The Waiting Is The Hardest Part.

So, Quattro has been back in work after his winter vaycay for about 2 weeks. And if I say so myself, he's really looking rather good:



For those who may be unfamiliar with the H/J circuit, I'll just point out that for THAT discipline, this canter is very nearly spot on: he's got the nice easy pace, he's powering off his quarters, but he's RELAXED up front too, not tensely stood back off his front end. He's light enough up front that you feel he could get over a jump without ever changing the pace. And that's exactly what you want. His stride (or "step" as we call it) does need to be longer, but he's young and out of shape and simply doesn't have the motor for that yet. You can see how it *should* be when he canters along the top of the hill at the very end of the video.

Right now is the point that it is CRUCIAL not to rush with this nice young horse. If you think back to last year, there's a wonderful change between this and "Mr. Go Mo' Faster" rushing around all tensed up with his nose in the air! Heck, back then he didn't even know which foot was supposed to come down first (causing me many a *headdesk* moment).

Unfortunately, we humans are competitive by nature, and we want it all RIGHT NOW. Especially when show season's upon us and it's all this close to being within our sights. I get excited about how well he's doing, and I battle the temptation to rush things EVERY day. More than once.

Good jumping stems from good flatwork. We all know this. If I had started him over jumps last year, I'd have ended up with a panicky rusher - the scary kind we've all seen, that buck through the changes because they can't do it any other way, and try to hurtle headlong at the jumps fighting the rider at every step. If we rush it with Quattro, it could still all go in that very direction - south. Sure, he LOOKS like he could canter around a crossrails course with no harm done - but it's an illusion. He's really only playing a hunter horse on TV; he just happens to be doing it rather well.

You watch that canter, and it's just sooooooo tempting to push too hard. My daily internal monologue goes like this:

"Just ONE jump from a canter would be so great to see..." "NO!"

"Maybe we should start him with ground pole gymnastics..." "NO!"

"I wonder what would happen if we tried to start him on autochanges..." "NO!"

"Maybe we should stick him in crossrails at the Rivermont (H/J) series..." "NO!"

And so on. You get the picture. When cantering, he might give every impression that he's ready to go on, but he's NOT yet, and here is why:



See how inconsistent he still is at the trot? He's trying his little Saddlebred heart out, but he's still tense and upright in the front end and has to be coaxed to drop his head and drive from behind. It's all uneven; there's no consistency of pace and no consistency of impulsion. These are all indicators of insufficient strength in the hindquarters.

You know how YOU felt (or feel) in high school gym class when the teacher asked you to do something you knew you couldn't physically do. It doesn't make for happy students, and it doesn't make for a positive learning experience. It's SCARY. And it sets you up to fail.

Quattro still simply lacks the balance, hind end power, and confidence to be doing anything much more than what he's doing right now. Sure, we pop him over a jump every so often - a teensy-tiny vertical, leisurely thrown into a trot set, just to show him that's what's coming, and encourage the concept of "forward OVER something" with a nice, relaxed pop. But it would be a betrayal of a lovely and willing young horse to ask for more than that right now, because it's all he CAN do.

He's still only three. There is plenty of time. Time which we will use to work on lengthening, building up strength behind, and building up the impulsion he needs to have to carry him CALMLY and SAFELY over a course of small jumps.

But boy, Tom Petty is right: "The waiting is the hardest part!"

The adventure continues.

Time to scrape the mud off!

Okayyyyy, it's time to scrape the mud off and get this show back on the road!

I've been a good girl and have been out to the barn every night this week to work Quattro. He was great up until tonight, when the combination of it being feeding time and there being a Shetland pony mare in the adjacent pasture were enough to get him alllll aired up and rowdy. You know what that's like - the "Look at MEEEE, I'm the Coolest Saddlebred in the World and I ROCK!" thing. He finally irked me so much with the rearing and bucking (I lie: it was the striking at me that ticked me off!) that I forcibly reminded him that until he has "CH" in front of his name, he's just another Saddlebred cull. (I'm kidding of course.) :-)))))

The thing about Q is that he is BATSH*T crazy for the first 5 minutes, and then after that he settles down and is ready to be reasonable. I keep trying to explain to him that cutting to the chase and just doing it right the first time would make his schooling sessions a lot shorter and get him his dinner quicker - but oh no, we have to get the stupids out first. We did end on a good note when after yet another stern talking-to he finally dropped his head and relaxed.

Probably going to trot him out at some ASHAG shows early this spring. Fear nothing, ASHAG'ers - he's a work in progress! :-P

The adventure recommences.

Why we need to NOT "win ugly".

Read this excellent article by Matthew Syed, which is LESS about a soccer team I happen to support than it is about the aesthetics of sport - ANY sport, including ours.

So, so much of it can be applied to equestrian sport in general and dressage in particular, where "winning ugly" has become the international zeitgeist.

This article illustrates exactly why we need to NOT do it, and why there will always be hope for those who CHOOSE not to do it.

How did we lose sight of this? How did we go so horribly wrong?

This is a beautiful and inspiring article, which I resolve to re-read EVERY day before I walk out to train a horse.

The article is tough going and may require a re-read or several to get your head around it. But yes - a great dressage horse coming down the center line, or a great Fine Harness horse, or a great equine athlete of ANY discipline - should indeed live up to the goals set out in this article....

..."All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move."

NOT "win ugly".

The adventure continues!

What's YOUR Horse's T-Shirt Slogan?

Just a silly for the holidays. What's YOUR horse's t-shirt slogan?

HRH Avery's was "You want control? Get a remote."

Quattro's is "What's your name? Mine's 'Whoa, Dammit'."

He was feeling extremely... "perky" shall we say - when I lined him yesterday, and we had to argue about "Whoa, Stand" on the lines for at least half an hour. Honestly I ran out of ideas for outwitting him. He's pretty good about what I call "applied halting", meaning that if he thinks there's a good reason to whoa, he'll be a good boy and stand there for as long as it takes. But "whoa" just because the trainer said so? Not so much...

I'm going to have to resort to a header with a lunge whip, and sooner rather than later. For carriage driving, a horse MUST have a good whoa/stand - it's the most important thing. This Twinkletoes routine ain't cutting it. And I have a feeling it's going to be the hardest thing to teach him!

The adventure continues.

Anniversary.

AVENELL ROAD, a/k/a "HRH Avery"
June 13, 1986 - December 5, 2008.

Gallop free, my brave TB. I love you and miss you so much. You truly were "The Mostest Hoss." I daresay we'll meet again soon enough...

EDIT:

Me: "Sorry, Avery. Me being me, I got the date wrong."

HRH Avery: "I told you, ya stupid fool Twolegs, you really should NOT be let loose without a Smart TB at the other end of the leash!"

Hanging Up My Boots.

The good news: I rode Quattro myself today for the very first time!
The better news: He was a little rockstar. WHAT a nice young horse he is; I'm so lucky to have him.

But now, for the bad news: I'm hanging my riding boots up. It's time.

For those who don't know me, the backstory is that twenty years ago, I had the Big H/J Wreck: pulled a rather large paint mare down on top of me and broke my hip in 2 places, my pelvis, and two vertebrae. HRH Avery broke two more for me spooking at a Mini about five years ago, so that makes a total of four vertebrae (L1 through L4, if you're into keeping track of that kind of thing) that are fused and don't work at all, as well as the fact that the hip and pelvis healed all funny and I'm 37% range of motion disabled laterally, meaning my hip (usually) works fine going forward and back, as when walking, but I can't stretch my right leg to the side for more than a couple of inches. But enough of my medical problems; I can't stand old people who go on about their medical problems. I'd rather tell you briefly, if I may, about a couple of very special horses...

There's a saying that goes "There is no secret so deep as that between a man and his horse." HRH Avery, my late and sketchily-sound Thoroughbred, and I shared that secret. In public, he'd do his best to pretend he was still a Good Horse and I'd do my best to pretend I was still a Good Rider - but we were FAKING IT, and the unspoken secret between us was "Yeah, this hurts like blazes, but don't tell anybody!" He understood totally that it was his job to Take Care Of Me, the same way I did him: Thoroughbreds have an exceptional sense of quid pro quo; it's their best trait. We pottered on for years doing what little we could do; sometimes once around W-T-C in the ring on good footing, sometimes an hour's trail ride; other times I'd scramble aboard and grit my teeth with the pain and he'd take four lurching steps and we'd stop and look at each other and say "Uhhhhh... NO." and I'd scramble off, stick his halter and "lunch line" on him, and lead him out to eat grass while I lay under an apple tree.

The one-year anniversary of HRH Avery's death is this coming Wednesday. He was my Mostest Hoss, who guarded my secrets well, and I miss him deeply.

When I was sixteen and a hotshot Big Eq. rider who could and would get up on absolutely anything and probably manage to squeeze a decent trip out of it (like Catch Rider Hannah is now!), I used to wonder how people could STAND to "just" be The Owner. How could anybody STAND to have a super-nice horse and never ride it? It just didn't compute in my head.

Now, at the age of 51, I understand completely. The answer is simple: You give up riding when (a) it's no longer fun, and (b) when it's the best thing for the horse. Not necessarily in that order.

For me, both (a) and (b) are now true.

I got away with riding a lot longer than I should have because HRH Avery was so wise, as well as being a mature horse who was 17.2 hands and built like a tank so he could more easily tolerate, in the physical sense, any unevenness from his rider.

For Quattro, this is NOT the case. He's a narrow 15.1 and he is green, green, green. He's still trying to find his own balance let alone help me with mine. He was quiet and perfectly well-behaved when I rode him today, but I swear I could *feel* his left stifle popping out when we trotted. And then came the calamity that really drove it home that I do NOT need to be riding any more: I couldn't dismount. My bad right hip had absolutely turned to water and I couldn't move my right leg at all. Marisa had to actually leave me on him and go for help! It took two people and an exceptionally kind Saddlebred to get me off him, and it very nearly took a truck!

I got off him and said to myself "Yep - time to hang the boots up." And I gave my little Q a huge hug and a bunch of cookies for being, in all likelihood, the last horse I'll ever ride, and being SUCH a good boy about it!

No sympathy, please. I'm blessed. As regular readers will recall, I saw this coming at least a year ago, and took Quattro in with the express intent that whatever he ended up doing under saddle, he would also cross-train into carriage driving for me. I just want to make sure he gets some good under-saddle mileage first, and finishes growing both physically and mentally. He is a LOVELY little horse, and I'm so lucky that in what is really a pretty NON-huntery-jumpery part of the USA, I've found such great trainers and catch riders who can ride and show him for me.

And you know what? It's not really all that BAD being "just the owner". I'm still pretty hands-on with the boy, and will be for quite some time, since his driving training will be done by me and all his show prep and whatnot still is, too. It's not like I'm going to be sitting in some foreign country just writing the checks. I'm also a big believer that everything you ever do to/around a young horse teaches that horse something; every handwalk or ground drive he goes on with me will make him a lot easier and more reliable for Hannah and Marisa. Just today, for example, Quattro met FIRE for the first time - there was a cookout at the barn, and he nearly had a meltdown at the smoke and crackling wood, but I managed to talk him out of it, and taught him to walk past it quietly and calmly. That's one MORE future potential carriage driving wreck averted!

So that's it really - I'm hanging the boots up, and will watch with great pride and excitement as Amy, Hannah and Marisa take my little Tony the Pony to the next level.

The adventure continues!

Quattro's First Horse Show!

I am now more than halfway convinced that Saddlebreds have "horse show" embedded deep in their collective unconscious the same way other horses have "snakes are predators" collectively embedded in theirs. At his very first horse show, Quattro had his game face on the WHOLE time. He was an absolute pro, and tried his very best for us. I'm so proud!!

Our barn took (if memory serves) 8 horses, ranging from baby greenies at first show to seasoned professionals. The horse stabled next to Q had never even been in a stall before - THAT's how green we're talking. Quattro has already long since given me to understand that pasture board in the rain is NOT his idea of a good time, so he marched right into a strange new stall in a strange new barn with a look on his face that said, "Well, THIS is more like it!" He tested the bed by having a nice roll and calmly settled down to eat hay and spent most of the rest of the two days attempting to look sufficiently cute to cadge edibles off any passing human:



For those of you who are Saddlebred people and may not be familiar with this scenario, I'll just point out that H-J shows at Wills Park are busy. And I mean BIZ-ZY!! You really haven't had the full-on Wills Park Experience until you've seen all five rings going at once, with people trying to mow each other down in the warmup rings while trying NOT to crash into the infamous TREE in the lower one; until you've had to school at close on midnight and again before six a.m. just so you can work the young ones quietly and safely; until you've had to share the warmup rings w/ the maintenance crew on tractors trying to drag the footing (who were, actually, really, REALLY nice and gave us every opportunity they could to move from ring to ring while they dragged the ones we'd just left - THANK YOU GUYS, you are such a huge part of what makes these shows work!).

This is only one pic but it should give you the general idea: almost every square foot of space anywhere on the grounds has a horse parked on it!



Why are they all standing around doing nothing, you Saddlebred people might ask? Because here is the key difference between H-J shows and Saddlebred shows. H-J shows do NOT run on time. Not ever. Not even close. Trainers have conflicts from ring to ring, so Ring A will be on hold while Trainer A coaches students in Ring B, then Trainer A rushes to Ring A and Ring B is on hold. And so on. And so forth. World without end, amen!

So the one CRUCIAL thing that a young H-J horse can learn at its first show really isn't to perform well in the ring: that, believe it or not, is almost beside the point. The most crucial skill for a putative hunter horse is learning to Hurry Up And Wait. Because that break listed in the prize list as absolutely positively GOING to happen at 9:00 a.m. so you better be ready really isn't going to happen until around noon... As indeed proved to be the case.

If there was one thing I would have expected Q to have problems with, it would have been the Hurry Up And Wait. He's a Twinkletoes at the best of times and really can't keep his feet still; I really thought asking the lad to hang around for hours between four scary rings in a crowd of peeps and heese might stretch his baby greenie brain to the breaking point.

Ummmm, NOT:



I honestly was more pleased with that than almost anything else he did at the whole show! It bodes well: sooner or later he'll learn to be like HRH Avery, who upon arrival at any in-gate anywhere in America would simply happily settle down for a snooze.

Quattro also got to learn about that other staple of Planet H-J, The Last-Minute Add. You Saddlebred folks are lucky - you go to a show, you enter your division, it runs when you think it's going to run, you show in it, you're done. On Planet H-J, not so much. We had intended to show Q only in Green Horse Walk-Trot (ideal place to school a baby greenie). But he kept his wits about him and was so well-behaved that his talented young catch-rider Hannah (brave girl!) and I decided, and convinced Trainer Amy, to put him in for another flat class where he had to canter! So horsie thinks he's done but he's really not; instead he gets another x minutes/hours of Hurry Up And Wait practice while Owner races to Show Office to do The Last Minute Add and get the add slip back to Ring B. Then he goes in again.

Quattro would have been completely forgiven, in my opinion, for concluding that this Horse Show Stuff Is Nucking Futs and simply going on strike.

Ummmm, NOT:



Like I said: He tried his brave little Saddlebred heart out. The thing that tickled me the most was that my twinkletoed little greenie who really CAN'T stand still at home not to save his life marched right into the lineup in both of his (huge) classes and did the most perfect dressage halt there has ever been (Anky, you listening?) and the feet did NOT move!!

See? I can prove it! Even Trainer Amy was laughing at him at this point; he was just TOO perfect:



OK, so his classes were huge (about 20) and he made a baby greenie mistake in each one - a teenytiny buck in the first class and a teenytiny wheelie in the second, so we were out of the running, but you know what? He stayed sane, he stayed safe, he obeyed orders, and nobody got hurt, maimed or killed. And that is truly the result you want for a young horse at its first show.

I have, at this point, to give a shoutout to the other members of Team Quattro, who made all this possible:

Trainer Amy (seen here watching a student while doing the Hurry Up And Wait for her own class):



I am so very lucky to have found a trainer who likes Saddlebreds, understands the mentality, and is willing to take the time to work with the rather unusual set of issues the breed presents. THANK YOU AMY!!

Catch-rider Hannah, an exceptionally talented junior, who gave Quattro a superbly intelligent, tactical ride with the goal of just keeping him forward, light and consistent and staying safe, and who managed to fool a whole show ground into thinking the little horse actually has canter leads, when the reality was he'd been cantering all of three weeks, really didn't, and had never cantered in a group, let alone in a group of 20! Hannah is a young lady who is smart enough to realize that giving a baby greenie the perfect ride at its first show is way more important than winning ribbons. I'd go on and on about her graciousness and good sportsmanship, but I think the smile of accomplishment says it all. THANK YOU, HANNAH!



Last but not least - let us not forget the Horse Show Parents. Not just Hannah's - although I think they are pretty special folks for allowing their daughter to catch-ride a baby greenie of a breed that has the rep on Planet H-J of being "psycho"! - but ALL the horse show moms and dads out there who devote so much time and effort to all these wonderful kids and pretty much keep this sport going. This pic kinda says it all too:



In summary, I think we'd have to call this horse show a raging, roaring success.

Quattro, like all good Saddlebreds, is now on winter vacation and will be back in training in the spring.

The adventure continues!