Yesterday and today was the first Blue Hors Dressage Championships for 3 & 4 year old horses, held alongside their annual Foal Championships. We took Hot News (Stinka) and Dream Time out for a spin and it was so much fun!

Dream Time has had a tough two weeks since the last show, learning that even though she thinks she's perfect (and most of the time I agree), I need her to really be through and submissive all the time, not just when it suits her. At the beginning of the week I didn't think I'd be able to canter her down an entire long side without her losing the lead and getting worried; at the same time her trot got bigger and better, so I had no idea what to expect this weekend.

We still had a few moments of freaked out disobedience but it was a huge improvement since two weeks ago and I'm really pleased with her. She found her canter again and though it was tight she never broke or switched leads. Even though she showed so much potential she was still marked down for the tension and occasional airs above ground.  

Stinka seems to be sending the message that He Is A Show Horse. He is so brave and proud in the ring, it's incredible. He just gave it all yesterday and scored high enough to scrape in to the top 8 invited back for today's performance. Today he was tired and irritable in the warm up but as soon as we stepped in to the competition ring and he saw all his fans he just stepped up and delivered. We ended up in a tie for 6th place and I couldn't more proud of the little man. He is also finding new gears in his movement, so the future is very exciting!

I have to also mention what a great atmosphere it is at Blue Hors! What a lovely facility and all the people were so nice. I am lucky, lucky, lucky that I get to take part in things like this! Wow. 

Well, someone's gone and given me a bigger audience to talk at. I don't know how long before I'm boo'd off the stage, but here's my debut on www.horsejunkiesunited.com  It's a great, fun website and I'm really honored that they asked me to blog. 

Don't worry Mom, Dad, and the other two of you reading this. I'll still be posting here lots since I don't think they want to hear ALL of my thoughts there...  

I want one. 

This is a video of Countess schooling today. I. Love. Her.

Will stopped by today with his new puppy, so Double Up and I took him for a spin. Puppy liked it, Double Up was cool with it too!

Really, who doesn't love a furry, cuddly little puppy?! Well, Maude doesn't; but other than her, everyone loves the puppies! Yay! 

Just got back from the horse show with my baby kids, the four year olds. It was a morning of the unexpected!

Hot News, the Hotline x Solos Carex gelding, was such a pleasant surprise! I was expecting a little bit of stink from him since at home I made his barn name Stinka. He seems to have a great sense of humor, and when the mood strikes him he will just be an ape instead of a horse; the first time I rode him in our outdoor at home it looked more like a rodeo than a dressage lesson. Imagine my surprise when he was foot perfect at the show! Sure he looked briefly at the judges & the booth, but he was just a good boy.  He scored a 7.6, with lots of room for improvement when I can show a better difference between the working and medium gaits. 

Dream Time, or Princess, or Little Miss Perfect as she's sometimes called at home, was an absolute, total turd. Not a nice surprise. This Don Schufro mare is the most beautiful and charming girl you can imagine. She's always well behaved at home, and when I rode her at Blue Hors earlier this week she was 'up' but totally submissive and lovely. Needless to say, this morning I was caught off guard and rode accordingly.

In the warm up she was a little freaked out but still with me, flouncing all over and making me smile. Once we got in to the competition ring my normally fearless mount decided that she would rather stop/wheel around/buck backwards rather than go past the judges on the long side. I think he was actually very generous in his scoring of a 6.5 for rideability… The bugger was that it didn't happen once or twice, it was non stop. Once I finally got a good feeling in the trot we went on to canter, and she threw out flying changes to show the crowd how advanced she is, or simply broke in to the trot because she had to poo. Sigh. In the walk she spooked at the judges and then the corners. Big sigh. Our  overall score of 7.1 was actually better than I thought it might have been. 

We were able to do some submission work up in the warm up ring after the class. No, I didn't beat her, as much as it seemed a tempting idea:^D  However, when she ran backwards rather than going near the jumps, we had the time and opportunity to work on her focus and response to the rider, just like we would at home. It goes back to the work that Tristan and Will, our cowboys, start the horses with, so once I started on that work she gave up the stink pretty quickly.

I have two weeks before the next outing with them, the Blue Hors foal and young horse championships. It's a little more pressure there, so I'm glad I had this chance to see how they would behave now. I will take both of them out of the ring more, hopefully into the hay field with very, very scary bales of plastic wrapped haylage, dangerous shrubbery, and evil, bloodsucking bunnies. We will have to hack down the road with signs and mailboxes and who knows what else. I will put things that just don't belong there around the outdoor arena. 

I don't want to set my baby kids up for failure, but I need to challenge us all on our preparation for new experiences. I want Little Miss Perfect and Stinka to be with me at Blue Hors, and to show the people there that we got some fancy stuff here in Silkeborg. 

So now it's time for my Sunday afternoon nap. I will surely dream of the PERFECT go that I know both horses are capable of. Off I go...

my life is awesome!

Sometimes I forget just how incredible my life is, and it's funny little things that make me remember and appreciate what I get to do with my days. 

Wednesday I was driving to Blue Hors to pick up my favorite four year old mare, Dream Time. She's been there for more than a month on and off, being bred to the beautiful Romanov. The original plan was to do an embryo transfer, since she is such an outstanding riding horse we wanted to keep her in the competition ring. However, it didn't work out and so she will hopefully carry her own foal this year and then we will try the transfer again next year. Anyway, I'd gone there Monday and Tuesday to ride her in the afternoon, in preparation for our first show this weekend. She'd ovulated and was ready to come home Wednesday morning, so off I went with the van to fetch her. 

It was a funny thing, but as I was driving through the small town just before arriving at Blue Hors, I had to pull over and stop to let an old farmer type pass by in the other direction. He gave me a big, toothy smile and wave as he passed. For whatever reason, his courtesy wave made me really happy, which in turn gave me the overwhelming feeling of joy I get once in a while, joy for the state of my life and adventures. 

I am living in Europe! I am riding for Morten Thomsen! I get to compete a lot of great horses! I have learned from amazing people in Germany while I lived there for almost three years! 

I mean really, holy crap! 

Sometimes life's momentum just carries you away; there are tragedies all over the world, from war in countries I'll never visit, to barn fires in places I've been. Friends have health concerns and heartaches that I feel powerless to fight. I get tired and frustrated. Life just does what it does, and we all forget to stop and be amazed. But sometimes a silly, irrelevant moment can take the blinders off and we can see all the beauty and colors and opportunities all around us. This feeling doesn't last very long (unless you've got some great pharmaceuticals) so I think it's important to appreciate it when it comes. 

Perhaps this feeling was a cumulative effect of my great week altogether? I had some amazing lessons from Morten, helping me really ride the one-tempis better, not just relying on a good horse and luck. Then sitting in the saddle while he worked the piaffe from the ground on a horse that can be a piaffe machine when the mood strikes (and strike it did!). Countess and I have found a whole new level in our work together. Thinking only of the rhythm/tempo in the trot work has made me quit F'n around and just ride, and the results have been huge. The canter work has also benefited from this. We have been playing with the one-tempis and piaffe again, and she just tries so hard for me, even when I make my mistakes.  I often forget to do this grown-up work when I get focused on the next Prix St George show. We don't have any competitions until mid-July, so until we get closer to that we will keep the Grand Prix training in the forefront of our program. Finally, my two 4 year olds have been great and I'm very excited for our debuts tomorrow. 

I have a lot to do in preparation for tomorrow's early morning departure (we have to leave here at 6:15), so off I go. Happy weekend to you, go hug your horse and be happy. 

So, as much fun as I'm having with Double Up, as much as he delights me with his willingness to learn and seemingly endless supply of work ethic, the horse is still enormous. Sometimes he feels like a sporty little machine, other times I feel every single millimeter over 17 hands that he is. 

I really believe and accept that all horses at times need more support from the rider through the rein; this does not mean that I will let a horse lean on me, or that I want to carry a horse around - absolutely not. However, there are times when they lose their balance and fall on the forehand, or when they get tired and want to drop the frame and they simply need to be shown where the boundaries are, where the desired frame needs to be. This sometimes requires a stronger contact for brief moments.

Now with Double Up, he's just such a big one that I find my "helping aids" a little ridiculous at times - I'm not afraid to give him a big, loud kick with my leg, but I hate it when I suddenly find my hands busy and coming up. A week or so ago I was really struggling with the position of my hands while riding the canter, finding that I would try to fix something and my hands would come up, become unsteady, and of course he would become more unsteady in the contact or frame, frustrating me and making me do more work to try to fix this. Never. Ending. Cycle. 

In an effort to keep my hands in the correct position but still be strong enough in my body to give him the support he sometimes needs, I tried to hold the reins differently. Rather than run the rein between my pinky & ring finger and then up between my index & thumb, I only used my index & thumb to hold the rein. I've put the picture up to show how I held the reins and had a lot of success. With the double bridle I believe this is called "Fillis" style, but I'm not sure what it's called when you have only one rein?

It was a really interesting tool for me; I was able to keep my hands down low by the saddle, with a very straight line from my elbow to the bit, and secure my seat and upper body to really ride him into the contact. Wow, great result with what felt like no effort or strength on my part.

What was very interesting to me however, was when I tried to use this technique in the trot it was a disaster. I believe the term for what I was doing is called "water skiing." While I could balance in the canter, for some reason this just made me drive with my seat, lean back with my upper body, and hang on his poor mouth. Lucky for Double Up I realized my folly after about half of the circle, so I went back to the traditional way of holding the reins and it was just as it should be. 

Sometimes I think we get so stuck in the tradition of dressage, the perfect position, that we forget to ride. More on that later, but for now, I challenge you to be unafraid of trying something a little untraditional sometimes. 

Sorry for being an idiot (you should be used to that by now?) and taking so long to update here. It's been busy, busy and I have so many things to write about. However, I'm going to stick with just one topic tonight and try to get a few more posts over the next days to catch up...

Last weekend's horse show was so much fun. Due to some client interest in the big orange gelding, we made a last minute decision to debut Double Up at Prix St George. I had 3 days to get him ready and couldn't be more pleased with his performance. Sure, we made a bunch of rookie mistakes. It was his first St George, his first outdoor show, and for the love of it all, he's SEVEN YEARS OLD. He tried so hard to be good and was rewarded with a whole bunch of 7's. Our mistakes gave us some 4's and 5's, so overall we scored a 61.57% I can't wait for our next go. 

Countess was absolutely stunning in the warm up. I'm finally getting the bigger trot more consistent, but I still let it go when I get into the show ring, chickening out from taking the big risk. Doh! However, the judge liked us enough for a 64.21% which was good enough for 6th place. I can't remember the winning score, but 2nd place was a high 65%; we weren't that far off the leader board this time! 

I'm really proud of both horses. Countess just does exactly what I ask of her, and as long as I keep improving so will our results. Double Up has surprised and delighted me at every outing. When I first started riding him I wondered what on earth I had done to deserve such a big knucklehead in my lineup, my dislike for HUGE horses coloring my opinion from the first step. While we made progress together it was only after our first show that things really changed between us. He is so much more confident in the work after the challenges of competition, you can really see he is pleased to be a Show Horse. His confidence and my gradual understanding of how to ride a giant equine with small aids has allowed us to do something I certainly didn't think possible 5 months ago! This horse will be a Grand Prix horse, probably sooner than I would believe. 

So many other things are spinning in my head, waiting to be shared, but I promised myself I would get to bed early tonight, so this will have to do. Till next time...