First Rides Post Injections

Peebs was cleared to ride last Wednesday, 4 days after his injections.  Unfortunately that was farrier day, and after holding him and Cinder for the farrier in 36* I was too frozen to ride. So Peebs got a light lunge and I bumped our first ride back to Thursday.

Missed that view

We had a nice long walk warm-up, with lots of lateral work because someone was feeling a bit fresh and needed to engage his brain. We did about 30 mins of walk-trot, mostly walk, and the whole time I was second and third guessing myself about his soundness. He did feel stiff, but it was more of the "its cold and I haven't loosened up yet" type of stiffness than the "I'm lame" type.  Peebs did get a lunge before we rode Friday, and felt much better.

Used to be terrified of puddles.  No fucks given Saturday

Saturday I hauled him over to friend A's to ride and spend the night as we were having lessons on Sunday. I had to work last weekend and wouldn't have time to work and haul over before my lesson so A was kind enough to let Peebs spend the night. It has snowed and rained Friday and A's arena was wet and a bit deep in spots, but it worked great for us.  The footing was just deep enough to make Peebs work a bit harder and tire him out, but not deep enough to be unsafe. Also, he apparently has gotten over his phobia of puddles, splashing through them without a care in the world and standing in one so I could get a pic.

We kept the jumps small for our lesson Sunday, mostly trotting cross rails. Peebs still wanted to get crooked and bulge right while tracking left cantering away from some of the jumps but it was better than our last few jump sessions.  My instructions was to disengage during those moments, let him be, then continue on like normal.  My normal reaction is to ride hard and try and correct him which usually makes him more upset, so trying the less is more approach is hard for me.  But I did it and we had some decent rounds.  We managed to string together a little trot course including cantering through a line on the left lead without incident.

BFF for lyfe!!

My original plan was to take Peebs home Sunday after lessons, but the weather was supposed to be nice Monday and A offered to let me stay another day to take advantage of her arena. She also wanted to use Peebs for an experiment. Her gelding Scottie can be a little herd bound when turned out with other horses so he's been on solo turnout for a while now.  She wants to try him back with other horses and since he and Peebs are BFFs we put them out together. Scottie really wanted to play with Peebs, but Peebs was more interested in eating.

When I got to A's Monday and took Peebs out of the paddock he and Scottie called to each other once, then both seemed fine.  In the past Scottie would call and pace almost nonstop but the couple of times I checked on him he wasn't pacing and seemed fine alone.  Hopefully he can start getting turned out with buddies again.

It felt like spring for a day

I'm so happy A let me stay for an extra day because Monday afternoon was perfect!  It was 60* and sunny and felt like spring might actually be on it's way. I took advantage of the jumps being up and did the same course we had done the day before then put a couple of the fences up to verticals.  We still didn't have issues cantering through the line, but Peebs wanted to get crooked cantering to singles so we went back to trotting.  Cantering off the right is fine, so we did some fences that way.  We have another lesson at A's this weekend and I have a couple ideas I want to bonce off my trainer about our left lead issues.

Team NW Bedrock Show Day One

This is what I saw Friday night before our show. Icky, nasty, poopy pony legs.  He got washed, twice, with Dawn and thankfully I didn't actually need to use the pony spray paint.

Friday night I spent at the barn, sleeping in the office/music room attached to barn.  My BO was out of town and had left their dogs in the office for the weekend for boarders to let out and feed.  By spending the night Friday, I could feed and let the dogs out and hook up and load the truck Friday and not have to do it first thing Saturday. They have a nice futon that I slept on, but I didn't get that much sleep. I could hear the horses moving around and at about 10:30pm one mare had a full on melt down screaming, running, and generally scaring the crap out of me.  I went out and checked on everyone, thinking there must be something wrong, but I couldn't see anything. Needless to stay I was pretty tired when my alarm went off at 5:30 Saturday morning.

I loaded Peebs and we headed off just over an hour north to Hunter Creek Equestrian Park, home to most of the rated shows in Oregon.  We were showing at a local show during the rated show.  When I got there, I didn't see us down on the stall chart so after finding somewhere to park the truck and trailer I scurried off to the show office to get checked in.  Apparently they were waiting to see how many stalls they had before giving me one, which seems a bit sketchy to me especially since I had already mailed a check for entries and stall fees. And of course, the stall I got had a wonky door that you had to kick the bottom of for it to close properly. 

But once I had the stall set up and Peebs settled in my trainer showed up and we got Peebs groomed and tacked up.  I was showing in the 12" trot-a-course and we decided to add a trot pole round before had to get him into the ring.  Which was not needed as Peebs couldn't have cared less about being at a show.  He was almost lazier than he is at home and other than giving the tree on the mound a good look, he didn't seemed fazed at all.

Tiniest jumps ever and scary tree

For our first round over fences, the plan was to trot in and trot out of the lines.  And it was pretty easy to accomplish considering Peebs never actually jumped any of the jumps.  He trotted over all of them and even managed to trip pretty hard on the first fence in the judge's line. I was told in no uncertain terms to add leg at base and make him jump for our second round.  I did, and we cantered the lines.  I hadn't paid attention to what they were set at and I know we added strides, even trotting in, but the lines felt even and flowed well so I was happy.  We had a under saddle to finish the day and let's just say that I have no idea how to ride a u/s class and Peebs will never win the hack.  We finished with a fourth over poles, a fourth and sixth over fences, and a seventh u/s. There were about 10 in the division, all freaking little kids on ponies, so I was happy with how we did.  Considering we were just going around to get mileage and confidence, satin is just icing on the cake!

I put the pony away, parked the rig, watched some junior eq and then proceeded to take a nap in my truck.  Trainer had to head back home for her kids, so once I woke up from my nap I cleaned tack and headed over to check into the hotel.  I then took another nap and went back out to feed and walk around 6.  Peebs seemed perfectly content and not at all upset by being alone at a show, which made me feel great. It's a great feeling to know you can trust your pony not to do anything stupid away from home, and they're going to be the same steady eddie at a show. 

Back to Basics

I didn't ride Tia in over a week so when I pulled her out on Tuesday I thought it would be good to revisit some of our issues from our last ride, our horrible trot pole lesson. I set up an easy one stride, x-rail to ground pole with the intent to turn it into an x-rail. I've never taken Tia through a grid, and I seem to remember one of her past lesson girls trying and it not going well.  I'm of the feeling that because she is such a natural hunter that whoever started her just went right to course work, didn't do some (to me) basics. Luckily I really like grids so Tia will have many of them in her future.

Doing baby basic grids is hard work

When we first approached the mini-gird I could feel Tia question it.  It was the same "I have no idea what to do" feeling she had during the lesson.  Like she couldn't figure where to put her feet or how to jump.  She backed way off and almost jumped the x-rail from a standstill.  She did what I call the splits over it; front feet on the off side while the back feet were still on the takeoff side. She did a tiny little canter step then realized she didn't have enough room to fit a second one it and supermaned it over the pole.  She's a horse that can't split her stride over a ground pole, she'll either chip in or leave long.   I just tried to stay out of her way and support with my hand and leg to keep her going.  I did laugh a bit though.

Scary stuff man

It took about four times through the "grid" for her to really get it and to smooth things out.  The one stride became easy and she was relaxing so I put the ground pole up to an x-rail.  Coming to it she wanted to back off, but didn't feel as confused as when we first started.  She looked at the grid but went right through pretty well.  I only did the x-rail to x-rail another couple times since she was getting it.  It wasn't hard physically, but it was a big mental challenge to her.  I was just about done when my BO (Tia's owner) came out and I was able to get her to video us. I have no idea what my outside hand is doing, kindly ignore it.

Death by Trot Poles

In a continuation of the simple-but-oh-so-hard exercises I had a lesson on Tia Sunday that kicked both of our asses. I had been talking with my trainer at the beginning of the lesson about the clinic and joked that she'd have me do an all trot fence/pole lesson and while she laughed and said no, I managed to jinx us.

Tia is not a super fan of trot fences.  She likes to either loose all forward impulsion and then kinda collapse over them or canter the last stride before the jump.  It's a balancing act between enough leg to keep her forward but not get her cantering, and supporting with your hand but not holding her. Since she's such a schoolmaster she knows we do a couple trot fences then move on to the funner, bigger stuff so she kinda checks out during warmup.

We were to start warming up over three small verticals, at the trot, a single outside, singe diagonal, then an inside rollback to an outside. The first fence actually was pretty decent but she wasn't convinced she had to come back to the trot for the other fences.  She did canter before the diagonal and our rollback left a lot to be desired.  Trainer then had us just focus on the rollback, making sure I was looking early and asking for the left lead to make the turn easier.  Tia then decided to get twisted and drift sideways to the last fence so we got a placing pole to help keep us straight.

Accurate representation of us

While the turn and approach to the last fence got easier, the mare kept rocket launching the tiny jumps.  So trainer put out a placing pole before the jumps. Didn't faze Tia any, she just launched from farther away or did a super short canter stride between the pole and the jump. At this point both my trainer and I were laughing that the point-and-shoot horse was having a fit over such a simple exercise and I repeated that we were going to spend the whole lesson on trot fences.

We got more placing poles before the jumps and Tia completely lost it.  She stopped and (very slowly) ran out of our line of 3 placing poles. It felt like she had no idea what to do or where to put her feet. Coming back around to the diagonal I really had to hold her hand and support  her, hands up and plenty of contact and a supporting leg. It took her many, many tries with some, as my trainer said, truly terrible jumps.  A few times it felt like she straddled the fence with her front feet on one side and her back end on the other. I've never had so many bad distances in one lesson.  Once she finally she figured out the trot poles and we could trot the two fences nicely we quit. We had spent almost a full hour on those two, seemingly simple fences.  The poor mare was super sweaty and look exhausted so she got a nice warm bath and turned out into our all weather paddocks for the rest of the day.