Suiting Up

Trump
Trump

I am currently showing in the Academy division, aimed at lesson students on lesson horses. The heart and soul of saddleseat is in the performance classes: Three-Gaited Country Pleasure, Five-Gaited Show Pleasure. In these classes, riders wear the traditional long-jacketed suit with a color-coordinated derby. Hence the term “suit classes”. If Academy riders plan to move up, this is where they plan to move up to.

When I tried on my not-cheap Academy duds, I could see a gleam in my instructor’s eye. To her this was the camel’s nose. She would continue to gently lead me down the garden path until I was in my own saddleseat suit on my own saddleseat horse. Since I have been at her barn for 8 months and have yet to miss a show, this is a reasonable conclusion.

To me, saddleseat is a detour. I’m getting out of the house, meeting great people, even learning things that will improve my riding on any horse. I don’t see turning away from hunter/jumper-dressage-eventing to go saddleseat full-time. I can’t imagine trying to balance both. I won’t say never. I never thought I’d continue this blog past one year. However, I find the possibility of high-level saddleseat deeply unlikely.

1) Money
Horse showing is expensive enough. Imagine the cost of showing in diametrically opposed disciplines: separate horses, separate barns, separate training, separate shows. The only shared equipment would be helmet & gloves. Oh yes, even if I were to be in a fancy suit, I’d be wearing a helmet.

2) Horse
Barn rules say that suit riders must have their own horses. The head trainer (my instructor) thinks that the horse needs to be focused on one particular rider.

You work as a team and you want that horse specifically worked/conditioned for you.  With multiple riders a horse can have multiple issues.  When working towards a goal, you want everything to be consistent.  

If you want to be the best, then you need to provide yourself with the best equipment, horse, trainer, etc..that you can afford and wish to put into it.

Since I know squat about the upper reaches of saddleseat, I would have to keep this mythical horse in training. After keeping my horses in my own backyard for 20+ years, I would be a terrible boarder. I have too many opinions on how things should be done and am too used to indulging those opinions. That’s just at a basic barn that provides a stall, turn-out, and two meals. I would be even worse at a training barn where someone else was making decisions about my horse’s care. That’s nothing against Stepping Stone, I would chafe at any training barn.

3) Time
If you are going to do it, do it right. That would mean going to the barn enough days a week to make the effort worthwhile and going to enough shows to merit having a horse for that specific purpose. That would mean leaving my own barn to chug along with minimal supervision. I don’t see this happening.

I still think it would be fun to find a saddlebred. But only so I could take him or her away from this life and go jump something. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ll stay with saddleseat – but as a visitor, perhaps even live there awhile as an expat. I have no plans to change my passport.

Time will tell.

Back In The Saddle

Lesson this week. Yeah! Rode a new horse. Eeep! Trump is good-looking to the point of being flashy and committed to working with his rider to the best of his understanding. However, he may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Reminds me of Rodney.

After my whining earlier about not riding [Grateful], you’d think I’d be skipping about farting rainbows. It doesn’t work that way. Nothing much changes in my activities of daily living or my response thereto. It’s just that over the next few days there will be an absence of crazy.

Riding doesn’t necessarily make me happy. I’m always a nervous mess on the mounting block. (Previous Horse was the one inexplicable exception to this rule.) Thirty minutes on an ASB leaves me exhausted for the rest of the day. I still flog myself for mistakes and decisions made decades ago.

It’s just that not riding is worse.

New Rule

The good news: Mathilda is getting stronger.
The bad news: so is her willfulness.

The blacksmith was here on Tuesday. Just because she could hold her own weight didn’t mean she wanted to. She was on her worst behavior for shoeing since her injury. We finally had a kerfuffle that sent the people running for cover and convinced the mare to fly straight for the remaining feet.

As he left, my blacksmith warned me to be careful working with her. He is not a worrisome sort. Perhaps I should listen to him. New barn rule: No one picks up Mathilda’s feet unless the other person is there. That means picking out, painting unguents on the sole, or putting on booties.

It’s one of those low-risk, high-outcome situations. It’s very unlikely that anything would happen. However, if it were to go bad, it’s likely to go bad suddenly and in unexpected directions. Even before she got wobbly, she had proven her lack of natural grace. Granted that just my opinion, but I’m the one she landed on [Helmet Evangelism]. I’m not worried. Just establishing good habits.

Do you have any barn-specific safety rules?

The Point Is

My state saddleseat association has a year-end points system that confused the stew out of me at first. Having spent the spring wrestling with it, I can appreciate the internal elegance. The deal is that every show gets an A, B, C, or none designation. Points are determined from this.

C show: first is 8 points, second is 7 points, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, eighth is 1 point, & 0.5 points for participation with no ribbon.

B show, values doubled: 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, & 1 for showing up.

A show, values tripled: 24, 21, 18, 15, 12, 9, 6, 3, & 1.5.

The tricky bit is that the designation is not determined until the show is over. It depends how many other barns from our state came to the show. Two barns – C show; three barns – B show; four or more – A show.

Confused yet? Here’s the theory behind it.

One option would be to count any ribbon earned at any show anywhere. Saddleseat shows tend to have the same classes, e.g. ASB Country Pleasure Driving. It would be possible to combine the results. However, since it is a state association, there is the feeling that year-end awards should be earned competing against other state barns, not splaying all over the map each doing our own thing.

A second option is to chose, say, ten shows that count toward points. Anyone who has ever sat through a rules meeting at any horse show association can picture how smoothly that does not go. Every barn has their own reasons for going to this or that handful of ten shows. Everyone agrees on eight shows. Reaching consensus on the remaining two is, at best, unharmonious.

So, the system outlined above, weird as it sounds, combines the best of both: freedom of choice and intra-state competition. Every barn goes where it wills. For instance, my instructor likes the show in South Carolina. No one else in the state does. We go. We ride. We have a lovely time. However, my three ribbons do not count for the in-state, year-end awards. The Tennessee ribbons count double since three barns came to the show. If two in-state barns attend the World’s Championship in Louisville, it’s a C show. Individual classes are not the issue. Barn X may compete in Three-Gaited, while barn Y competes in Five-Gaited, and Barn Z competes in Academy. Three barns – B show.

I’m looking good so far, but I’ll believe it when I’ve have an award clutched in my fevered fist. You see, I tend to fall afoul of year-end award systems. One year, I was consistently hanging onto the bottom rungs of the Top Ten only to be shoved into 11th by a late rush from another competitor. They gave me the Sportmanship Award that year. The moral high ground is all well and good for the state of my soul but the competitor in me wants big fluffy ribbons and gaudy trophies. Previous Horse and I almost won a jumper year-end, hi-point award. While I won the division several times, it was not held often enough to qualify. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I had realized the rules from the beginning. As it was, I basked in seeing my name on the top of the points reports only to have the entire division disappear off the page at the end of the year. Bitter? Moi? Grudge-holding? Jamais.

What year-end awards have you won or watched slip away?

Update. Still didn’t get it quite right. The above is true for out-of-state shows. (1 AL barn = no points, 2 AL barns = C points. more than 2 AL barns  = B points.) The only A-point shows are the big in-state shows. The informal summer, in-state shows are C points regardless of who attends. Got that?

My Confidence Has Increased

ribbons spring

The Mental Game
Moving past yesterday’s snit, the spring saddleseat shows have been good for me in more ways than simply keeping me amused until I find a new horse or figure out how to ride the one I have. Previous Horse went to a few shows in his retirement years. We even earned hi-score at a dressage show. Still, we were not doing any serious showing. I rode regularly. PH would not have handled a passive retirement. But, mostly I pottled about the pasture on horse I knew well.

In absence of positive data, I tend to assume the worst and deteriorate from there. When I ride too long by myself, I start comparing my progress to an unattainable ideal. That way lies madness. I need to get out among other horses and riders to remind myself that one can still be competent while being non-ideal.

Plus, it’s good to learn new things. It has been good to have a challenge easy enough for me to succeed, yet hard enough that my success doesn’t feel empty. It’s good to meet friendly, pleasant horses. Even the grumpy ASBs I’ve met want love. Kinda.

Spring Recap
Four shows, nine classes, five blues. The blues include a sweep from the Georgia show [Show Report, humorous ribbon photo]. It’s hard to think of two as a sweep but I did win everything I entered. The crop of reds is less impressive than it looks. My classes have been tiny. The white (4th) was a last place. One thing on which we can all agree – saddleseat shows understand ribbons.

ribbons closeupMissing from the array is the blue from South Carolina [ASAC]. Since it was such a big, pretty ribbon [see inset of second place ribbon], I left it with my friend to show her granddaughter whose lessons at Stepping Stone were causative to my ending up there [Random]. “Here little girl, don’t you want one of these of your own?” That’s me, the horse show enabler.

Progress
When I look back at the Winter Tournament shows, I see that I was a basket case [A Hot Mess]. Years back, I was interviewing for a job that I desperately wanted. I had to take a drug test. I had no reason not to pass, so I was sure the job was mine. I was equally and completely convinced that I would inexplicably fail. Being positive on two conflicting ideas at once? What can I say, I am vast. As this spring went along, my nerves never got any less. However, I began to believe that I could actually do this and it might even be fun. Dual drives of nerves and excitement.

I think that might be the answer to riding in big shows such as Rolex or the Olympics. You are still nervous. From what I hear that never goes away. However, alongside of that, you have developed mental and physical skills you trust.

Do you have any spring progress to report?
—
Title: not perhaps the most appropriate quote for a generally mild-mannered site. Blame Alabama Phoenix Festival. Science Fiction conventions have a tradition of late night sing-alongs: My Little Pony/songs from Equestria, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Once More with Feeling, and the granddaddy of audience participation, the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Skipping out for the horse show precluded my attending any evening events. Instead, I played Rocky Horror on the drives back & forth to APF. Ever since, I have had the entire album as an earworm.

Photos: apologies for the blurry shininess. These are the best of the lot. Ribbons are even harder to photograph than LEGO bricks.

A Grateful Whine

A flat few days lately. Con crud. A crop of minor but motivation-sucking occurrences. Rodney being his gorgeous, useless self. Mostly, it has now been OVER A WEEK since I have ridden a horse. Hyperventilate. Withdrawal symptoms. Rage & agony.

The main question is how on earth did I survive from April 2011 (the last time I so much as sat on Rodney) until September 2012 (my first saddleseat lesson)? I must have been a joy and a delight to be near.

Saddleseat has been a slender bridge over the abyss of despair that is my riding career, but a bridge it has been none the less. However, no lesson last week. The nice lady who has the saddleseat barn and all those lovely lesson horses, had surgery. She’s through the worst part and promises to be back in action quickly. NOT quickly enough, thank you very much.

You know who you are. Get well soon … I need a horse fix.

Whining while grateful. Selfishness disguised as concern. What can I say, it’s a gift.