frustration

I have a lesson each week on one of the gaited horses with a top reining rider and trainer. I like her a lot. She`s kind to the horses, she`s nice, and the horses always come first. This is great, until you simply cannot work out a problem! I`m riding a 6 year old who has some training and is very kind and sweet with a lovely gait and movement, but she`s unfit and hasn`t been schooled for a while, so I`m learning right along with her, as this trainer`s methods are Western, and I`ve always ridden English. I`ve introduced young horses to flatwork before, sure. But not like this. My co-ordination is off. She`s asking me to approach the wall at 45 degrees, then ask the hip to move over with a leg bump, then block the shoulder with the hands halfway up the neck, then leg bump, then block, then bump. Whilst keeping momentum, on a horse that doesn`t quite get it, with me, who doesn`t get it a lot! I understand the principal, but I`m so darn frustrated, trying to forget everything I know so I can ride this different way with a horse who`s not on the ball either! The only positive I can take from today, apart from a couple of steps of leg yield, is that I didn`t take out my frustration on the mare. When I was younger, I`d have blamed her for it. If anything, I was maybe too nice, apart from when she was staring out of the window and resolutely ignoring my leg so I smacked her one with the crop. I`m going to ride her again tomorrow and try again, without the pressure of someone yelling instructions, however well-meaning! Then, the mare is going to be put in foal, hopefully, to try to increase the Rocky Mountain gene pool here in Quebec. Meanwhile, I`ll stick to lateral work with the dressage horse. After we`ve completed our TREC!

preparing for TREC!

So, in a bit of a twist, there is a mini TREC competition being held on Sunday. We had a theory day - In French! - this last Sunday and 8 or 9 of us will be trying out the three phases this week. Given that the stable mainly has youngsters and inexperienced rocky mountain horses in at the minute, my best option for this is Maverik! Spooky, freaky Maverik. Joy.

So, we`ve been practising obstacles and trails as much as possible. i.e. not much. We`ve put a bright blue tarp weighted down with poles in the indoor school, made a bridge out of planks, made a cone slalom, a little maze with pieces of wood, some small jumps and a couloir for rein back etc. Everyone`s pretty doubtful that Maverik will do the course, and maybe he won`t, certainly not without penalties, but he`s better than he was, and we`re going to give it a go. Another practice session tomorrow, and we`ve built a `gate`, which is a leadrope attached to a carabiner between two jump wings and added in a couple of other tasks. My main worry would be a ditch, I think. He gets a bit spooky and likes to dither before leaping like a frog over them. I grab mane and hope! The control of paces section will also be tougher than I anticipated. Lengthened, fast walk is ok, but collected canter will be tough outside. Tough for everyone though. I will update with any further progress!

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.

horses as business?

I read a lot of blogs who have links to rescues and retirement set-ups for horses and I'm full of admiration for them. I can think of nothing better than giving happiness and care to wonderful, deserving horses, particularly where their previous owners have not been so kind.

I can also think of nothing worse than the inevitability of losing them all to old age or illness.

I suck with death. People, not so much. It shocks me and I grieve, but it doesn't devastate me - although I know that one day it will, when it is a person I love dearly. The death of animals I love devastates me. My best friend's family dog passed recently and although I only visited them a few times a year for the last 10 years or so, I loved that dog and I couldn't help but cry.

What my link to my post title is therefore, is that my attitude to horses varies as to whether I am working with them, or if they are my own. I have never sold a horse of my own and never will. I am fortunate in that my mum agrees with this. When I went to college, Frankie was still a good age and full of potential and I suggested that maybe we sell him, so that he could carry on doing what he enjoyed for someone else to appreciate. She wouldn't hear of it. I used to torture myself at night, thinking what a waste it was of a great pony and what he could have been doing, but what did he know of that? He was happy, living in his herd with regular feed, water, shelter and care. He's as loved by me and my mum as he could be by anybody, and right now i'd probably still cry myself to sleep if he had gone and something had happened or we'd lost touch with him. I have no idea if I was right or wrong, but at least he's still around, fat, healthy, sassy and happy to prove that it wasn't the worst outcome.

I couldn't imagine selling on or getting rid of a horse that couldn't be ridden anymore, not where I had such a close bond and love for the animal. It appalls me that people will sell or dump animals in their 20s or 30s who have been family pets and children's wonder horses when they can no longer be ridden. Morally, how do you do that? Emotionally?

I know i've been lucky with Ollie and Frankie, and I'll be forever grateful to Ian for finding them both for me. They were both the perfect ponies for me at each stage and Frankie is my equine soulmate. If I could have any horse in the world for the rest of my life, it would be him. I tear up just thinking about it! I'm not special, I think he'd do most anything for anybody if they asked him right, but I've had the pleasure of being the asker and the receiver of his abilities and bravery and the wonder of going from local shows one year to HOYS the next because of his scope, honesty and his faith in himself, not in me thinking that a fence was too scary. It so wasn't!

There are so many things I still want to do with him but due to circumstances, I don't know if it's possible. I'm in Canada right now, and he's at home! Still, if horses are to be my business, it won't be interfering with the pleasure I take at having such a perfect horse for me.