friday foto finish: seasonality

Happy Friday, and Happy Fall to those who celebrate! It feels like September is always one of the craziest months of the year, not least because it is a month of transitions. 

August is peak summer in Maryland, with the heat and humidity seamlessly carrying on into September.

We were fortunate to have enough late season rain to keep things luscious and green — even after the last cuttings from the hay field!

Still tho, eventually everything goes to seed for the year — our fields get this gorgeous heather-y purple hue that really brings out the contours and steepness of the hillsides!

We’ve been lucky to get out a lot lately too, and occasionally in larger groups! And Doozy loves the groups. I used to worry that she’d be too chaotic and triggering for other horses but she’s proven me wrong (yet again haha). The vibes are good <3

September also always brings a new tenor of urgency to the show season calendar too. Suddenly stuff needs to happen! Preparations need to be made!

Including the MDCTA’s fall starter, which we’re super excited to be holding at Shawan Downs again!! In just a few short weeks all these jumps are gonna be back out and ready for action!

Doozy, for her part, seems to be happy for the routine. Well. Except occasionally — our early morning dressage lessons sometimes interfere with her nap schedule!

“I need a coffee. And maybe a hug too.” — sleepy Doozy <3

It’s not exactly coffee, but she likes sniffing the lavender potpourri satchel I keep in my helmet bag haha.

And hacking, haha. She likes hacking. We hacked a lot this month, apparently!

The low trail down by the creek finally got cleared of trees again too! I just love the woods this time of year.

Doozy’s been so pleasant and happy out there this month that we’ve actually done some hillside trotting and cantering too!

It’s super important to me that hacking remain a relaxing and fun activity, a nice escape. Obvi being free to run can be its own variation of fun liberating escape — but only if Doozy’s on board with that vibe lol. And lately? She has been !! <3 <3

Tho obvi we probably spend equal time stopping and snacking and chatting LOL.

It’s also been a season for starting to get back out to all the major FEI events — starting with the Plantation Field International!! 

I got to steward the 4* and 1* dressage warm up the day before our own show at Loch Moy and it was super inspiring lol.

I also stuck around long enough to help transition the big hilltop ring from dressage to show jumping — picking up all the boards and blocks etc above and putting down the standards and poles and cups and numbers.

I’m always so amazed by the level of organization and professionalism at these big venues. If you ever have a chance to help with set up for one of these events, you totally should. There’s a lot to it!

As it is, I’m super grateful that the gorgeous Indian Summer weather held fast through that event and our own showing at Loch Moy, bc it’s been rainy and cool ever since. 

Soggy Biscuit actually wore a blankie (and fly boots, go figure) a couple nights this week, esp the night before our last dressage lesson. God forbid she be cold and muddy AND have to go to work lol.

The rain brought in a distinct new crisp coolness to the air. A change in the light and color.

And the sun is setting earlier and earlier, as it always inevitably does.

Fall is my favorite season for riding, tho. I’m honestly kinda glad it’s here, excited to see what it brings! Hope you all have a happy start to the season, and a fantastic fall weekend!

click beetles + boat houses + trot steps, oh my!

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?

these boat houses are some of my favorite jumps at all levels — charlie jumped this T one a couple times, like in 2019. they definitely deserve some TLC and fresh paint!

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!

this N version of the boat house used to live at our last boarding barn, and charlie and i jumped it literally zillions of times, memorably that one time we actually won an event

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.

and here’s the legendary USEA VIP original gold medalist volunteer Sue, painting yet another of the boat houses, this time the P version!

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!

dooz control

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 really really 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.

So ya know. That makes happy. One day at a time!