Horse Collaborative
About this time last year, I received a call about a possible blogging opportunity at a new and exciting website that was coming down the pipes. Of course, they heard that I'm the irrefutable queen of wordsmithery (yes, that word counts), and called me up to help with the site! It all sounded quite intriguing to me, and I agreed. Good thing too, because that small phone call in my backyard in Aiken last January has finally come to fruition in the form of Horse Collaborative. Let me take a moment, and share with you what I think is going to be the next Eventing Nation.
So, you get to the website, what's it all about? Horse Collaborative is this amazing combination of everything that you need within the internet (for your horses). It is based around a community idea, how to connect with people that surround you who are interested in the same things. You can create your own "page" which allows you to have a beautiful mini-website in just minutes. There, you can blog, advertise horses or tack for sale, promote your business, and connect with other individuals or clubs in your area. You can read articles written by a variety of interesting people, ranging from a blog about trekking across the mountains on a quarter horse, or Denny Emerson's fascinating chronicles of breeds and bloodlines. There are professionals and amateurs alike found on this website, all of us trying to share knowledge, and get more connected.
One of the best qualities of the forums and blogs on HC is the lack of anonymity. I know so many people who have struggled with anonymous heckling across the interwebs, which is quite frankly just the most ridiculously cowardly high school behavior I can imagine. However, the internet allows this, and thus it becomes acceptable. On HC, if you have something to say, it has to be your name under the comment, and you have to be held accountable for what you say. I think this is a really important enforcement of honesty that sometimes escapes us.
Horse Collaborative also has a Facebook page, which is really useful. CLICK HERE! I "liked" it, and now when I sign up, it lets me know when there are horses for sale in my region, when people have posted local equestrian events, and when there are new interesting blogs up on the site. It is a really great way to find out about those hidden gems, whether its a OTTB down the road you didn't know about, or a spur of the moment schooling show that would be perfect to get your season started.
Anyway! I hope that you all will check out my blog on HC, I tend to philosophize a little more than I do on here, and it's pretty fun! I hope to be able to add a new one every two weeks. (MY BLOG, Y'ALL)
December hacks with Nyls
Planning for the 2012 Takeover
Wishing my gallop field still looked this green!
A little later than most, I have finalized my plans for the first half of 2012. I am super excited to be attacking the game once again, and I plan to come out better than ever, with my main man at my side. Unfortunately, we have to run one more CCI**, because our qualifications for a CCI*** run out at the end of 2011, so I will be re-visiting Jersey Fresh this year, which is a little daunting to try and best my previous 2nd place finish!
I will be traveling down to Aiken, SC in the second week of February, a little later than others. I am fortunate enough to live on a dirt road, and I can do a reasonable amount of fitness on that even through the winter months. I will be returning to VA after The Fork.
FEBRUARY 24-26: Pine Top (Intermediate)
MARCH 23-25: Southern Pines (Advanced)
APRIL 5-8: The Fork (Advanced)
APRIL 20-22: Fair Hill CIC***
MAY 9-13: Jersey Fresh CCI**
As always, my calendar is conservative, yet competitive. I like to keep my competitions to a small number, and do lots of work at home in between. The goal at the end of the season is to be able to give Nyls some time off, and then gear back up for some more Advanced horse trials, and then a CCI*** in the fall.
Hope to see you down in the warmer weather!! Until then, stay toasty next to a fire like mine!
VAHT - End of 2011
Best View of Fall Fields
Unfortunately, this fall "season" (both Morven and VAHT) have been plagued with unusually terrible weather this year. At Morven, we toughed it out and ran through the freezing rain, and came out feeling great about ourselves. This weekend at VAHT was predicted to get colder than tank-top weather, but until today, we didn't really know how bad.
At 9:45 this morning, Intermediate and Preliminary riders were called to a meeting to tell us that our Cross Country would run after dressage in the afternoon instead of tomorrow morning...because the forecast called for SNOW???? I think I need to move further south! With only a few hours notice, we were allowed to motorbike around the course for speed, but cross country was running at 3 no matter what. There was a lot of exclaiming, and some grousing, but everybody left the building at the speed of light towards the course.
I returned the the barns and got ready for my dressage test. Nyls warmed up brilliantly, even though it was pretty chilly, and I went in the ring confident. He proceeded to have the most rythmical, consistent, correct test that he has ever performed. I was THRILLED. The only fly in the ointment was that a piece of my hair flew out of my hairnet halfway through and it was driving me CRAZY. I kept looking at the photographer hoping he was shooting my good side without the flopping hair. However, Nyls had brilliant extensions, which are very hard for him, and lovely canter work, even in the counter canter. Sometimes, since he learned his changes, he gets a little tense in the counter canter in anticipation. However, this time he was brilliant and I left the ring grinning from ear to ear.
My division was stacked with the cream of the crop at this level, and we got a 31.6, which left us tied for 3rd! It feels good to beat the big guys in my most difficult phase. Truly, what I really wanted this year was a competitive dressage test. I feel like so much of the time I place somewhere in the middle and then move up based on his jumping skills. This is fine, but I feel like a little kid. This time, I felt like a true competitor. I was in with the best of them.
I have been working lately with Lainey Ashker on my dressage and I'm so glad to see it finally paying off. We have found that he goes really well in the biggest, fattest rubber bit (I use it to break yearlings at the track!) on the flat. If you try the tactic of putting bigger and bigger bits on him, in an attempt to contain or control him, he simply ups his game and fights back. I've known this about him for a long time, and frankly feel like a bit of a moron for not realizing this sooner.
Last year this time, I was resorting to riding him in a double bridle, and he was still running off with me. Now, he can have a baby bit in his mouth, and he's much more happy and obediant. I feel like in the past 6 months, my riding has improved a lot, which is in part due to my riding 10+ horses a day at the racetrack, and in part due to Lainey getting on my case about my position and refusing to let me use my hands as a crutch. It is so much more satisfying to ride a horse who is sensitive to your body than having to pull and struggle.
To sum it up, I scratched from XC, simply because I would not have been able to walk my course more than once, and it would have been a scramble. I was so pleased with dressage, and I know he's a cross country machine, so I have nothing to prove there. I did some show jump schooling tonight, and for him, it was a combined test. As nice as it would be to have a pretty ribbon at the end of the weekend, I made the decision to withdraw and save my horse for another day.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is swallow the fiscal losses, and make the decision that's best for your horse on that day. Nyls clearly has the ability to jump around easily, but did he really need to do it on a moments notice? No. So we now enter the winter, to work on our Advanced dressage test (get those changes down!) and get ready for a serious season next year. I have to re-qualify at the CCI** level, and in order to do a CCI***, I will be going down south early, running an Intermediate, a few Advanced, The Fork CIC*** and Jersey CCI** (again). After that, I will see if I can possibly get to Bromont CCI***, or perhaps take the trek to Montana, which would be very exciting!
Thanks to everybody who helped me and believed in me this year, even through all the setbacks, and even though the scoreboard doesn't reflect this, we ended the season in style.
K
Happy to be Home
Do I Live in Seattle Now???
After about two straight weeks of rain, I have to say, my weather sensitive and naturally complaining tendencies really came to a tipping point. Living in Virginia makes one particularly prone to feeling personally affronted when the weather isn't beautiful, and I'm not sure why. I mean, am I expected to actually function in this kind of perpetually damp existence? Seriously? Obviously, being made of primarily sugar, I fear the worst in terms of melting and dissolving. Nyls agrees.
However, I bravely soldiered on both at home and at the track. I have confiscated any photos of myself wearing goggles and galloping in the rain, because I look more than a little special needs in that outfit. Nyls and I got ready for Morven to run Intermediate after a 6 month break from competing, and left on Friday in lovely weather.
Yes, they have strange "ginger people" on the package.
I was very nervous, anticipating both the best and the worst. For me, a lot of competing is a head game. Nyls has proven again and again that he can easily handle whatever I throw his way, even if I am operating at the level of a mentally damaged monkey on his back. However, this does not tend to soothe my nerves, and I have to pump myself full of these little ginger candies, which prevent nausea. Make fun of my Gin-Gin's all you want, but those puppies work miracles.
Saturday dawned for me at around 4:30 AM, and I left the hotel to find that I needed to locate all of my lost winter clothing in the trailer and promptly don all of it. It was absolutely miserable. Around 40 degrees, raining steadily, and wind blasts that went right up your tail. As if the prospect of early morning dressage wasn't bad enough, eh?
All summer and fall, I have been working hard to explain dressage to Nyls a little better. He used to get really stressed about movements like counter canter, changes, and walking. When Nyls gets stressed, his immediate reaction is to use his strength to bully through you, scare you, and hopefully avoid the movement all-together. However, I had a mini-revelation this spring: the bigger the bit I use, and the more I fight, the more he fights. So, I put a softy-soft rubber Nathe bit on him, and stopped cranking his flash, and suddenly I had this super sensitive, incredibly relaxed horse on my hands. Instead of taking the route of forcing him with more powerful gadgets and harsher bits, I went down the road less travelled and came out on top. Honestly, I can't believe it took me this long to realize this, I think I knew it all along, I was just programmed like most people to respond to strength with more strength.
So, Morven dressage begins, and I try madly to keep my white pants resembling an off-white (which is about as good as it got) and ran from the barn to the indoor, where my test was held. My teeth chattering, I forced myself to relax, ate some Gin-Gins, and Nyls warmed up great. The last time the two of us were in a dressage ring was March, and I made a few mistakes. I worked the week before with Lainey Ashker on how to ride my test accurately, and that was incredibly helpful. I've never known how to put a test together, only how to basically ride the movements separately. Lainey helped me identify my weaknesses, and get the most out of my horse and myself. We misread each other coming to the first shoulder-in (he thought lengthen, I thought NOOOOO!!) and one of our halts was not so impressive, but we ended up getting five 8's, most of it in the canter work and the simple changes which we really struggle with at home. I was a little bummed, because as usual I imagined myself coming back the most victorious dressage rider in the world, but we didn't score as badly as I imagined, and ended with a 35. The scores were fairly high all weekend, and some horses that I know are fancier movers with more experienced jockeys got higher scores than me, so that helped a little.
Thanks to the best groom in crap weather: Addie French
My outfit for show jumping was this: t-shirt, long sleeved fuzzy shirt, vest, show jacket, and rain jacket. And I was STILL freezing. I could have used goggles to see my jumps, and the warm up was a pitted mess. The craters before and after the jumps were pretty bad, so I limited my warm up jumps to a few verticals and two oxers. The actual show ring was a little better, but still pretty rough on the landing side of the big oxers.
Basically, show jumping came down to the fact that I thank God my horse is a ridiculously freaky jumper, and I raised him from a tiny tot to expect all sorts of idiocy from my end. I thought he would experience some "haven't-jumped-in-a-while-jitters" and pull his usual prop and pop moves, but I guess I misread that one. He was all business, approached the fences with his eyes firmly in his sockets (unusual) and actually took the distances I asked for. Now, if I could only see some reasonable distances.... He was a little surprised by the triple, and something weird happened in there where we did a one stride and a trot step?? But, as I mentioned before, he's a freak and jumped clean. I was mostly proud that he jumped the liverpool without snorting or bugging the eyes, because he has a longstanding relationship of hatred with liverpools. Maybe my baby is growing up!? It's only taken him until he's ten...
Cross country! As seen above, it was muddy, muddy, a little rainy, and more muddy. There were four Intermediate divisions, and most of the people in the last two divisions withdrew due to the footing. My division went second after the Pan Am division, and I decided that, what the hell, I haven't run in so long, why not? The course was fairly straightforward, not too big, and not too many crazy combinations. Maybe I've been out of the game for a while, but I thought it was fairly simple. However, it caused a lot of problems for the people who did run. The footing was mucky in some places, but actually dried out pretty well overall.
I pulled out some of the biggest studs that I own, and off we went. Nyls was....phenomenal. I could feel his excitement and happiness to be back out on the course. He absolutely lives for Cross Country. I haven't felt such a good trip on him since the summer of 2009 at Jersey CCI** and NAJYRC CCI**. He cruised around, answering every question with ease and aplomb. I didn't kick him once, and he didn't fight anything I had to say. What a difference to last fall when I was running out of bits to try and make him stop running off with me! I didn't feel that I was going all that fast, but apparently I was braver than most, because I had the second fastest XC time of all the divisions, with only 10 time penalties. This moved us up to 2nd place overall, and Nyls got to sport a fancy red ribbon!
I was so happy with how he came back into the game. So much has happened to the both of us this past year that has made it really hard to get back in the groove, and Morven proved that we both still have "it". There was lots of room for improvement, but even when we are not at our best, it still stacks up pretty well against our competitors, and that feels great. I wish that I could bottle the feeling of riding Nyls XC and sell it. I'm fairly sure that it's better than any drug currently available.
Until next time!
Plantation Field 2010 Advanced
September 16th, 2011
Horse sense is what horses have that prevents them from betting on people.
FINALLY!!! MY NEW WEBSITE!!! I don't know how excited you guys are, but let me tell you, I'm about to bake myself a cake, light the candles and blow it out while singing myself a song. While this may say something less than stellar about my social life, it pretty accurately describes my feelings about finally seeing the results of my long hours of toil on this new website.
As for updates, I'm sure most of you are simply wondering, "Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego?? And where is Kate, too??" . Don't you worry your little noggins, I'm still here. No, I have not been a presence in the Eventing community much this year after coming back from Aiken, but I am in the process of returning. I scrapped my plans of doing a spring CCI*** with Nyls after feeling some discomfort on his part earlier in the spring, and deciding to take the safe path and give him some extra time to heal from his accident last fall. I figure, if MY leg was torn open like that, I would want him to do the same for me...er....if he could, you know.
So, I've been busying myself with my new horse, Ella, who will be tackling her first season of Foxhunting this fall, which means I get to go shopping for lots and lots of tweed! I also have been spending time with my boarder and student Bevin Lexa, who has purchased her first pony through me, and has been making leaps and bounds in her capabilities, while simultaneously teaching her five year old green pony that riding isn't JUST about eating the leaves on the trail.
I have also been working full time at Braeburn Training Center, exercising race horses for my oldest (seriously) mentor Felix Nuesch. Wow, has that been an education! Not only is it more than entertaining to work for an 80 year old ex-swiss Cavalry-man (also ex-eventer and ex-jockey) who has been breeding, training and riding his own Thoroughbreds for the past 60 years, but it has been VERY educational to ride the many varieties of horses. By that, of course, I mean that I'm learning about pretty much every single type of crazy that is possible in the equine mind.
Imagine that you fill two buckets tip-top full of water. Pick them up, and pretend they are pulling on you in a forward manner: this is what racehorse mouths feel like. Let me tell you, it makes me appreciate Nyls and Ella at the end of the day, even on their bum days. After riding 6-7 at the track, and my two in the afternoon, can you blame me for not having a social life??
Nyls is back in full work, and we are getting ready for a few events this fall, an Intermediate as a warmup and hopefully time for an Advanced. We are entered at Morven Horse Trials coming up soon, and I'm super excited to be back in the game.
More news soon, so stay tuned...or else....
Try to pretend you don't want to touch this.
Photographic Knee Timeline
Everybody loves gore...right? Well, maybe not, but everybody loves Nyls, so here we have the amazingly fast healing proof of Nyls' right knee, which he tore off in a completely random and really horrible accident with me last October. He was very intent on licking his knee while it was healing, and looking at these pictures and the timeline, I'm thinking of bottling his spit and selling it as a combination antiseptic and miracle healing solution. Enjoy!
