Notes from North Georgia, Us

Home Team, Combined Driving
Another horse show, another dawn over a parking lot.

 
Another showcation, this time sans show. Stepping Stone Farm only brought suit horses to the Northeast Georgia Charity Horse Show & the Mid-Summer Classic Horse Show , at the Chicopee Woods Agricultural Center, Gainesville, GA. Husband Greg and I brought Milton along for more away-from-home experience before summer closed in. Previous adventure [Primitive Trailer Camping, Us at Mid-South 2018]

Living
+ Still enjoyed being on the grounds.
– Lacked the novelty of a new adventure.

+ We had all day to ride/drive and take care of one horse.
– Care of one horse and two work sessions took all day and wore both of us out. I brought projects. I never touched said projects.

+ When the evening session of the show ended at 11:30 on Saturday night, I could stumble across the parking lot and go right to bed.
– Repeatedly stumbling across a parking lot while folks drove back and forth.

+ City matters. More options to eat in Gainesville than in Rainsville …
– … which was a good thing, as we had far more trouble with ants.

+ Every faucet had someone’s hose attached, open to all users. Ours was in the wash area.
– If the hose leaks all over the aisle, turn it off when you are done. Why is this hard?
– Almost came home without our hose. Who thinks to check the washstall when packing?

Riding/Driving
– Milton is not Caesar, never will be [In Defense, Deary Monday].
+ Different does not equal worse. I need to value Milton for his own self.

+ Teaching a horse to do something is easy.
– Teaching a horse to do something until it becomes a habit is hard.
+ Milton has done so much lunging that the routine settled him when he had his Mr. Hyde moment.

– One pea soup explosion, 3(5) hard spooks, and some generalized fussing.
+ 9 work sessions in 5 days, all ending with gold stars.

– The Mr. Hyde/pea soup was the very first day. Usually Milton waits until after spending the night in a stall. Greg started lunging and Milton briefly lost his mind. I didn’t see exactly what happened. I was too busy running around the arena closing gates. It was almost as if Milton thought he was back at the track, had a panic attack, then realized he was with his people, doing his thing.
+ After a few minutes of Milton lunging quietly, I got on. Go me.

– Hard spooks. One, repeated twice, was on day two, while driving, at a trailer next to the ring. Spooked, spun, cantered off. Lather, rinse, repeat. The third time ended with some moderate hopping. Greg settled him, put him to work, and ultimately trotted quietly back at that end once or twice. The heat may have been on our side, re sails, taking wind out of.
+ In retrospect, probably not as bad as it looked/felt. We are both hypersensitive to Milton’s bad behavior at the moment. Coach Courtney saw everything and was not perturbed.
+ Did not turn a hair at hitching. Wondered why we were hyperventilating.

– The other two hard spooks were during grazing sessions. One at a passing trailer. I saw it coming and had choked up on the bat. The other was horses at liberty in a distant ring. I had just finished mentally commenting that he doesn’t mind what other horses do when he suddenly noticed the other horses, thought, ‘Holy Horse Frolics, Batman’ and spun.
+ Either I’m really good, or he wasn’t really trying to get away.

– Generalized fussing. The third time in the arena, on the last day, Milton decided that he had never seen the space before, that he didn’t like the looks of it, that motorcycle in the parking lot was the herald of doom, that the people on the bleachers where on a rampage, etc., etc.,
+ Standard issue green horse behavior that I found ridable.

+ Schooling in the arena with traffic. Oncoming: no rearing. Yay. Caesar did this all the time. Passing: slow down to see what the other horse is up to. Weird, but yay.
– Overtaking: On look, my new best friend. I must go over to them and bond. Tug, tug, tug, stay in your own lane your silly beast, darn this loose steering.

– Milton had to ride AND drive each day. We were very careful about the heat and how much we asked. A lot of the riding was wandering around looking at things.
+ Eventing and Combined Driving have three phases. Fitness is a factor.

+ The horse is allowed physical and mental breaks.
– The rider/driver is not.

+++++ Milton was a trooper.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Notes from North Georgia, Milton

Home Team, Combined Driving
Please note how I have carefully arranged myself so that I can still see out.

Another trip on the rattly box. Another home away from home. (Gainesville GA, ed.)

Trailers is scary. Not mine. Mine is fine. Other trailers, with other horses on them.

Motorcycles is scary. Don’t like loud vroomy noises.

Other horses is scary. Sometimes. Other times, I look at them and laugh. Why use all that extra energy?

I don’t like using extra energy. Except when I need to use extra energy. Then, I have a LOT.

I like to leap away from scary things. But not too far. If I did, I’d be all on my alonesome.

I’m an old hand at bridling and hitching now.

I walked EVERYWHERE and looked at EVERYTHING. Different arenas, barns full of other horses to talk to, even walking down a big – a huge – hill, and trotting in the open.

A bucket of treats. Five pounds of carrots. Constant hay. Home away from home is not without perks.

I need to talk with the brown horse about sharing the load. (Good luck with that. Many others have had the same conversation with the brown horse over the years, ed.)

Update
[Notes from North Georgia, Us]
[In Which I Consider How Much Schooling Is Enough]
[What Happens When One Spends Five Days Sitting About In Northeast Georgia]

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Road to the World Cup, Rail Work vs Patterns, Guest Post

Adventures in Saddle Seat

 

Stepping Stone Farm rider Reagan Upton is on the U.S. Saddle Seat World Cup Team. She is sharing her story. Welcome Reagan.

Part 1 [Have Saddle, Will Travel]
Part 2 [First Team Practice]
Part 3 [Three-Gaited & Five-Gaited]
Part 4 [Do I Miss Equitation?]
Part 5 [Traveling for the Team]
Part 6 [What Is Equitation?]
~~~

Reagan and Rare Friends win Adult Equitation at the 2015 Dixie Cup horse show.

The World Cup competition consists of two phases (Phase I and Phase II) that are held on separate days. The riders are required to ride a different horse for each phase. Each individual phase will consist of two segments:

1. Rail work: the riders will all compete together and work at a walk, trot and canter (the five-gaited team will also work at the slow gait and rack) both directions of the ring.

2. Pattern work: this will be executed individually. All the riders competing have received six patterns already to begin studying and practicing. At the competition, two of the patterns will be drawn at random and those will be the patterns the used for each phase.

The rail work section will run like any other horse show, with the exception that I will have never competed on the horse I will be riding. The rail work segment on an unfamiliar horse doesn’t stress me too much. I have been lucky to have many opportunities to catch ride at horse shows on horses I have never ridden before. Competing on an unfamiliar animal is something I am familiar with.

The pattern work section could be tricky. If you have read my previous post [Part 3], you know that five-gaited equitation is not present at USA shows. So doing five-gaited pattern work is not something I have a lot of experience with. I have done 100s if not 1000s of three-gaited patterns, so I am comfortable and well versed in the individual elements of the patterns. I am just not polished in the “gaited format”. Luckily, I have the patterns to practice before the competition. Two of these patterns will be used during the competition. The wild card will be the horses…

USA is required to provide all the horses that will be used for the competition since we are the host county. USA’s five-gaited horses will not be familiar with pattern work since USA does not have five-gaited equitation. So racking a figure 8 or slow gaiting a serpentine is not something the horses have been previously trained to do. At least the playing field will be even. All five-gaited riders from all countries will be riding gaited horses that probably have never been asked to do pattern work before this competition. The biggest challenge for ALL riders will be communicating each required pattern element to the horses who will all likely be thinking, “You want me to do what???”

Baby On Board

Random Snaps

 

When we go over to Stepping Stone Farm with Milton, I bring drinks to store in the tack room.

There’s a future foal in the refrigerator! Tell me this isn’t a weird time to be alive.

I know the idea was to keep the box cold. I took the photo as quickly as possible and then closed the fridge. I even went back to double check that the door was shut.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Mr. Excitement Regards His Future


Home Team

 

We took Milton to Full Circle Horse Park to walk over the teeny, tiny Amoeba-level jumps. Despite my snarky title and the half-mast ears in the photo, Milton’s attitude was the perfect combination of stepping quietly over the little logs and marching happily around the field.

He paused in front of one jump, as if to consider whether he could indeed step over. As I sat there considering my next move, he decided that Yes, he could and over we went.

We trotted about the countryside, we trotted away from a few fences, but did not trot AT any jumps. I didn’t want him to get overexcited and land in a rampage. He’s done that on the lunge line.

He spooked once. At the platform where the dressage judge sits. After which, he crawled around the dressage ring at a snail’s pace.

Likes XC. Hates dressage. Looking more and more like an event horse.

My first time on cross-country in … I don’t know … how long ago did they stop having penalty zones? My first time on cross-country with Milton. Our first time passing through red/white flags together. Our first time standing in a start box.

Baby steps.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott