Grooming Tweets

Last Saturday, we took five horses and 11 riders to the Horsemanship Challenge. I rode last year [Regular Programming], but declined to do so this year.

They didn’t have enough blue ribbons on the day. [Show Report] The rosette in the earlier post was a stunt double.

We continue to show at a saddleseat barn that has a resident hunter/jumper trainer. I have yipped about this before [Echoes].

Tweeting as a groom was an experiment. Turns out I had much to do but little to say. The point of the Horsemanship Challenge was to show on an unknown horse. Each rider pulled a horse out of the proverbial hat, or in this case, plastic food storage bag. Then, we all ran about identifying our horses for other riders and helping our riders track down their mounts. Repeat for two divisions with three classes each. I spent the day getting subsets of child, saddle, horse, & bridle into the same point in time & space. Exciting moments consisted of “Yes, this is Willie.” or “Oh, here is Annie’s bridle.” Useful information, but hardly an exciting tweet.

I have not done a full-on grooming day in a long time. My feet hurt so badly afterwards that my in-house masseur had to give me a foot rub before I could stand up long enough to take a shower.

My GPS track for the day.
My GPS track for the day.

A friend invited me to dinner that night. Technically, an event could have existed that would have drawn me out of the house. Short of resurrected family members, none came to mind.

Mare Update the Second

Mathilda is making the Thoroughbred look sane. Due to winter weather and muddy footing, her current routine is pen at night and handwalks/grazing during the day. Furthermore, we have switched her from a senior feed to a pellet of which she likes the taste. No more leftovers. More calories + less activity = spooking, spinning, & trotting in hand. From a horse who often tacks at the walk.

While concerned that she might hurt herself, we are delighted to see her full of pep & vinegar.
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Gratuitous Cat Pic

Percy
Percy

Update: Title changed because I am starting to repeat myself. Mare Update from last summer

Obedience Epiphany

Old ASHA logo
Old ASHA logo

Saddlebred riders do not want obedient horses.

Bear with me. Dressage and saddleseat have many similarities: rearward balance and an uphill shoulder from the horse, seat and posture from the rider. That is a topic for another post.

A dressage horse trotting down centerline has no idea what the test is. Rides at home are an endless remix of gaits, transitions, and figures. Show patterns are majorly different for each level of competition, minorly different within the levels, and change every few years. Patterns are not practiced between shows. The goal is a horse who is attentively and athletically ready to do whatever she is called upon to do smoothly and promptly. This is termed submission. This does not mean a slavish robot. Dressage riders want a happy working partner. On her blog post, Vocab Lessons, Ange Bean writes “Submissive = When the horse lets you control of each of their body parts easily.”

(Pet peeve: I take issue with the common dressage parlance of “improving” a horse’s balance or gaits. His balance works fine for his needs. We may want to bring the horse in line with a chosen ideal, and work to help the horse achieve this ideal more easily, more consistently, and on demand. However, to privilege one expression of a gait over another is a value judgment that resides inside our heads. End soapbox.)

When an ASB enters the ring, he knows the drill. Enter at a trot heading left. Walk (perhaps. The big-time performance classes are not stringent on this.). Canter. Reverse. Repeat. There might be a little modification: the instructor throws in a second canter if the students are not sufficiently worn out, a horse competes in walk-trot instead of walk-trot-canter [Show Report: Class 78]. By and large, the routine is the same every ride, every class, every year. The result is a different attitude on the part of the horse. No one wants a Saddlebred who asks, ‘What next? What next? What next?’ They want one who says, ‘Hot damn. Here we go.’

Different requirements from the horse equal different goals for the rider. My job – on a Saddlebred – is to assist the horse to look as flashy and striking as possible. Then to sit lightly until I am called upon to assist further. Granted this is easier on a trained horse who knows her job. I imagine that riding a young Saddlebred requires stronger assistance and less time staying out of the way. But the underlying philosophy remains. I would think.

Folks who know more about dressage &/or saddleseat, please weigh in.

New ASHA logo
New ASHA logo

Great Grays

Milton
Milton covHorse & Hound recently ran Milton: 12 fascinating facts about our hero. Check out the first picture. That’s how horse should use his shoulders over a fence. Found courtesy of the Facebook page for Equestrian Legends – Book

My favorite Milton quote from his biography:

Sometimes I get so carried away on Milton I ask him to do something that is almost impossible, but he’s so good he manages it. Then I try it on another horse and I find myself upside down. Milton by Gail Newsum [Kenilworth 1991], p47.

Gem Twist
My brush with greatness was down in Florida. Wandering the barn aisles at a Tampa show, I saw a gray horse standing toward the back of his stall. A nice enough Thoroughbred but nothing remarkable. He looked tired and a little grumpy. He could have been some kid’s 3′ hunter recovering from long day of outside-diagonal-outside-diagonal courses. Then I spotted the nameplate.

Local Hero
I was tailgating at a steeplechase with a friend who owned a gray. In her honor, my friend bet on any gray in a given race. The grays he backed didn’t always win, but they always finished ahead of whichever horses the rest of us chose. By betting color, he won every race in our betting pool.