Deep Creek Derby

Photos by Bobby Austin...!

 

    

 

 

When my alarm went off at 5am on Saturday it was cold, dark, and pouring rain.  It was physically painful to get out of bed and head to the soggy barn to hook up the trailer.  Added to the crappy weather was the knowledge that the day before I had had my worst ride on Jasper EVER.  He decided he could not go from a halt to a walk and at one point reared straight up.  Rearing is the one thing I will not put up with, and by the end of the ride we were both drenched in sweat and frazzled.  I was accepting the fact that all trust gained between us might be lost and this competition might be a disaster.

Pulled into Deep Creek late, tacked up in a whirlwind while Jasper was still shaking from his trailer ride (he always unloads shaking), Serena got my number for me and we headed towards the dressage areas that were on the other side of the creek.  Which he would not go near.

Finally someone noticed us and offered a lead which was gratefully accepted. I went to the wrong arena and was told they were waiting for me in the other one.  It was just a warm up test, Intro B, in a sand arena (the sand arena was actually good- horses were slipping all over in the wet grass).  He spooked at the letter pylons, the judge's stand, and jumped when the sand hit the white plastic fencing.  At one point I actually half smiled and rolled my eyes when his whole body spasmed and jumped in place, and then kept trotting on.  I'm wondering if that was what earned the comment "tactful" in the Rider's Position (keeping in balance with horse) section.  Was informed by the judge afterwards that he was rooting which "is not the same thing as free walking."  Gee, thanks. Good to know.  37.5.

An  hour and a  half later was our BN-A test.  By this time the rain had let up and things (including us) were starting to dry out.  Jasper was still tense and "hopping" into down transitions before we went in, but it was the same arena and the judge gave us a long time to trot around before she rang the starting bell.  The test felt much better than the first one. It wasn't fantastic-  he was unbalanced and throwing his head up in the transitions, wouldn't get off of my left leg, and was sucking back throughout the test eyeballing the evil pylons. He was much more relaxed though, which in my mind was a major score no matter what else happened.  The video makes it look a lot better than it felt.  I don't know why there's a green stripe across the top...

After a tack change we headed up the big hill to the XC course, got lost once, and arrived at the top in the crazy wind.  The warm up area was within sight, and the first thing I saw was a horse spooking and bolting when a particularly strong gust made all the plastic flags marking the arena strain at the ends of their tethers and whip around.

Luckily the girl riding him got him back under control pretty quickly.  I had flashbacks to 2009 when I brought Jasper here for the "Rock Hopper" (ground pole) division and it was not windy and he would NOT GO NEAR those horse eating flags.

 Memories of 2009.  My finger was broken in 2 places and I was wearing a splint.

I checked in and began trotting around the warm up and Jasper let out a  huge sigh and started to relax.  We went right by the flags, he was calm and responsive to the jumps, and even offered to stand still for a few seconds while Serena told me what the course was.

We went in for our warm-up round, I entered it mainly because I wanted to school the water.  Decided just to trot everything unless he happened to land on the correct lead.  I'm glad we entered it because the jumps were freshly painted and very, very bright... Jasper said whoa, those things are NOT supposed to be out in a field!

The BN course was the same as the warm up with higher jumps, an added line of 5 or 6 cross country jumps, and one more water obstacle.   I rode well when I remembered to actually ride and rode crappy when I got distracted.  Jasper was awesome.  We almost had a stop at a tiny 12" bank, I still don't know why other than it was next to a ditch.  Ditches don't usually bother him, so who knows.  My friend Anke brought her whole family out to watch and so every time we went through the water or over a jump they all clapped and cheered. :)

My mom came out to support and spend her Saturday morning videoing and was able to get my BN dresssage test and the warm up jumping.  Thanks Mom!  Something went wrong with the camera after that. 

There were 35 people in the BN division which they split into two groups.  I wanted to pick up our dressage tests but had to wait until everyone was done jumping and the scores were posted for a half an hour.  Really?  Why?  We had a 37.5 in the warm up which put us in second.  We also had a 37.5 in BN which put us in third.  I was pretty disappointed with that score, I thought he did much, much, much better in BN.  Finally everyone finished up jumping, they posted the scores, and I got my tests.  The BN test was 32.5, not 37.5!  Not a 28 or 29 like we've gotten before, but respectable and it put us in first place.  Woot woot!

 

I am a very brave horse now.  You can attach flappy things to my halter.

...squirrel!

And a few more photos from this event in 2009, just to show how far we've come...

Dude.  Ears.

Invisible top rail.

That thing will not grab MY hooves...

An excuse to accelerate.

Dude.  Ears.

PFEC Hunter/Jumper Show

I've been trying for a week to put videos up from our show last weekend, but Blogger is not cooperating.  I uploaded them to Youtube which makes Blogger happier, but not me. 

I was at an Equine Assisted Psychotherapy training in Helena, Montana for work Wed-Sat, got home late Sat. night, and at the last minute decided to get up and take my unridden, unbathed horse to the show Sunday morning.  He was, um, energetic that morning but it turned out we had hours before our first class, so we warmed up.  A lot.  Did canter (er... gallop) figure 8's in the field, rode in the indoor, rode around the grounds, repeat.  When it was getting time for our first class, sweaty, legs and belly covered in dirt and sand, manure stains all down the backs of his legs, we quietly walked past all the shiny horses in their gleaming tack and went back to the trailer for damage control.

I had a hard time deciding what I was going to do, but in the end entered the 2'6 division with no warmup.  I figured at events you don't get a warm up, you just go in for your one stadium course and that's it.  He was really, really good.  Once he has something to focus on he's golden.  Everything that goes wrong in these rounds is pilot error.  We really need to start working on flying changes.

 2'6 Hunters

The first round felt like the last stride was short in almost every line.  I decided to play around with it and see if we could do some of the lines in 4 instead of 5.  It was fun and he made it easy.  The judge was NOT impressed... but I was. :)

 

2'6 Hunters II

The only other class at 2'6 was a jumper class.  I am not ready to start pushing him for time and tight turns, so we rode it relaxed.  Maybe too relaxed at first, he almost forgot to jump the first jump.

 

 2'6 Jumpers

First time at 3'

Yves Sauvignon Jumping Clinic

 Roxie and Jasper in their big kid clothes.

Serena and Roxie picked us up Saturday morning and we drove 3 hours to Tulip Springs Eventing Facility in the Tri Cities.  Normally I am not a fan of the Tri Cities.  Spokane is on the east end of Washington State and is forresty and surrounded by mountains, lakes, and rivers.  Seattle is on the other side.  In between is a giant desert waste land, boring as hell to drive through, which is where the Tri Cities are.

However it's spring here in the Pacific Northwest. We had record amounts of rainfall last month and lots of flooding.  Everything is mud and days have been drizzly.  Picture two days in a beautiful eventing facility, 70*, sunny, dry ground, irrigated grass... I got an awesome sexy sunburn on my arms between the sleeves of my polo and my gloves.  The weather was perfect, the people were friendly, the horses were gorgeous.  Serena and I would be like whoa, that's a REALLY nice horse.  Must not be in our group.  Hahaha. 

Jasper was a really good boy throughout except when he pulled back and broke a metal tie ring off Serena's trailer.  And ran back to his paddock.

I thought Yves was a fantastic clinician and would recommend him to anyone.  He didn't have a single negative thing to say all weekend, yet was able to get riders out of their comfort zones and doing things they didn't think they could do.   He really liked Jasper and said he would take him home to his barn.  He said he's athletic, ratable, and has a tidy jump.  Serena heard him say he thought he could go far.  I had a few lightbulb moments about waiting before the  jump (I need a scarecrow in the middle of the arena with a recording that plays, "wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait"), and what keeping leg on before a jump actually means.

 

We begged people to video us.  Unfortunately the girl that was taping the second half of the XC didn't know how to use the camera? because none of it got recorded. :(  However, Jasper did his first Trakehner!  It just had a shallow little ditch but was Novice level and he didn't give it a second look.

One of my friends watched the video on facebook and and commented that Jasper looks "broke".  Someone else commented on how it looks like I'm not hanging on for dear life anymore.  It made me realize that for the first time I'm not questioning IF he's going to jump or not, and then frantically grabbing mane as he launches himself 2 or 3 feet higher than the top of the jump.  I'm now assuming he's going over and am able to wait for him to figure out his distances and let him jump. 

It also made me realize I really don't see distances, even at a nice even pace.  Jasper's going to have to figure that out.  I'm just going to get him into a good even canter, sit and WAIT, and let him adjust his stride accordingly.  In the end, according to Yves, I will have a much better horse.

Icebreaker H/J schooling show

Roxie giving Serena the eye, Jasper standing still for a few seconds.

Jasper got a blue ribbon in a HUNTER class! It was fantastic, he just... flowed. To be honest, just getting around the course was an achievement in itself. The arena is large and industrial and scary, the jumps were decorated and horse-eating. The first two riders fell off in our blue ribbon winning class (at the same fence) and there were quite a few refusals after that.

Jasper jumped every single jump every time I asked. The first jumper round was not pretty. We swerved here and there and ended up trotting into most of them. The second round we knocked over a standard. He was acting green, not naughty. I had absolutely no doubt he would be cantering the courses by the end of the day. And once he settled in and figured out what was going on, and after I quit holding him back and just let him go his own pace, things started to click. We had 3 fantastic classes. The Gambler's Choice class (I think we got 3rd), the 2'6 eq class (2nd), and a hunter class (1st!).

I quit trying to do simple changes each time he landed on the wrong lead. It was chopping everything up and throwing off the rhythm. I decided to just let him canter on and address the changes at another time.



I forgot where I was going and started circling the wrong way. I mean, I meant to.

It was really fun to have Serena and Roxie there, they rocked it. Serena's boyfriend Matt did the video-ing, thanks Matt!

Serena and I are getting ready to take Jasper and Roxie to Tulip Springs Eventing facility down in Kennewick this weekend for a clinic with Yves Sauvignon (sp?). Stadium on Sat. and cross country on Sun.

We're going to a clinic!

Hellloooooooo spring.

I just sent my entry in for the Yves Sauvignon clinic! It's at Tulip Springs eventing facility, about 2.5 hours southwest of here, Saturday and Sunday April 14-15, showjumping Sat. and Cross Country on Sun. I'm a little concerned that there's only 3 weeks to get ready, fitness wise Jasper really isn't in shape yet. And of course the day after I send my entry in I get sick, so I'm now in bed thinking that I'm losing even more time. And it snowed last night and stuck. Helllooooo, spring! It's a good thing he's a young Thoroughbred that has a huge paddock and tends to run around a lot. I figure we'll go and do what we can do. The nice thing about clinics is there are a bunch of riders so the horses get a rest period between jumps.

And the best part? We're going with Serena and Roxie! Woooooot!

Serena loaned me this saddle to try and it seems to fit him quite well. It's a wide tree. The balance isn't bad either, I don't feel like I'm in chair seat like I do with a lot of jumping saddles. I have to say, though, it feels like riding on a postage stamp jockey saddle. I love squishy knee pads and thigh blocks. This has none of those. I think it looks quite elegant... it will make me a better rider, right? If I can stay in it that is.

Words of Wofford

Serena and I audited a Jimmy Wofford clinic today. She kept everyone up to date on Facebook throughout the day, but if you're not "friends" with her here's what you missed:

JIMMY WOFFORD DROVE MEGAN AND I AROUND IN A 4-WHEELER! :D PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF!

Wofford:

"If you get left behind jumping up a bank, your horse will HATE you!"

"You should know where your horse is going to land before he takes off."

"Horses don't WANT to jump badly! They jump badly because of US! Ever seen a horse get loose in a steeplechase? It jumps like a BIRD!"

"Close your knee angle as you approach the jump. Don't sit BACK as you approach. Most trainers teach that you sit back, but they're wrong and I'm right."

‎"I don't teach beginners. Mostly because my nerves are shot."

"I was riding in a warm-up ring with Bill Steinkraus--you know, the greatest rider America has ever produced? That Bill Steinkraus?--and I asked him, on average, how many fences on a course of ten does he get to accurately. He thought about it and said "Seven." I said "Oh." But I was THINKING: "Oh. What does that say about ME?!"

"You are not nervous. I will TELL YOU when to be nervous."

"I want to get to know your horse. It's your job to sit down, shut up, stay out of your horse's way, don't fall off, and don't refuse."

"We're going to do canter exercises! All you have to do is CANTER!"

"Oh, he was doing that last year? Then you should have fixed it!"

"Any rider can be accurate! You think Anne Kursinski got where she is because she always had great horses? NO. When I first met her, she was 17 years old and jumping spotted mules for Jimmy Williams!"

"You, on the grey. Ride over here and have someone pull your spurs off. We have lots of problems to work on today--creating energy is NOT one of them."

"Wait, wait, wait. Why is everyone talking? There is only ONE clinician out here!"

"It's a steady five. Just let your horse go. He's 19 years old and he survived a 2-star--he DOESN'T NEED YOU telling him what to do."

"What went wrong there? You were supposed to go 'one-two-three-four-five!' You went 'one-two-three-OHSHIT!"

"Generally speaking, I wouldn't encourage you to slow down in order to speed up."

"Your heel slid back, along his ribs! Did you feel that? Well, DON'T!"

"Oh! Hit her! HIT HER! She's a BAD girl! Aaaaaaarrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!"

:)