riders of the storm

It's been mecha busy here. We now have 12 horses in residence, 7 Rocky Mountains, a littl'un, Maverik, the Canadian, the Paint and the Kentucky Saddle Horse. The Canadian and baby boy rocky are lame, Mav has a sore back, again, and the newbies are still settling in. We're short of horses to ride!

The Rockies are all from Kentucky and two are here to have foals, but at least one is not pregnant as she was showing signs of heat. 4 of them live out at night and the others are in. There is one grulla filly, which is a colour I had never previously seen in real life, so that's exciting and she is very sweet to boot. Weather is mainly humid and there have been storms in the region all day. I went out on the trails with Chelsea, the paint mare, and we got caught up in the beginning of a big ass storm! I hate storms! She was fine, but we were soaked through by the time we made it back, just as the heavens opened and I had to cool her off in the barn. She's steady to the point of laziness, but I was very glad for that today!

From reading the Fugly blog I came across the term 'following release' with regard to jumping. I have no idea what this meant, versus 'Crest release' So I looked it up, and found this:

http://glenshee.blogspot.com/2009/01/crest-release-and-how-it-has-ruined.html

Glenshee Equestrian Centre's extremely helpful blog about it! My immediate thought was 'well of course I do that.' So then I looked back through some photos. Sometimes I did that! A lot of the time I did crest release. Bad me. Poor ponies.
top photo is bad! very tight crest release, although otherwise, this is my favourite photo of us doing working hunter, apart from my awful lower leg position!
the bottom photo is us flying round a mid size xc competition and I'm much more relaxed and my legs are in an ok position. The jump is maybe 2'6" in both photos.

Having started small jumps with Mav here, I'm keen to jump properly after having not done it for a while. Once his back is better, I will pay plenty of attention to this detail!

rain rain rain rain rain

That's all it's doing right now. The horses are stuck in and I'm stuck with the resulting ever-filthy stalls! I last rode on Friday as Mav had a visit from the Osteopath, which has sorted out a vertabra(e)? In his lumbar region, as well as a rib that was mis-aligned. Poor guy. I'm looking forward to working him again and starting where we left off with the jumping. Problem is he's a complete freak to ride indoors and much better out, as am I, so it's not going to be possible to crack on too much. Easy stuff for the next couple of days, and then we can maybe take in a small trail when the rain stops. If it stops...So much flooding and fear of flooding in many places right now.

Today I bought two saddle blankets from amazon which I will use while I'm here, and I've found a seemingly good size western saddle on UK ebay, which I have bid for and if I win, that can go live at my mum's. There's already talk of me staying here for the full year of my visa, rather than just the summer, which is a big deal, but it would mean I'd get to see the foals when they're born in March, as well as experience living through a *real* winter! I'm pretty intimidated by that right now, I have to confess! This job is great, but what would make it perfect would be having Frankie here. I want to ride the trails with him, go visit the alpacas with him, do trec, all sorts. Meh.

I've rewritten a memory of competing from years ago that I had on my very old computer when I was younger. That's in much better detail, but this is the best I could do after a couple of glasses of wine and a stressful, wet day!

I was used to competing against adults and people who I now read about in Horse and Hound every week, every summer who ride professionally and have owners for a great deal of their horses. I wasn't so much impressed by the riders as by the horses. I knew all the qualifiers and who the judge's favourites were. I wasn't one of them. I was a 13 year old girl on a skinny but stylish horse who rarely faulted. Due to the rules of working hunter, we often had to win, or at least place.

Being a bit of an optimist and having such an honest, scopey horse, who through his breeding and paperwork was eligible to do these classes, I entered Horse of the Year Show qualifiers. We only did 4 or 5 shows a year due to money being tight and showing being expensive. We did a local qualifier in April to get our ticket to the BSPS champs, then the Northern Horse show, sadly no longer going, the NPS area 4 show at Harrogate, another local show to keep in tune, then the BSPS champs, where we did 3 or 4 classes over 3 days. It was always fun to stay away at a show and have the atmosphere of being at the large ground with all the classes running simultaneously.

So, I started affiliated showing in 1999, and we did two HOYS qualifiers, which I unfortunately remember little of, except one of them was that of the demon hedge and the 5 finishers in a class of 28. I was sat on Frankie, watching person after person fall or be eliminated, thinking 'This is a different class, and they sure as heck ain't it!' I knew Frankie would get round, but I wasn't naïve enough to think we'd win first out. We got placed something like 5^th and 4^th that year, but only 1^st qualifies! In 2000, we did the same thing, another 2 classes and the same demon course builder, who did all the HOYS courses in the north, Bob someone, I think. I hated him for scaring me, but I loved him for building tracks no one else was up to! One class had a bounce. Easy! For us anyway. The qualifiers were always big entries, 25+ and the courses 1m with spreads allowed up to 1m, so a fair size for rustic, solid looking obstacles. We were in exceeding 138cms classes, although there were rarely ponies much smaller than Frankie – people tended to get them measured in for under 138s. Grr. How I used to long to be able to pop round the small courses with no nerves! But it wasn't to be. Me, Frankie and all the 15.2hh cobs, a full hand higher than us, did these classes. There was us, some Connemaras and brave, too-tall for under 138 New Forests usually. In 2000, we again placed in both qualifiers, coming 2^nd and so darn close in the last one! We were then 2^nd in the Heritage finals at the championships, after being 3^rd in '99, and I thought 'hey, this ain't so tough' although I still felt sick with nerves and like a lump of jelly. Frankie deserves 95% of the credit for getting us round any course, I just did the steering and gave the occasional kick!

western trails

erk. Had sushi for tea with Sake - not really a fan - and have then chased this down with a Corona and a Caramilk, my first Canadian vice. The supermarkets here are awesome, a hybrid of the best bits of Europe and the States. Coles and Woolies in Aus remain my absolute faves, but Metro Plouffe will do for the summer. Canadians like savoury pie, and I do too. Result.

I have my day off tomorrow and I am very tempted to go to the tack store and pick up a couple of neon splash halters to send over to my mum for Frankie and Jack. They'd look so metrosexual and fun.

Went for two trail rides today. Schooled Maverik and then followed Tatoum, the Canadian mare, and Valerie for a mini trail up the rue and into the woods. We encountered water, which it took two of Tatoum's go throughs to get Mav to follow. He wasn't that spooky, although I had been warned he would be, and we even leapt - and I mean coiled like a spring and pinged! -over a ditch. All rounder!

I then went out on Chelsea, a 15hh palomino Paint, who is pure Western and rides in a massive shank bit but of course Western, you don't really use the mouth -or I didn't on the trail - and I enjoyed her spins a little and her comfy jog and lope as we loped across a meadow, Western film style, to the neighbour's homestead! fun.

Tomorrow, shopping might await. I'm definitely going to get me some pecan pie, and maybe another Ben and Jerry's special '1000000 flavors' carton.

Canadian spring!

Comes very late! It was already pretty green and warm when I left the UK nearly a month ago, but despite some warmth here, trees and bushes are only just getting round to budding and sprouting. Luckily nights are light and the sun is out fairly frequently, so it feels somewhat like summer.

I've managed to ride the big fella in the outdoor arena a couple of times now and he's much more relaxed than when indoors. I'd tend to judge it the other way round with most horses, but it's his preference. I rode a lot indoors when I was younger, fortunate to board at a competition yard, but after that, we were based somewhere with just an outdoor, so winters were long and rainy! After that we had an indoor again, then when we got our own place, it was back to a manege and cold, windy, wet after school sessions!

Anyway, he - the dressage horse I'm schooling 5 times a week - is up for sale pretty soon and is a good guy. I'm going to try him over fences when I get the chance as he's been keen over poles and has a nice, genial attitude. He's 17, but lightly used so I'm hopeful that someone - perhaps young - will take him on to do a bit of everything.

I also have a small pony to work in hand, a large Canadian mare to do groundwork and longeing with, and a couple of western/trail trained horses to ride lightly and longe.

Busy and new and exciting. I'm developing my equine cv at last.