Milton’s rate-limiting step for driving shows is transportation. Locally, we could drive the cart over, come back, drive the horse over, show, reverse the process. If the show is 20-30 minutes away, that equals 3 hours of shipping. Cumbersome, but not impossible. This is what we already do for the driven dressage lessons.
All we have available locally are driven dressage classes at regular dressage shows. This means modified tests to fit in the narrow, ridden dressage ring. We have to travel for anything driving specific: derbies, combined test, pleasure shows, CDEs. The closest are the MTCC shows that Greg did with Bliss last year [HDT, Derby]. Those are 4 hours away. Other places are 6 or 8 or 10 hours. Double trips are not feasible. We have to figure out a way to get horse and cart on the bus at the same time.
Thanks to the showing last year, Greg has all the gear he needs: jacket, apron, gloves, show hat, etc. Milton has the harness. We have the cart. Now we need to get there.
Oh yeah, and prepare a green horse for his first show. Details.
At least we have the local driven dressage tests to start. The first likely show to have driven dressage is a few weeks after the show Milton & I might attend [Schedule]. This gives me a strong – albeit juvenile – motivation in order to show him first.
tldr: more logistics. Thrilled to be at the point of having these kinds of problems issues to iron out.
My saddle seat schedule can be reduced to 2 words: who knows?
Logistics
I hope to make my debut with Milton at a show in March [Schedule]. Since I am currently riding in a ring, I only ride when we can ship to Stepping Stone Farm, which means weekends. That leaves a handful of rides between now and then. Therefore, I have to capitalize on every weekend. I have already declined the last Winter Tournament show and the first big show.
Before I can devote an entire weekend to a saddle seat show, I need be able to ride Milton during the week. These means either riding at home &/or shipping Milton to SSF by myself, enabling me to take lessons/ride in an enclosed space during the week. Both of these are in the plan. Neither are going to happen immediately.
Yes, I am turning down horse shows. Gasp. Clutch the pearls. I’m also planning to skip most of BrickFair. More pearl clutching.
Yeah, I really want to show my own horse. It has been way too long.
Focus
Even if I had all the time in the world and necessary facilities to hand, there is merit to focusing on one thing at a time. This is not me being a weenie. Karen Pryor calls it New Tank Syndrome [Back To Kindergarten].
While I am wrapping my head around riding and showing (cross fingers) Milton, I cut back on other things, such as obsessing about my deteriorating saddle seat and fretting over new ASB mounts.
Of course, I could just be chill about shows and catch them as they occur. Me? Chill? We all know that’s not going to happen.
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.
Virtual Brush Box 