Show Today: Embrace the Day, Dixie Cup 2015

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The Dixie Cup
April 30-May 2, 2015
Georgia International Horse Park
Conyers, GA, USA

Sport Psych
When Tim Price and Wesko knocked down a pole in the final phase of the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, the mistake cost them $56,000. That was the difference between first and second place. Can you imagine the pressure?

Karen (Lende) O’Connor, the USEF color commentator this year, has won three times at Rolex, including the CCI**** in 1999 with Prince Panache [Wiki: Rolex KTD]. On Sunday’s livestream, she said you have to “Embrace it.”

My motto for today:

Embrace the Nerves

I’ll let you know how it goes.

More on the subject:
Finally Farm: Revisiting the Psychology of Riding
Horse Collaborative: Understanding the Mental Skills of Highly Successful Riders
Horse Junkies United: 5 Tips to Improve Your Mental Game for the Show Ring, presented by The Clothes Horse

Technical Considerations: Position
At the last show [Report], I lost control of my shoulders. I drooped. I flopped. I pitched forward with abandon. [Photo series: Dueling Disciplines]

At my next lesson, I had a crop shoved down the back of jodphurs and another laid across my forearms. The first reminded me to sit straight. The second insisted that I lift my hands, my arms, and therefore my shoulders. I felt like a fool. But it worked. Is it possible that maybe, finally, I understand what to do with the upper six inches of my torso?

I can achieve the correct position at a halt and under controlled conditions, i.e. on Bingo in the round pen at home. The next step is to maintain my form on different horses, when I need to adjust the horse, and/or as I get tired. Perfect isn’t going to happen right away. Today, I’m hoping for “Decent effort.”

Technical Considerations: Traffic Management
Despite my less than stellar showing, I did improve on looking where I was going in the show ring [Counting]. Unfortunately, I started looking in the MIDDLE of the curve and as I started down the long side, exactly what I would do if I were looking for a jump out of a corner. I need to look BEFORE the curve, so that I can plan a path around the other competitors.

State of the Blog: A Matter of Record

End of the month commentary on blogging.
List of previous SotB

The blog has been around long enough to serve as a repository for things forgotten. That can be good and bad.

The Bad
Part of stylin’ in the saddle seat show ring is to cut the end of the arena at a crisp, 90o turn, instead of following the curve of the track. This is called a diamond. I know this. I have been diamonding for three show seasons. However, this spring I hear that the point of a diamond is traffic management, ‘If you’re just going to get covered up, why do it at all?’ 

Well, hell. Why hadn’t someone told me this? I was randomly tossing diamonds whenever I had a clear shot. I thought the point was to impress the judge. I had no idea that other people where involved. No idea at all. It was never mentioned in my presence. Not once. I’m sure of it.

In Boot Camp Begins posted after my first lesson on diamonding, I wrote:

Riders use it to get clear of other horses.

Oh.

The Good (or passably consoling)
Hindsight is useful for thumping myself about the head and shoulders. How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I see that something was wrong? Lather, rinse, repeat.

In So What Am I Going To Do? posted in November of last year, I wrote:

We think Milton might have something very mildly amiss.

It wasn’t mild – poor guy – and we took far too long to figure it out, but at least we noticed.
~~~
Gratuitous Pasture Sunset

sunset 4 28 15

Pondering Wrist Position

A common riding admonition is to keep a straight line from elbow to bit. Okay. What is straight?

wrist

If I look down at my hands while riding, A is the one that appears straight. B feels straight. The answer, at least for saddle seat, is C. (A if driving.) When I combine this wrist position with the elevated hand position, I feel as if I about to poke myself in the chest, if not the eye.

Update: Here I am considering the axis that would consitute cocking the hand up or down while holding the reins. As far as the in/out axis, the back of the wrist should be flat in relation to the forearm (not popped out as pictured in A). Not sure about driving.
~~~
Gratuitous Photobomb

wrist paw Blue wm

The Power of Narrative

“We are Pan narrans, the storytelling ape.”
The Science of Discworld II: The Globe
by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen
[Elbury 2002]
Wiki.lspace.org: Narrativium

Milton is impatient. After one or two trips through a new exercise, his response is ‘Yeah, Yeah, I got this.’ Sometimes we change the exercise to keep him challenged. Sometimes we tell him that he’s not as clever as he thinks he is and that he must practice.

Does Milton experience the concept of impatience as I do? Not at all.

However, horses definitely have opinions. Two horses can have separate, even opposite, responses to the same situation. Working with horses requires taking the individual into account. Before I can work successfully with a horse, I have to discover his (or her) narrative. Sam needs to be treated as a fabulous show horse, especially deep into a long series of Academy classes. Natalie wants to be treated like a fairy princess. Is this true? No? Yes? I have no idea.

When I tell myself these stories, I behave in a way that causes the horses to react favorably.
~~~
Gratuitous Cat Photo
Ghost ladder 12 30 14

Pics Or It Didn’t Happen

Rodney walk 4 26 15

I’m not ready to go public with video. Instead, as proof of concept, here is a still from one of them. Rodney and I have been doing short, quiet, walk sessions on a semi-regular basis. Yay!

Rodney is wearing a synthetic schooling bridle because leather upsets him [Here We Stand]. Go figure. He’s wearing neon green because why not?

Riding bareback avoids putting saddle pressure on his scar area [Daddy Dearest]. This problem will have to be solved eventually. Although, I could foresee that much of his at-home work would still be done without a saddle.

I was not happy when I saw that my ground crew had a camera. Our previous photo session didn’t work out well [Universe]. I made him put it away while I got on. Superstitious? Magical thinking? Moi?

Is the glass half full or half empty? Both. We have a long way to go. OTOH, we’ve come a long way.