Stillwater Stables

I originally had another post today, but in the light of my favorite instructor putting out her video, I wanted to share with you all!

I rode with Connie before she became a non-profit org., taking dressage lessons. She helped me with Yankeeface and his excitable nature and taught me how to teach a baby dressage. She is a wonderful person and I love what she has done for the community with her farm.

I actually donated Dolly (my first horse, an older Arab mare. See "previous horses" tab above in pages) to her stable in hopes that Dolly would make a god child riding horse. Sadly, when her husband, like my father, got laid off from DHL, they had to sell her. Then, several of their horses had medical issues and they lost almost all of their riding horses.



Over time, and the gracious help of others, they regained their footing and are truckign on stronger than ever.

I just wanted to share her story with you all, since she was such a huge part of my teenage life.

PS I despise this new blogger. Why, blogger. WHY.

I've Had As Much As I Can Take

Just when I thought life couldn't get ANY worse...we put my 3rd min pin down last night.

After tonka died in Dec., we adopted a 6yo min pin from the humane society. I'd had a min pin in HS and loved her, but she died of a rare blood disease. Tonky, suddenly died of a horrific seizure, and now this. I feel like the dog killer.

He was such a goofball!

He constantly had issues with his health and required a special diet and frequented the vet often. Just last week he racked up $500 after getting extremely sick.But we loved him anyways.

He was on the mend, but still weak, and tripped going down the stairs while going outside to potty. He broke his leg in half and we opted to put him down. The damage was severe, and I didn't have high hopes for a good quality of life afterwards. I thought the best thing to do was let him go. I spent my last $40 to my name doing the kindest thing I could think of for the little guy.

So here I am, 4 months later, my heart breaking yet again, only a few short weeks after Spirits death, and a couple months after Tonka's. I feel like people are judging me. I feel like the worst person in the world. Maybe if I had had a couple thousand more dollars laying around I could have tried to fix Vinny. Maybe I just shouldn't have dogs. I've hadthe worst luck, and the only dog I've had for more than 2 years was my chihuahua that I spoiled for 12 years. After him, I guess I lost the dog luck charm. I feel like a dog killer, even though I do my best to provide them stellar care and I sacrifice everything I have for them.

SO now I have no drive to ride. Or do anything for that matter. With the combination of being 100% broke and loss after loss, I feel like I've hit rock bottom.

FML.

JOMPING. All The Things. With All The Horses.

I know you all are tired of seeing us jump. But get over it. Its more exciting than dressage.

Normally I blather about Jankee, but today, since I rode Pronto, I want to deviate from my normal subject matter and talk about the big monster.

Jackie hadn't ridden in a week, and Pronto's owner fell off at the show and got a concussion so we concocted a jumping day for the two of us. Not really sure what her goals were for the day, but mine were to keep the monster from hitting all the jumps, not let him refuse and keep my leg solid (stay with him).

We think we are pretty cool.

Before I dive into Pronto-ness, here are a few pics of Jankee. Since we had to keep the jumps Pronto height (no more than 3' for now) she focused on accuracy and speed/turns.

Like. a. boss.

wicked turn

Knees!

Turning in the air!

They were pretty awesome. Yanks was wound up, since he had just come off a jumping show and a day off. PROUD :)

OK, Pronto.

He has refusal issues. and knocking jump issues. And overall impulsion issues. I appoint it to the fact that he is still pretty green at jumping and needs to be shown HOW. With Jackie's masterful eye, I attempted to negotiate him around a small course (5-7 jumps at 2'9-3')

I was instructed to keep my upper body back, and still but keep my leg on and contact up till the jump. We tried letting him figure it out. We tried me telling him when to jump. Found a balance between the two. If I 100% kept still but rode him through the contact, he remained on his butt, stayed ahead of my leg and jumped WONDERFULLY. He refused the barrel jump once, but I'm 97% sure it was my fault. I rode him to it like I expected him to refuse. So he did.

I found that as long as I stayed still, he was actually EAGER to jump and took everything with gusto.

He had a little trouble with this line...

But after about 6 times, of missing the distance, or me dropping him, we finally nailed it.

Also, when jumping this big guy, its so HARD to keep your leg still. His jump is awkward and huge. It throws me, Jackie and his owner forward. Every. single. time.

I was concentrating so hard on keeping it locked down, and my overall position improved. Check it...

Sup. NBD.

We got this.

Everyone came out to watch and it was a pretty good feeling working with this big guy and succeeding!

Afterwards, we wanted to go have some fun out on our mini XC course. I say mini, because we have like 5 jumps and none of them top 3', but its still fun.

Down-some reluctance at first.

Up!

Down! (first time ever!)

Up! Can we please talk about how he looks like the biggest dork dinosaur ever. EVER.

Double Jomp!

In other news. I'm RATHER pissed at Area 4.

Not only is the selection of shows slim, but the ones they offer are like, HOURS and hours away. I got super spoiled in Area 8 with all the shows at the KYHP. Even more depressing is that my favorite show, Mill Creek has FOUR entries in the Training Level. 4. Meaning I could possible tromp everyone and not only qualify for the AEC's, but win the high point TB award in the T division and the $100 prize, the halter and the pad. Screw walking at graduation. Don't care. HA-RUMPPPFFF!!!

There is a tiny schooling show in Kansas on April 28, but that would mean I would have to scrap up $95 in one day to enter. And its 2 hours away. But Jackie neeeeeeeeeds a schooling event because she has never done XC. Hate everything. First world problems.

F**k You Mothernature!

Before I get to the show lowdown, I wanted my dear readers to check out Jackie's new blog! She is a-bloggin' and about 21x's more interesting than me. So if I were you I'd check her nonsense out :P

This weekend's weather was very unkind. I should have known that the first show of the year would yield relentless downpours, thunderstorms and tornado watches. Fantastic. I spent most of Friday fretting if I wold get my $ back, or if we would just all die from drowning. Fun fact about me- I am literally terrified of thunderstorms and they pretty much render me useless until they pass. I usually curl up in a tight ball and somewhat sob like a little child until they blow themselves out.

Nevertheless, I hooked my truck up, loaded a confused Yankee (he was not braided or bathed- a process he is accustomed to for shows) and made my way to the show grounds, all in the pouring rain. I made it there about 10am, and I had quite a while till 2:03, so I gave Yankee his hay and headed over to watch my barn-mates ride their tests.

Luckily, the weather broke around 11:30 and the sun actually came out for a hot second. I got Yanks off the trailer about 12:45 and let him graze before I tacked up.

This is an extremely fantastic picture of Yankee.

He was a total gem on Saturday. Not at all the cray cray OTTB I've experienced in the past! I was blown away by his serene attitude and our warm-up was more than perfect. We headed into our first test with confidence and executed it wonderfully! Minus the break in the canter as we headed across the diagonal for the simple change. We barely waited 15minutes and we were up for our 2nd test. Our lateral work was pretty crappy, but he was more than relaxed and supple. I'd never felt or seen him act so wonderful at a show and I exited my second test smiling ear to ear! Our third test- 2nd level test 1, went super fantastic as well! His shoulder in right was a bit stiff, but otherwise, the countercanter was flawless, and everything else was just lovely. In all of the tests, his free walk was excellent and the stretchy circles were great! All the practice is really helping!

Overall, I was pumped to see our scores, since I felt he was mostly perfect, and rode better than we ever had before. unfortunately, even though the judge was super sweet, she was uber unfair. Like, whoah. Normally I don't bitch about judges, but we never crested a 68% on any of our tests and I thought we deserved much more than that. Perhaps I am biased, since I know how psycho he used to be, but I figured we would at least get a 70% on the First Level tests.

The girls who beat us had over 70%'s, which I could NOT figure out. Not only did their horses go around with their noses in the air, but they were stiff, spooky and generally unpleasing to the eye. Nevertheless, at the end of the day I was pleased with a first, 2nd and 3rd and a brilliant performance by Yankee, but that tiny competitive part of me was pissed!

Sunday dawned even more stormy than Saturday and I stalked the radar like my life depended on it. It actually probably did, since we had a tornado watch, god bless smartphones. The bad storms were going to hit around 11:25, right before my dressage test. I debated scratching, but went anyways.

I got there around 9am, and they were ordering all horses off trailers and to stand in the indoor. This complicated things a bit, since a) there was no warm-up for dressage indoors because of the already limited space being taken up by the offloaded horses b) I had to haul all of my tack to the indoor, in the rain, since we weren't allowed to go back to our trailers in the lightning.

About 20 riders scratched, so I ended up riding my test at 10 something. With no warm-up. At all. Can we please think about this for a minute? No warm up. At all.

We got to WTC in the dressage ring for like, 3 minutes before our test but this in no way suffices as a dressage warm-up. I usually take 30 minutes to stretch, walk then gradually work up to trot and canter.

Our test was alright considering. His stretchy circle was not very stretchy since he was still cold, and he bucked a mighty buck in our second canter circle, but otherwise he was collected and calm. I thought for sure we would be in last place with that and was rather frustrated. Not the show grounds fault that it was storming, but still....FRUSTRATED.

Jump 30 minutes ahead and we were getting ready to do our stadium round. After the lighting passed, they let people start doing rounds again...in the sideways, pouring rain. FUN! No walking the course. No warm up. At all. Again. I sat there watching the riders go...

(This picture does the rain no justice, it was so thick I could barely see!)

Yankee was not amused.

Since I had about 2 people before me to memorize the course, and not having walked it or warmed up (I hand galloped around the indoor for a few minutes before hand), I was very apprehensive. I came here to practice though, and eventers ride in the rain, so I sucked it up and tried very hard to remember my course. It was to say the least, extremely windy, wet and cold. The course was windy, with a triple bar fan, a swedish oxer, vertical one stride combo and a skinny vertical, among others.

Yankee. was. brilliant.

He acted like he was having the time of his life! He was squealing and overjumping everything. I couldnt help but ride around with a HUGE smile on my face. Not only did my horse go out in the torrential rain, slop through the disgusting ring, jump this training course like a boss, but he did it wonderfully, WITH NO WARM UP. I love him. Love. Double clear!

Again, no justice for the mud

I sprinted back t0 the trialer with him, tore off his sopping, sandy tack, and tossed him in the trailer with hay. I drove up to the office to grab my test and walked into ALL the riders crowded around the table. They were doing like a ceremony type thing. I got my barn-mates tests and ribbons, since they dipped out before the storm and was stunned to hear " Can we please get Monica up here front and center?"

I was like, Me?

Then they handed me this giant ribbon and goodie basket, telling me I was overall champion for the weekend. SAY WHA?

Dude, that is wicked cool. I ended up winning my division with a 30! Imagine if we had warm-up and no buck! I was SO ELATED. God, I love my horse!

"I haz no moar roomz on mah face mom."

"Can I just have treats now?"

Wow. Just wow! My OTTB FINALLY won something huge!

My disgusting tack.

The winnings from this weekend

Our goodie basket!

Coming off my happiness high, I began my chores shift at the barn. I had most of the horses in, less 3 geldings from the far field when mothernature really screwed us. It literally rained for an hour. Solid. It was bad. 2 of the 3 barns flooded, and the lower barn was like a river! I would post the video but the BO asked me not to, so out of respect, I won't. 2 stalls flooded completely...

...and a few of us spent almost 2 hours digging trenches in the aisles in hopes some of the water would drain. It was literally like a river in the lower barn. The water was flowing and it was ankle high! Never in my life have I seen rain like that!

The self care barn flood.

Eventful weekend!

What The Friday

WTF is all I could say when I saw this.

I saw this a few weeks ago and thought it was clever photoshopping, or a huge joke.

NOPE.

I cant even...

Woke up today to torrential downpours and some cray cray thunder. I was wondering if I should even prepare for the show, but I got an email saying it would carry on, rain or shine.

Fantastic, since its supposed to storm all day tomorrow.

And I walked in to see this...

Awesome sauce!

I don't even know how to fix that! So the water just sat there. I'm sure I'll get a squawking text from the Icequeen about that, but whatevs.

Practiced First Level Tests 1 & 2 today, and a few movements from Second Level Test 1. He was pretty good, just a little tense from the pounding rain. His leg yields were pretty shitty today and maybe thats because we've never started at X and only had half the arena to get over. I think we will just do the best we can tomorrow, but Pronto/Hannah is (some of) our competition for First Level and they have some legit leg yields.

Cleaned tack, clipped Yanks nosey/ bridle path and prepped the trailer as much as I could in the rain. Luckily I don't ride till 2PM tomorrow, so I can spend the morning prepping if I need to. Still deciding if I want to braid for a schooling show. I love braiding him :)

Slightly panicking because I can't find my
a) hairnet
b) white breeches
c) camera charger

I think I will die if I don't have video of our first 2nd Level Test. Also upset because the Boy says he can't come because he has to study. PFFFT. What part of "this-is-one-of-the-few-shows-you-will-be-able-to-watch-me" doesn't he get? Besides I ride all 3 tests within an hour. Whats an hour?

At least Big Sexy got a bath from the rain. One less thing I don't have to do.

Gridwork

Grids are by far one of my most used/favorite tools in my Toolbox for Success. They can be used for almost any level horse that knows the basics of jumping and can be manipulated in infinite ways to suite the horse and rider. A grid will increase athleticism, as well as improve rhythm and balance. By utilizing what grids have to offer, riders can improve their mounts form, take off distance, teach and correct striding, strengthen, and help horses learn how to properly jump and carry themselves over fences.

I've been doing grids with Yankee since he was 5 years old. He used to have all sorts of issues (most OTTBs do) and grids gave him a focal point for his energy and improved his over all straightness, impulsion & balance. When he had a baby brain, we used lots of ground poles and cross rails, switching up the long distances (2-4 strides) to keep him on his toes. As he progressed, we shortened distances to occasional bounces, 1 & 2 strides and integrated oxers & verticals. Today, I vary it every time, but he is more than competent to tackle multiple bounces, verticals, varied striding, and oxers.

Yesterday, this was our classroom:

I consider myself a master at pulling jumps out of my ass, and with Jackie's assistance, set up this lovely grid. Our goal was to get him to set back on his butt and use himself, lifting through the shoulders and challenge him with verticals and bounces. The first is a simple crossrail, 2 strides to a 2'3 vertical, 1 stride to a 18in. vertical, bounce (no stride) to a 2'9 vertical, bounce to a crossrail, then 3 strides out to a 3'9 oxer.

Jackie had the bright idea to have a larger vertical to a smaller, to a an even larger vertical to a cross rail to help set him back even more. By giving him the chance to regroup over the lower vertical and crossrail before the oxer (physical break), we alleviated the chance of excessive brain stress (mental break)-which I feel is imperative for a successful training session.

Obviously, we started all of them off as crossrails or groundpoles, and each time he moved through successfully (impulsion, balance and not knocking any down) we raised them-usually 1-2 holes. At first, he was having issues staying balanced( drifting majorly to the right) and maintaining impulsion. The key for Jackie (as with all riders through grids) is to maintain stillness and let the horse figure it out. Occasionally riders can assist with a well placed leg aid but normally, it is up to the horse. That is why it is important to progressively make the jumps higher.

The final jump

Looking very composed and tidy

I had his striding memorized yesterday but it completely slipped my scattered brain today. The standard formula for a canter stride is 12 ft plus 6ft for take off and landing, so
Bounce = 12'
1 stride = 24'
2 stride = 36'
3 stride = 48'

However, Yankee is a complete weirdo and none of those worked out for him. He is a rather short strided TB and I'm pretty sure it was
Bounce = 1o'3
1 stride = 16'3'
2 stride = 32'
3 stride = 48'

Weirdo.

He is LOVING the hackamore. This is his, "locked onto a fence" look

Overall, we were happy with how well he did with the challenge of the bounces and verticals. He whacked his hooves twice through but otherwise, he was a gem and really accomplished what we set out to do-set back on his butt and work it!

I also wanted Jackie to work him over the horse eating barrels I had trouble with on Sunday, so I set up the fence and asked her to simply swing him around to it after the line.

Cake.

He seemed to be mocking me with this move...

AW YEAH, TAKE OFF FOUR FEET EARLY, YEAH!

I'm pretty sure its just Jackie's awesomness as a jumper. She has no hesitation or frumpy shoulders, like I do, hah. Must emulate.

Holy Hops Batman

This is old (May 2011), but hot DAMN! CAn we please talk about how the jumps in the race are like, 3 feet tall and the fence the rogue horse jumped was about 7 feet?!

And yes, about 20 people got injured, none killed though.

Still insane, and I had to share.

On a lighter note, THIS video is an absolute riot (wish I knew how to get 2 visoes on one post). I seriously almost shit my pants with laughter. I needed that after this ridiculously awful past 4 days. By the way, feeding my comment whore ways is really improving my mood. Thanks ya'll.


Also if you need more laughs, Dressage Curmudgeon has had some rip-snorting posts lately. I want to be like her.

Also, if the last 4 days are any hint to how the rest of this weekend and weekend will go, it can be expected that myself or Yankee will have a freak accident, like step on a pebble or something, and die.