I don’t remember exactly how long it’s been — definitely years, maybe even a decade? — since the MCTA hosted their fall unrecognized at Shawan Downs. For a lot of different reasons, it’s most frequently been held at other local established facilities in recent years.
fall is doozy’s favorite color <3
The stars aligned this year tho, and everything came together to make it happen at Shawan this fall!! Which was super exciting for me — not least bc I got to 1) make the courses again, and 2) get Doozy out to school them! It’s such a lovely place to ride, and I was so bummed to miss this spring bc of Doozy’s injury.
staring at that guy in a gator, ready to rage out lol
You might recall when we schooled Spring a year ago, I was a bit circumspect and philosophical about acknowledging that, yes, we were still just jumping the same jumps we’d jumped the year before that… That it’d been a long and at times bumpy journey with Doozy. But that progress *was* happening, however incremental and hard fought it felt.
barbie dream house to warm up!!!
And ya know. Those things are still true LOL. Tho we’re not gonna talk too much about the challenge and the journey today, bc apparently doing so risks getting yet another earful (eyeful?) of folks chiming in with all manner of oversimplified ‘solutions’ regardless of how explicitly I spell out the words “Spare Me.” Ahem.
sweet little roll top!
And besides!! This time we *didn’t* just jump the same jumps we’d done the year before, and the year before that! Bc Doozy really is well and truly happy comfortable and confident with BN stuff these days, and ‘happy comfortable and confident’ is my jam!
lol our fake ditch was VERY fake, with legit zero filler at all this time around. all good tho, claimed zero victims!
So I finally got to jump around one of my own BN courses!! Truthfully, I don’t really know a whole lot about design, in the grand scheme of things, beyond just what I’ve experienced, what I see out at other competitions, and what I, personally, like doing with my horses.
for some reason these log tables just jump so fantastically on rising ground off a gentle bend
It’s one of those subjective creative endeavors that is actually shockingly easy to get *exactly* wrong when you try to do it. And ‘bad’ design is basically plain as day to anybody - and everybody is a judge. True story, the first time I set a course, literally just about every single jump had an awkward ‘S’ bend before and after it. And none of my jumps measured, they all had to get dug in, bc I put them in basically the worst possible spots. Fun times for the builders!!!
this ramp, tho. for some reason this thing jumps like trash
Luckily, tho, the crew running the operations at this club have been enormously patient and generous with their experience, guidance and collaboration over the years. And for this event, it really felt like things kinda clicked into a nice familiar gear setting everything out.
everyone **HATED** it in the warm up at our spring recognized, and we all blamed the crazy ridiculous ice cream scoops that maybe looked like weird voids or portals into a dark parallel universe. obvi i made it my business to give it a fresh facelift… but maybe will try again with a more toned down hue?
And it was such a treat getting to actually ride around it too! Charlie was kinda already well into his declining soundness when I first started, so even tho I made all the Novice courses somewhat selfishly with ourselves in mind, we never got to ride them. And before this year, Doozy and I had stuck to just the starter courses.
a lot of our jumps are some variation of blue tho — and this feeder always jumps great!
So it was nice to refamiliarize with some of my favorite jumps!! Like the Lincoln Log tables, and the steeplechase jumps (below), and this fantastic feeder that used to live at Tranquillity and that we basically completely rebuilt this spring!
and another sweet little roll top! wtf with those janky flags tho, what kind of amateur hour is this??? oh wait, **checks notes**, yep, that was me who flagged it. WHOOPS!
I was especially eager to experience first hand how the jumps felt relative to the terrain. Shawan Downs is a long narrow race track set on a massive hillside. Depending on which end of the track you’re on, the slope can be quite severe — and it can be tricky getting the lower level courses far enough out to turn them around without sending them either straight up or straight down that slope, and without running over the allowable track lengths by level.
finished with the steeplechase brush, minus the brush bc we hadn’t set it out yet LOL. didn’t matter, doozy jumped it great
And naturally, Doozy being who she is, the terrain can be extremely challenging for us haha. So it was super reassuring when everything rode more or less decently for us, even with all our, uh, personal challenges haha.
short ’n sweet helmet cam video
It wasn’t necessarily a good enough ride to make me really want to do all three phases of the show itself… what with all the other difficulties we generally have… But it was a good enough ride for what it was. A productive net positive experience.
“i am the fastest horse in the world” — doozy, so fast
And also a smoother and more consistent schooling experience vs some of the drama we had at Windurra a few weeks back. I really don’t think the typical lesson format of ‘starting and stopping, one jump at a time, everyone takes a turn’ suits Doozy at all.
so sweet and silly too lol
She’s much happier with the opportunity to settle into a rhythm and jump a few things at a time. For my purposes, I need to be good about not taking that too too literally — we can still work on putting circles in between jumps and reestablishing balance and all the things so that each individual jump is a nice pleasant effort. So it ends up feeling like something in between “one jump at a time” and an actual competition course.
fall arrived for the show with a bang — hard to tell but that is FROST on the jump!!
All in all, tho, a fun time, with some super nice jumps on perfect ground in perfect weather! And all done by basically mid morning, so I still had time to get Doozy home and taken care of before getting back out to finish numbering the jumps and finalizing all the rest of the show prep.
easier to tell on this pic, just look beyond the little bits of scraped off poo lol
Seriously, tho, guys — if any of you have any interest at all whatsoever about all the various tasks in the lead up to an event, you should 1,000% sign up for an event prep volunteer shift at your favorite local venue. There is always *So.Much* to do, and a lot of it is honestly kinda interesting, especially for adding another dimension or perspective to how you see things at a show.
pictured: super important volunteer shit
And everything actually went pretty great for the show itself! A couple ups and downs across the day — it’s horses, after all, and horses and horse sports are hard, full stop. But from an organizational and operational point of view, things went just about as well as can be hoped for — lots of happy horses and riders, and all the necessary resources and protocols for anyone who needed them.
I might not have ridden in the show myself, but getting to check off “Ride at Shawan!!” from the wish list for the year feels like a win all the same. At this point, I’ll take it LOL!
Well the festivities have finally concluded for MDCTA’s annual recognized event, and follow on unrecognized Jenny Camp Horse Trial. But just because the party’s over doesn’t mean the fun stops, amirite?
There was still jump painting going on right up through the day before the starter trial, and in fact a couple more got done afterward too. It’s so much easier to get them painted nicely when they’re out in the field vs stacked up in storage, ya know? And some of them were pretty desperate for attention…
taking the club into the digital age with an actual database for the jumps, complete with printable reports!
I’m not the world’s best jump painter, tbh — I’m a little too fast and sloppy and not as disciplined about the scraping and prepping as some others… But I *am* good at compiling, cataloging, and recording information into usable data and shared information hubs. So I finally took pictures of everything and made a digital jump inventory!
From my experience as a volunteer, storing and sharing information centrally is so much more efficient than having everything residing inside key individuals’ heads. Not that there’s anything wrong with key individuals who generally know all the things, but… ya know. Being ‘key’ and all that, they’re typically busy and doing a million things. Much easier to just have a list.
That way, when some of the country’s most amazing volunteers show up ready and eager to beautify our precious jumps, everything is ready to go for them! And voila! More jumps get painted, less time is wasted tracking down busy bees, and everyone is happy! By my count, something like 17 jumps total got painted for this event!! Amazing!
the club receives grants for introducing new groups to eventing — here’s a set of actual small children, apparently accomplished steeplechase riders, warming their race horses up before schooling xc
The schooling week in between horse trials is always a big hit too. I don’t know the final numbers on how many folks came through, but it was a LOT. Such a great resource for the local community to have full competition courses available to school so close to home!
what goes up must eventually come down: unflagging is the least sexy task
I’d personally love to see the club offer more events at Shawan Downs throughout the calendar year. It’s apparently more feasible than I dared hope… but ya know. It’s a LOT of work, especially for a skeleton crew of board members and volunteers, almost all of whom are either retired or working full time jobs on top of, ya know, having lives and stuff.
new flexible pipe flag attachments recommended by the xc builder were a solid win!
But there are some ideas bumping around. Including opportunities to streamline some of the fussier tasks and chores — like this new method for flagging the fences, recommended by the cross country builder. Sure, it takes a little time to install each tube, but once it’s set, the flags go in and out, no muss no fuss, no friggin zip ties, AND — this style counts as frangible for narrow jumps and corners!
Only trick is to buy the right type of tubing, bc the really flexible stuff will completely relax and lose its shape once you cut it open. Ahem. Cough cough. Ask me how I know….
everyone knows hypothetically about staking jumps… but few spend much time thinking about unstaking jumps… blergh, 2 stakes + ~4 screws per fence x ~100 fences…
Anyway, tho, for many tasks, there really are no shortcuts. Like staking the fences. Sure sure, plenty of facilities out there get away with leaving jumps unstaked. And sure, plenty of oopsie rolled fences don’t result in major accidents — like that time Charlie and I rolled a house at Windurra.
it’s a fun way to get intimate with the local bugs — meet the Click Beetle, a gigantic native bug i’ve somehow gone my entire life without ever seeing before
Buuuuuuut…. when there ARE accidents, they can be legitimately catastrophic and fatal for everybody. Thanks but… no thanks. The few hours spent staking and unstaking is cheap insurance, as far as this club is concerned. It’s just hours that need to be accounted for in planning any additional events.
if bugs aren’t your thing, here’s cats instead, in a very good box
The neat thing about accounting for hours, tho, is that it’s all just numbers at the end of the day. If you know what things need to get done, and how long* those things take to do, it’s just a matter of assigning tasks, budgeting for paid professionals where feasible, and working backwards from a date, right? In theory??
(*And I mean the REAL time things take — like including the 20 minutes spent looking for the drill bit you dropped in the grass, or the extra trips to the hardware store bc you bought the wrong material — not the ‘aspirational’ guesstimates LOL)
anyway tho. doozy. she’s still a weirdo LOL
Well. In theory, all things are possible LOL! Like, maybe in theory, if the club decides to host a fall event at Shawan, mayyyyyybe Doozy will be fully rehabbed by then?
and we’re still tack walking with friends!!
I still honestly don’t really have a sense of timeline for that, and am trying not to set any expectations, consciously or unconsciously, even as I may or may not be trying to manifest opportunities LOL.
do we look happy? <3 <3 <3
But we’ve been tack walking for a couple weeks now, and have started introducing little bits of trot, one long side of the arena at a time. Well. Ahem. And the occasional accidental canter step, bc Doozy is who she is.
ain’t a bad way to spend an evening!
The mare feels like a million dollars tho… A million feral dollars LOL, especially compared to all those nice obedient well-schooled dressage horses I’ve been taking lessons on haha. Like. Doozy, some horses just ya know, do the thing without all those feelings and opinions!
oooooooh but the rehab continues!!!! (not pictured: lots of feelings and opinions! oooh, or cohesive color coordinated outfit choices LOL #dontjudge #allthebluesatonce #andalittlegreentoo)
I have this beautiful fantasy that perhaps we can use this rehab period to maybe polish over some of those little rough spots in our schooling… Ya know, like, if we have to be walking and doing lots of transitions bc we’re only doing littles bits of trot at a time… might as well make the practice count, right?
Seems like a nice idea LOL, we’ll see how it turns out in the real world tho. As long as we come out the other end with a happy sound horse ready to go run and jump again, I’ll be happy regardless!
So… yea. Lots of wishful thinking going on at the moment — hoping and wishing for more fun club stuff, and hopefully a happy sound horse to do the things with! Now that the club stuff is wrapping for the spring, it’s time to get serious about that other part!
On one hand, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind around these parts. On the other hand tho… We’re still just kinda marking the passage of time with Doozy.
just me ‘n my formidable creature
I started doing a little tack walking about two weeks ago, and it’s been absolutely lovely to sit on my favorite girl again.
She’s a feisty beasty tho, and despite my cautiousness about keeping things civilized under saddle, she’s definitely been, ahem, unruly in turnout…
And I admit to spiraling a bit after she’d clearly been up to no good outside:: telltale mud sprockles around face and belly were the first hint that she’d been tearing it up. Second hint was the teensy tiny little pinky-nail sized wound on her left hind. Ya know. Her cellulitis-leg.
new hackamore plates from nunn finer! i *almost* got the biscuit style bc obvs! except it looks a little too western-y for me.
And naturally it blew up like a stove pipe and everything.
Luckily it did NOT escalate into full force cellulitis again, and was back to normal after a day or two… But still. I did a little pity-party shopping for myself (new hackamore plates and fancy rubber reins from Nunn Finer!), and otherwise went full bore into total immersion / distraction with all things MDCTA planning.
Fortunately, as with any recognized event put on by a grassroots skeleton crew, there was plenty to do! And fun opportunities too — like getting to be a fly on the wall for the prelim course inspection, conducted by none other than Captain Mark Phillips.
Mostly tho, it was the normal chores list. However long you think it takes to flag for an event… double it.
don’t worry, i’m a professional
And brushing up the fences. Tho, uh, we were… ahem, a little short on brush LOL!
whew ok, we’ll call that “passable”
Setting up dressage arenas isn’t my favorite thing in the world, but that needed done too.
And painting. So much painting. Some jumps just needed some work on the leading edges and high points — like the above two — while others needed full on facelifts. Probably still more to do there before the starter trials next week too… Makes for some long nights!
these kerrits paddock boots have held up shockingly well for the last two years, and are super comfortable. considering my blundstones were riddled with actual literal holes after the same amount of time, i’m officially a convert!
Eventually it all paid off with two good days of horse showing, with perfect weather, great footing, and lots of happy riders!
apparently a fox wanted to make sure i didn’t miss picking up this decorative straw ground line…
Thennnnnn straight back to the ‘salt mines’ of cleaning up after the event — we take down the P and M courses right away since those levels don’t run for the unrecognized trial, and obvi all the decorations etc need to get picked up too.
kittermission picture as a palette cleanser after the poo LOL
It was definitely nice in a weird way to be a little too busy to even really feel guilty about not riding Doozy. Sure, I still made it out to groom her, check her legs, scratch her bug bites, etc… but mostly it’s been a couple weeks of just cruise control.
Finally, tho, with the event behind us, I started tack walking again this week <3
Doozy is fresh AF and sizzling like a steak on the grill. I swear this horse just vibrates with energy omg.
aerie is a stalwart supervisor <3
And I opted to cut one of our solo hacks short when we got out to the hay fields and the guys were all out there in the middle of cutting and baling and all that and Doozy thought that was all VERY EXCITING OMG lol…
Luckily we had proper supervision for our next attempt and enjoyed a lovely (tho still extremely energetic) hack out to the woods.
Idk how long it’s going to take me to not feel nervous about the next steps in rehab, tbh. We had a single ride where I trotted exactly two long sides of the indoor arena… And the very next day she got that little wound on her cellulitis leg, and I instantly got cold feet again.
I’m sad to miss out on riding and showing and all that, and obvi eager to get Ms Thing going again. Except, more than anything, I reallyreally want durable long term soundness.
Obvi there are no guarantees with horses. A large part of Doozy’s recovery will depend on how well she treats her own self, ya know? Tho, by all accounts she appears happy healthy and SOUND frolicking around in her field. And the leg is looking good too.
