BCHA=cheap fun

The Botetourt County Horseman's Association hosts a show at Green Hill Park every year.  Now, what I love about this show- 1) It's actually got jumper classes, an annoyingly scarce occurance at GHPEC shows for some stupid reason; 2) It has incredibly affordable classes, typically $8 or $9.

Maxin' and relaxin' in the in-gate crowd

I still haven't found a job but I felt like Reily was getting REALLY bored with the same old, same old at home.  I'd been doing some odd jobs/ horse work to make a little extra money and felt it was worth the $27 to take Reily to the show and let him do something new and exciting.  Boo-who got to stay home because there was no excuse to spend the extra money.

So Reily went and we had him entered in 3 classes at 3 different heights (2'-2'3"; 2'3"-2'6"; and 2'6"-2'9").  The course was not entirely to my liking because it just had a really rangy feel.  It was really a hunter course set-up with an added narrow on one end of the ring so for the "jumper" course it was a ton of single fences, no lines, bending lines, related distances or anything and I just felt like it was lacking in the educational department.  Essentially you jumped either the in or out of a hunter line, went around to the other end of the ring jumping the in/out of another line, and so on and so forth.  The only change up was that (and this was again really poor planning) the narrow fence was added in for the jumper course and it came directly after the only oxer in the ring... who does that?  Anyways, due to the course design it meant you jumped big over this oxer then made and almost 90 degree turn to the narrow, landed then make another 90 degree turn to get turned back towards the final jump.  Did I mention that the oxer was headed straight for the in-gate...yeah, poor course planning.

I figured something new is better than nothing and since the course was the same for all the jumper classes I figured if we had real issues in one class we had 2 more chances to school it.  And it proved to have some educational merit after all.

In the first class (2'-2'3") I tried to stay as out of his way as possible I wanted him to make the decisions on where to take off but if he was hesitating I'd give him a little squeeze and he responded immediately.  Since I care more about his training then I do about some silly ribbon we made big wide turns to help him (and me) regroup as needed.  He got almost all of his lead changes naturally which I was so happy about!  If he was on the wrong lead and felt unbalanced he'd swap.  We had a big steering issue after the oxer at 7 to the narrow at 8.  As I was ranting about earlier the oxer was right before the narrow and headed straight for the in-gate.  So when he jumped 7 he was staring straight at the in-gate and not listening to me so once I finally got him turned in the right direction we met the narrow fence really crooked.  Thankfully it was so small for him it didn't matter so with a little cluck and squeeze of the heels he popped right over anyways.  He earned himself a 2nd place ribbon even with the great big turns we made and the turning issue.  Reily's got big, ground covering strides but it really goes to show you, good training is a hell of a lot better than reckless riding, tearing around the course ruining any good you may have ever done at home or in lessons.  And unfortunately I see that a LOT from the people who show at Green Hill.

The second class (2'3"-2'6") was the same course but this time we weren't so lucky.  Now that the jumps were a bit bigger he jumped the oxer with even more enthusiasm and I just didn't sit up and take enough.  So this time we meant the narrow at about a 45+ degree angle, and of course hindsight is 20/20 and if I could do it over I would have just circled him and presented it straight rather than asking something outrageous of him.  If he was already at, say, training level then it wouldn't be such a stretch to ask him to jump it as such an extreme angle, but he's a little green bean still and this was only his 3rd show.  Bad riding and pilot error this time, but after a correct approach he went over just fine.  Even with the faults and time he still got 6th.

His last class (2'6"-2'9") I was determined to make it work at that turn.  So coming down to the oxer I actually bridged my reins and asked for a big whoa on the landing.  We made a good, all be it, tight turn to the narrow and I made a big fuss over him because that was my only real goal for that class, for him to learn that if I asked for a whoa I meant listen now, not later.  We did pull a rail at 9 because I cut the turn a little too tight and sort of buried him at the base.  But I couldn't care less about that because I was just happy we made that turn.  He earned himself a 4th in this class.

Teaching while Reily naps

I also helped school a couple girls and their horses which was great fun cause I love seeing that my input is actually improving the way they go.  It makes me feel like a real trainer ;)  Reily just stood around with me while I raised and changed jump poles and some little girl came over asking if she could hold him for me.  I was sort of baffled but the way she was asking I think she thought something might happen if I was holding him and doing that at the same time.  I'm not sure what made her think that because Reily was napping and being perfect the whole time.  I was like "He's fine, but if you want to, sure" and handed her his reins while he dozed away.  Then she looked at him harder and was like, "Hey, this is that horse that I really liked in that jumper class.  He was so cute!".  I just chuckled cause I thought it was adorable Reily was already collecting fans.  He can't help that he's so handsome and wonderful.

All-in-all, great success!!!

Mini XC

We don't have much in the way of jumps/poles etc. at home but we make do with what he have.  Since I still had Pat's (amazing!) camera and the girls had been exercising the boys for me while I was gone I felt comfortable the boys were fit enough to do some makeshift XC schooling last night.  I have a few trees and PVC pipes to use as poles, a couple of barrels and I repurposed the compost "house" to make a coop jump.  The weather was fabulous and the boyfriend agreed to take pics for us.

Boo was good.  He had his usual cheeky, tantrum moments but no refusals or major bucking fits.  He's such a funny horse.  He's rarely a joy the whole time you're riding, but when he's good he's very fun to ride.  Not to blow my own horn (especially since it only took what, like 8 years?!) but he's really a pretty well trained horse.  He's decenlty adjustable and good to the aids, but damned if he doesn't make you work for every second of it.  He can be such a pain in the ass, but he's made me a lot better rider for it!

Reily was also great.  He had never seen a lot of this stuff before.  Barrels, the PVC poles, and skinny jumps were all new for him.  Pardon my disgusting equiation in some of these pics.  It's awful but sometimes he would jump so big he'd jump me out of the tack and other times I was pinching a lot with my knees and just got way ahead of him, subsequently crawling up his neck.  Sixteen days without riding and my eq went to sh*t  :'(  What matters most to me is making sure I don't catch him in the mouth so honestly as long as I'm not doing that I can live with myself while I get back in the swing.  Riding through some of his big leaps was hysterical, but looking through the pictures is even more hilarious!  He's such a good boy though, he'll really go anywhere you point him and it's great for him to do tons of stuff at this level.  I want him to learn where to take off while the jumps are little like this so that, later on, when we get to the bigger stuff and I get him to a fence funny he can save both of our butts.  So as funny as it is to see pictures like this one... where he took off WAAAYY long, I want him to learn that if that happens here's what he'll have to do to still safely get us to the other side.

It was a great night of riding :)

The good, the bad, and the ugly

The Bad: I got laid off from my job and unemployment is barely going to cover my bills.  And since this happened a week before my trip it's far to late to cancel.  Sadly, we'll have to cut back and be more selective with some of our touring choices :'(

The Good: I was really starting to hate my life there.  The environment was unfriendly and growing more uncomfortable by the week, so I'm actually relieved in a way.  I can chalk this up to a lesson learned, start looking for a new job before getting stuck in this situation!  At least while I job search I'll be at home all day so I can ride and study for my CPA exams a LOT in the mean time.

The Ugly: Poor boyfriend will have to be buying most all of the groceries and probably more than his half of rent until I get another job.


As anxious as I feel about all of it, everything is already lined up and booked for the trip, boyfriend is taking care of the ponies and a couple of friends have agreed to come out and exercise the horses a few days each week so they don't go completely idle while I'm away.



These cuties always cheer me up

 Until next time, I'll be surfing job postings :/

Look out Europe...

Lock up your kids and practice your emergency evacuation procedures... because Celeste and Susanna are coming back!!!!!!!!

That's right folks, I'm excited to announce that it's official, one of my best friends and I will be returning to the motherland.  Two summers ago I flew over to meet her in Spain and we traveled for two weeks within Spain/the Balaraic Islands.  She's doing the same oper job again this summer and her parents offered to pay half my plane ticket again if I can adventure with her again this summer!   This time we'll be meeting in Dublin, Ireland traveling to the west side of the island than around the lower rim before flying to England.  There we'll spend a couple days with her relatives in Cheltenham then go to London (right after the Olympics and right before the Paralympics) before taking the chunnell train to Belgium.  In Belgium we'll go first to Bruges were we'll get to meet up with my best friend Isa (who I haven't seen in something like 8 years!!!!)  then ride back to Brussells with Isa and spend the night there before I fly out the next morning.  Susanna will continue on with the epic adventure through Germany and Italy before returning the Spain and then home to the good old US of A.  I'm so excited I can hardly believe it!!!!!!

RVHS

So I had considered showing Boo in a couple of the little, unrecognized jumper classes but after adding up all the fees, even for those little dinky classes, it just wasn't worth the cost.  However, one of the major benefits of living close to the venue (which is the Salem Civic Center)  is that we can pack up, trailer over, school in the groomed arenas, utlilize the fancy jumps and just go home.  So that's the route we chose.  The boyfriend, wonderful as always, tagged along to hold ponies and take pictures because he's just that awesome.

I rode Boo first, flatted him and then did a bit of jumping doing some single fences, lines, bending lines and finishing with a couple little made up courses.  He was good.... as long as I rode.  Predicably I did not ride a few times and he thoroughly embarrassed me in front of anyone who was watching (hopefully just a few random people I'll never see again) and certainly scared the living shit out of one of the horse show officals who thought maybe, I "really should just let it go".  Umm, thanks but I know my shit-headed horse and if I was doing my job, trust me, I can make him do his, despite that you apparently think he's dangerous.  He's not that dangerous.  He's just an ass.  And I really can ride, I just wasn't right that second.  Thoroughly embarrassed and moving on.  Otherwise Boo was good.  His one ridiculous habit... being TERRIFIED to walk over the hard plastic things they run over the wiring to protect it from being run over by cars, golf carts, hooves, etc.  He jumped them. Every. Single. Time.

Reily on the other hand was a total champ (about the plastic covers and riding) per his usual self.   We did quite a bit of flatwork to start which he was very good during.  He was however, extremely excited to jump, to the point that when I set up some trot poles to work over he decided he wasn't entirely sure what I wanted so the best thing to do would be to jump across 3 of the 4 poles instead of trot through them.  Needlesstosay I was completely caught off guard and the boyfriend managed to capture this amazing moment on film.  Luckily for Reily we did get to jumping after some good flat work.  He was great for that as well.  Height doesn't seem to be any issue for him, which is great, but his technique is still very green (to be expected) so that will be an ongoing process.  We jumped some x-rails, some verticals and finished jumping in a figure-8 pattern over a nice square oxer.  This exercise was great for him because it helps him with landing on the correct lead or changing leads as needed, to keep a steady tempo and be adjustable.  Overall I was VERY pleased with how he handled himself!!  Even though I purposely schooled him in a ring that was on the edge of the grounds there was still a lot to look at and take in.  Noises, sounds, smells, traffic, none of it really phased him :)

After Reily was done and walked out I rode him, while the boyfriend led Boo-butt, and we went for a slow, meandering walk through the show grounds between all the temporary stabling, vendors, schooling and show rings.  He was alert but never put a step wrong.  He's such a cutie he even caught the eye of a little girl walking around with her parents and he let her pet his nose before heading back to the trailer.  Boo was very good walking around too, which I'm not sure I've ever done with him before so I was happy with him as well.  All in all, a successful day :)

Like a BOSS

That's right, Reily is a BAMF!  Want to know why?  Because he completed his first Horse Trials yesterday!!!  Yaaaaaaaayyyyyy!!!!!!!

We did the "Green" division which consisted of Intro Test C for dressage, a 2' show jumping course with lots of oxers and filler, and max 2'3" XC fences.  He was definitely more calm at this show but because he and Boo where in back-to-back divisions it got very hectic very quickly. 

He warmed up decently for dressage, we're still not to the point where he'll accept steady, consistent contact but I was happy he would take a few strides on the bit, then his head would go up and his nose would go out, then he'd come back down and take contact, and so on.  But I felt like he was as calm and forward as I was going to get him for his second show and felt good about where he was at mentally when we stepped into the ring.  Our first halt was much better than last time, I saluted and we trotted off to C tracking right, and just as I'm turning the corner... "LOOSE HORSE! LOOSE HORSE! Heads up at the dressage rings, loose horse headed your way!!!".  I was concentrating so hard on his test I was confused why everyone was screaming, including the judge who got out of her car and was frantically screaming at me to halt.  Chill peeps, Reily and I got this, we ride in the field at home all the time with the other boys running around loose, he's not going to gallop away with me.  Well the renegade did come straight down to the dressage rings and was trotting around enjoying his freedom outside the arena fence, but Reily just stared and then we walked around in little circles until the little Houdini found his barn buddy and was caught.  Good news is, Reily kept his head like an old pro.  Bad news, it COMPLETELY broke our concentration and though I (thankfully) remembered his test when we were allowed to start again, I just couldn't regain his attention the way I'd had it before.  So our test left much to be desired, but I don't blame him for that.  This is horses, sh*t is gonna happen, it just by chance happened during our test, no reason to really sweat it.

The weather was nice but threatening rain all day and, go figure, it held off until right before Reily's stadium round.  That was really inopportune because the stadium warm up was on turf with rather long grass and it got slippery pretty quick.  Reily only has front shoes right now and no stud holes, not that I have any studs to use anyways, but it just made for a less confidence building warm up because he was having a hard time keeping his feet under him.  The actual show jumping course was in an arena with all-weather footing so I was glad for that at least.  We went in and had a decent round.  Unfortunately I didn't use enough leg and he wasn't entirely paying attention so we had a refusal at fence two and when we came back around we got there funny and pulled a rail.  Otherwise his round was good.  He was definitely a little strong but I think it was mostly the atmosphere causing that.

The rain had slowed almost to a stop by the time we walked out to XC and luckily I knew that BREA had just cut the grass on the various XC paths so I felt more confident about the footing not being too slippery for him out there.  He was raring to go and even though it was really a rather long track, even for his level, the optimum time was VERY generous, almost even excessive.  We trotted a bit cantered most of it and by the time I was one away from home we still had about 1min 30secs left so I actually walked him down the steepest hill to the final jump so I knew we wouldn't slip any going down and to give him a little breather too.  Unfortunately, I'm obviously no Buck "Runs 11 Horses Each Weekend" Davidson out of shape because after riding 3 exhasting phases on Boo and 2 slightly less exhausting phases on Reily my legs were tired as crap and I was just sort of on autopilot, enjoying the breeze and not paying attention and Reily, surprisingly, ran out on the 3rd jump from home.  He wasn't scared he was just checking to make sure I was still awake up there... I wasn't  :(  It was totally my fault but I was definitely caught off guard.  But hey, there's no day dreaming allowed, especially on XC, no matter how trustworthy the horse.  Touche Reily, touche.  Other than that silly mistake XC was great.  Almost all of his fences were just little logs and I think there might have been one mulch mound and a tiny little baby hanging log with a fake ditch underneath.  All very straightforward and inviting fences.  A perfect introduction to the joy of HTs  :)

My little boy’s growing up!

So we’ve been riding a lot lately but I just haven’t had anything super significant to write about so pardon our absence.  Tax season is ALMOST over, so soon I’ll be able to do an awful lot more with my boys and this blog, just bear with us a few more weeks!

Though tax season can pretty much kiss my butt, my boss was at least willing to let me off of my mandatory half day on Saturday morning as long as I made up the 4 hours Saturday night or Sunday, so I got to take Reily and Boo to their first show of the season, and Reily’s first show EVER!!  If you’re reading this you probably already knew about it because I’ve been blabbering about how excited I was to anyone who would listen (and even to some who wouldn’t!) for weeks, I know, I’m shameless.  But I was just so EXCITED! Reily’s first ever show, what could even be any more exciting?!  Exactly J

Well I had Reily entered in the tiniest Combined Test (CT) division they offer and that’s “Cross Rails”.  A CT consists of a dressage test and either a stadium jumping round or a cross country run, but not both or it would be considered a Horse Trials (HT) when all three phases are present.  Dressage consists of a preset test for each division where the horse and rider must perform a pattern of movements and actions at certain parts of the ring for a judge who scores each movement from 1-10 where 1 is not completed and 10 is perfect.  The second phase for this particular CT was stadium jumping.  His CT was made up of dressage test “Intro A”, a simple little walk/trot test, and a stadium jumping course of 7 fences which were all cross rails of 18” or less.  Boo was in the CT division called “Beginner Novice” with a walk/trot/canter test and stadium height of 2’6”.

Well thanks to Boo being a butt and running off up the driveway this morning (because he didn’t want to get on the trailer) we were running a wee bit behind and Reily was scheduled to be the 3^rd horse in dressage so his test was at 8:12.  I was totally baffled when we pulled into the horse park at least 15 minutes behind schedule only to find that we were the first people there!   The only other people on the grounds were the show secretary and her daughter.   So we got the boys off the trailer and tied them up and I went over to check in and pick up their numbers and papers.  Reily stomped a superb half circle into the grass as we got tacked up, and I fully admit I was a little bummed that he was already so anxious when there were only a few trailers trickling in and unloading.   Such is life.

I was still memorizing the correct movements for his test as we warmed up for dressage when the secretary came over the loud speaker saying one of the first two horses had some issues so now I was essentially being bumped up.  That was irritating but I knew I had until my originally scheduled time so we just kept warming up.   He wasn’t calming down much so we ended up in the ring 2 minutes early anyways and got through his test, with lot of tension, without any errors (yay, I remembered his pattern correctly!) but it took us an unfortunate 3 tries to get a true halt, and even then it was less then straight since his little booty swung out to the right once we got all four feet stopped.  We left the ring more relaxed then we entered it and that’s really all I could ask for his first time!

After a quick course walk of the jump course for both Reily and Boo we switched his tack and warmed him up for a few minutes on the flat then over some tiny cross rails before entering the ring for his first ever jumping round.   I know I’m biased but I think the video that my boyfriend got of his round is by far one of the absolute cutest things I’ve ever seen!  Decide for yourself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dfZ8le2eCg).  Even though we took off quite long at jump 5 (the yellow jump) I love that he made his own decision there!  As an event horse I want him to be brave and bold enough to think for himself because we’ll get to jumps funny sometimes and I love that he was confident enough to say “hey I’m pretty close too this and too close to feel comfortable putting in another stride, we’ll just jump it from here” then continue on unfazed!  The last jump had some brick walls out beside the standards that were supposed to go in later for the Novice divisions but for his division had been placed out to the sides of the jump almost like wings.  He got rather distracted looking at the walls for a second and got quite close the cross rail before he was paying attention again but got over it fine.  Considering he could walk over it I wasn’t concerned.  It was more cute because after he finished I wanted him to canter (which we did but on the wrong lead) just to get used to ending that way and as we were finishing that canter circle he was dragging me back toward the last cross rail like “I’m sorry I was looking at the other things, I got it this time, lets jump it again, I’ll show you!” but we would have gotten eliminated for jumping it again after our round was over so I had to pull him right to make sure we didn’t do that.  He finished the day getting to take home his first ever ribbon (6^th) and was a very happy camper.  So proud of my 3yo gangly little (big) baby!!