Guys — we finally did it!! I finally took the plunge and rode Doozy around her first full three phase event at beginner novice, yay!!!
helmet cam snapshot post-xc of my sweetest mare’s face, since i apparently took exactly zero good pictures of her throughout the day!
Our progress together has been, without a doubt, the slowest boil of any horse I’ve ever gotten going. Not sure if that’s entirely bc of who Doozy is as a person, or if it’s just a combination of factors including where I am in my life and journey with horses.
Regardless, tho, Isabel and I did our first BN together after just 2 lower level events. Charlie moved up to BN about 4 months + 4 starter trials after his first show. And Doozy? Well. Lol. She did her first CT in March 2024, ahem, has 8 three-phase completions at lower levels, plus all manner of other activities along the way.
arrived early enough for some low key grazing
But ya know. It’s always been apparent to me that the ‘difficulty’ of the level was never the biggest question with Doozy. Rather, it’s… all the everything else that we needed to work through and sort out, while keeping the “main event” of our actual rides relatively easy and drama free.
carefully observing the xc finish line lol
And honestly I feel really good about our trajectory together so far. Doozy was a very good girl for her dressage warm up, even tho we almost got cantered into once or twice by wayward juniors. Oh, and xc started running right behind some shrubbery, which Doozy found a bit triggering… But even so, it was a really solid warm up.
Lately I’ve been focusing on establishing a forward balance in front of the leg. Which, natch, is possible now that Doozy isn’t constantly racing off, slipping into canter at the least provocation.
snackies for a good mare
And this soft balance in front of the leg, paired with a relatively soft contact that’s trying to push the mare’s neck out, meant we actually had a relatively decent (for us) test. It wasn’t perfect, obviously, still basically a ‘bottom of the class’ type score.
She’s still tense, above the bit, tight, needs more bend, etc etc etc. But I was happy with our rhythm, geometry and pacing through the test. We got our leads without any fussy moments, were able to soften again even after a little bolt step in the first canter, and only had one little accidental break into canter during the second trot circle — but again, could still soften after.
jump 2 was a bit of a reality check that… whoops we’ve never really done oxers at this height
The ride-ability is slowly coming along. It doesn’t necessarily feel like much to show considering that basically all we ever do in lessons is flat work LOL… But ya know. C’est la vie! I’m happy, and that’s enough.
i knew this line was supposed to be a 6, but we kinda splatted a bit when we got there early and i thought she’d go for it in 5, sorry mare!
Tho… part of me would realllllly like to do more real jumping in regular lessons LOL. As it is, virtually all our work over jumps with any height is done solo at home, with whatever I’m feeling brave enough to set up. Meaning mostly single fences and grids.
‘twas not my best riding — note our severe crookedness here
So I kinda knew this show jumping course might be a somewhat, er, big ask of the horse. But again, we had a really solid warm up where I maintained that feeling of ‘forward in front of the leg’ — trotting along in a marching rhythm for way longer than I normally do. And it paid off!
full disclosure: the mare 100% saved my ass
Doozy was super game around the course, even tho it was definitely a little impressive to both of us. Naturally the weekend I selected for our move up was also the weekend Loch Moy was running their starter series championship, so all the courses were totally maxed out. Including a big giant oxer at jump 2. Uh, oops.
finished strong tho, and somehow only 2 rails for all my messiness!
Plus a two stride in-and-out…. since when does BN have in-and-out combinations??? Again, tho, Doozy got us around. I admit to not riding my best tho. I hadn’t walked the course so didn’t really know what to expect in some of the lines, plus I kinda missed a few turns.
the helmet cam doesn’t look quite as gritty as it felt
Doozy would have been blameless for opting out at multiple points in the course… But what a mare, she’s so game, she likes the jumping, she’s good at it, and she’s willing to fight for it. Obvi that’s not really a sustainable way of getting around lol, ideally I’ll calm down and get my shit together and pilot her a bit more reliably…
finally, tho, our strongest phase!! got our only real ‘oopsies’ jump out of the way at 2
On this day, tho, it was enough to get around, bc I was pretty sure cross country was going to be an absolute blast!!
this log box doesn’t look like much, but something about it (maybe the vertical slats?) always catches a couple horses and riders off guard
The course was freakin lovely, lots of nice big inviting fences and almost everything placed on rising ground. No insanely steep ups or downs, and enough of a challenge to keep us occupied every step of the way.
so mature for the bending line!
Doozy left the start box fantastically — no explosiveness at all! Then we had maybe our iffiest jump at 2, a nice big roll top that we kinda launched at and landed in a run… Took a minute to get organized after that but then 3-4-5-6 were all close enough together that we kinda stayed on the ‘straight and narrow’ from then on.
baby’s first corner — another fence shared with novice! also note the sneakily tricky landing. better have a plan for that tree well in advance!
Obviously it’s been a minute since I’ve gone around BN, Charlie’s last BN was March 2018 after all… But this definitely felt like a properly stout course for the level, again likely bc it was set for the series championship. Like, omg we had a corner! It was an option for my class, we could have jumped the table on the left in the pic above instead if we wanted, but c’mon — a corner!! Obvi Doozy would nail it!!
our little cedar oxer (just to the left of that white-ish roll top) was set on a somewhat rakish angle to the water
Honestly she nailed just about everything. I still trotted her into the water just to be safe — esp given our next jump is a funny little timber oxer that I’ve seen cause problems. It was set on a weird angle to the water too, so I just wanted to give it the proper respect.
steeplechase!! these always look big to me but they jump great! also, omg the foliage in the pro photos is insane, i can’t wait til they arrive!
It didn’t seem to matter, tho, Doozy was locked and loaded. She just marched right on around wherever I pointed her. Cedar oxer? Cool. Baby ditch that we jumped last month? Nbd. She got a little strong for the next to jumps leading into the woods, but then was literally foot perfect for the final leg of the course.
this ‘rolex barn’ was properly large! then straight ahead to the last jump and finish line!
They had some properly impressive jumps in the woods too — the steeplechase roll (tho it wasn’t brushed up for BN) and this crazy ‘rolex barn’ looking thing that isn’t overly wide in terms of top spread, but definitely used up every inch of allowable height lol.
what fun, and doozy was 100% up for the challenge!
Doozy felt incredible the whole way around — sorta this visceral awareness over the last few jumps of just what a special and lucky feeling it is to jump around on a horse like this!
obsessed with this sweet little xc machine <3 <3 <3
In a way I think Doozy was overdue for a more challenging course. It felt like she was paying the jumps more attention, and was therefore easier to rate and ride all the way around. It also felt like she was using herself better, vs sorta just cantering largely over the jumps.
All in all, I’m just so happy with how the day went for us — a properly satisfying end to our season. Our inauspicious start to the year wasn’t what I’d hoped or imagined, but honestly I think we’re better for it. It forced us onto a different trajectory than I’d planned, but one that’s proved to be more leisurely and confidence-building. If this is what the future holds with Doozy, I’m all in!!!
Happy Monday, friends! It’s been a bit of a whirlwind around these parts for… hm, basically the last full month. I actually straight up cancelled all my plans this weekend to just chill out and slow down. It was super nice, not gonna lie!
doozy is obsessed with these specific leaves and legit drags me to them srsly tho, look at those flared nostrils!
And gave me the perfect opportunity to get a whoooole bunch of random photos off my phone and recorded here in ye olde blogge for posterity, if not exactly for some sort of cohesive story line lol. So, uh, brace yo’self for the randomness!
new tailgate spot this year!! (purple dot)
First up, obviously my friends and I had our big annual To-Do at the Maryland 5*!! I always love making a whole big thing of it — with volunteering Thursday and Friday at the YEH Championships, then tailgating Saturday, and then show jumping / shopping on Sunday.
Allison Springer & HTS Jenson in the 3* at our prior tailgate location
And this year did not disappoint! Every year is a little different, It’s still a very young event and they tweak and change things with each running. For example, our tailgate spot of the last 2 years was absorbed into another area, so we relocated up the hill to the Sunken Road complex.
Monica Spencer & Artist in the 5* at the new spot. not bad!
And guys, it was a fantastic spot! A super cool (and influential) combination to watch, plus a big screen to follow along with the action. AND a liquor store literally directly across the street — convenient when I realized we needed more ice + coolers. Plus, this tailgate section is on the opposite side of the ropes from the normal spectator paths, so we never had to deal with crowds.
It was a great day with a wonderful melting pot of so many horsey friends over the years, including our core original group, friends from the last boarding barn, Charlie’s barn, Doozy’s current barn, and even some folks from the Isabel days. So fun, I’m already excited for next year!
and meanwhile, doozy <3 <3
Per usual, I did all my shopping on show jump day too. Unfortunately didn’t get pictures of everything yet, but am pretty pleased with my haul. Biggest priority was a shimmable half pad, since Doozy and I continue to be frustrated by weird fit issues related to our combined crooked mechanics.
new shimmable half pad from shopping at the 5*
Like, both saddles fit the horse. But they also both shift in exactly the same way over the course of a ride bc Doozy and I are both dynamic and moving beings who apparently don’t adhere rigorously enough to postural ideals. Womp.
brand is ErrePlus, comparable to the Mattes pads
This particular half pad appealed to me bc it’s predominantly natural fibers — with the sheepskin lining and wool shims. But it’s also extremely non-bulky. So it can be as “barely there” as you want it to be, with a nice progressive set of shims for precision adjustments. So far, so good, I’ll keep you posted.
also got a few new pairs of breeches at the 5* — finally, purple pants!! and green!!
Other shopping items were maybe less exciting — I got a couple pairs of Romfh breeches from the same booth I always pick up a pair or two. For whatever reason they always have the inside line on Romfh deals, legit maybe the only good “deal” to be had in the entire vendor village!
equine artist Darlene Ivey had the most incredible prints, you should follow her on insta if you’re into that sort of thing!
Tho independent small business Sona Equestrian definitely won the award for best prints used across the most inspired selection of products! I picked up a pair of socks, but was also completely smitten with her charming shower curtains, notebooks and notecards, tumblers, totes, and so many other items, definitely check her out!
all the better for our low key schooling practice on terrain in random paddocks lol
I’m also working on getting Doozy back onto the cross ties reliably in our grooming bays at home, and picked up some really really cool rapid release devices from our friends at Nunn Finer. I’ll get actual pictures + thoughts when I’ve got them properly set up.
pictured:: mare who ignored the nets when they were full….
Ok. Whew. So yea the 5* took up a lot of time and energy (and miles driving LOL), but life goes on and Doozy naturally requires her due as well! Obvi we had our big Windurra outing a couple days later, and I was slightly miffed to observe that… Doozy wasn’t really touching her hay nets in the trailer.
musical chairs hay piles!
I’d noticed the same at the Area Championships, but thought maybe it was just a funny weedy bale or something, so I filled another couple nets for the trip. Obvi the idea of a 3 hour round trip without palatable hay doesn’t sound great to me, so when she left basically all those nets untouched after Windurra, I opted to dump them all out in her paddock and start from scratch.
apparently much more palatable when not in a net…
My very first riding instructor (at whose barn I first learned chores) always said to leave a hay pile for the “invisible horse.” As in, enough piles for however many horses are in the group, plus one. Her rationale being that the dominant horses will always push around the meeker horses, and you want an obvious open spot for them to go.
good girl, eat your vegetables!
Doozy is such a tyrant with her ponies, tho, that I opted to leave enough piles for **two** invisible horses LOL. And somehow, go figure, the hay was much tastier when she didn’t have to fight a net for it. Ugh, horses.
so you can grow big and strong for our adventures!
In the meantime, I picked up a bale of timothy / orchard mix from the local feed store. At ~$14 a bale, it’s more expensive than just buying a regular bale from my barn as I’d been doing… But, eh, peace of mind, right? It’s hard to ride an unhappy belly.
i might be biased, but i think she’s extremely handsome <3
So that brings us up mostly to real time. Doozy and I had a bit of an uneven few schooling sessions post-Windurra. Not ‘bad’ rides, per se, but probably the ‘least good’ since we started using our recorded ride guides. I think my most recent version is just a little too long, making it more likely that I’ll deviate from the plan and possibly tune it out a bit.
and so is our hacking buddy Dante!
Plus, obvi, it seems reasonable that we might both be a little tight after such a big cross country schooling session! Fortunately it worked out that we were scheduled for another body work / chiro / acupuncture session.
Doozy still doesn’t love these sessions as much as Charlie did, but she’s getting better. And the practitioner seems really pleased with the mare’s development and condition, so that’s always super reassuring!
good mare, always marching eagerly ahead haha
Anyway. We closed out the weekend with a lovely hack through the fields and woods. Our foliage is finally peaking and daytime temps are still super mild in the 60s, what’s not to love, right?
as a reward for making it thru all those pics, here’s my cat, as he discovers the radiators are on for the season!
Not gonna lie, it felt super nice to have a relatively quiet weekend. This time of year I’m always so tempted to get swept up into a whirlwind of trying to do all the things bc “winter is coming!” But ya know. There’s still plenty of the fall season ahead of us!!
Happy Wednesday, folks!! I promise not to be too wordy, but we have a metric shit ton of media today, woot woot!! Doozy and I had another xc lesson at Windurra with local legend, Sally Cousins, fresh off her impressive finish with Wizard in the 3* at Fair Hill!
grazing serenely when we first arrived <3 (tho yes i promise she did get more amped after i got on)
Honestly I think Doozy and I really had a nice little routine going with our solo xc schooling trips to Tranquillity this summer and last fall. There’s something to be said about just going out and doing what you wanna do, without making a whole big thing of it.
warm up loggoes!!
But there’s a time and a place for everything, right? And now that Doozy and I have a relatively established baseline of experience and comfort, it feels appropriate to seek professional guidance to start fine tuning and adding more (level-appropriate + progressive) challenge.
oooh right away starting with the jumps we finished on last time
And Sally is such a pro at that. Teaching is a huge part of her business model, and for a very good reason: she’s good at it. She has loads of regular students, even more like me who flit in and out on a semi-infrequent basis over the years, and presumably countless straight up strangers riding in her clinics.
normalizing <3
Over time, she’s developed a keen eye for feeling out horses and riders, and guiding them through appropriate and progressive exercises. It also helps that she knows Windurra inside and out, she’s always super familiar with how everything is set up, and knows how to string exercises together in all the various ‘zones.’
sally is so progressive about introducing things like cut outs etc
My goals for this ride were simple: Listen to Sally. Don’t get too stuck in my head. Prioritize confidence and relaxation. Listen to Sally.
trit-trotting to the little bank!
And we totally did exactly that! Sally started us off right away stringing things together — first some small logs, then a line of starter jumps, then introducing those ‘slightly smaller than BN height, but definitely more spread than starter’ jumps we finished with last time, and then right onto actual BN stuff.
another nice roll top
Doozy was more or less being quite good. She gets a little stuck and behind the leg and snarled up in a pretzel every time we pick up for our turn, but I just did my best to kinda ignore it and just ride her forward, oozing into a flow as drama-free as possible.
omg a **real** ditch aaaah lol (still quite narrow tho!)
Sally’s biggest feedback for us was that I need to focus on straightness to the fence (sound familiar?), and that we need to be organizing **right away** on landing. She said I’ve got about 2-3 strides on landing before Doozy kinda bolts away, and that I need to act quickly in that time — the longer I wait to half halt, the stronger the half halt will need to be.
this was definitely the biggest thing we jumped, esp re: spread. caught us both a little by surprise
While technically this is legit the opposite of some of the work we’ve done with Woodge on exaggerating that big release exactly at the moment Doozy would expect me to pull, I think these two concepts actually can live in harmony. I need to practice the release so that the half halt works when we need it, like when jumping cross country.
doozy nailed the super fun mini course!
Mostly tho, Sally advised that I don’t over think it. Ride the horse forward, connected and straight. I’ll know it’s working when… I get the result that I want. It really is that simple.
last exercise of the day (tho we repeated once more to clean up the house)
Anyway we put a few fun features together — jumped a little ditch, and did slightly more grown up variations of the bank and water complex exercises we did last time, and it was good!
omg guys we are growing up!!
It was interesting tho, with the larger jumps (esp a properly chunky house by the ditch that I suspect exceeds BN dimensions at least in width but possibly height too), Doozy a couple times had to dig a little deep, try a little harder. And it kinda surprised her, I think.
lol went a lil’ extra there, dooz!
Not necessarily in a bad way, but just like, “Oh wow, ok I really do need to work a bit here!” And it led to a few more squirrelly efforts than either of us are used to — first at that chunky house, and then at a couple subsequent jumps when Doozy was maybe feeling a bit less sure.
a bit jittery at the house, but we cleaned it up to finish
It was a good experience for us both, tho, bc obviously… yes the horse can do it, but also yes we both need to stay committed and forward.
full helmet cam video!!
And it gave Doozy a chance to sorta keep pushing through after a harder-than-usual effort, and smooth it out and gain confidence. She was an actual super star through the little bank complex mini course, and honestly made quite easy work of that somewhat technically challenging line through the water.
sweet mare barely broke a sweat <3 <3
All in all, a really great experience for us both, I think. There are a lot of little details that are obvi still a bit of a mess, but I can also really feel a lot of improvements in the mare even just from all our work with the recorded ride guides.
Plus it’s just exciting to be doing this again!! It’s kinda crazy wandering around Windurra and gawking incredulously at some of the stuff I jumped a lifetime ago with Charlie… But equally exciting to be forging a new set of memories with this special little red mare <3 <3
