The portables are disappearing!  It’s officially the end of the season here in Area 1.

The pony and I got in one last go at them yesterday. 

I wanted to do an actual course – a pretend sanctioned xc, so I could pretend say “he was great at our last event!”  :)

Warmup was a tour of the field (just one small slip on a shaded hill), followed by a few warmup jumps, and some concentrated work at the canter, just getting him to relax on a circle.   I worked on softening my hips and seat, which brings his back up and requires me to be quick to reinforce with my leg as he wants to break.  It’s a balancing act right now, but it felt like the exercise worked very well to stop him from worrying.

Denise asked me what we’d done last week with Eric.

“That log…the birches…I skipped the telephone log oxer, which felt sort of chicken, but I just didn’t think it’d go well…”

“That oxer is solid T.  Even if you were having your best day ever, you should not have pointed him at it.  He’s just not ready.”

Well, yay for reinforcement.  I guess I don’t have to feel guilty anymore!

“Let’s see…the red house, the ditches in the fenceline, steps up, big ditches in the back including ditch to skinny log and skinny log to ditch, that brown rolltop there -”

“That rolltop?” 

“Yeah, and -”

“THAT brown rolltop?”  She points, for clarity.

Ummm.  I guess I haven’t walked up to the rolltop.  I nod and wait to hear what I’ve done.

“And how was he?”

“Well, we did the big up bank, bending line to it.  He was good – Eric was happy.”  (This was the jump that provoked the grin and the “don’t look so smug” remark)

“That rolltop is 3’3″.  A solid 3’3″ at that.”

YAY, PONY!!

So my course is:  fat log, across the field to hanging birch, up the hill and turn to a small tire jump we’ve never done, straight down the steep side of the hill to a rolltop (different one), over the cordwood built into the return uphill, across the top left turn to the green house, straight down the hill to the ditch, bending right to the bench, optional rolltop which I’ve just learned is giant, across and down the hill to the open ditch to log combo, up the hill left turn into the water, bank out, to the tiki hut.

14 efforts.

Here are my priorities:

1. Jump all the jumps, on the first try.
2. Practice my half bridge.
3. Sit and take the strong check on approach at the right time and get the balance so that I can move him up to the fences.

Report:

Fat log – not quite enough engine, so I get up off his back and really move him up across the field.

Birch – very good.  He gets a good boy.

Tires – he wants to peek.  I bring him to trot so he has time to, and he figures it out and jumps right over.  Pat, pat.

Steep hill – we walk a little.  My pretend xc isn’t timed, I decide.

Rolltop – good.  I wished for a little bit more boldness, but good.

Cordwood – easy out of stride.

Green house – fine. 

He comes back to trot for me and jumps exuberantly at the ditch, but I don’t toss him away so much that we can’t get reorganized easily for the bench, which jumps well, soooo…

I go for the big rolltop (other direction this time) and he jumps it just as happily as he did last week with Eric.  More good boys.

Trot down the hill, get straight and trot the ditch to skinny log – again with the trot in he gets the easy 2 strides in the distance.  Another good boy and we swing around and up the hill to the almost blind water entrance. 

We get trot just as we crest the hill and he doesn’t even hesitate to get his feet wet, but he feels like he is staring hard at the bank and wanting more time, which we don’t have – I realize I need “sharp” and that means (per Eric) tap behind the saddle, so I do it (less wallopy this time), and he blasts right out.  My butt gets a little left behind but stays out of the saddle and I think I do a good job of giving the arm that has the reins.  I’m pretty sure I grabbed mane up there with the left hand.  I land in my feet and he seems unconcerned.

Tiki hut – I gather him back up again and he goes happily.  He’s so nice and rhythmic, he cruises right along and gives me plenty of time to organize.  We’re done!  Good pony!

Review:  speed – much better – no jump-by-hurrying.  Denise tells me the left hind is stepping under well and that we looked much more comfortable together, with a better relationship to the canter.  It is interesting how he’s getting more to the bottom of the bigger jumps:  he knows which ones they are, and he chooses to come right down and pop over safely.  Not awkwardly, he just doesn’t stand off and take the flyers.  Very smart.

We decide to just redo the bank out of water.  I take the route over the down bank on my way, just because we haven’t done a down bank yet and I want to lick that.  He’s good.  I could be with him a little more, but I don’t interfere.

This time he flies out of the water as if to say, this is what you wanted right mom?  It’s a little *too* sharp, so we go around again, collect the trot a bit more into the water, and he gets out PERFECTLY.  I don’t have to adjust one bit, I just take my hands back from the release and we canter on down to the tiki hut.  It feels awesome!

And that is the real story of our pretend zero-penalty course.  Followed by very real treats for the brave pony who appears to have recovered fully from our roller coaster season!  He really seemed to have fun…PHEW.  Go pony!!

The pony and I participated in our second Eric Smiley clinic last week.  It was our first big cross country outing since the eliminations, the shoes, and the starting over rocking out sticks on the ground, so I was both excited and nervous.  My major goal was for the pony to have a confidence building experience at what’s likely to be our last xc effort of the season. 

Like last year, Day 1 was a mix of flat and show jumping exercises.  Eric had us emphasize balance and responsiveness in the flatwork and precision and straightness over poles and small jumps.  He pointed out that our canter needs more gears, and that the pony jumps through his right shoulder.  I know, I know.

Sometimes I enjoy a clinic because I know what to expect and the similarity in agenda from year to year makes for easy progress measurement.  For example, when I ride with Lucinda I can be pretty sure I’m going to be tested on arrowheads.  In this clinic, the philosophy was consistent, but the exercises differed from last year, so we left with some new tools in our toolbox. 

Eric’s energy and expressiveness were also consistent, and just as fresh as last year.

Off we go. The ditch and skinny log are ahead, just to our left.

The pony and I were in the first group on Day 2 at Scarlet Hill Farm.  During warmup, as the pony is slipping behind on just about every hill and turn, Eric pulls me up and tells me he feels I was a bit tentative yesterday and wants me to really get the pony going today.  I nod and think to myself that I’m in big trouble – if he thought I was tentative yesterday, in this footing he may find me positively comatose.  I do confess to him that I am concerned about the slip sliding away and he reminds me that horses slip all the time.  Not to worry.  Eeeep.

We begin over some itty bitty things and the pony seems happy.  Same as we progress to small and then BN height.  The others aren’t having any trouble, either.  The TB/PerchX mare in my group did N earlier in the season, and the cute bay TB is coming back from an injury, before which I think he was jumping N/T.  Today he is wound like a spring and takes off bucking up the hill after one of the early little birch log fences.  They make their way back with the (now somewhat pale) rider saying “well at least it was uphill!”  Eric cheerfully exclaims, “that’s good!  He needs that!”  Hmm…at least one of them did.

The other two horses then jump a biggish airy square telephone pole oxer (at least N height) in the fenceline, which I elect to skip because I know that in spite of my best efforts, I will come down to it saying “I really don’t know about this,” the pony will then stop, and I will have created a problem.  I feel slightly cowardly, but I can live with it. 

We jump the ditches teeny, small and big in the front field and it takes the pony a try or two to get casual about them, but he settles and is good.

Eric then has us jump a red coop by the water downhill, but at an angle so it’s slightly less downhill and we land cantering along the side.  I consider bailing here since my imagination is running wild with slipping over images, but I suck it up, telling myself we have at least  jumped it before in the other direction.  The pony is putting in some of those pat the ground strides and I don’t have him 100% balanced so that I can really move him up to things, but he isn’t backwards, so I’m not complaining.  I’m just too worried to take the really hard check. 

Then we go down to the bigger ditches in the lower field.  We skipped the actual water, I’m not sure why.  Eric has me practice a half bridge in which I hold the stick in my right hand and the bridge part in my left.  He wants me to give the pony a little smack to sharpen him off the ground as an act of confidence on my part, designed to inspire him to be more confident as well.

Well, the first time I try it, over the big open ditch, I make two mistakes.  I hit him too late – he’s already committed to leave the ground – and I don’t tap.  I wallop.  Ooopsie.  The pony takes off shaking his head and gives a little kick out afterward and I apologize to him profusely.  I hear Eric calling from behind me, “ENCOURAGEMENT Shannon, not punishment!”  Poor pony.

I bring him back and I’m ready for him to be pissed – to overjump, give me a little buck, bolt, pin his ears, whatever, but no, my good little pony puts my bad behavior behind him and pops over like he’s forgotten already that I’m an idiot.  See why I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt on the stopping?  When it comes right down to it he’s really pretty generous.

Next Eric tells us to jump the other big ditch one stride (18′) to skinny log (2’6″?) with no wings.  I feel my eyes slightly goggle – mostly I am worried about a runout, because we do have a crookedness issue.  But the pony locks on and he gets 2 strides, but never feels like he is going to do anything but jump.  It feels like he is just thinking.

Then Eric informs us that we are going to jump it the other direction and my eyes fall the rest of the way out of my head.  That is a BIG question for my little guy.  We just did it forwards for the first time ever and now we’re going to do it backwards too?  I’m thinking there should be a month, or say maybe a season in between.  Eric asks “what is the issue with this?” and I say “they can’t see the ditch,” and he says “but if they have confidence in the rider it should be fine.”  Uh oh, that sounds a lot like the kiss of death to me.  I take a deep breath and go before I can reconsider.

Off we go. The ditch and skinny log are ahead, just to our left.

The pony pops right over the log and gets to the ditch and does a ditch dance.  Now would be an excellent time to try my little tap thingy but instead I choose to just kick.  I’m thinking “keep the feet moving, keep the feet moving” and Eric yells from behind me, “mean it, mean it!!” so I kick again, more Thelwell-like, and the pony hops on over.  Good pony, pat pat pat.  I would actually like to do it again, but he doesn’t invite me to.  I don’t know if it’s because he’s worried it will unravel, or because we’re running out of time.

He directs the other two to jump the small steps up and gives me the option.  I think steps are fun and we’ve done them before, though not for awhile, so we go ahead.  I give the pony a decent canter because I’ve made the mistake before of underpowering him to steps and it wasn’t pretty.  He loses a little momentum in the middle and I stay back and kick – he pops up and Eric says I encouraged him well but don’t need to stay so far behind him, so I go do it over, have more faith to fold, and it’s better.

Finally we do the big bank up, easy right turn to a nice natural rolltop.  The pony feels great and when I come back Eric laughs and says, “don’t look so smug!”  I’m not sure which of us he’s talking to, but then he looks right at me and says, “Shannon, you have your pony back,” and I realize that one comment is probably powerful enough to carry me happily through the winter hugging the pony and feeding him unprecedented quantities of carrots.

In our wrap-up, we talk again about the half bridge – the PerchX mare’s mom comments that it feels awkward and Eric says yes, it will until you practice it until you’re…articulate…with it in both hands.  He knits his brows and asks, “is that the right word?” then cocks his head and searches for another until I pipe up “adept?” from my position walking the pony in a circle around him.  He spins toward me. 

“It sounded like you were looking for suggestions…” I say.  “Yes!  I knew it started with a!” he exclaims as the other two riders let out a breath.  He asks what I do and I tell him I write.  “So you can proofread my next book?” he asks.  “I found 3 mistakes in the last one.”

I tell him yes, and plan to see if I can hold him to it.

"That jump was placed badly" or "I didn't give my horse enough time to adjust to the change in light"?

This is the culture of horsemanship I was raised in:  if something is wrong, look first to your own behavior for the cause and solution; if something is right, the horse is good and clever and kind.  You don’t tell the horse you’re so glad he finally recognized how great your riding is.  I mean, you might think it, of course, but in general, you pat your horse and say “good boy.”  You tell other people how lucky you are to have a horse who…jumps big oxers so much more willingly now, who’s so brave about liverpools these days, who’s become so brilliant in his changes.  You don’t say your horse is so lucky to have fantabulous *you* who taught him all these things. 

When you make a mistake and your horse tolerates it, you say he took care of you; when he makes a mistake, you wonder how you could have helped him out of it.  You never, ever whine — certainly not to a clinician or an instructor — that “his canter was bad here,” “he wouldn’t get balanced,” ”he keeps chipping.”  You say, “I didn’t get him balanced”…or even, “I couldn’t get him balanced;” you say, “I let him come to that strung out,” “I’m getting him to a bad distance.”

So maybe the horse is totally weak behind and nothing you do as the greatest rider in the universe would produce self-carriage.  You still say, “I need to get him stronger before I ask him to do this.”  You don’t say, “he’s not listening to me” and kick him or yank his teeth out.  You don’t get frustrated with him, you get frustrated with YOU.  You might say, “how can I help him?  Can I sit lighter?  Use a bit more leg?”  And when he gives you the teeniest hint of the answer you asked for, you fall all over him with praise to make sure he understands that yes, THIS is what she wanted.

True, I have been criticized a few times for praising a bit too much (usually when I am so busy patting that I fail to make the turn to the next fence).  True, there are some exceptions:  you walk away from the committed rearer who is going to flip over one of these times, rather than saying, “if only I did this differently, maybe I wouldn’t risk getting crushed underneath.”  Also true, I can get a little intense and beat the rider up somewhat (mainly when the rider is me). 

Still, and I have noticed this more as I’ve taught kids (am I hopelessly old school?) that while I have become more generous and encouraging, saying things like “don’t let him talk you into taking your leg off” instead of “what is wrong with you, stop taking your leg off!!” and although I very much enjoy lavishing praise and congratulation for a job well done…I still sometimes have a terrible feeling in my gut when I hear people – especially young people – blaming their horses instead of asking how they can make themselves better.  Instead of insisting that you need to go to your stick because your horse ignores your leg, how about wondering how to teach your horse to be more sensitive to your leg?  Or ask what you can do to make your leg stronger?  Or consider that you may be using your leg in a way that the horse doesn’t understand, or that irritates him?

Is there something about the way we’re teaching now that absolves young riders of personal responsibility? 

Back in the olden days, if I made one of these sorts of blaming comments to an instructor I could count on a nice stern lecture and a horsey suspension.  No more lessons for you until you change your attitude, young lady.  You are responsible for your actions.  Not the horse.  You.

Of course, those were also the days we took apart our tack and cleaned it after every single ride.  It was a requirement.  Only when our bridle was sparkling and hung on its rack with the throatlatch wrapped around in a neat figure 8 were we finished.  If we performed this task inadequately, we heard about it at the next roll call (yes, at Mrs. Dillon’s Junior Equitation School, we had roll call).

Naturally, we also walked every day to and from the barn in the snow – uphill, both ways.  :)

As in, tired all over again.

Event report:  Groton House Farm Fall Classic – Beginner Novice – October 3, 2010

The event was not what I had hoped, but I did learn from it.  I think :)

The pony put in a nice dressage test.  At times, he felt underpowered, and as a result wiggly and a tiny bit heavy, but I was still very happy with a lot of the work.  He did get unstuck from behind my leg, it just took a lot of pushing.  If we’d been able to create the trot we had after cantering from the first moment we stepped in the ring, that would have been great.  I think he may have been a little tentative on the grass with his shoes – it was his first time going on grass since he got them, and his first time going without bell boots too.  I’ve been religious about keeping the bell boots on since we shod him not only for the first time, but also in eggbars, so I literally took them off on the way down to the ring.  He didn’t feel at all like he was slipping, more like he was being very, very careful.  He felt the same in the warmup, and I probably should have carried my whip with me into the ring.

On the up side, the canter continues to feel like it’s becoming pretty fancy.  Also, we are starting to develop some lateral suppleness.  This is the first test since the connection got consistent that we didn’t get the comment “needs more bend.” 

Watching the test back, it looks like the main thing I could have done to make it better would have been to ask more.  I’m not too surprised.  It’s good info, though.

Overall, dressage is the area I can really see improvement over the course of the season.  He’s really come a long way there, and I can’t believe I learned to sit up in my jump saddle :)

Stadium was fairly positive as well.  We continue to be a little bit out of sync with me being slightly behind, but he doesn’t seem too bothered by it.  We had some nice fences, and he shocked me by putting 2 strides in the 36-foot combination.  He seems to have had it all figured out on the way in:

We had two fences that I let him get flat to, and we got the deep distance.  Then one very lousy jump.  It was fence 7, an oxer off a hairpin turn.  He was feeling quite good coming off the in and out, and jumped fence 6 on the short side like this:

He landed very forward and on the left lead.  I rode the turn wide in an effort to make more space for him, but didn’t get him back enough.  He swapped in front, locked onto the oxer, and we got in badly as he fixed the cross canter and tried to rebalance and leave the ground all at once.  He tapped the front rail pretty hard with his fronts, but managed to get himself to the other side in not too much of a heap.  My contribution, after failing to set him up well, was to try and stay out of his way.  He did seem to end the course happily. 

We walked right down to the xc box and he was with my plan to get more canter than we needed going up to fence 1, but I could tell as soon as he locked on that he was going to backpedal.  He went over, but it felt like a crawl.  Likewise sticky to 2, and stopped at 3.  They were all pretty close together, with the best chance to get going before 1. 

Made a biiiiig circle to try and get him forward on the reapproach to 3 and he popped over, but we had a repeat performance at 4.  I decided we would reapproach – I was pretty sure he would go – and retire at 5, the little ditch, because he’s never stopped at a ditch, and jumped this one last year like a pro, so I figured that would be the most positive ending I could fashion.

He went over 4 on reapproach as I thought he would, and then, not at all as I thought, spotted the ditch from our trot and tried to spin.

He’s never tried to spin on me, on the way to anything.

Got him over, then pulled up and retired him.  I am already petrified that he will decide he doesn’t like the job – I didn’t want to try and stuff him around another 12 fences.

I don’t think he was hurting, in fact I’m pretty sure he wasn’t, but I think he was afraid he would.  I should have worked harder to create an opportunity for him to school xc after he got his shoes – I don’t think I did enough homework to make him feel confident.  I decided not to try to do it in crappy weather or lousy footing, so it didn’t happen.  Instead I believed that once he learned his feet wouldn’t hurt jumping, period, the sentiment would carry between phases.  Apparently, not so much.

So now I hope that I didn’t make things any worse.

It’s been a somewhat miserable few days since the event.  We have been through a lot this season, and it’s certainly overflowed with teaching moments, but it has most emphatically not gone according to plan.  We’ve managed to end the season worse than we started it, although we did have some very nice moments in between.  So, onward. 

I’ve decided to abandon my hope of ending with a good event, and concentrate on homework.  There is still time to turn the xc around before the ground freezes, and go into winter feeling positive, even if we don’t prove it at a competition.  So that’s what we’ll do, even if we have to go back to sticks on the ground to get there.

Scene:  near Boston, MA.  Pouring rain.

Pony (enters stage right):  You gotta be kidding me.

Me (mounted and getting wet):  Hush and be good jumping your first time out of the monster bit.

Pony:  You want me to jump?  Let’s talk about seeing.

Me:  *ignoring diva pony* You remember what a half halt is, right?

Pony:  I can ignore you too.  Mwahahaha!!

*Beginning on course*

Pony:  Behold, the pony wiggleworm!

Instructor:  I said *straight*.

Pony:  What’s it worth to you?

Me:  *Grrr* *puts on more leg*

Instructor:  Every time he drifts, he changes the distance. 

Me:  Help me out here, pony?

Pony:  All right, all right already.  Don’t get your panties all in a twist.  

Me:  *forgetting the course*

Pony:  DIRECTIONS PLEASE!

Instructor:  Not that canter.  Shorten.  Shorten.  Make him shorten.

Pony:  *chips*

Instructor:  He wants to lengthen the whole way in.  You get backwards.  You have to be able to put your leg on.

Pony:  Excuse me?  Did someone say put leg on?  You people don’t think you torture me enough already??

Me:  Pony, do I have to give you the “you have a very good life” talk again?

Pony:  *drawing hoof across forehead* Woe is me!  Do you see these metal plates on my feet?  Let’s not even mention the NAILS!  Hasn’t this poor little pony made enough sacrifices for the cause?

Me:  Let me know when you’re done and we can canter.

Pony:  Okay.  *Powers off ground*

Me:  *getting left behind*

Instructor:  You DO know you’re getting him to the right distance, yes?

Me:  I see the distance, but I don’t think he’s going to leave the ground.

Pony:  Mom, you so need to get with the program.  I’m a STRONG pony now.  Well, sometimes.

Me:  Okay, here we go.

Pony:  *Giant spook on turn*

Me:  *losing a stirrup* Pony!!!

Pony:  Oops.  I was bored.

Instructor:  *reviewing course*  You need to sit on him in the canter.  That nice light seat?  It’s not going to make anything better right now.  Just riding that canter to the fence?  It assumes he has a consistent, good canter.  He doesn’t yet.  You have to help him.

Pony:  *dances*

Me:  Pony, do you have to pee?

Instructor:  He looks like he’s all done with being wet.

Me:  Pony, if you want your carrots, we do this one more time and we do it well.

Pony:  Oh, well, Miss High and Mighty – I will if you will!

******

We more or less nailed the last course.  Nailing for us right now, anyway.  Pony got several “whoa, he can jump!!”s.  We need more practice.  It’s a very different feeling and I’m trying to keep a lot of new things in my head at once right now that aren’t quite habit yet.  All in all, though, it’s not a bad problem to have.

The snaffle worked fine, although I had some thoughts on approach that I wish I could move it a little more in his mouth.  Just felt like he got a bit stuck.  I almost wanted the loose ring.  We may or may not have the same experience with it at an event, but we’ll go xc with this on Friday, and have the other bit on hand Sunday in the warmup, just in case.

If the weather doesn’t clear, we’ll have to play it by ear.  If he’s slipping, he’s not going out on course.  Just won’t help with his confidence.

I want to take as much time as we need to make him comfortable and happy, because he *can* jump.  He’s careful and clever.  But if I push him too fast, he will quit somewhere, probably earlier than he needs to.  He can do T, the question is…will he?

Cater to the diva it is.  Oh, my…

The aftermath. Yup, eventers are crazy!

Military intelligence =/= Adjustable canter!

I rode a pony I did not recognize yesterday.  For the first time ever, I sat on a canter that at times felt floaty and adjustable.  I witnessed from up top the first ever fences he has truly powered and pushed off the ground to. 

The pony was happy.  For a change we have clarity:  he feels better.  No question.

I’ve been having some really good rides the past week or so, but I’ve been afraid to jinx them by saying so…

The funny part is that this way of going is so new and different that it left the pony and me staring speechless at each other in astonishment, confusion, and utter lack of recognition, like a couple of wide-eyed dummies.  There were some literal moments of laughter that left Denise shouting at us from the sidelines, “neither one of you trusts it yet!”

I have to relearn how to ride him now.  What a huge crossroads.  And yeah, it’s not as if he is going to raise his hoof and volunteer to go this way all the time at this point, but it’s quite a motivating tease!

Of course the million dollar question is, what has precipitated this change?  He’s had a whole course of Adequan, a loading dose of Legend (four shots IV), has a month of doxy under his belt, and got eggbar shoes with pads in front.  He’s also had a whole year now of steady, correct (I hope!) work and he is definitely stronger.

Um, it appears that I may have thrown the book at things again.  Which I did knowingly because I think it’s important – for both our heads – that we do everything we can to make sure we don’t go into winter hibernation afraid of what competing might be like in the spring, and we only have six weeks or so left to accomplish that.  On the flip side, though, now I get to wonder how to best maintain him.  His therapies feel a little bit like the rings on a dartboard, and I’m throwing with beer goggles.

Jessie votes for the single biggest difference being the shoes, but she still recommends continuing the Legend on a twice monthly basis.  And probably injecting his hocks in the spring.  There is still something up with the LH, but it could be just weakness.

He’s warming up more quickly, he’s using himself more behind, and he comes over his back more willingly.  I can feel actual swing!  I have new challenges now.  I have to concentrate on not allowing myself to help him with my seat – he’d still be more than happy to not carry himself consistently.  I have to stay over his hips more, taller in my collarbone, and make him push me out of the saddle.

The hardest part for me right now is that when he goes correctly, especially at walk and trot, he feels slower because his step is longer.  However, he also feels slower when he drops behind my leg, which seems to be the most inviting evasion atm.  One of these requires correction, and one of them requires reward.  Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell which is which.  Denise assured me I am in for plenty more of that, and to trust my instincts. 

Jumping, I have to make my seat slower than the canter – make his back stay soft, maintain the uphill in the gait, don’t let him change its quality 3 strides out.  He still believes sometimes that he needs to do that to get to the other side - and sometimes I believe he needs to do that too and switch to driving.  Sometimes I’m just not sure what’s going to happen and freeze.  Sometimes I don’t see a distance on the better canter.  Sometimes he doesn’t see a distance on the better canter.  All this can make the space right in front of the jump very confusing.  I am worried about it being confusing, because we’ve been talking about him having a confidence issue.  If it is a given that we’ll have some awkward jumps on the way to figuring this out, how do I make sure he stays confident?

Yesterday was very interesting in that regard, because we did get to some funny places.  And in at least one instance, I made a mistake big enough that he stopped – he just didn’t know where he was going until too late.  (That’s actually also a separate challenge on his part, as he’s back to locking on to everything, and I need to find a way to communicate better exactly where we’re going.  But being back to locking onto everything feels like a pretty awesome problem to have right now!). 

When we came back around better, he said oh, no problem.  He didn’t hold it against me at all.  So maybe it’s not going to wreck him for us to figure this out, even when it gets a little…imperfect.

That points to the physical stuff, not the brain stuff, being at the root of the confidence loss.  And that is a GOOD thing.  It means he still likes the job and he still wants to try.  YAY!!!!  My pony is back <3 <3 <3

It’s exciting…but also, what a relief.

I am going to jump in the snaffle next week and see how that goes.  I have a half halt now, I have a horse who moves off my leg instead of falling on it in the turns (when I believe he will and use it!), and I have a horse who’s soft and light in my hand.  LIGHT!  Not pulling!  I think the bit has become a distraction.  Although it was really good to hear that a bit is only as harsh as the hands it’s in, and that mine are nice and soft.

We are ready to determine whether landing in a heap is due to habit or a lingering discomfort.  Atm I am willing to bet habit.  It’s nice that there’s a clear, straightforward test:  ride him away consistently on landing and see whether or not he changes.

Here’s the end of lesson comment that sums it all up for me:

“A few weeks ago, I thought, this isn’t so bad.  But now I see how much more he can really do, and how fancy he really is, and I get what you were talking about!”

I am starting to dream up new and lofty goals, but I think we should try to get through an event without earning a letter before I get too run away with it all.  If GHF Fall Classic isn’t full (and it may well be), we will go to that.

*Fingers crossed*

Leaving D, I peek through the trees to sj and see that the course is being reset, so I hop down, hand Blue’s reins to my wonderful but somewhat reluctant husband (who prefers managing the smaller pony), and hurry in to walk it.  I figured I’d get to watch some rounds later, so I didn’t go over the track too thoroughly (is your red flag alert going off?) - I just checked out the turns and let myself be mightily distracted by the footing.  Surprise, it’s the same grass they have on the other side of the hedge.  It hasn’t rained more on this side.

I’m thinking, if he didn’t like the way this felt for flatwork, how’s it going to feel jumping?  I just fixed the foot.  I don’t want it to break again.  I don’t need him to complete this event; I need him to be my horse next year.

I go back and forth a few times in my head and decide I will make the call right before entering the ring, when we are allowed to use the small warmup area just outside the tape.  I will pop one of the jumps there and if he doesn’t feel right, we’ll be done.

He’s good in the upper sand warmup, although he wants to land in a heap and root and yank me out of the tack.  I try to send him on, but I don’t commit to fixing it completely.  I’m counting every jump.  I’m also seeing that they’re moving people right along and maybe even running a little early, and it’s starting to occur to me that I might not really know the course.

Lower warmup:  one canter around and over the oxer.  He feels great.  In we go.

Blue stands quietly in the middle while we wait for the whistle.  Really, he couldn’t be calmer.  The horse who showed up to today’s event is a pro. 

Luckily, he gave this away before dressage.  Which is how I knew I didn’t have to worry about the land and root act.  Because this is the canter I have in the ring:

He absolutely knows that he lands from one thing and looks for the next.  He doesn’t stare at the ground, he pricks his ears and waits for directions.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m still riding the same Blue, the one who wants to be in charge.  Watch his thinking unfold at fence 1…lol:

He doesn’t mind telling me, even in the air, how he feels about my participation.  He’s occupied enough with trying to inform me in no uncertain terms that I should Just Sit There, please and thank you, that we blow by a couple of distances.  He’s failed to register that these are Beginner Novice fences, though (or he’s just asking to be moved back up already), so there is no danger of rails being involved.  He powers over 8A and B such that I almost can’t get around the turn to 9 and seriously wonder if I adjusted my curb chain sufficiently, but we make it through the flags clean.

It was strange and fun to know that I could more or less completely screw up and fail to put my leg on at all, and we were probably still going to get to the other side.  The challenge with Blue is walking the fine line between establishing the appropriate engine and balance, and also staying the hell out of his way.  The tune up this week was really helpful for that.  I sat on his back and drove him to something like I was on the pony. 

Didn’t make that mistake twice.  He shot over the fence and nearly out from under me. 

A few more, just for fun.

On to xc.  The ground is slightly more giving here than it was in stadium, probably because there’s more grass cushion.  Still, I plan my warmup to be almost no jumping, and several small trot circles to check in with him about his feet.

I have walked the BN at three of the last four events KO has held.  This one is by a considerable margin the toughest of the three.  It’s still inviting and pretty straightforward, but this time they have decided to include the water – it is always easy to have a glance-off when the water is passthrough there – and the biggest surprise is that they have put a decent sized drop on course as fence #5.

It’s shared with Novice, but for N it’s something like fence 11.  For BN, the course is downhill hanging log, little log pile, turn and up the big hill, steer around a N log to another more sizeable log, steer off the path and maneuver around a tree to a palisade, then steeply down the hill straight to the drop.

I’m a little concerned about the downhill – mostly that if we get into it about whose pace we’re picking, he may see the drop too late.  I decide to trot down the hill.  He’s not that strong and he’s on his forehand anyway, so let’s not tempt fate. 

In fact, my overriding plan for the course is to save my horse and take it slow.  I may have mentioned the ground was hard?  Once or twice…

After the drop, we run along the side of the field to a ramp, cross the road to our combination (gratefully, this time it is 3 strides), choose a track through the T/P combinations, across the field to a bench, across the rest of the field, down the swale, up the swale, 180-degree turn to a red table, then back all the way across the field to the water.

It looks like a complete blast.

After the water, we are headed home.  One more fence in the field and then this fun wall, which I jumped the other way on the pony last year:

Our course follows the path, with another small bench (or a coop?), a little log in the woods, then back into the front field, hairpin turn to the last fence which heads right at the warmup.  This doesn’t seem to be jumping very well – I see some horses just not picking up their feet.  I resolve to not have last-fenceitis, although I don’t think I can remember Blue touching anything solid for any reason…ever.

15 efforts altogether, and I mentally subtract one for the water since it’s not a jump.  14 more fences.  I think he can do that, if he wants to, as long as we take it nice and easy.

He gives me no worries in the warmup.  After determining he feels good, I jump two fences and head to the starter. 

He’s such a good boy out of the box.  Relaxed, rhythmic, and confident.  It feels amazing to sit on top of.

I think fence 2 is more of a canter stride than an actual jump.  Tee hee.

Here’s where you get some video. 

He’s a little bit weak in places, and tends to trot when I ask for rebalance.  I let him keep a long frame…I want to stress him as little as possible.  I know my horse will keep us safe unless I do something really stupid (and maybe even then).  I just try to reorganize, give a little reassurance, and wait while he sizes up whatever’s next – he brings himself to canter and sets up to everything when he’s ready.  I bridge, stay in the middle, and verbally whoa at one point when he decides he wants a gallop across the field back to the water.  I’m so glad he’s having a little fun.

I hear Joan Davis yell when we come across that field.  I’m so happy I don’t think you could knock the grin off my face with a sledgehammer.  I’m just glad to be out there with him.  Truth - I would have been glad to take him to King Oak and walk him around on a lead.  It’s just good to be out together…really good.  It’s icing that a few people recognize him, come up and say hello.  Let alone a professional photographer cheering for us while we’re on course! 

I let him talk me into a flyer or two on the back half.  He’s looking at this little log, and flicking his ears back to me as if to say, “it’s just a log.  Don’t worry so much!  Sit there, would you?” 

I have to work to tell him we’ve gone through the finish flags and can stop now.  I think he is ready for about 15 more.  The gallop pic I opened yesterday’s entry with is a still from the approach to the very last fence on course.  If it isn’t the picture of a horse who loves what he’s doing, I don’t know what is.

Here he is at the end of the course. 

It turns out I wasn’t the only one thinking about the footing.  Of our 20 starters, there were only 4 rounds xc with no (slow) time penalties – at Beginner Novice.

Somewhere along the line, we moved up to 5th.  But my greatest reward was watching my horse eating hay at the end of the day, looking like the happiest horse on earth.

He got a lot of carrots, a good long cold hosing, some bute, overnight turnout, and woke up on Sunday with the legs of a 4-year-old.  Eyeing me from the cross ties, giving me his best, most Blue-like line:  I told you so.

I hope he keeps telling me so for a long time.

…I own the world’s most amazing horse, and he’s BACK after six very long years out of competition.  And he’s happy, like he’s spent all this time wondering where my head’s been, leaving him home.  Just let me be biased – I’ll come down off my Blue-high, but give it some time.  Not everyone gets a second chance with their horse.  Today, I did.

Event report:  King Oak Farm fall HT, USEA recognized BN – September 11, 2010

If you want the TLDR version, here you go.  This one pretty much says it all:

Look at his face!

So, I decided I was going to scratch the pony from KO.  He’s on all kinds of meds – doxy, Adequan, Legend, Cough Free - just got front eggbars with pads on Tuesday after being barefoot his entire life, and was lame for almost a week after last Friday’s LH suspensory block.  He came sound on Th but I just didn’t think it was fair to ask him to do an event.  He needs time to get confident again – he’s been through a lot. 

The crazy idea to take Blue crept into my thoughts, but I barely wanted to give voice to it.  He’s been sound and back in consistent work since he got his hind shoes and front pads maybe two cycles ago.  Before that I was working him on soft ground only on the advice of the vet, who said I should not let him get any weaker.  I had pretty much not jumped him at all.  Maybe one gymnastic and an unscheduled crossrail or two in the D saddle.  I’d taken him to FHS a few times to help Tory work on her dressage, and he literally ran onto the trailer every time.  His mind was way ahead of his body, but the message was still coming through loud and clear:  he wanted to work.

Hedging, I scheduled him for an extra acupuncture appointment with Jessie, and took him for a jump school.  That could be its own entry…but suffice it to say, although we were both rusty, things got better and better as we went along.  So I waited to see how he felt the next day.  And the day after that.  And then…I asked KO if they would let me substitute him.

And, because they are wonderful, they said okay, and found a spot for him in the Open division.  Blue was so happy, he went out and got the secretary a thank you gift:

My one reservation was that he might not be strong enough to do a HT in one day.  But I resolved to pay close attention and pull him at any point if it seemed he was tired, unhappy, or anything even nearly approximating unsound.

Friday night, Blue stood like a statue through all the stuff I’m used to him hating, like being doused with cold water, and having his face washed.  Braided him in prime mosquito time and he didn’t move a muscle.  Saturday morning, I went down to the barn to find he’d twisted his antisweat almost under his belly, but somehow, he didn’t have a dirty (or injured) spot on him.  Off we went.

I should mention that for our ride Friday, I measured out a D ring and practiced our test – for this event, BN A, which plays to our biggest weakness – the left canter.  In A, there’s a whole circle of it (only half of one in B), and it comes before a lot of the trot work (in B the majority of the scored trot work is done when you get to canter).  Our rehearsal was hysterical.  I posted this FB status update afterward:

*Memorandum* To: Landlord/Carrot vendor From: Blueberry Re: Stuffage

It has come to my attention that you would like me to perform an entire 20m canter circle to the left. I regret to inform you that this is not what Blueberries do. May I remind you, should you think of insisting, that I do know how to jump out of the ring. With sincere wishes that you would find a HT with xc as the 1st phase,
Blue

I literally could not complete one left 20m circle.  As soon as I half halted to bring him up, he would break to sprawly trot, getting so rattled and unbalanced that I couldn’t pour his brain back in his head for the rest of the test.  Ooops.  Does not bode well.

So I planned to ride him like a hunter in D and suck up my 50-odd penalties.

Welp.  I mount up at KO and he is as calm as calm can be.  We mosey down to the D warmup and walk a bit, and then I pick up the reins and BOOM, experienced horse arrives on the premises.  Drops his head, picks up his back, and waits for instruction.  Huh. 

There’s some confusion, because I’ve switched divisions, about which ring I’m supposed to be in, and he stands in the shade and looks around gaily while a few green horses explode nearby.  We aren’t sure if we’re going to be called now, or much later, so it’s hard to know how tuned to keep him, but I decide that I want to save him and that more work is not going to make our test that much better, so we walk around and do some lateral steps.  Eventually, in we go to the grass ring, which  is made of slippery rocks.  Seriously.  Every time we put a foot down, it pinged back up at us.  Blue didn’t like it at all. 

Still, he gave me the best test I could have asked for, considering his strength right now.  Before the left canter I whispered to him, “just get through this,” and he almost did.  We had an early break, but we got around the *(&^^%$%!! circle.  MUCH better than I’d anticipated.

I am thrilled. Blue is eyeing the camera, saying "I had it all under control."

What a good horse.

Entry

 

The comment on our collectives was funny.  It said, “Nice position.  Horse needs help with canter.”  Tell me about it!  Well, six weeks ago the horse wasn’t even cantering.  So it’s all good.

We got a 38, which I thought was very respectable.  The judge was pretty generous all around, and the 38 put us in 12th.  Our division was 20 deep, but there were a bunch of ties ahead of us, and our score placed us pretty close to the bottom.  That was fine with me.  I was excited to have made it around the left canter circle :P  And I was also more worried about how he’d responded to the footing than I was concerned about our placing.

More tomorrow!

Lesson report

 

Two kinds of crazy today.  I will leave you to determine exactly what kind and to what degree of crazy…

 

Crazy part 1.

I took a very interesting and thought provoking lesson with Denise yesterday that resulted in some new and different hypotheses about the mysterious behavior of the little pony.

After the 411 portion of the lesson, she first suggested the obvious, which is do you think he just needs his butt handed to him?  He is a pony after all, there’s nothing screaming wrong with him, BN is not all that much to ask, and I have brought him along slowly enough that he should not be scared.  I said I really didn’t think so, but I couldn’t rule it out totally.  I think he is worried, not naughty, but I don’t know why.  She said okay, let’s see what he gives us.

Right away in my warmup she made some adjustments in my riding.  In the trot we worked on me not helping him so much with my post.  Post more slowly, concentrate on making him push me out of the saddle, and go to my leg first when he drops back rather than posting bigger to send him on.  The result was a trot that felt really, really slow to me, but which covered more ground.  Also, it made him come up over his back more, so I got stretch in that part of his neck right in front of the wither that is so hard to muscle.

In the canter again she first wanted me to change my seat.  I am helping him way too much with my seat.  Yes, that was appropriate when he was leg salad pony, but he needs to own the balance now.  So I needed to really relax my lower back.  A lot.  It was very hard.  Part of it I think is my conformation – my pelvis slants back anyway, so to get less arch in my lower back I really had to feel like I rolled my butt under and rounded it.  She also wanted me to release more in my lower thigh.  Yeah – lower thigh, who knew.  I’m not pinching with my knee, but in an effort to keep my lower leg back in that saddle on the flat I’m sending my knee toward the ground and holding in the area right above it.  So I had to consciously stick my knee way into the air and focus on putting my ankle on him.  Felt weird, but wasn’t as hard to achieve as the back thing.  And actually, his canter was really good yesterday.  I did feel like his hind legs were more underneath me once I sort of got out of the way.

He did want to break some, which was a good sign that it was hard for him to carry himself, but he can do it and he needs to, and I have to not let him talk me into doing the work for him.  He also swapped once which worries me more but which I think is another topic.

The good thing was that she said I was making whatever change right away, so I’m capable of it.  I think it is going to take some reminding for awhile till I form new habits though.

So then we started jumping, just a little xrail at first.  First time over, he did his get quicker but shorten stride thing right in front of the fence.  She showed me the footprints and it was really obvious.  So she had me come back in a sitting trot, asking for “collection” so I had him on my aids enough that he really could not change anything in the last couple strides.  And guess what, he had absolutely no idea how to get over the fence that way.  He got there and sort of sprung off the ground deerlike and inverted.  We did the same thing again and he jumped slightly better.

She thought it was interesting that he seemed to genuinely not know what to do with himself out of that balance, so she put 6ft placing poles before and after the xrail.  First time through, messy, then he figured it out, so we went to a small (2’3″) vertical and the canter.  He was quicker to understand what to do and we were able to reproduce it without the placing poles, then we slowly added a couple more jumps one at a time.

She was very strict about my eye and line.  She has a rule that once you look at the fence, you may not look away.  I had no idea how much I was looking at the jump, back to the turn, then at the jump again, until she started calling me on it.  She said that every time you look away, your brain has to reset and recalibrate your eye to the fence.  She also had me concentrate on riding a straight line after, which I am really bad about, and it allows him to fall onto my inside leg.  It was not that hard to fix once I actually worked on sending him straight (duh).

She was also very particular about the fences being “clean.”  She said if I am not jumping something from both directions, take away the ground poles on one or both sides, especially in an oxer.  It will mess up his eye and possibly mine too.  Right now he does not need anything to mess him up.

For the same reason, if I got the wrong lead on landing, or landed for any reason in a sub-optimal canter, I had to walk and “cleanse” it, then pick up canter again and continue.  Another way of saying don’t practice bad behavior.

He never stopped, but he did some interesting things.  She laughed at me at one fence that we met on a half stride and got crooked to fit in a last one.  She could see from the ground what I was doing even in my head – her comment was “you both totally agreed to that.”  Then at one fence I got left behind.  I saw the distance but it’s a distance we’ve been missing so I thought he would put in an extra – however, because he’d come with the right power and balance, he was able to leave the ground in the right place.  She pointed out that he wants to jump off the tips of his toes behind – that’s one reason he wants to make the change 2-3 strides out from sitting down.  But when I get him in correctly, he can bend his hocks and power off flat feet. 

We worked up to a course of 4 “perfect” fences.  Talk about riding every step.  It really did feel like slow motion.

At the end she said she does think he is very worried and has lost his confidence.  I was wondering why, because it’s not like some big disaster like a crash has occurred, and she said that it could very well be that his canter has changed so much that he’s not confident in how to organize his feet out of the better canter unless he meets the fence on a perfect distance.  And even when he is going to meet it well, he worries and wants to change the canter right in front of the fence, which of course changes the distance, and then we have a bad jump anyway.  In the lesson we actually had to create his confidence at meeting the jump on a perfect distance while staying in the good balance - so, she said, it probably would have unraveled if she’d asked me to say, meet it on a forward stride instead.

She said he is ready to learn these things, or sort of relearn them with his “new” canter, but that he needs time and work on them to get confident again.

So on course, he might start out well, or warm up well, but then he meets something from a place he doesn’t like – or mentally changes the height of the fence if it is scary looking, which changes the distance too – and he gets more worried about leaving the ground from then on.  It explains the one constant I’ve been able to figure out from the bad trips we’ve had, which is things get worse as the course goes on instead of better.  Even at ENYDCTA, where he was clean, I remember thinking on xc that it was weird how I had to ride the end of the course harder than the middle. 

Footsoreness would explain it too, and he’s getting blocked tomorrow, as well as having the left stifle/suspensory looked at, which flexed mildly positive and which he’s sore on for about 10 strides after it hitches, not a good thing if the jump is 5 strides out.

Denise said she often sees it happen that a green horse is willing to do things when green (like find some way, any way please!, over a jump when asked) that it’s no longer willing to do when not so green.  I thought that was interesting.  I’ve never come across a horse that began to stop as its education increased, but then I have not usually ridden a princess.

So the million dollar question — okay Denise, this is all fascinating but how do I translate it to King Oak in 2 weeks?  She said well, you’re going to have to make sure that the distance to every single fence is perfect.  And if it isn’t and he stops, you need to retire before you get eliminated, because there are only so many times a horse will tolerate going out and having no fun.  He’s a good mover and a very cute jumper and I wouldn’t risk ruining him if I were you.

That sounds to me like a scratch.  She said, well, you could take him and just do dressage, or you could play it by ear, but if you have even one single bad fence in the warmup, I wouldn’t take him in the ring.

Hello, can anyone say King Oak stadium?  Perfect distance to everything:  not going to happen.

Sooooo….that brings us to the shorter crazy, 

Crazy part 2.

Think Blue wants to go run a BN?

Event report:  Great Vista BN Ch, continued

Pony #14

So, where were we?  Of course – we were at the good part.  The part at which I get eliminated for fashion violations:

Yes, it was soggy.  Peel-your-clothes-off soggy.  Soggy as in a full 24 hours after my test, I put my dressage coat on the front seat of my truck so I’d remember to take it to the dry cleaner’s, and it left a big, huge, bleeding wet spot.

In the bog and the sog, we prepared to run xc.  I was not too worried about the pony on the footing, because last year it rained at every event, and he didn’t care.  He has barefoot surefootedness.  He has a little slip every now and then, but nothing big and it doesn’t trouble him. 

I more or less liked the course.  I thought a few things were skinnyish, and there were a few sj-like turns, but I appreciated the course design overall, especially that there was room to get rolling between fences 1 and 2, and that there were no long or severe downhill approaches until fence 6.

I worried somewhat about fence 1, because I think it is healthy to always worry somewhat about fence 1 (which, bless CD Todd Richardson’s heart, was headed toward stabling), but also because it featured flowers, and we’ve been wondering if flowers have tripped a spooky switch in the pony’s brain.  I mentally prepared to engage the autowhack on my way to fence 1 when reviewing the course in my head.

My plan was to ride the pony like he needed to jump every single fence, so I wouldn’t wonder afterward if I had failed in the encouragement department.  A couple of lessons ago I backed off too much because I was worried about how he might be feeling, and it did not improve his confidence.  So positive riding was a very important feature of my plan.

So:  get over fence 1, hanging log with flower ground line.  Move him up on landing and have a nice little (BN) gallop to fence 2, a nice round hay bale roll with ginormous round hay bale roll wings.  Turn to fence 3, my first worry:  a ski ramp with a drop landing eerily similar to the ski ramp with the drop landing he stopped at approximately 200 times a couple of weeks ago.

I decide my plan on this one is to not let him check it out.  Stay behind him, keep his head up and keep my foot on the gas so that he does not recognize the drop landing until it’s too late for him to do anything about it.  This is a different strategy for me, and competitions are generally not the places to test drive new strategies, but my instincts say to go with it.

Fence 3, ski ramp (center), drop landing side

Fence 4 is a small up bank, related to 3, out of the swale.  I’m thinking the jump onto the stone dust landing could be tricky because of the footing difference, but it’s much less intimidating looking when soaking wet :P  I make a mental note not to bring the pony to this too fast.  He’ll need time to look.

Sharp turn uphill and short approach to 5, a big blue barn.  Yes, I am holding the camera straight.  The fence is on the side of the hill.

Right turn and lonnnnggg downhill approach to 6, a grey ramp with big light wood wings built to look like fence gates.  Very wide face, but strange looking.  You will see this one in a moment.  It did cause some stops on course.

Another downhill right turn to fence 7, a very light colored table.  This is the next question that gives me pause, as we have had our issues at table shapes in the past.

I think the next part of the course will be fun.  It’s our first numbered combination:  fence 8, up bank; 9a, log; 9b, down bank.  A mini N/T level question.  Mini questions are my very favorite kinds, so I’m liking it a lot, even though down banks have not been reliable for us of late.  I handwalked him off a couple last week, though, and I could have sworn I saw a light bulb illuminate over his head the first time he followed me down.

I’m also thinking once again that Mr. Richardson is a brilliant man indeed for having given us the practice up bank at fence 4.

The C, btw, refers to Championship course, as opposed to C element.  It was very confusing at times.  Too much alphabet soup for me.

Sharp left turn to fence 10, a very interesting fence – an innocuous looking log, with long stemmed orange plastic flowers arranged on top steeplechase style.  The flower tops arrive at my waist, which means the total height is a minimum of three feet.  I very seriously doubt the pony is going to brush through these:  he will jump the whole thing with room to spare.  The pony doesn’t understand steeplechasing yet.  I definitely wonder if he will find the extra height objectionable.  The pony carries a very accurate onboard yardstick.

I decide that my job on this one will be to hang on.  :)

Notice it is shared with Novice.

Very abrupt left turn now to the water.  By abrupt I mean that a huge jump at 10 will mean that when you land, you will have already overshot the line to 11.  It doesn’t bother me because the water is a little passthrough puddle, and there’s nothing preventing you from swinging back around onto your line.

Long downhill gallop along the side of the hill to fence 12, which I don’t like, because the pony has trained me not to like airy.  It’s a feeder and I plan to make sure that we are no longer coming down the hill when we get straight to it, because I anticipate that I will need to ride it aggressively and I don’t want to be getting sucked down the hill when I try to do that.  It is artfully placed such that the ground does incline slightly on the takeoff side – a tricky little tradeoff, because that same incline accentuates the airiness of it.  Thank you times three to Mr. Richardson.  I am really liking this design stuff.

Little gallop and right turn to fence 13, the boot bench.  I think this is pretty adorable and uncomplicated.  It’s at the far reach of the field, so it’s the most away question, and the woods border it on the left; home is to the right.  Okay, maybe not totally uncomplicated.  But by this time in the course, we should be rolling, and he should be looking for the next fence.

Next, odd hairpinish turn (I wished I had brought a wheel for this course, because there were so many route options) to 14, ditch, on a related line to 15, log.  Fun!  Except for one thing.  The ditch is lined with white stones bright enough to burn your retinas.

Mmmhmm, very natural.  The pony is not especially ditchy, but he is careful.  I am betting he will request a close inspection of this alien ditch lining prior to navigating over it.  Another mental autowhack.  Pony:  go to the log.  Go directly to the log.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.  You will just have to trust me on this one.

At this point in the course, I abandoned photo taking – I confess I was more interested in a big dark bay horse loose on xc.  He was galloping and galloping and galloping around, having a grand time, and not worried about returning to stabling at all.

Left turn around a treeline to fence 16, fake ditch and wall with a swale top.  I didn’t think too hard about this fence, but it ended up causing some problems.  Then roll back to a swedish bank with #17, a log, on top (more fun!), rolling left turn to #18, a rolltop, and straight to the finish flags.

So by now, Dear Reader, you have correctly guessed that we did not get all the way around this course.  If you are wondering what happened to us, you are in good company, because I am wondering, too.

It didn’t start badly.  Here are fences 1-3.

I stay behind him but don’t need to go to my stick to fence 1:  flower problem conquered, apparently.  He’s very focused to #2 (see stadium warmup on his left), and happily, my strategy to #3 hits pay dirt.

If you are microanalyzing, which I certainly am, you will notice the teeniest hesitation between 1 and 3 strides out to all three of these fences.  He’s not just setting up, I don’t think.  He’s wondering if it is strictly necessary to get to the other side.

And then, when he jumps, he sort of heaves himself to the landing.  This is not my bold, happy pony who earned oooohs and ahhs from Eric Smiley and Michael Page, and who’d been clean at every event this year since he got his injections until Snowfields.  Oh, except for one stop at the GHF Summer Classic that was shared with half the other BN competitors.  I don’t count that one.  That course was not designed by my good friend Todd Richardson.

On microanalysis I also notice that he’s jumping differently than usual through his shoulder.  Ordinarily, he has a very tight front end, but here, although he’s still folding his knees well, he is not getting his forearms up as horizontally as he normally does.

Video stills from #2 and 3:

Still, he gets over the first four jumps, then turns to #5, the barn, and says I don’t think so.

In keeping with my no-wondering-if-I-rode-enough plan, I give him a whack to remind him “this is your job, pony,” reapproach, and over we go.  Not entirely happily I might add.

Downhill to the funny looking but very wide #6, and stop again.  He quits from so far out and so worriedly that I can barely stand to smack him, but I give a little one.  He figures it out (or agrees to it) the second time over and jumps it fairly well:

Fence 7, the light colored table on the downhill approach, he does not give me trouble at, but neither does he stay straight in the air.  Ditto on the no trouble for the cute mini banks question 8, 9a, 9b.  This is super fun.  I yell to him that he’s a very good boy and a brave pony.

Then at #10 I make a mistake.  I roll up the hill in 2-pt, thinking that especially with the extra height, maybe he will like it better if I just stay up there and let the roundness of the jump influence him to take it in stride.  Bad idea.  He says, “what are you DOING?  Why are you NOT SUPPORTING ME?” and gives me a halfhearted runout to the right.  Okay, I’m falling on the sword for this one.  But I telegraph to him that this is stop #3 – one more and we’re done, pony. 

I do not want to be done.  The pony, as we know, has other ideas.

Interestingly, we hit the perfect distance on reapproach to this obstacle, but he doubts it and ends up scrambling over.  This is the worst fence of the course.  I stay as out of his way as I can, and he goes on gamely with his ears pricked.  Right away I start to talk to him and tell him he’s all right.  We do in fact end up overshooting the distance to the water, but double back without a problem.

He is a good boy through the puddle and I give him a pat.

We trot sideways down the hill to airy feeder, #12, pick up a canter once straight, and he does not want to jump it but I am able to stuff him this time.  Then the boot jump, #13, I whack him over.  I am starting to think we are not having too much of a blast out here…I pat him on landing.  I am thinking that I must remember to reward him, because although I do not understand why he’s feeling the way he is, I do understand that if I don’t reinforce good behavior, things will be even worse.

Since fence #6, I have also been thinking that I need to change my plan to help us get around safely and as positively as possible.  What I decide to do is forget about the time, which is 350 mpm.  I am purely focused on getting over each fence.

I double whack him – behind my leg this time - at the retina-burning ditch and if I’d been a microsecond later, we’d've had the stop.  As it was he jumped sideways before leaping over and it was marginal.

He’s grateful that the thing following the ditch is a simple little log, and I pat again.  Then we head to the fake ditch and wall swale, #16, and I do use my stick, but that is the end.  I know as I am smacking him that his shoulder is way too much pointing at the ground for him to pop over, and even though I am not happy he stops, I am glad he stops rather than jumping dangerously.

I am sorry to not finish the course, and I am worried about giving the pony a bad experience, but I am not so much concerned about him ending on a stop.  I should not have had to ride as hard as I did – that is a bigger issue in my mind than the stops themselves.  The fact that I did have to tells me something – I don’t know what it is yet, but it isn’t that my pony was being naughty.  In my gut I am one million percent sure this is not a naughty pony problem. 

When he stops, I look over to the swedishesque bank and say to the people there – one of whom is a fence judge, I think, although I could be wrong – “that’s four for us, we’re done.”  And the fence judge (?) says, “are you fired?”  and I laugh a little and answer, “yup, we’re fired.”  And we walk to the finish, carefully looking out for whomever is behind us.  Someone calls to me, “you have a very cute pony!” and I nearly burst into tears. 

No one yells at us, no one treats us like we’re a couple of idiots unbefitting the BN Championships.  For this I am grateful.  I’m not mad at my pony, but I am very sad, and I am wondering what is wrong.  I am very frustrated, and very confused.

The pony seems somewhat to share these sentiments, because instead of eating hay, he stands with his head hung in the corner of his stall while I pack up to leave.

If this were the pony with whom I did King Oak fall ’09, our first BN, I would think, okay, he’s not confident yet.  But on the balance he was more confident then.  He wasn’t always certain about going, but he did what I asked and got happier every fence, every competition, every clinic until spring ’10 UNH, where we unraveled in fine style.

Then he got his body scan and his joint injections, and climbed sharply uphill again, clean at GMHA, clean (by my count) at GHF, and winning ENYDCTA.

Then Snowfields – a big departure for our first E. 

Now this.

I left Jessie a message yesterday and she called me back this morning.  She had a cancellation, and came to see him this afternoon.  She watched me ride and jump him, she felt him over, she did flexions, she put hoof testers on him, and she watched our video and looked at our photos from this weekend.

I asked her what she thought about my toughest, hardest to ask questions.  One, do you think he has decided he doesn’t want to jump?  And two, do you think I have done something to make him less instead of more confident over time?

She said that she thinks the vast visual and performance inconsistency points toward something physical that we have not put our collective finger on yet.  She thinks he looks keen to the work, but that he isn’t confident about some of the distances he finds, and she did not like the way he landed in a heap afterwards when the confidence was lacking. 

He was quite short in front starting out.  He had a mildly positive left hock and left stifle/suspensory flexion (2, 2+), was negative to hoof testers, was very sore all through his back again, sore in both shoulders, and had an intermittently mildly locking left stifle.

In other words, lots to say, but nothing screaming, “here I am!  The Problem!!”

I should be so lucky.

She’s still thinking – she is working very hard for me on this and I am lucky to have a vet so invested in my pony.  She believes atm that despite the negative hoof testers, we may have a footsoreness problem on our hands.  It is the #1 physical reason horses stop.  She explained to me that there are something like 34 different points in the foot that can hurt and the hoof testers only look at the sole. 

I asked why a horse would work *out* of footsoreness.  I figured if my feet hurt and I walked on them, they’d hurt more.  She gave me a better analogy:  say you twist your ankle.  You get out of bed the morning after, put your foot on the floor, and say ouch!  But then you hobble around a bit and it slowly starts to feel better as it “warms up.”

The choice to make at the end of the day based on what we can figure out so far went something like, put shoes on him and see if that helps, or block his front feet and see if that helps. 

I would very much like to leave him barefoot – although I have no problem putting shoes on him if he needs them for comfort – and I would very much like to understand definitively what is happening, so that I can take care of him right and work him right – so I am opting for the blocks.  Hopefully next week.  Meantime, I will continue the doxy, it does seem to be helping something, even if we are not quite sure what it is.

And that’s the story.

Here is fence 7.  Here is everything from the second approach to fence 10 through our ending at #16.

Whatever you may think, I doubt you will be able to help but love the pony!  We all do.