Shhhhhh! Be vewy, vewy quiet. I am looking at show schedules.
Greg brought up an interesting suggestion. Why don’t I take Milton to a little, local, walk-trot dressage test this Spring?
Hmmm.
I’ve been thinking that it would be ages before I could ever show Milton: lessons, schooling, cross-rails, practice shows, on and on. But that’s for hunters, or jumpers, or a combined test. Eventing is not even on the horizon. Walk-Trot? Dressage? I can do that.
Well, I can’t right now, but I can see it would be feasible without requiring months of training or a miracle step. Nor I am I saying that I can do it well. I’m looking for go in, get around, happy kid on a happy pony, finish with a number. Don’t care about the size of the number.
We have a long way to go. It may not happen. But I can picture it well enough to start planning for it.
Steps Switch to dressage-legal bit. Done (Or done once. We’ll see if it sticks.)
Lose the blinkers.
Lose the safety vest.
Ride in the big ring.
Ride with other horses. Dressage test will be alone; warm-up will not be. Trot more than 5 steps.
Trot for the duration of the test.
Practice test.
Go to FCHP to school.
Check Coggins, etc.
Buy rider boots.
Buy/find rider jacket or suitable shirt.
Buy/borrow leather bridle.
Buy/find show saddlepad.
Enter test, reserving the right to bail at any point.
Milton is LibreOffice, or Microsoft Word, or any commercially available text program. You want the word “Hello”. You open a file. You type. You get five letters at the top of a page: black, serif, 12 point font, probably Times Roman. Straightforward. Useful for a wide range of activities. Not what you would use to design the marketing strategy of a national chain.
Rodney is FontForge. You want “Hello”? Where do you want it? What size? What color? What thickness on the upstrokes? How do you want to adjust the kerning? Immensely powerful. Immensely complicated.
Rodney will do exactly what I ask him to do. Exactly. If he goes cattywompus around a corner, it’s because I sat cattywompus around a corner. If I want a simple right turn at the walk, I have to check that my balance is properly adjusted down the outside of my body and leg, sit up tall, and bring my inside shoulder up and back. Voilà, a balanced and accurate corner.
The simplest move is complex. Does that mean the complex moves will be simple? Our one exposure to lateral work would indicate yes [Dressage June 2017: We Leg Yield, Who Knew?]. If I can sort myself out to ask correctly, I can design logos that would win Clio Awards.
When the recent cold snap was looming on the horizon, many of my neighbors chose to blanket &/or put up their horses. We chose to do neither.
Human behavior toward horses often reflects our values as a species rather than the way the horses see the world [How I Learned to Think Like a Horse]. In this case, my desire to be toasty warm inside my house and not come out until Spring. If I do go out, I wear enough layers to cause comment from passers-by.
Yes, if you clip a horse’s coat, you are responsible for replacing the defenses that you removed. You are committed to a winter’s worth of blankets, stalls, lights, whatever it takes. This is one reason I don’t clip.
I’m not anti-blanket. Mathilda and Previous Horse wore them for years. Mathilda scoffed at them when she was younger, but became quite the blanket hog in her old age. Rodney doesn’t get them because he shocks himself [Zap!]. Milton points out that there is no reason that HE should be punished because Rodney can’t manage a blanket.
After this bout of weather, I’m pondering that blankets are far less necessary than I had previous thought, provided the horses are healthy, fit, well-cared for, etc. My Shetland doesn’t blanket, except for individual need, and those horses live in far more extreme conditions.
I am mildly anti-stall. I understand that there might be insufficient land or that people are worried about the safety of expensive show horses or that some horses (coughSamcough) would be appalled at the idea of living outside. Overall, the only purpose of a stall is to make life easier for the humans.
Instead of stalls and blankets, we shoveled hay and hot water at Rodney and Milton. I upped the grain a little, mostly for my benefit. Internal warmth comes from the long-term digestion of hay. So they got hay. Lots and lots of hay. Little snacks throughout the day rather than one big load. The frequency of snacks wasn’t a problem since we were marching up to the barn every few hours with buckets of warm water from the house. They love this. Rodney will drop half a bucket in one go. Providing water also meant we didn’t worry when the trough froze over. They have access to shelter at all times, but didn’t use it (unless we put their hay there).
Truly cold weather is rare enough that all of this is feasible. Obviously, we would make different arrangements if we lived farther north, or had more horses.
They seemed fine with it. Some mornings, after thunder and rain, we can see that they are tired from a long night. This week, they were happy and rested for the entire arctic episode. We never had wintery mix, so they didn’t have issues of getting wet. The snow settled on their backs and their dense, plush coats insulated the horse underneath. They seemed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. And wanting more hay.
Not a lotta snow, but a lotta cold & ice.Fighting over the hot water. (I brought more.)Dog walks must occur.This is where they were sunning, so this is where their snack was served. Spoiled? Not them.Water in many forms.
Horses can ride and drive on the same day. Saddlebreds do so all the time.
Whiskey
We are not currently asking Milton to multi-task. We tried it over the holidays. It did not go well.
It was the day Milton walked about with me leaning on one stirrup [I Ride]. He was a star. We gave him a break, hitched up, and tried to to school some driving. He was a pill. He wouldn’t go in the ring (in his defense, it is a steep hill). Once in the ring, he revisited getting silly at the end of the ring [On the Move]. He whined and fussed the entire time. He’s had worse individual moments, but this was the worst he has been consistently.
Does he not like riding and driving on the same day?
Did he not like going back to work, regardless of activity?
Was he having a bad driving day unrelated to riding beforehand?
Or does it have nothing to do with the horse, instead the operators have trouble switching gears?
Who knows.
Eventually, he will be able to do both. Nashoba [Show Report] has a ride-and-drive class where entries are driven, tack is changed, then entries are ridden. If all goes to plan (Ha!), Milton will slam dunk this class. Some day.
For now, Milton does one at a time. Since both driving and riding are being done at Stepping Stone, we go over, work, come home. It is tempting to combine the activities, particularly since my rides are so short. Slow, methodical horse training struggles against maximizing efficiency. Festina lente.
I did not show last weekend. I did not feel ready.
Between rain, the holidays, the cold snap, and riding (yay!) and driving Milton, I’ve only had two saddle seat lessons since the last show [Show Report]. This was not enough to give me confidence that Whiskey and I were ready to go back into the show ring.
It is possible that the more I ride the home team (Kermit dance!), the more my saddle seat will deteriorate [Pondering]. Although I have not yet figured a way to continue dressage lessons [Dubious Future], whenever I sit on Rodney, I try what I can remember of the exercises. Every time this happens, I reinforce my dressage/hunter/jumper/eventing habits and move farther from inexplicable correct saddle seat habits, i.e. hands in the air, grip with the knees, sit on the cantle. Riding Milton (yippee!) will double the effect.
Even Greg’s driving tips the balance away from saddle seat. Combined driving is based on eventing. Driven dressage is ridden dressage with cart added. Listening to his lessons and watching him at shows puts me in the d/h/j/e headspace.
I had a brief reprieve in November, but the only thing Nationals proved was that I can ride Dottie [Show Report], which is right up there with proving one can drive Alvin.
This isn’t a bad thing. I have two sets of horses to ride. (!!!) More learning is good. I have faith that I can do both, eventually. For a while, it’s gonna get confusing, mostly for saddle seat. The habits of 40 years will always win out over the habits of 5 years.
Confession: There was another reason I did not show. Greg was not able to join me. I showed at the first Winter Tournament without him. It was not fun. My rides were fine [Show Report]. Beforehand, not so much. As I’ve said before [NRHA 2016], I don’t get any less nervous when he is there, I just have someone to be nervous at. I hope I will get my act together sufficiently that I can show without such intense moral support, at least at the little, one-day shows. This weekend was not that time.
Virtual Brush Box 