If wishes were saddles, and general horse-hearted updates

First off, in reference to my prior post about Padre+, I am pleased and excit
ed to announce that my next proper, non-random-update post here will be a short and sweet interview from Padre+'s owner and rider, Patti Gruber. We have exchanged some e-mails and I have a couple more questions for her, but it's been exciting to pick her brain.

Next.. as you may have surmised from that intro paragraph, this is just a blabby little update on the flock of ponies. I've gotten a lot of riding and groundwork in since my last post, but feel a bit burned out on the arena as of last weekend and a million Girl Scout riders, so am satiated to be in San Antonio for a night. I don't feel obligated to do some work with the horses when I can be focusing on the family. (And clearly, Facebook and Blogger.)

Indigo got his mane roached for the first time two weeks ago. Which was nearly as anticlimactic as his first backing experience. He eyeballed the clippers once or twice, figured out there were treats up for grabs, and just let it happen. I confess he looks a bit like a convict, with the tattoo and the crazy eye and buzz cut and all, but he must be wildly cooler. His mane was a kind of thick I cannot describe.

At play with Rocky, who visited this weekend.

Pax has been carrying both saddles well and our lunging on the line has improved. Lunging over cavaletti was.. uninspiring, at least initially. She seemed to have no impetus whatsoever to pick her feet up and instead plowed blindly through whatever was in her path. A few rounds of set-up, walk over, a little whip, and coaxing finally produced an oversized but passable bounce and some degree of rate in her trot. I don't think she's brilliant, but she has a burning desire to be rewarded for something and will figure out (eventually) a roundabout path to that attention.

Our big pet spent a good portion of this weekend pressing herself against the fence, bright-eyed and starved for pets from the passing Scouts and troop moms. She got what she wanted and has stayed polite, if a little bit.. looming.

I feel like it's too early to be introducing a bit, but I also feel like Indigo could've benefited from earlier work carrying the bare bit, unconnected, underneath a halter. Thoughts?

Bandit had a very full week of work under saddle, and my thighs had two full days of bareback trotting. He is showing much more thorough acceptance of the bit and it takes a lot less warm-up to start seeing a little bit more frame without quite so much sweat at the start of a ride. Our 10 m circles still end up as.. err.. 10 m circles with a bite taken out of one corner when his shoulder drops. But I hope, pray, and think we will have something to show of ourselves next Tuesday at our lesson.

Desperate want.

Hopefully will purchase a Wintec Isabell on the rough anniversary of my treeless endurance purchase. I am also considering another treeless, but they are harder to come by and I don't want to spend quite so much as on my past two saddles. I know there are more than a handful of local and reasonable places I could get my hands on an Isabell Werth and the gullet system gives me confidence it could at least be passable on several horses while I'm still in the early learning stages.

Also would love to try the Fhoenix Vogue (treeless.)

Possibly most ideally.. A Sensation Formal Dressage.

Almost scared to try that one. For one.. It was a miracle I found my Sensation English Trail as cheaply and perfectly as I did, and snapped up the deal. (Thanks for your generous cash, Sweet Spouse Man.) And pure fortuitous luck that it has so perfectly fit Bandito, who, admittedly, is an incredibly easy horse to fit. Would it be worth the cash and the hunt to do it again? Maybe? Where are you lacking in going treeless for a discipline that requires more precision than perseverance?

No matter what.. We are enjoying ourselves in our questionable tack choices and dime store schooling clothes!

"If you don't have a deep passion for patience, stay away from training horses. "Hurry" is the enemy of progress." — Otto Von Monteton

Crushing on this stud.

Pretty sure I've shared this on my Facebook wall before, but I have been following Padre' and Patti's progress for a few months now through their Page and follow their developments. As someone just learning the very basics of dressage who also has a developing soft spot for the mighty BLM horse, he is probably my ideal. This video was taken after this horse had been under saddle for eighteen months. Here I am, contradicting myself from a few blog posts ago when I scorned the Road to the Colt kind of movement. Yet watching this mature horse school at such a level is a world apart from that kind of rushed start, in my opinion. I think it's beautiful, and a testament to some good training and stallion management.

Dressage has only really appealed to me for the past two or three years. I think I've come to a point in my riding where I realize there is only so much more "survival" style riding I can learn. ("Survival riding" is a description right out of the mouth of our current instructor, Sally.) In just a handful of lessons, my perception of true harmony between horse and rider has changed entirely— which, certainly, doesn't mean I'm anywhere close to "there" yet. But when we catch glimpses, I get excited.

I realize that the ideal dressage horse doesn't normally look like this, and I respect the reasons and differences. But that bay horse serves as an inspiration that the high-dollar horse is not the only athlete— my little Frito Bandito proves it to me, too, in his old age and tireless ways. Totillas is a true champion and a star, in every sense of those words. But I admit I see Padre' when I fantasize about my dream dressage horse, someday far into the future.

Maybe with a tiny splash of color, just because. ;)

Dressage lesson on Friday! I cannot wait!

Short horses

Why is it, that as a woman of substantial bone structure (what I mean is, I'm not skinny) who stands five foot ten (optimistically), I so dig short horses? I yearn to own a Halflinger or an Icelandic the way most horsewomen I know fantasize about a Friesian or a gorgeous warmblood of some high-dollar variety. I am not particularly worried about riding big horses. Yeah, there's a bit more airspace between your tail and the trail, but it isn't the gravity so much as the ground that gets you. I definitely look better on big horses.

I think I've just had good luck with most of the ponies and shorties I've ridden. I am possibly more likely to stick the dumb stuff because I'm not as worried about the aforementioned gravity— I'm sure that's a heavy piece of subconscious lurking around in my brain. I like their pluck and I like the ones that don't give a hoot about their height and will smash up a much bulkier full-sized horse without so much as a blink. Bandit is really quite tiny when you scrutinize him. Most of his papers say he's 15 hands, but I would guess 14.3 is a little more on track. He is not heavy boned but fairly stout and quite fit at the minute, so I don't think I look utterly ridiculous.

One of my favorite mounts at my old camp was named Mao Mao. Mao Mao was an Icelandic / pony / somethin-somethin'. I looked ridiculous on Mao Mao. I would have probably made an attempt to buy Mao Mao if I thought I was going to continue riding, because Mao Mao could carry any old sunofabuck on his back and was an absolute champ. Mao Mao was an asshole, frankly, as the cherry on top. And I loved him. Still do. See him in a pasture not too far away.

All that said, Pax is towering and I'm concerned I forgot that.. Whoops, I prefer short horses. I finally took some scissors and luck to her mane and said goodbye to the chunks that were still long and beautiful. Our new fence is supposed to be in before summer, and we have replaced all of our roundbale feeders— some with this great, high-density plastic kind. So hopefully once her mane grows back again, she can be Belgian Repunzel for longer and won't snag it all out.

Anyway, the seed behind this entire post is the first picture up top there. My dear friend Tiff drove up from San Antonio today to ride horses and shoot the breeze, and after a fairly successful arena adventure on little Indigo (only our second ride in there, actually) we decided to see how things went out in the open. I've ponied and packed him around some of our trails without any fireworks at all, and today was no different. He rolled with the punches and followed in a relatively well-mannered way. Occasionally he leans into the bit and tries to plow horse through a request, but he is quick to remember who the boss lady is. I have brought along some kind of whip on our last few rides (the dressage whip has worked the best) and he sometimes requires a cluck-squeeze-tap-TAP! reminder to, y'know, actually move forward. But really, he is doing great. As of April or May, he will be three. And yeah, you can watch YouTube clips of futurity horses doing ridiculously advanced things at his age.. But this is my first horse started all on my own, and he wasn't exactly imprinted at birth. So I think we're doing pretty well. It's mostly by his good graces!

In less positive news, Bandit and I are staying home this weekend. He appears to be recovering from a soft tissue injury of the minor variety. Vet took x-rays and, while he looks 100% sound, it isn't worth the cost or the risk to haul him to Oklahoma. The good news is, for being an old fart with bad breeding, Bandit's joints are in excellent shape. Will do my very best to get to the Wimberly Wayfarer in May.

Scampering, planning, training

Some of the photos from the Girl Scout Scamper popped up on the interwebs today. I am feeling rather conflicted.

1. I shouldn't try to cheeseball smile when the camera man pops up. Turns out a focused face is better than a fake, head-back-in-the-wind, squinty-eyed-smile. Sidenote.

2. Bandit looks great on the trail. Away from Scary People. And despite getting a sore on one corner of his mouth from the rubber snaffle I use (I can pretty much tell you the minute he got it on Saturday, grr) he looks much more composed and engaged in his dressage bridle than when I switched back to the Little S hack on Sunday. I think I will shuck the flash noseband. While it keeps him from lolling his tongue out the side of his face, I believe it played a part in the sore mouth— there was so much grit and sand in it, despite me trying to clean out the parts of his bridle that rubbed on his face at every stop.

3. We were definitely more relaxed, more composed, and more likely to be walking on this ride than in our previous two competitions. There were several stretches were he dropped his nose, I dropped the reins, and we just booked it at a lovely, 4.5 mph hauling-tail walk. That was perfect. There were some fun stretches after P&R checks were I hopped up in a two point and we hand galloped for a half mile or so in the easier sandy bits and let him blow off some happy steam. But yet we were terrible (TERRIBLE) at some of our obstacles. I mean, terrible as in, a horse I was not enjoying riding. And despite not being a picture-perfect horse by any means thanks mostly to my meager training skills, I always enjoy riding Bandit. After ten years, even his darker moments make sense to me and can be treated with a quiet, practiced hand. But at one point, during a water crossing from a sandy ridge down to a boggy pond and back up an embankment, I had a tiny, angry horse on my hands who swung his hip out at a judge, grabbed the bit, and very dangerously barreled down a hill. On two of the next obstacles, we executed a brilliant trotting, loping, anxious sidepass up and down another ravine, and later nearly dumped me in a shallow culvert. All things we encountered elsewhere on the trail with no problems, but put us in front of a judge and under the pressure of time and people, and things fell apart. I am more than happy to take some of the blame for tensing up in the presence of judges, but it's a mutual thing we need to work on. Bandit is still high-strung and flighty for probably 2/3s of the 40 mile rides. But that in itself is an improvement. I am going to give it the rest of this season— which for me may only be three or four rides— to see if he keeps improving. I hate being awful at something, but will keep trying to improve. Everybody in the NATRC community (that I've talked to— there are a handful or so I shy away from!) has been very supportive and helpful. So not giving up yet!

4. Boy, I was SORE on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. My core was killing me, which is cool. At least I'm using that and not my hands all the time, right?

In other news, not going to dressage tomorrow. Bandit was stiff and tenderfoot on Monday in his back left, and I'd rather not push him. If diesel weren't as expensive as it is, I would go just to watch and talk with Sally and Jadyn, but I think we'll just have to wait for April. Bummed because it has been so good for us, but I haven't spent a solid moment in the office all week. Besides some lessons, I have lots of paperwork to catch up on. Unexciting but necessary.

Not particularly news for this blog here, but there is some family illness, so Richard and I have been shuttling back and forth between San Antonio and Hunt as often as possible. I'm going back to visit again on Saturday night. Providing things don't deteriorate further, I'll be loading Bandit up for Oklahoma next Thursday to squeeze in what will probably be the last of our spring 2011 NATRC. He is going to the vet Tuesday for a powerfloat and a soundness check, so fingers crossed for us.

Indigo is doing well. Lots of groundwork. Our past few rides have been easy and quiet. Pax is fat and useless. I kid; she's sweet. Pulled her up and played with her a little this morning. More worried about getting Indigo safe enough to fall in line this summer a couple of times.

We have a new horse as of today, named "Scout." He belongs to miss Lindy over at Saddlestrings and Other Horse Things and will be joining us at camp for at least a year. I feel for her as Scout is her first "real" horse (which is how I see Bandito.. After many a lease horse in my younger years and a family cow pony) and I am honored she trusts us to take care of him! He's going to be a great addition —smart and light and willing and sweet— and is already settling in nicely. I am excited to put him to work with some of our intermediate to advanced students, depending on how things go.

March is in like a lamb, and I'm on my ponies like white on rice.

Having to Blog for work has completely zapped my ambition to blog for fun. (Note the change in Capital Letter Usage there.)

Let me just say that everyone is doing well. Got more rides in on little Indigo and lots of long lining. He is carrying a bit (with the aid of a little molasses and lots of time) and being very positive with every small step we take. We need a little tweaking on our steering— he likes to double over to pressure and loses a little balance in the process. Still, I am very pleased with each day.

Dressage lessons are progressing well. Last week was our first time incorporating the canter into the session, and I was so pleased with Bandit's listening ear as I tuned up my cues. Sally is teaching us to rely more on knowing our mount's footfalls and setting them up for success in everything we ask of them. Waiting for the right foot to ask him to pop into my hands for a nice, collected, forward canter has given me a new perspective on what he is capable of, if I can wrap my dense little tight-fisted hand around it. I realize I asked a lot of him over the past week; in one day, he started with an early morning training session, moved to a trail ride to Vesper with a student and I, grabbed some lunch and hopped in the trailer for a 1.5 hour lesson with Sally in Fredericksburg. That in addition to several other days of trail rides. I'm giving him this week off and we pack up for east Texas for the Girl Scout Scamper. 30 miles I am ready for! Just need to pack smart. :)

Pax is huge, sweet, and in it for the good stuff— attention, chin scratches, and cookies. I am blown away by the size of horse I saddled (harhar) myself with. She has been a Percheron lately, not a Belgian. All hot, snorty, and leggy. Crossing our fingers that it's a phase.



Things I Will Never Agree With:

“The reason you do not see our people wearing helmets is because we try to teach people that rather than be brave because they are wearing a a helmet to protect them, they would be better off not riding until their horse is behaving safely.” –P.P.

Uh huh. Sweet job on not rushing that Road to the Horse colt. That said, don't agree with that process whatsoever. Clinton Anderson can sit on a horse a bit more to my standard, but I think he is in the same schemey game and hated how lathered his pony looked through the process. What's the point in starting a horse in a few hours? Why? Who does that benefit? All of the backyard riders (myself included) who now reference half a day as proper training time to put a colt under saddle? How is this helping the animal? I am not posting this to hammer on my helmet fetish (bang bang bang..) but to simply point to a pretty glaring fallacy in this kind of logic. Especially paired with high-speed, high-stress types of training.


And What I Must Try To Take To Heart

"When we listen to our horses, we get an education. When we don't, we get experience." —Mark Rashid, author of Life Lessons Learned from a Ranch Horse

I need to find more ways to physically and emotionally shut up and wait for a clue from the horses I'm on.