy road. I can only imagine the nightmare that could occur if I fell off and Gem ran into the road. No thanks!
My riding space. Typically Pete is following us around and getting in the way, but Gem is relaxed and happy to work in the pasture and we have made some really great progress in our home rides of late. No lights means no rides now that we entered the dark months, so I need to figure out something.
Trainer’s barn is more exciting to write about and that is where I get the real work done. The barn is actually property of the city as part of the rec program (along with several water parks and trail systems). Before Trainer came along to lease it, the facility was sitting empty and quickly going to disrepair. Now Trainer is there and leases out the barn for boarding and runs her lessons. The fact that the rec department owns it means that the place is public and anyone can ride there during the posted open hours. I take advantage of this to go up and ride on the weekends a couple of times a month to get work in a real arena. It is really nice to have that option.
Media is always preferred over lengthy words, so lets take a picture tour!
There are three arenas (though I only have picture of two as the third was built specifically for warm up and we never use it in lessons) with the main arena having stadium lights.
The dressage arena (ignore that it is under water, it isn’t typically like that). It is a full size legal court with letters and all. Not sure what the footing is, but Trainer would love to get it changes out. Guess how badly the city wants to??A look through the barn aisle door. I don’t have a picture of the barn since I don’t use it, but it has around 20+ stalls, two wash racks with hot and cold water, three tack rooms (Trainers personal one, the boarders one and the lesson program one), the office and a bathroom.Another look at the dressage court on a dry dayThe jump arena. This one has the stadium lights, bleachers and a gazebo fro the judge when it is show time. The jumps are permanently set up and usually are set to some insanely tall height.Like so. Who jumps that high?
Beyond the arenas and barn are the pastures and woods with trails. I haven’t ridden the trails yet, but I think it is a bout 2 miles or so. Trainer has used the space well to include a variety of solid obstacles to play around with. Her most devious plan was adding coops to the pasture fence line so that once you jump into it, you have to jump back out over the coop. It helped scared little ole’ me because I was stuck and had to do it.
And that is about it. It is a really great barn and I am so glad I found it. I’m not sure what the future will be if we ever move as it will likely double the time to get there, but thankfully Trainer will travel to me too so lessons can continue.
A lot of lessons were learned at the show. I could have walked away from this experience dejected. I mean, I just got my butt handed to me by a bunch of 8 year old girls in literal pigtails on lesson ponies. My time was slow by a full minute. Gem tried to leave the arena upon entering. I had a total of 4 refusals between the two rounds. I forgot where my fence was.
But we jumped. Every single fence. No rails down. Even with a crowd of people hanging on the rail. Even with a crap ton of flower filler. Even on a height we haven’t ever even schooled. Gem said yes. The refusals were my fault. I didn’t set her up right or I stopped riding. Maybe a better/more forgiving horse would have said yes anyway but we all know by now that isn’t Gem. And yet she said yes 20 times.
That’s pretty amazing.
Beyond that though I learned some things.
First, the next time I’m signing up for every freaking class possible to stave off the bone numbing boredom that hanging out for hours on end at a h/j show by yourself creates. Hubby was off entertaining Wyatt and I just stood there. When I saw the class schedule I had no clue what half the classes were. Now I know. Sure we would never win in the hunter equitation over fences 18”, but damn that course looked easy. Outside line, diagonal, outside line. Sign me up for that next time!
Second, I ride better over bigger fences. I was more nervous going into the 2’ class having never jumped a course set to that height before and maybe that is why, but looking through the screen shots my position is way better during the 2’ round than the 18” one. I think it has more to do with the fact that Gem required a stronger ride, I was more secure having just done it before and therefore I dug in and got it done. Plus Gem had to actually jump instead of zooming over which helped me too.
I talked to Gem. A lot. Kinda loudly too to the entertainment of the judge and spectators. I talked to her the entire time. “Ok Gem we’ve got this. Jump it!” “Sorry Gem! My fault let’s try again” “We look like fools out here but come on let’s finish this thing” on and on. I even told her I was a wimp. I talked and she responded by being more present. She looked around a lot less than normal and was more focused. Point taken and thank you to blogger of 3dayadventureswithhorses for the suggestion on another one of my posts. It helped a lot!
I really believe that the cross country schools are helping our arena jumping 1,000 fold. I may never be brave enough to enter a HT with her, but the schooling will continue. It’s made her a better jumper. It’s made me braver and more bold. We were coming to the yellow fence 5 in the 2’ round and I knew she hadn’t liked it before. With one refusal already I wasn’t going to let her say no there. She twisted and turned her butt and I stayed firm in my leg pressure and didn’t give up. She jumped it.
18” verticals, even on a short or odd approach, no longer bother me at all. I made her jump them from a standstill no issues. The 2’ course began scary but by fence 3 I was down for it and by fence 7 I was laughing out loud, giggling to myself and having a blast. That’s a major change from 9 months ago when I wouldn’t even jump a 12” cross rail.
Other than the boredom factor, which could have been lessened had Wyatt’s class not been #6 and mine 16, I quite liked the jumper show. I liked that you could enter multiple classes and just keep going. I liked that it was only $10 a class. I think I’d like to keep going and building our confidence. I also think that Gem could be a really good jumper. She is fast, athletic enough to take the inside turns and this is a game she understands the point of. I’m just not sure I’ll ever be brave enough to let her do it.
All in all it was an amazing experience. It wasn’t perfect and I’m pretty sure we only beat the girl who fell off in the 18” and the girl who was rung off course in the 2’ round, but I don’t care. I throw all my ribbons away anyway (did I just hear all my readers have a collective stroke?). I left happy. Gem? Well she seemed ok with it all. I’m ready for the next one!
Over all my years riding, I have won 7 ribbons I believe. Endurance isn’t big into the ribbon scene. When you complete a ride they give you a hat or a water bucket or a bag or a flashlight or a t shirt or a ride photo. Pretty much anything but a ribbon. Not including those non ribbon awards, I can think of two that really stand out: my year end hunter pace 6th place ribbon for 2015-2016 season and the 4th place I got at my first CT this past June.
Of those, I think the hunter pace award is my favorite.
Crappy photo, but its the best I have since I no longer have the ribbon. I told you I throw them away.
What makes this 6th place ribbon mean so much is the work that went into getting it. The 2015-2016 Hunter Pace season had rides scheduled every other week from August to May with a two week break for the holidays. That was a lot of rides to attend. Compare that to this season where several rides have bailed out and I believe there are 6 fewer rides on the schedule than in 2015.
Each ride is based on the secret optimum time and I was really stoked to get in the top 5 multiple times. Finishing the ride gets you 2 points, but top 5 gets extra points that really help boost you in the rankings. I had hoped to make it to every single ride that season and win the coveted framed professional photograph, but I missed the last three due to timing with the Biltmore 100 mile endurance race I did that May.
In fact, I didn’t even bother going to the year end gathering (I believe it was at Biltmore that year, but i could be wrong) because I figured I was out of the running by that point. Low and behold I found out I placed 6th out of over 150 riders!!! I was so excited!!!
So many weekends were dedicated to hunter paces, so much effort went in to trying to maintain a good pace and make that elusive time and a lot of arguments on pacing occurred out on those trails. Wyatt was a ride camp staple that year with his dump trucks and diggers playing in the mud and arenas. It was a fun season and one I hope to repeat again someday hopefully with a built in little trail buddy on his Wyatt sized pony. Maybe next season?
The Roaming Rider 