It’s honestly a little hard for me to know how best to spend the last few days leading up to a horse show. Over the years, I’ve taken just about every possible approach — from trying to school each phase in the last few days, to prioritizing jumping, galloping, dressage, hacking, or even taking a couple days off.
this silly mare and her floppy ploppy muzzle
There are pros and cons to everything, ya know? And sometimes I’m weighing my options based on what I think *I* need, vs what I think might most benefit the horse.
it was so dusty just a week ago!! it’s been raining ever since tho
Real talk, tho. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really entirely clear whether it makes much of a difference haha. At least, not for me and Mondeuse, and not from a “results” perspective.
From a “feelings” perspective, tho? Actually I’m coming to believe that at least the day before, and realistically probably even the last 2-3 days before a show, should be fairly intentional and disciplined flat schools. Maybe a couple jumps too on one of the days if needed, but mostly focusing on the flat work.
Doozy has this interesting sort of quality about her that, whatever she was yesterday, she’s a little bit more that way today.
So if yesterday she had off or just hacked, today she might be… more inclined toward expressing a preference for liberty and freedom. But by tomorrow she might be coming around to the idea of civility, and the day after that she could be a perfect prim little princess.
we did a LOT of walking tho, much of it actually nicely on the aids
This seems to be true too regarding how relaxed she can be in the acceptance of the aids. It always seems to be a calibration game with her — support with leg, but omg not too much! Or, conversely, she may need very exaggerated bending and suppling aids on a Day 1 ride, compared to something a little more subtle by Day 3.
just trying to normalize relaxed balance
She also seems to benefit from practicing and recognizing patterns — whether that be with verbal cues or how we arrange various exercises etc. Doozy is a very anticipatory type horse — she always wants to know what’s coming. So it’s not like we drill the work or whatever, but I definitely aim to give her a nice predictable schooling experience day after day to ideally help her sorta relax and breathe into it.
and more walkies
Again, this obviously hasn’t necessarily proven to be a winning formula or major difference maker or whatever in the show ring. At least, not yet. Our experience in the warm up ring at Loch Moy, however, gives me confidence that we’re sorta kinda getting there. Maybe. Lol.
and halties too bc mare Could.Not with the flies and required personalized swatting
Regardless, the last three days leading up to Loch Moy were all dedicated flat schools. And I did my best to set myself up for success by recording the first of those three with the Pivo. With the idea being that:
1) Having the pivo rolling would keep me accountable for sticking to the plan; and
2) Reviewing the footage afterward would still leave me with a couple practice days to work on any key adjustments — like remembering to shorten my reins, or prepare the mare more proactively for balance in changes of direction
we’re both learning to hold our balance a little more upright
Basically treating it like a bit of a coaching session while still ensuring there was time to work on any findings etc. That note on balance in particular being one of the biggest topics for us lately.
plenty of decent moments despite the tension!
It was our last lesson with Matt that kinda helped me connect the dots that some of Doozy’s tension, anticipation and rushing are directly related to how balanced she feels — or doesn’t feel, as the case may be.
Doozy is naturally a very balanced horse, that’s a big part of what I like most in her natural way of going. But it’s like once she kinda gets into that rushing frantic rigid place, everything snowballs.
would love to be able to do more of this in the actual show ring!
There’s actually a really nice example in the video from this ride where I try to trot a little serpentine change of direction from tracking left to tracking right, passing in front of the camera to turn toward the gate. And Doozy just like completely loses her balance, bend, suppleness, rhythm, all in a flash. She goes from feeling supple and on the aids and in a nice tempo to hollow, rigid and counter bent and rushing almost instantaneously.
the overall picture at canter is still middling at best but the balance is coming along!
Obvi that’s not exactly uncommon, right? Like there’s a reason you don’t see very sophisticated changes of bend in the earliest dressage levels and tests — horses have to gain the strength and learn to hold that balance. But it’s becoming more clear to me that it’s the feeling of imbalance itself that’s part of what gets Doozy a little frazzled and upset and hard to put back together again.
might not look like much but this is light years better than just two months ago
So that’s something I’m trying to keep in mind, keep working on — and stay proactive about.
In our last dressage lesson with Trainer C (I didn’t take the pivo so there’s no media so probably no dedicated post, sorry!) we kinda integrated this idea by doing more serpentines — but throwing in circles within the serpentine as needed to reestablish balance if we lost it. And also tinkering around with feelings of shoulder fore down the long side.
lots of cookies for the good girl
I’m also working on doing more canter. Just in general to help channel Doozy’s energy and not lose sight of the commitment to “forward” that has been so important for us these last few weeks.
And it seems like it’s working! Suddenly it’s like, even if Doozy feels like she’s rushing and flat and hard to sit on, I can throw in a fairly dramatic half halt to really kinda sit her down a bit — but then she stays there and holds it. Almost like this feeling of, “Ah, yes, actually this IS better!”
smooshy biscuit <3 <3
The next thing I want to work on is spending more time in an actual 20x40m space — but like an actual court, not against a fence or wall, as with our smaller indoor ring. Probably I’ll measure out a couple corners or something with poles + cones in our outdoor ring. Mayyyyyybe in one of the grass paddocks if I’m feeling really ambitious LOL.
Bc this topic of balance has me wondering if part of Doozy’s difficulty in the show ring itself comes from trying to hold herself together without the crutch of a proper wall or fence, when she’s already inclined to be rushy and over pace. It probably wouldn’t be a silver bullet — if such things even exist with horses haha — but seems worth a shot, right?
We’ll see. In the meantime we’ll just keep chippin away with the regular practice haha.
So! Doozy and I made it back out for our first full three phase horse trial since her injury last spring!! And…. welllllll…. it didn’t go *entirely* to plan, to be honest.
**record scratch** yep, that’s me…
But actually the good moments were quite good for us, all things considered, even if the day ended prematurely with my first ever fall off Doozy at one of the smallest jumps on xc. Well. Ok, cough cough, technically speaking, we were already eliminated in show jumping anyway bc SOMEBODY (me) missed a jump, ahem, oops. But Doozy didn’t know that!
you’re probably wondering how i got here!
So yea. A few things went wrong LOL. But. Eh. What else is new?? So let’s get into it!
it all started about five hours earlier….
Obvi I’m not gonna lie — it’s hard to consistently kinda suck at this sport. But ya know. It’s not like I’m not trying, right? And hopefully close observers will agree with me that even with all the fuckery, there are still some pretty solid bright spots from the day — still some clear signs of slow (oh so slow) progress.
for real, tho — all joking aside, it ended up just fine. doozy, tell the people you’re fine!
Tho maybe not THAT clear bc we’re lacking a fair bit of media so…. haha, you’re just going to have to take my word for it on some stuff! Like dressage warm up. For once, I was adamant that dressage warm up would be a feature of our day, that it would get the time and attention it needed.
doozy!! tell the people!! …doozy??
For whatever reason, some of my clock-related psycho tendencies include giving myself exactly not enough time. Not on this day, tho! I gave myself 40min. It’s more than we need for the “work” itself, but I hoped would provide the same sort of mental buffer for Doozy that the 7min break between tests at last month’s twilight dressage did.
oh. ah. i see. just a little low key mugging while i’m trying to selfie lol… yep, she’s fine!
And we’ve been working really really hard at putting together a consistent simple flatwork routine. More evidence to come of that from a recent pivo ride that I haven’t had time to write about yet.
All things considered, with all the prep work and time buffers and all that, I was actually extremely pleased with our warm up for dressage. Especially the canters. It wasn’t perfect, wasn’t as good as at home. But was NOT explosive, and actually bordered at times on ‘pleasant’ and ‘harmonious.’
walking downhill from trailers: first ring is dressage warm up, next ring holds the dressage courts, and the ring below that (behind the judge’s booths) holds show jumping. cross country is on the opposite side of warmup from this path.
Unfortunately tho that just doesn’t translate into the show ring itself. Doozy just gets so tight and tense. The test wasn’t at all our worst… some parts were probably fine. But the score is atrocious anyway bc every single movement is so tense. And still with the collective 5.0 (x2 coefficient) Harmony score.
anyway. for real for real — show jumping started off great!
I’d say it was a bummer except… Meh. For once I wasn’t even checking scores online throughout the day. So I actually didn’t even know the scores until I grabbed my test the next day while volunteering. It was important to me to try my best, to not feel like I shortchanged us in the warm up. But otherwise, it kinda is what it is, ya know?
actually quite pleased with how i rode the tricky half stride distance in this line
So we just got on with our day — the next step of which was show jumping!! And another major major bright spot of the day was the warm up for this phase. Not that there’s any media at all, so again, you’ll have to take my word, but this might have been one of our strongest jumping phase warm up efforts to date.
slightly, uh, less pleased with straight up just forgetting that red #7 even existed in the world, oops
For once I actually was able to practice opening and collecting the canter and felt like Doozy understood and was responding. We jumped four jumps — the X, the vertical once off each lead, and then the oxer, and felt READY.
ah well. doozy didn’t know her pilot is a moron. well. ok actually she might have an inkling on that point, but it was all good!
The round itself started great too! The whole course was kinda twisty serpentine-y bending every which way with almost every jump feeling slightly related but also slightly on an iffy stride.
We got a great shot into the first tho (with a rub but no rail), and then got the strides I wanted to jump 2 in a bending seven. The tight turn to 3 went smoothly, and I was super happy with our ride from 4 to 5, which was set on exactly a half stride but rode in a tidy six with just a slight bow vs the direct line.
full round, complete with our drive-by of #7
We landed counter cantering tho and in retrospect I should have fixed the lead to 6 bc even tho Doozy had good distance, she had the rail and then landed in a bit of a run. That’s not why we missed 7 tho — I literally just straight up forgot about it, never even aimed for it.
Just went right on around to the in-and-out at 8, which rode sticky and long for us, then another kinda sticky jump at 9 to finish. I suspect the stickiness is a direct result of my shoving her at 6 when she didn’t feel totally comfortable in her balance.
they still let you go cross country on a technical elimination tho!
Obvi the warm up steward — longtime volunteer and rider Meredith, who ran a fantastic ring!!! — alerted me to the missed jump and subsequent TE. Honestly tho? I honestly wasn’t ruffled by that at all. Obvi with the way our dressage is, it hardly matters anyway, right? We’re just here for the experience. And even if they’d said we couldn’t go xc, it would have still been a net positive experience.
and it started off pretty good!
But they DID let us go xc, so ONWARD, right?? And again, Doozy actually had a very nice warm up — I only jumped one fence just when the horse ahead of us was in the box, mostly to check the brakes etc, and all was well. So we made our way to the box, picked up a trot about 30sec out, then headed out and got a great shot to fence 1!
straight up princess to #2
Doozy landed strong, but I made it my business to reestablish balance right away, and she got a really nice feeling forward stride to the second.
i call this down hill run to jump 3 the “heart breaker,” but doozy did it just fine
Ditto for jump 3. It’s a fairly long downhill run away from the trailers and warm up and all that. I’m notoriously terrible about riding downhill, and everything about this jump is perfectly situated to tempt a rider into getting too backwards and behind the leg. Not Doozy tho! She carried a steady rhythm and jumped it nicely.
we’ve seen some variation of this bending line a few times now — #6 is top right corner
The next few jumps are all extremely similar to a couple courses we’ve done here before — with jumps nicely positioned on gently rising ground with bending approaches.
got a pretty decent shot to the table!
Doozy was a touch distracted at times — you can actually hear me at various points in the helmet camera telling her not to worry about various jump judges etc lurking in the trees… But honestly she felt super rateable and rideable.
proof: the good moments were good <3 <3
And she got what felt like a great shot to the table at 7!! Hindsight being what it is, tho, I wonder if she felt again like I kinda shoved her at it, sorta like jump 6 in show jumping. She didn’t land out of balance or anything like that, honestly she still felt great (albeit slightly distracted).
got a little bit of a clunker to the corner tho, oops
But the next jump definitely was a little sticky. Just not as confident a feeling as I’m used to with Doozy. I’m not entirely sure why — some people said their horses felt a little slippy on the ground, she also could have just been tired. Idk. But I opted to let her trot into the water just to be safe.
a few small things went slightly wrong here that layered together into a slightly bigger oopsie
Tho again, hindsight being 20-20, it wasn’t exactly an effort to get her to trot. Which… Should have clued me in as unusual. And she just trit-trotted right through the water, right up to a piddly little slow-motion stop at the cedar logs after.
Watching the helmet cam, I understand what I was thinking — clearly I was just waiting for her to pick up and go and take me to the fence. But she just… didn’t. And I didn’t do anything at all about it…. so yea, whoops. So we turned around and picked up the canter to try again.
evidence: oopsie
But you know what they say — you really ought to jump it the first time bc it’s almost never going to look any better the second time. For whatever reason, Doozy was just out of steam and a little upset and didn’t want to play any more.
“i need an adult” — sweet little biscuit
For a hot second, I thought she would push me back into the saddle with her neck. An instant later tho I was way up in the air and actually afraid she might be coming toward and possibly over top of me. Good girl tho flung me clear and spun back and away. And then actually just stopped and stood there waiting for me instead of bolting off into the sunset. Whew.
honestly not hard to find bright spots about this video
I’ve never fallen off Doozy before — obvi have come very close, many times — but really was not at all sure what she’d do. She’s such a sweetie tho, she really does like to be with the people. So she waited <3
bummer to end on a sketchy note tho, but c’est la vie
So ya know. Obvi disappointing. In retrospect I kinda wish I’d retired after the first refusal bc the next couple jumps were all on slightly fussy downhill off-camber lines that probably wouldn’t be ideal for us anyway. But eh. In the grand scheme of things it’s not the end of the world.
no worse for the wear <3
We both probably need a little more schooling, a little more fitness. And *I* definitely need to work on being more proactive especially in the moments when Doozy ISN’T dragging me to the fences.
All the same, tho, I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater bc of one a couple mistakes, even if they were kinda big mistakes. There was a LOT to like about how our day was going. The moments that were good, were really good (for us lol). And at the end of the day, that’s what we’re here for!
I really did have all the best intentions for this year… But obviously horses being horses, we work with what we got, right? And so here we are in September — finally arriving for our first xc lesson at Windurra of the season, almost an entire year since the last time.
looking back down the driveway completely packed with trailers
And given all the circumstances of that long break… We’re still basically almost exactly where we left off. Actually, this most recent lesson was in many ways a fair bit pared back from that last lesson back in October — and appropriately so, right? Given the mare’s fitness and time off and all that.
one of the locals stopped by to say hi too!
This mare is gonna teach me patience if it’s the last thing she does LOL! Regardless, tho, it was a super fun day and so great to be back out again. The weather was perfect, the ground was good, and even tho it was probably the most packed I’ve ever experienced at Windurra, we were able to basically go about our business unimpeded. Very nice!
it was busy in more ways than one — water trucks and mowers and tractors out dragging, plus boyd’s dog randomly popping in and out from the woods
I was proud of myself for actually putting in a proper warm up too. Close observers may recall I’m sometimes a little, erm, complacent about that. Warming Doozy up on terrain around cross country jumps when she’s running a little hot and distracted is… ya know, hard. Historically I’ve been a bit quick to throw in the towel and just get on with it.
we had a good little group tho
And it’s not that I need to spend ages on it, but it’s been clear through the rehab process that Doozy goes best when I can get her more laterally supple and connected in the warm up. That doesn’t mean cantering her around for 20min or anything like that — actually we start at the walk — but it just means at least trying to establish the feeling, however fleeting it may be.
did a lot of familiar exercises and jumps
And Doozy was honestly pretty good, especially to start! Tho the reality is that the typical group lesson format — everybody taking a turn jumping one thing at a time — is probably the trickiest style of riding for the mare. We just straight up don’t do that much starting / stopping in a normal ride, and it really activates Doozy’s natural tendency toward anticipation and rushing.
doozy did best with a little repetition and being allowed to cruise around for a bit
And even tho I was super careful on the landing sides to mirror the work we did in our recent lesson with Matt — returning quickly to balance and suppleness at trot or canter, or even just stopping straight — it didn’t seem to make Doozy want to pick up for her turns much more smoothly.
didn’t do too too many jumps, and some were pretty small, but the bn stuff was all nbd
Tho don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like bad or anything, just not as smooth as I’d like. Never really settling into a rhythm, ya know? Tho we did a couple times put little lines together, and those often went better. Or a couple times I asked to circle back immediately to the jump, keeping my canter along the way, and that worked nicely too.
doozy don’t care bout no brush!
Remembering my commitment to staying forward definitely helped with all our up transitions — we didn’t have too many moments of twisted stickiness or pogo-sticking like we sometimes have had. Tho it was hard for me to keep that same forward feel to the actual jumps.
just enough to say we did it!
As it was, tho, Doozy jumped everything basically quite nicely. Nothing super skittery, tho some a tad backwards feeling mostly bc of that lack of rhythm issue. She didn’t seem to care one way or another, tho, and actually seemed to level out when we got to jump actual BN height stuff.
and again played with nice jumps out of the water
She felt very confident, maybe even a little cocky at times. Like she knew what we were doing, and why, and even occasionally allowed that I might have a point about asking her for more lateral suppleness before and after our jumps.
d’aww doozy
And for my part, while it wasn’t necessarily a perfect representation of all the good work we’ve been trying to establish, it DID feel better and more reproducible in this schooling session compared to some past efforts. Especially given that it was our first time jumping cross country in like 5 months… ya know, I’ll take it LOL!
somehow between this moment and getting back to the trailers she lost that left bell boot, womp
It’s just yet another reminder that with Doozy, the jumps are the easy part haha. If I can get her to the jump, even in decidedly suboptimal levels of straightness and balance, she’s jumping.
so fun <3
The moments **between** the jumps tho… That’s really the tricky part for us. One thing I noticed in this ride is that the terrain really seems very influential to Doozy — as soon as she starts to feel a little off balance going up or down hill or off camber or whatever, it’s like she gets completely rigid across her top line and loses all suppleness.
helmet cam video of most of our ride
While some of that is undoubtedly her just being a bit triggered and anticipatory, it’s probably a strength thing too. Hopefully I can keep finding opportunities for dedicated (and RELAXED) flatwork on the grass at home, bc that should theoretically help her feel more secure.
there was so much noise and distraction along the driveway, she wanted me to stand with her while she finished her mash before going home lol
As it was, Doozy was TIRED after our ride! And we really weren’t even out there that long, didn’t really jump all that many things. But she wastes so much energy on tension, on just being hot and bolt-y and having to do extra circles and all the things. Oh mare, it doesn’t have to be like that haha!
so pleased with this critter <3 <3 <3
Again, tho, for our first time out in a while it felt like yet another positive reinforcement that some of the changes we’ve made in our approaches are paying off for Doozy. It might not be classically “easy” yet, but it’s definitely fun haha. One step at a time, right ?
