down the rabbit hole

So! Anybody who was foolish enough to check in on my incessantly prolific musings over the weekend will already know: I made a thing, and am kiiiinda excited about the concept.

Like, literally can’t shut up about it. I’m going off about these little recordings to anybody polite enough to pay me any attention, even my farrier had to hear about it LOL. Sorry dude. 

pics today are from volunteering at Plantation Field’s big international event!!

But! Early feedback is positive, and a couple barn mates have either already done trial rides (and provided feedback) or have indicated they plan to soon. 

A couple aspects of that first recording kinda obviously needed tweaking. I already wrote about my early impressions (ex: the warm up is too long), but the other big take away was that, overall, I hadn’t accounted accurately enough for the time spent talking. 

That first recording was designed to walk you through gaits and exercises, with frequent coaching prompts (like “chest up!”) tossed in at least every 5 to 10 seconds, with pauses in between. My measurement on the timing of the various exercises and time-in-gait etc was based off the length of those pauses plus a guesstimate on time spent talking.

i signed up too late for my normal favorite roles like stewarding warm up rings, where i get to interact with riders. instead, i ended up as timer in the show jumping judge’s booth, where i got to interact with legends like Peter Gray, Marilyn Payne, and Hellen Brettell instead. it was actually pretty cool!

Except, in the end product, the pauses felt a little awkward, and meanwhile the time spent talking actually exceeded the time of silent pauses.

So I ditched the pauses entirely (aside from walk breaks), reconfiguring the script to be constant talk. It turns out, especially with a text-to-voice AI app, the average words/minute is extremely consistent. So you can reliably time a script cadence on word count alone. 

If you want to spend 2.5 minutes in a trot segment? Put 312 words into that script block. Boom!

All that to say, I made another set of recordings that I’m sharing with you:

- Schooling Plan - Short Session (about 17min)

- Schooling Plan - Long Session (about 24min)

These two plans are identical, except the ‘Long Session’ has an added block of work inserted into the middle. After riding the short session, it felt… a little too short, like a few pieces of work needed a little more time and attention. YMMV.

not gonna lie, this bell + timer device was a bit more intimidating than i expected — i’ve only ever timed at national events with just like, a stop watch… but the course designer gave me a very clear orientation and fortunately none of the riders tested me with any unplanned stoppages etc.

So let’s talk through those ride guides and their components!

Both start with free walk into working walk, including gathering contact and organizing walk onto a 20m circle in both directions. In the second circle, the rider is prompted to find moments of true bend and counter bend in the walk circle. 

Trot work starts on a circle after about 2.5min. Again the rider is prompted to find feelings of true bend and counter bend before progressing into a trot spiral exercise. 

I’ll be first to admit — these feelings are a bit *aspirational* for us, we’re mostly just trying to survive on a steady rhythm and circular circle. But the proactive coaching reminds me to activate all of my rider aids, even if we aren’t technically executing a “spiral” etc. 

Anyway, the spiral then transitions into trot leg yields down the long side, which feels like a progressive use of aids. After this, the rider changes direction in trot, with a trot-walk-trot transition across the diagonal. Then the whole trot pattern repeats in the new direction. It’s about 2.5min of trot each way.

The guide picks up the canter from the leg yield exercise in the second direction, then instructs the rider to spiral the canter in and out. Again, this is a little aspirational for us, but helped to get my aids on. From the canter circle, we go into canter leg yields from rail to quarterline — so again, activating the outside aids. Then another canter circle that includes canter-trot-canter transitions before a walk break. All in all about ~2min of canter.

didn’t get much video bc my fingers were on the buttons all day,
but here’s Boyd in the 3* with Mo Chroi!

The ‘Long Session’ deviates from the ‘Short’ at this point, as I inserted another block of work after feeling like we needed more. I really liked the ‘Short’ tho — even tho it felt like we probably could have / should have done more work… Well, the mare was finishing the ride very well and on the aids, and…. isn’t that the whole fucking point?? As it is, I have not personally ridden to this next block myself, take that for what you will. 

Anyway. It picks the rider up from free walk into working walk before preparing to trot. This block is all about downward transitions and building the half halt. It starts on a trot circle, then a change of direction with a trot-walk-trot transition, then back to trot circle. 

From there, you pick up the canter, ride a circle, then execute the canter-trot transition down the long side just like in the Starter test. Ride another trot circle, then, **pay attention,** bc on the open side of the circle, you change bend and canter off on the other lead. My intent with this is to 1) square the horse up in that change of bend, and 2) not put all the canter transitions in true bend on a circle bc we already have enough of a problem with accidental transitions. 

Anyway. In this new canter circle, you repeat the pattern: ride a circle, then trot transition down the long side, ride a trot circle, then change bend/direction on open side of circle and strike off on new lead. Rinse repeat a couple times. 

Like I said, I haven’t personally ridden this pattern yet, but you can hopefully pretty easily see why I set it up this way for me and Doozy at this point in our life. It’s essentially a variation of the ‘snowman’ exercise, for those familiar.

it was super cool to be a fly on the wall for all the banter in the judge’s booth, esp bc these same folks had judged the riders in dressage too and had (obviously) higher level perspectives on all the rounds, horses and riders.

After all that is another 90sec walk break, before switching back to the ‘Short Session’ plan to finish the ride. 

The rider is guided from free walk into working walk (ymmv but Doozy and I need this help!) into trotting a circle. It again instructs the rider to find feelings of true and counter bend on a circle, then change directions using a trot-walk-trot transition, then another circle with alternating bend. Next into a spiral feeling to activate outside aids, then push off the inside into a canter transition. 

The canter exercise mirrors the first block exactly, with both spiral and bend/counter bend feelings on a circle, followed by a canter leg yield from rail to quarterline (off outside aids), then back to a circle with canter-trot-canter transitions. 

Finally, you transition to trot to ride serpentines / figures of 8 / changes of bend with trot-walk-trot transitions, again reinforcing the “full halt— to—half halt” development. After a few moments of this, you trot long and low to finish.

i didn’t stick around for xc, sadly, but here’s a quick shot of Ema Klugman in the 3*

Obviously this is a very new (and shiny) toy in my riding toolkit, so my utilization experiences are… limited. But the two rides I’ve logged to date have been overwhelmingly positive, to the point where I’m clearly bought in enough to keep refining and making more recordings. 

It’s not that we’re accurately (or even effectively) executing all these exercises. Instead, I think it’s a lot simpler than that: A constant voice in my ear guiding me to ride Doozy *proactively* means I’m NOT getting baited into riding *reactively.* 

In other words, instead of getting mired down in an argument telling Doozy not to go so fast, or whatever, instead I’m focusing on a specific pattern that, surprise surprise, just so happens to be easier to execute from a slower more self contained balance. 

And so far, Doozy is responding very well to this change in style. Again, it may be too early to tell, and I PROMISE to let y’all know if we start going the opposite direction or frazzling the mare… But for now, I’m all aboard, and even created a hyper-personalized guide for us to use when practicing the Starter dressage test.

anyway. thanks for humoring me while i go a little micro down this ‘guided ride’ recording rabbit hole. as a reward, here’s a little goblin who looks ready to catch any bunnies that come out of it!

Ultimately, if this concept continues to consistently produce good rides, my idea is to develop a ‘library’ of sorts. 

One barn mate suggested that instead of full start-to-finish ride guides, I could create ‘modules’ that can be interspersed for a more mix-and-match experience. For example, there might be a ‘warm up’ module, and then individual recordings for various gaits and degrees of difficulty. 

I’m also imagining modules that are just pure coaching prompts (like, “chest up!” or “long legs, level shoulders!”) with no specific movements, gaits or patterns included — something like that could be useful during a jump school, for instance. 

So perhaps there’s more to come. In the meantime, I’m definitely interested in hearing from you all if you have a chance to try riding along to one of these recordings!

riding with technology: CoachGPT

Happy Saturday, friends! Hopefully you’ll forgive me for the off-day post, or perhaps just the diehards will read this, in which case — excellent, you are **exactly** my target audience today. Bc I have a favor to ask of you!

ooooh who’s the new roan in the herd?? 

Obvi it’s somewhat inescapable these days to make it longer than 5 seconds without somebody extolling the virtues (or perhaps impending doom) wrought upon society by the burgeoning field of AI in general, ChatGPT in particular. 

I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m actually a fairly heavy ChatGPT user in my professional world — mostly for writing code and all that, and also a bit of copy editing for reports etc. 

oh wait haha, nvm it’s just a Dooz of a Different Color!

For some time now, tho, I’ve had this idea of utilizing the generative and multiplying effect of GPTs to support the creation of some sort of real-time pocket coach app. Not like, an actual app that you could download from the app store, and certainly not something I’m trying to monetize or whatever. 

But basically, just another tool to add to my existing kit of helpful technologies to improve my rides. Recall, I’ve been evangelizing for literal years now on the benefits of riding with a metronome app (mine is set to trot tempo) and an interval timer (mine dings every 2min). 

chatgpt helpfully suggested three distinct ride plans to be interspersed in our weekly routine

So finally I got serious about the idea. 

I started by feeding ChatGPT background info about me and Doozy, specifically relating to our current goals of relaxation and transitions. It spat out some ride plans and helpfully offered to craft a weekly scheduling guide that could be printed and left in my tack locker. Thanks, Chad!

But I pushed it for more — I took what I liked from these different ride plans, and asked it to create a moment-by-moment coaching script that could be turned into a recorded ride guide. 

my prompt for generating coaching cues throughout the ride

It took a fair amount of iteration and refinement, especially relating to timing. In fact, idk about you all but imho gpts can’t be trusted to math for shit, so once we had the bones of a script put together with time stamps for each exercise, I moved things over into excel to fine tune and create symmetry. 

From there, we plopped the script into an AI text-to-voice app (also recommended by ChatGPT), created an audio file (in a British accent, you’re welcome), and uploaded the resulting Recorded Ride Guide session to Google Drive. 

If I set things up correctly, that recording is now available to anybody (like you!) with the link.*

(*There are no trackers / pixels / counters / cookies / **whatever** associated with that link either, it’s legit just a link to a file saved into my google drive that you can either access directly online, or download / save locally as you see fit.) 

for those of you absolutely bored to tears by all things AI, however, there’s also new tack!! this time with exactly the type of aggressively anatomic v-shaped crown piece that i know works on Doozy

So. Back to me asking you all for a favor — I want you to try it out, let this recording play along in one of your next flat schools, and then provide critical / constructive feedback on what worked, what didn’t. What you’d change or adjust in any future iterations.

it’s a used Montar Normandie, from ebay — isn’t it elegant?

First, some details on what, exactly the ride entails + my preliminary thoughts after riding to it once (last night). It’s a 25min session, starting off with about 2ish minutes of walk before embarking on a trot warm up exercise of riding sweeping 3 loop serpentines, transitioning to walk for crossing over center line / changing bend, then trotting off again. 

This warm up stage lasts about 7 minutes, and includes changing directions about halfway through so you can serpentine off both reins. My impression was that it’s a fair bit too long for this specific exercise, tho an appropriate time frame for general trot warm up. 

well. ok. the rolled leather snap-on browband is clearly not a fit, womp, it’s so pretty and understated tho!
($50neg. including shipping if you think it’ll fit your creature! fraidycat {dot} eventing at gmail!)

For Doozy, getting straight into serpentines and transitions was a bit premature, so the next time I ride it, I’ll probably ease into that exercise a little slower, since there’s plenty of time. More advanced horses might also intersperse other common warm up exercises into this time, and you could add a brief walk break to reduce overall ride intensity too. 

Next up comes a block of trot spirals. Again it’s fairly generously timed, so the intrepid rider probably has enough time to spiral in and out, then back in and out again before the change of direction to rinse / repeat.

everything else works nicely, tho, the straps all lay nicely against each other vs layering weirdly like the last bridle i tried. we have a new (used) browband arriving next week to try too.

From the spiral, you step into your first canter. Starting with canter on a 20m circle, then beginning to intermix shallow one-loop serpentines of counter canter in between 20m circles of canter-trot-canter circles. This whole block of work from warm up serpentines, to spirals to canter lasts about 16min.

After the first bit of canter, the recorded guide brings you back down to trot and then walk, for about a one minute break, then finishes with another roughly 8min working session — taking you first back up to trot for another (shorter) spiral cycle to lead into the second canter. 

That canter follows the same pattern as before — circles with trot transitions and shallow counter canter loops — before transitioning you back to the very first exercise: three loop trot serpentines with steps of walk over center line, before finishing with stretchy trot.

the full picture is coming together! finished the kit with Wintec webber leathers, and some black Royal Rider irons that i already had on hand

Some real talk: Our experience did not start out…. great. Doozy was super tense and distracted and rushing. And I actually paused the recording for a bit during the first warm up trot segment to kinda regroup and get my bearings (and shorten my stirrups). 

But then… Actually, as we progressed through the exercises after restarting the recording, it felt extremely helpful. My experience may be different from yours in that it’s hard for me not to get kinda baited into the tension, to kinda devolve into an almost survival-mode “just get through the paces” kinda attitude. 

Having this recording tho, especially with the consistent gentle coaching prompts, really really helped keep me centered, AND — most importantly — kept me proactively giving instructions to Doozy. Instead of just being like, “omg dear lord slow down!” I could actually stay focused on an exercise and just help Doozy find her balance within those steps. 

we’re clearly going for that muted palette bc obvi doozy has no trouble drawing attention to herself already!

And gooooo figure, the ride ended much more successfully than it had started. Like finishing with another stint of trot serpentines with trot-walk-trot exercises might be a bit remedial for some horses, but it was just the ticket for Doozy and she was able to execute them much more smoothly at the end vs the beginning. Which, ya know, is the whole point of schooling. 

So yea. I made a thing. I’m excited about it. I’d like to create more things like it — with variations in exercises, timing, intensity, etc., presumably with progressive complexity to continue skill development.

You know how it is, tho. Grand ideas crashing into mundane reality, this stuff takes time to do and is so far of untested / unclear utility. Will it be one of those tools that, over time, I stop using bc it’s not helpful? Or will it be like the interval timer or metronome (which, personally, I played simultaneously with the recording and may possibly integrate into future recordings pending interest) and turn into something that I use for virtually every ride? 

It’s to be determined, I suppose. In the meantime tho, I’m interested in hearing from other folks. Do you plan to try this recorded ride guide out? And if so, would you please consider leaving feedback?

ww: show pics!!

I still miss the GRC Photography days — where they’d sell you a thumb drive on show day with every single photo taken of you for $99 ($79 if you brought an old thumb drive with you….). But I try to support this next generation of photographers. 

They’re out there all day long, capturing the moments, ya know? The current business model doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, as prices vary wildly across different vendors and prints are somehow cheaper than digitals… C’est la vie tho! I actually kinda like getting the prints anyway!

So here’s a collection of my favorite shots from our Loch Moy outing earlier this month, used with purchase from the excellent team at Erin Gilmore Photography <3 <3 <3

proof that we chilled: that is an actual honest-to-god-almost-loop in the reins after we’ve already entered the ring for show jumping!!

lolz and perhaps we were too chill (note the knocked rail) but the feeling was good!

getting into a nice balance in the middle section on xc

what a pretty shot <3 <3 
the colors kind of remind me of that one good shot i got of me and charlie at waredaca a million years ago 

and loookie at me not immediately snatching back on landing!
yes yes i know the e-brake is still on, but one step at a time, right???

hover dooz says “floor is lava water!!!”

i’m honestly convinced that this is her favorite game

sweet mare, can you believe we actually qualified for area championships??

mean ol’ dressage: post mortem edition

So! If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll know that Doozy and I rode two dressage tests at a schooling show over the weekend. Technically two different tests — Starter and Training 1 — but practically identical in pattern. 

It’s my impression that our efforts in each were reasonably equivalent, give or take. And while there’s no video of the Starter test, we do have past evidence of general consistency across multiple tests. 

All that to say, you’ll have to take my word for it that our execution between the two tests was relatively similar, but the final scores differed by more than 3%, a remarkably high margin all things considered. 

tests with more scoring opportunities (ie larger count of total movements) are less susceptible to having one blown movement wreck the whole score

As is my occasional habit, I decided to dig into the numbers from both of these tests. I want to understand exactly why the scores varied so much, especially if there are takeaways that can be integrated into my schooling sessions. 

Tho I’ll also admit right off the bat: part of my hypothesis is that the actual design and scoring structure between the two tests is responsible in part for the score variance, beyond just how we performed and executed each movement. 

Training Level Test 1
score before collectives: 59.47% ||| collectives alone: 59.29%

Because even tho the pattern for these two tests is nearly identical (slight variation in location of canter-trot transitions, trot-walk transition, and free walk — short instead of long diagonal), the scoring structure is a bit different. 

Most notably, eventing dressage tests did away with the suite of collective scores in 2022 — reducing the overall judge’s impression score down to a single metric: Harmony. Dressage tests, meanwhile, retain the original block of 5 ‘collective’ marks that give judges an opportunity to add nuance to their impression beyond just scoring the movements as presented. 

trotting: needs more of this more quickly after transitions

The Training 1 test also breaks out individual scores for working canter, so the canter receives 4 total scores compared to the Starter test’s 2. On the flip side, the Starter test scores the medium walk both before and after the free walk, for a total of 3 scored walk movements compared to Training’s 2. 

For Doozy, the differences in canter scoring opportunities didn’t have much effect in these tests — our overall canter averages across both tests varied by just 0.3%. The addition of that second scored medium walk, however — the walk right before transitioning back to trot — definitely does not work in our favor.

Starter Level Test
score before collectives: 57.31% ||| collectives alone: 50.00%

Doozy has a generally lovely free walk that so far most judges have been happy to mark as a highlight. But the tension increases as soon as I start picking the reins up, so our average walk scores for Starter are more than half a percentage point — 0.6% — lower than average walk scores for Training. 

The biggest variation in scores by far, however, came in the collectives. While we earned just one movement score of 5.0, the judge (imo) crucified us with a second 5.0 (with x2 coefficient, natch) for our single overall collective in the Starter test — which had an enormous impact on final score. Ouch. 

free walk: proof that the mare can learn to play the game

Charting both tests by looking at the running average as the tests progress kinda makes it more clear how those slight differences can have cumulative effects on final score. 

For example, in the below chart, both tests start out identically — a conservatively ‘satisfactory’ 6.0 first impression upon entry, then ho-hum continuing on thru the first trot and canter circles, then the wheels start coming off a bit as we shift into downward transitions to arrive at the walk work. 

progression of overall average score as test goes on

The free walk is a high point in both tests, but the bifurcation in running average happens at the point of that third walk score in the Starter test. Then we see relatively parallel downward trends as we work back toward the second canter (low points in both), before the final exit. 

Here is another difference in test pattern — Starter does that weird broken line from the corner letter back to X then to G, whereas Training does a traditional 10m half turn onto the center line at A. Considering all of our canters in this test happen in the corner after CL, it’s no wonder that Doozy is maybe thinking about canter instead of halt at this moment — whereas a true CL turn is another one of those ‘trick’ patterns that horses learn to recognize.

click for full size if you want to see comments

Anyway. Again, after the movements themselves, you can see in the chart above that the Training test running average perks back up again with the addition of collective marks, whereas the Starter test lands with a thud.

Naturally it’s any rider’s tendency to dismiss that sort of thing as just a harsh judge biased against tense red mares lol. Which, eh, ymmv. 

Realistically, tho, there are still some useful tidbits for me to chew on from this analysis. Namely: transitions. Dear lord. Up, down, all around. Our transitions are ultimately what’s getting us into trouble, and the design of the Starter test leaves virtually no place to hide from them.

final halt: everybody is happy when it’s over lol

It’s something I’ll admit to not focusing on a ton in our schooling sessions too, since at least in my experience doing a lot of transitions can significantly amplify tension and fizziness. So we probably won’t just start doing 8 million in a row, or something crazy like that. 

Instead, I might try to identify some baselines — like counting strides between a transition and when the gait feels “established.” How many strides does it take from when we pick up canter to when the canter feels balanced and organized? Right now that answer is… Well. According to these tests, more strides than can fit into a 20m circle LOL. 

And how many strides does it take from when I first ask for a canter-trot transition and when we are in fact trotting in a steady rhythm? I think focusing on shortening those distances, while incrementally increasing the number of transitions we do, could be a big help. 

Bc… Well… Obviously my hope is that we’re just about finished riding this test forever. But we’re not quite there yet. And I’d like our last few attempts at it to keep getting better lol. 

doozy does dressage @ BCHC

I semi randomly browsed Strider last week looking for interesting opportunities, and stumbled upon basically exactly what we crave: A low key schooling dressage show that was: 

- Close to home

- At a nice venue

- With a respected judge

- And affordably priced

Bingo! Ding ding ding, sign us up!!! Interestingly, it was hosted by (and held in benefit of) an organization that’s not familiar to me, the Baltimore County Horse Council. So I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect — but guys omg, it really did tick every box! 

do we look ready??

We really got into our dressage groove over the past week too. First with trying out all the new kit I wrote about last week. Then had an excellent lesson with Trainer C on Friday, where we really got to work on some of my and Doozy’s lateral imbalances. 

Then I spent Saturday morning scribing at a different schooling show in order to polish off my volunteer requirements for another organization. That was also a lovely show, tho sadly is not quite “close to home” enough for my preferences for this sort of activity. Ymmv.

chillin in the parking lot, spying on golfers lol

But anyway. Both Doozy and I were basically fully “in the zone” for dressage. My goals for this show were fairly straight forward and ultimately extremely fundamental: We need more mileage between the boards. Full stop. 

That’s been true for a long time, and in fact my ‘winter boot camp’ plan last year was to get to as many schooling dressage shows as possible… But ya know. Horses are what they are, and those plans never came to fruition.

idk guys, but the uterus pad is kinda growing on me!

I honestly really believe that Doozy is the type of horse who could benefit from ‘learning the test.’ She’s such an anticipatory creature, to the point where it feels like “dread” — like she’s waiting for the worst. So I’d really like to shift her paradigm, and make the experience more recognizable and predictable and easy to hopefully help her breathe and relax more in the test itself. 

technically it’s stitched crowns… but we allllll see it lol

To that end, I signed up for two tests — Training 1, and Starter. Which, it turns out, are virtually identical tests. Some transitions happen slightly after a letter vs before in T1 vs Starter, and T1 free walks the short diagonal instead of the full. And obvi Starter has those weird broken center lines (and no entry halt). But otherwise, the pattern is exactly the same. Perfect!

Tho for scheduling reasons, the show was running Training level in the large court, so rather than having a weird giant gap between tests (they weren’t changing the ring size until lunch), they let me ride Starter in the large court too. Maybe it would have been better for us to do both in the small v large, but, eh, I think for our purposes the large actually suited my goals of having more space to take a breath.

remembering to halt for the training test!
also: see what i mean about the ‘understated’ look we’re going for?

Anyway. Let’s get to the good stuff, yes? Doozy actually warmed up quite nicely. The tension was absolutely still there — for example, we were not quite successful at managing walk-trot transitions in warm up, and instead mostly just got walk-canter.* But fine, right? Let’s just go ahead and work the canter! 

But really, we were able to pick right up where our lesson left off, working on correct bend, straightness in my own posture and balance, and more half halts on the right rein than I expect (while simultaneously remembering to find moments of release on the left side).

(*Aside from that one walk-bolt we got right before our turn, that was…. unfortunate…)

anyway. cherry-picked is as cherry-picked does.
see the video below for the full picture.

Doozy was a little nervous when it was our turn to circle the ring — the judge was under a pop up tent, and there were folks moving around in the grandstands etc… But she honestly kept a lid on it. There was a ton of space around the ring, including a wide enough strip for circling between the court and the warm up area, and the schedule was such that riders got a very generous ‘familiarization’ period before the judge range the bell. Nice!

blergh, ain’t even got a cherry to pick here at all

And once that bell rang, we were ready! Honestly I was super proud of our first test. It wasn’t perfect, obviously, but we didn’t have any accidental canters — and it felt like I was able to find opportunities to soften and let the mare carry herself. 

I mostly just focused on riding as steadily and consistently as I’m currently able to do — staying in one spot in the saddle, trying to feel both legs long and feet evenly in the stirrup footbeds, hands in one place, tall and tits chest up, not twisting or collapsing down one side or the other.

free walk continues to be among our highest scoring movements

I’m obvi still not perfect either — in fact the judge dinged me numerous times in both tests for being crooked — but I feel like I can see improvement, and like Doozy is having an easier time meeting me where I am, vs the two of us kinda constantly bouncing around off each other. 

No major blips in the first test, and actually what I would consider more than our normal “nice” moments. To the point where I actually considered just calling it a day with that, and scratching the second test. Except… Ya know. This is what we need. Doozy clearly expected to be done after the first, but… No mare, let’s just do it again, and then be done.

idk tho, guys, i really believe she’s getting it, even if the overall picture is still kinda bad

So we chilled for a bit in the warm up before I picked her up to get ready for the second test. There was a bit of a snafu with the judge finding our scoring sheet (since they’d shifted our time to the large arena) so it felt a bit like I wasted some of our best moments while waiting for the bell… But, eh, Too bad, so sad, go and do the test anyway.

always feeling like we could bolt at any moment lol

Second test was maybe less good, but maybe only by a fraction. I honestly think if I’d gotten that test out of the mare at Loch Moy or Waredaca, I would have been thrilled. 

can’t wait until we can do normal center lines in our eventing tests too, she does them nicely!

It scored a bit worse, tho we had a little interpretive dance blip into the right lead canter, plus I fudged some of the geometry bc realistically in the smaller court I need to be ready to do it sooner — like the final halt, G comes up very fast after the broken center line in the small court. The judge just scored what she saw tho, which ya know. Fine. 

good mare, i was proud of her the whole day <3

In both tests, tho, our scores were decidedly worse for the second little tour after the free walk. I *know* I’m anticipating Doozy getting strong and strung out. And ya know, she is. 

And it tracks, right? Like, if you think back to warm up where we kept reencountering tension after walk breaks, maybe it’s getting a little ‘baked in’ right now. I have a tendency in a ride to get into a gear and just keep working it, which is common, I think. But maybe we need more random short walk intervals interspersed to improve flow and fluidity thru all the gait transitions.

It’s also the case that we often break into canter in that second trot circle in the test, so I intentionally did fairly big “whoas” to bring down the tempo in advance. That paid off in terms of rhythm on the circle, but cost us on topline softness. IMO, it’s a price worth paying at this moment to achieve a better rhythm even if the scores are basically equally bad.

wonder of wonders!

i finally coerced an innocent bystander into grabbing video!

Anyway, tho, I’m immensely grateful for the video, not gonna lie. It’s so so so helpful for me to connect the feeling of a ride to what it looks like. Bc realistically, my perception of our performance is… vastly different from the generic outsider. 

click for full size

And it’s hard at this moment in time to reconcile all the various competing truths in my head. 

One truth being: I’m SO proud of the mare for her performance on this day — it finally felt like we were ‘doing it,’ like we looked like we were meant to be there riding that test. Another competing truth, tho, is that… Well. It’s still a bad test. And the scores reflect that. And to me, that is… frustrating and honestly disappointing. 

But with the benefit of video, it becomes easier to reconcile these two truths — bc I can easily see WHY *I* feel so happy about the test, even as it’s clear why the *scores* are what they are.

fancy biscuit <3 <3

So in the grand scheme of things, it felt like an extremely beneficial, educational, and also satisfying activity with my sweet little mare. Another bite-sized adventure, another notch in the belt of figuring this game out, learning how to play by the rules. 

And it was also great for meeting new folks from the BCHC — they did such an incredible job with this event, I have legit been evangelizing about it to anybody who’ll even pretend to listen LOL. Who knows, maybe there will be more outings like this in the future! 

friday foto finish: tack + trees

Happy Friday, folks! It’s been a nice quiet week around these parts, but per usual I still managed to take an inordinate amount of pictures….

why yes, we do occasionally hack about in fly boots lol, why do you ask?

I’ll start with the “trees” half bc honestly, what is there really to say about another jaunt out thru the hayfields and woods surrounding our home barn? We’ve got a good “normal” circuit routine at this point, and try to get out as close to weekly as possible. Tho, realistically, it’s usually more like 2-3x a month.

you can almost see the start of changing seasons

We go with friends whenever possible, but often we’re solo. Which is nice in its own way. Doozy is a lot like Isabel was to hack: she is **marching, ma’am!** — and any attempts at slowing her roll are met with anything from mild annoyance to straight up indignation lol.

dropping down the valley to enter the low side of the woods

So ya know. Sometimes it’s nice to just hit the hills at our own speed lol.

hints of yellow already in the brush!

There’s been a log down by the creek bed for a couple weeks now, but actually we’ve been enjoying the “new” trail that’s cut into the high side of the woods. It’s still got a decent grade, but no straight up-or-down paths, plus the footing is loamy soil vs creekside rocks.

suspicious cabbage finally dying off for the season, much to doozy’s immense relief!

Anyway. After a couple days off post horse trial, we got going again with a relaxing evening hack, and then straight back to the salt mines while testing fun new consignment tack!

a strange purple-y pelt coming up thru the hay fields gives greater contour to the hillsides

Long story short, I finalized purchase of the Veritas Eximo. I like it and Doozy has gone well in it (especially compared to our various disastrous attempts at prior dressage saddle trials). I’ve wanted to get us into black tack for a while now, so. Here we go!

anyway. tack. imo this bridle looks more or less ok from the left side

Next stop was naturally to Maryland Saddlery to browse for appropriate accessories and accoutrements to complete the kit. Namely: Bridle, reins, bit, and saddle pad. And…. idk. I was happy walking out of the store, but am less sure now.

buckles and straps ‘n shit seem jankier from the right tho?

The bit is a very similar Myler to what we’ve been going in, tho it’s slightly longer (which I like) and actually has a very very small port (to which I’m more or less indifferent). The length factor, tho, really kinda puts me in a bind with bridle sizing. Doozy is technically a full / horse size — but could probably do better with cob cheek pieces. 

i like the sorta luxe flat black look of this noseband tho

I also don’t really like the crown piece on this bridle. For some reason, Doozy has kinda a weirdly large poll and I’ve ultimately preferred almost aggressively anatomic cutout / flexible crowns for her. Oh and the straight browband kinda bugs me too.

somewhat amazingly the consignment shop had almost the same spec myler we’ve been going in!

So idk. I like the simplicity of this bridle, and the leather is lovely… But it’s probably getting returned to the shop. Let me know in the comments if you think that’s a mistake tho!

oooh and a super nice pair of squishy soft Thinline reins that are a tad short but good ‘nuff!

I’ll probably keep the reins I picked up, tho. They’re technically the wrong length but that’s also probably why they were such a good price. They’re in great shape and feel lovely in the hand, so that’s good enough for me.

vote in the comments: is this color “ugly” or “elegant”????
(pls to ignore the brown stirrup leathers, thx!)
((am i the only one seeing uteri??))

The last bit of kit I picked up in this particular shopping trip was a schooling dressage pad. And I dunno guys… I like the fluffy quilting, and I think I like the color? Less sold on the gold trim, tho, ngl — esp paired with the white boots. Basically my goal is to be more or less understated.

she puts up with so much <3 <3

What do you think — should it all go back to the shop? Or would you keep some of it? 

And let’s not forget, I still need to think about leathers, irons, and maybe a different girth so those billets stop popping loose….