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 ?
We had another clinic lesson with 5* eventer Matt Brown this weekend, our third such lesson with him. It’s honestly kinda hilarious bc it feels like these three lessons fully encapsulate my three years with Doozy so far…
ready for action!
The first clinic was back in August, when Doozy was still only very recently coming back into “regular” work, and we’d cantered maybe once so far in the rehab. And she was more or less unhinged in that lesson — we were either walking or exploding into porpoise mode. And Matt not-so-subtly suggested we might need a little more ground work in our lives.
doozy was very mature about the trot poles — even tho they were cow print!
Then in mid-July we were starting to get back on track, and were able to have a fairly productive flat lesson focusing on lateral yielding and transitions, with only a couple little (and not-so-little) explosions along the way.
jumping her itsy bitsy grids like a pro
Finally, tho, this go-round we showed up ready to jump! And with full confidence that we’d be able to present to him a more or less representative picture of our fullest level of training. Which is honestly a really good feeling at this point.
got better on the landing balance as we went
You know how it is with horses and horse people tho… How people describe themselves — what they know, their experience level, etc… is, er, occasionally NOT entirely tethered to reality. Especially in a clinic setting, any good pro has to take whatever somebody says with a BIG grain of salt, and let context clues (like how the horse looks and goes) fill in the gaps.
I always felt really good about letting Charlie kinda ‘represent’ me in that regard. Like, “Here is my horse: he is relaxed, nicely muscled, obedient, and nonchalant. We are ready for this lesson!” Doozy, on the other hand… Well. To be perfectly honest I just assume that most people get a pretty fundamentally questionable first impression of us.
and another little X!
And ya know, c’est la vie LOL! But finally, for whatever reason, Doozy is fully present in Princess Land now. She’s calm and confident again in the work, and game for whatever! And kudos to Matt for more or less treating us accordingly — matching the flat work expectations to the horse in front of him.
slightly more enthusiastic about landing going this direction lol
Which, for our purposes in this ride, meant continuing to work on that lateral flexion and suppleness — especially in transitions.
It’s so funny bc I swear I don’t show up and run down the full list of every single little thing we’ve been working on, but each lesson it’s like he magically kinda picks up right where we are. Last time it was introducing the transitions, and this time it was pushing the expectations on lateral suppleness and frame control.
easy peasy over the swedish oxer of planks
He encouraged me to ask for more, even to exaggerate if needed to help the horse understand. Starting with long reins at the walk to get the mare stretching down, and then gathering in the contact while retaining the lateral suppling as she’s ready. Then picking up into trot but continuing the same feeling — helping the mare find her balance in a comfortable rhythm by releasing through her back and top line.
finishing with another bebe grid
Same story with the transitions — slowly, gently, clearly but firmly: maintain the same degree of bend in up and down transitions, where Doozy is most likely to stiffen and tighten.
And basically, this was our flatwork throughout the entire lesson — even as we started introducing ground poles and little jumps, the focus stayed on exactly this detail: clear soft inside bend, especially in transitions, before and after every jump or exercise.
doozy says it’s #tooeasy lol
And go figure, Doozy caught on quickly. She’s naturally a very balanced horse, and naturally wants to be balanced and comfortable. I think in the past when I’ve tried to do some of this flexion and frame work, I’ve been a little too restrictive and tight — which is what probably creates and intensifies Doozy’s tension and resistance.
Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and I’m being a little too lax at times right now. But that’s kinda the way the training and practice goes, right? Regardless, Doozy understood the posture and was legit perfect almost every time thru the trot poles, good girl!
apparently unclear on how to buck under saddle LOL
Then we sorta just started piecing little jumps together. One at a time, then with each repetition adding on another jump to the little mini course. All kinda long sweeping turns to singles, nothing related (other than the grid), and circling in between to establish rhythm as needed.
“just kidding, i’m fancy little snake” — doozy
And Doozy was super! Consistently establishing the soft bend at the outset helped her right away create a nice balance to take off for each jump. Tho for my own notes, I need to definitely remember to keep the forward feeling in this work too, always with the forward!
Our landings from the jumps were often a fair bit less organized lol, but even there Matt encouraged me to raise my expectations a bit — ask a little more clearly, a little sooner, and a little more firmly. He noted that she wasn’t arguing or fussing at all, wasn’t getting inverted or anything like that, so I didn’t need to be so worried about being delicate with her.
quick video from our last run thru
And, somewhat unusually for us, the more we repeated, the better it got. One of the host-barn’s boarders captured video from our last little trip around the course and it honestly looks decently well balanced all the way around. All the jumps came up super nicely — compared to some of the more skittery efforts we had at Thornridge for example.
And the landings got mostly organized reasonably quickly. Tho, for whatever reason we kept landing the wrong lead and I was opting for simple changes to continue reinforcing the balance, and Doozy was wanting to get a little stuck and annoyed by that. Just something for me to be mindful of, and maybe practice staying forward even in those transitions.
the goodest girl, being #nosy about the parking lot
Overall, it felt like a super productive session and exactly what Doozy and I needed right now to reinforce the right feelings to practice.
Sure, the jumps were all pretty small… which can be tricky for me bc I *know* that some of my bad habits only really crop up when the jumps are bigger… But Doozy doesn’t seem to care one way or another, and it’s honestly probably good for her to feel like it’s ho hum and easy — it doesn’t always need to be exciting LOL.
