click beetles + boat houses + trot steps, oh my!

Well the festivities have finally concluded for MDCTA’s annual recognized event, and follow on unrecognized Jenny Camp Horse Trial. But just because the party’s over doesn’t mean the fun stops, amirite?

these boat houses are some of my favorite jumps at all levels — charlie jumped this T one a couple times, like in 2019. they definitely deserve some TLC and fresh paint!

There was still jump painting going on right up through the day before the starter trial, and in fact a couple more got done afterward too. It’s so much easier to get them painted nicely when they’re out in the field vs stacked up in storage, ya know? And some of them were pretty desperate for attention…

taking the club into the digital age with an actual database for the jumps, complete with printable reports!

I’m not the world’s best jump painter, tbh — I’m a little too fast and sloppy and not as disciplined about the scraping and prepping as some others… But I *am* good at compiling, cataloging, and recording information into usable data and shared information hubs. So I finally took pictures of everything and made a digital jump inventory!

this N version of the boat house used to live at our last boarding barn, and charlie and i jumped it literally zillions of times, memorably that one time we actually won an event

From my experience as a volunteer, storing and sharing information centrally is so much more efficient than having everything residing inside key individuals’ heads. Not that there’s anything wrong with key individuals who generally know all the things, but… ya know. Being ‘key’ and all that, they’re typically busy and doing a million things. Much easier to just have a list.

and here’s the legendary USEA VIP original gold medalist volunteer Sue, painting yet another of the boat houses, this time the P version!

That way, when some of the country’s most amazing volunteers show up ready and eager to beautify our precious jumps, everything is ready to go for them! And voila! More jumps get painted, less time is wasted tracking down busy bees, and everyone is happy! By my count, something like 17 jumps total got painted for this event!! Amazing!

the club receives grants for introducing new groups to eventing — here’s a set of actual small children, apparently accomplished steeplechase riders, warming their race horses up before schooling xc

The schooling week in between horse trials is always a big hit too. I don’t know the final numbers on how many folks came through, but it was a LOT. Such a great resource for the local community to have full competition courses available to school so close to home! 

what goes up must eventually come down: unflagging is the least sexy task

I’d personally love to see the club offer more events at Shawan Downs throughout the calendar year. It’s apparently more feasible than I dared hope… but ya know. It’s a LOT of work, especially for a skeleton crew of board members and volunteers, almost all of whom are either retired or working full time jobs on top of, ya know, having lives and stuff.

new flexible pipe flag attachments recommended by the xc builder were a solid win!

But there are some ideas bumping around. Including opportunities to streamline some of the fussier tasks and chores — like this new method for flagging the fences, recommended by the cross country builder. Sure, it takes a little time to install each tube, but once it’s set, the flags go in and out, no muss no fuss, no friggin zip ties, AND — this style counts as frangible for narrow jumps and corners!

Only trick is to buy the right type of tubing, bc the really flexible stuff will completely relax and lose its shape once you cut it open. Ahem. Cough cough. Ask me how I know….

everyone knows hypothetically about staking jumps… but few spend much time thinking about unstaking jumps… blergh, 2 stakes + ~4 screws per fence x ~100 fences…

Anyway, tho, for many tasks, there really are no shortcuts. Like staking the fences. Sure sure, plenty of facilities out there get away with leaving jumps unstaked. And sure, plenty of oopsie rolled fences don’t result in major accidents — like that time Charlie and I rolled a house at Windurra. 

it’s a fun way to get intimate with the local bugs — meet the Click Beetle,
a gigantic native bug i’ve somehow gone my entire life without ever seeing before

Buuuuuuut…. when there ARE accidents, they can be legitimately catastrophic and fatal for everybody. Thanks but… no thanks. The few hours spent staking and unstaking is cheap insurance, as far as this club is concerned. It’s just hours that need to be accounted for in planning any additional events.

if bugs aren’t your thing, here’s cats instead, in a very good box

The neat thing about accounting for hours, tho, is that it’s all just numbers at the end of the day. If you know what things need to get done, and how long* those things take to do, it’s just a matter of assigning tasks, budgeting for paid professionals where feasible, and working backwards from a date, right? In theory??

(*And I mean the REAL time things take — like including the 20 minutes spent looking for the drill bit you dropped in the grass, or the extra trips to the hardware store bc you bought the wrong material — not the ‘aspirational’ guesstimates LOL)

anyway tho. doozy. she’s still a weirdo LOL

Well. In theory, all things are possible LOL! Like, maybe in theory, if the club decides to host a fall event at Shawan, mayyyyyybe Doozy will be fully rehabbed by then? 

and we’re still tack walking with friends!!

I still honestly don’t really have a sense of timeline for that, and am trying not to set any expectations, consciously or unconsciously, even as I may or may not be trying to manifest opportunities LOL.

do we look happy? <3 <3 <3

But we’ve been tack walking for a couple weeks now, and have started introducing little bits of trot, one long side of the arena at a time. Well. Ahem. And the occasional accidental canter step, bc Doozy is who she is. 

ain’t a bad way to spend an evening!

The mare feels like a million dollars tho… A million feral dollars LOL, especially compared to all those nice obedient well-schooled dressage horses I’ve been taking lessons on haha. Like. Doozy, some horses just ya know, do the thing without all those feelings and opinions!

oooooooh but the rehab continues!!!!
(not pictured: lots of feelings and opinions! oooh, or cohesive color coordinated outfit choices LOL #dontjudge #allthebluesatonce #andalittlegreentoo)

I have this beautiful fantasy that perhaps we can use this rehab period to maybe polish over some of those little rough spots in our schooling… Ya know, like, if we have to be walking and doing lots of transitions bc we’re only doing littles bits of trot at a time… might as well make the practice count, right? 

Seems like a nice idea LOL, we’ll see how it turns out in the real world tho. As long as we come out the other end with a happy sound horse ready to go run and jump again, I’ll be happy regardless!

So… yea. Lots of wishful thinking going on at the moment — hoping and wishing for more fun club stuff, and hopefully a happy sound horse to do the things with! Now that the club stuff is wrapping for the spring, it’s time to get serious about that other part!