When I started at the saddle seat barn, the kids weren’t sure how much I knew about horses. One of them asked if I knew how to tack up. Trick question. My horse, yes. Your horses, not so much.
In their defense, if you see a rider taking once-a-week, school-horse lessons and flailing around at the beginner level, you don’t expect her to have horses at home.
So, I was drizzling about watching the barn rats feed the horses. One of the girls laid the feedbag faceup in the cart. She pointed to the tear strip and explained that the bag opened from the right.
Listen Kid, I’ve opened hundreds of feed bags … and I never knew that. Seriously, getting that stupid ripcord to operate was always a stab in the dark for me.
In my defense, we keep our feed upright in trash cans. Front and back aren’t a consideration.
Rice – friends\pretty letter
Oregon – pretty letter
Dartmouth – attended
North Carolina State – local, took one class
Eastern Michigan – pretty letter
Yale – family, local
UC San Diego – Tricky to the point of being unfair, but I was there for a term, so I wanted to include it.
Smith – family
Alabama – local, in their alumni magazine, Ancient Lessons
Georgetown – local
Auburn – local
For another twist on a college alphabet, Fercott Photography spells out college names with naturally-occurring letters from each location.
Saturday has turned into my admin day, when I don’t have a Show Today post. Over time, I will be reposting the entries from my previous monthly blogs Back To Eventing and Back To Riding. You can catch ’em if you missed ’em the first time. I can include them in the Rodney’s Saga search space.
This one is where it all began. I sold the idea of a column following my purchase of a new horse and my return to eventing. HA! A slightly edited version appeared on the USEA website, Tue 2010-08-31 19:18, archived here.
Back to Eventing: How I Won the Training Level AECs
by Katherine Walcott
“If you build it, he will come.”
Lee Garlington as The Voice in Field of Dreams
Photo by Allan TuttleThe Mission
The title is an overstatement since I am horseless. After 20 years of owning an Adult Jumper, I am going back to eventing. Just as soon as I find a horse to take me. The subtitle is one of those affirmation actualization statements the sport psych books endorse. That’s the goal. Let’s see how long it takes to realize and how the scenery looks along the way.
Our Story So Far
Once when I was admiring a new horse, I was told that the rider had looked for a year. My first thought was ‘How horrible.’ I was so right. Last September, we finished upgrading our fencing and began horse hunting. In the past 12 months, I’ve sat on almost two dozen horses, looked at an equal number, and seen hordes by picture and video.
The Ones That Got Away
Horse 1 – The Class Act: The first horse who had a chance of coming home with us was a young Danish/TB gelding. A true mix, his turning radius was somewhere between the roll-back of a Thoroughbred and the barge turn of a Warmblood. He was pretty, a good-mover, and alert to the fences without being insane.
The verdict: Too fancy. Given a few initial blue ribbons and nothing else to ride, I would succumb to the temptation to push him too fast. Plus, I kept crying. Shortly before we started looking, my 26-year-old retiree passed away suddenly. Whenever I thought about bringing a new horse home, out came the waterworks. A subtle clue that I wasn’t ready for a horse yet.
Horse 2 – The Rolex Horse. Candidate number two was a young, wide-built, 17+ hand OTTB. His conversation consisted of “Huh?” and “Okay!”. For a bank jump, I had to introduce the concept in very small words but then he happily hopped up and down. He had a look I see every year up in Kentucky during the jog. Hey, if sellers can tell me that a horse has Advanced potential after one abbreviated Novice-level cross-country school, I can make equally absurdist claims.
The verdict: Too strong. I lacked the nerves of steel to let him carry on at his own pace. I would always be pickin’ and fussin’.
Horse 3 – The Intriguing Problem: An youngish, black TB who had unfortunate behaviors that I felt could be addressed physically.
The verdict: Too complicated. I was more interested in the problem to be solved than the horse underneath.
The Bottom Line
I’ve built the field. Where’s the team?
On the inside back cover was an announcement for this year’s National Academy Championship Finals.
The pictures are from the 2013 show. I am in back of this photo on the middle left. You can see the patch of white hair. [Posts on the subject listed here.]
He swept the six Adult WTC classes, including the two national finals. See how how straight he stands? That’s how he rode. That’s why he is bedecked with blue.
Our round pen is a 20m circle made from simple jump standards and plastic tape. Rodney motors around happily. He’ll even throw the occasional fuss without challenging the tape. If he freaks out and runs thru the tape, oh well.
We do not to use Famous Name Branded Method Round Pen (TM) tactics. Just voice commands and hands-free lunging. Someone has clearly taught him this.
We had jumped him a few times before in the round pen: a jump in the middle, a cavelletto on the rail. No biggie. On this day, we put the jump on the rail. One standard outside the ring, one standard inside the pen, a pole across the path of the circle. To prevent confusion, the standards were different than the ones used to build the ring.
He could not have been better. He went over the pole on the ground or a low, low jump every time: walk, trot, and canter. He would come into the middle for pats (he does this) and then leave the middle to head directly for the jump.
Either he actively likes to jump or he knows that it’s his job and he is willing to do it. Either way, happy rider.
Day 2
Rodney was all over the place.
These barrel standards are heavy, so I had removed the pole but left the standards in place. Rodney just had to pass through them. No jump. No pole.
He was a mess. He refused to walk the circle – something he’s done easily from day 1 of round pen. He’d stop. If we got after him, he’d buck and fuss and run off. He’d dash over to the jump standard inside the pen and start grazing. Tearing at grass is his displacement activity when he becomes stressed.
He thought he was going to have to jump again.
It took two of us – one in the center, one walking next to him – to get him walking quietly around the rail. Afterwards he was exhausted, despite doing far less physical work.
Take Away
He will jump, but it makes him crazy. Sigh. As I have said before [Weekend Report], I may not understand his demons, but they are real to him.
… my mind is elsewhere. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. So, I designed an exercise. I downloaded a buzzer app …
… and gave the phone to my instructor. She tasked with buzzing each time I looked down. We both expected a lot of buzz.
Not so. Two reasons:
1) I was on Bingo. I chose a horse who would not go ballistic at constant weird sounds. Bingo is also the sort of horse who doesn’t get my knickers on a twist [Clinic Report: Day Two]. No twisted knickers meant no default riding mode meant no staring down at my horse while I tried to sort out a problem. If I could ride the other ASBs with the confidence I have on the Bingos and the Georges [Sidesaddle] of this world, I’d probably stop coming in last. But I digress.
&
2) I knew the buzzer was there. That was enough to keep my head up.
_____________________________________
Gratuitous Stepping Stone Farm cats
I had a tall, dark, good-looking gentleman flirt with me a few days ago. Unfortunately, it was Rodney.
He had worked three days in a row in the round pen at all three gaits. He was due for an easy day. So we did weave poles. He loves weave poles. He can do them. More importantly, he knows he can do them, which makes him confident.
As we walked back and forth around the poles, he was happy and relaxed. Then, he got visibly happy but still relaxed. Then, more happy, less relaxed. Then, full-on porn star audition status. The next thing I know, he’s arching his neck and wuffling at me.
I don’t think so.
When my husband took over, Rodney lost interest. He was clearly making a statement about me, not just about a people. I don’t know why. At this point in my life, I’m hardly creating enough estrogen to attract a small squirrel, much less 1300 pounds of male mammal.
Yes, he is gelded. From what we know of his history, he had the vet appointment at a proper time for a colt. Previous Horse was gelded years late and may have been used as a tease stallion. He hit on mares all the time. Never on me.
Weird. And kinda creepy. Apparently, I draw the line at human.
Virtual Brush Box 