New blog

I've had this blogger account for a number of years now.  A few years ago, I made the decision to "unpublish" all of my posts.  At the time, I made the decision then not to delete them.  I'm still making the decision not to delete them now.

I wasn't necessarily the healthiest or happiest person at that point in time, but those posts are my history and there are times when I like to reflect on my past.   Plus, my training posts can be helpful and give me a point of reference in my riding and my habits.

However, I don't particularly like being bombarded by my history every time I log on to write my new training posts, so I've made the decision to move.  New barn, new posts, new life, new blog.

If anyone wants to follow along, I'll be writing over at https://getbacktohorses.wordpress.com/

Freezing

I'm not talking about the weather.  In fact, it was already 75º F while I was in the saddle for my lesson on Thursday.  

I'm talking about my body.  Specifically my tendency to stop following the horse with my body at the canter.  Instead, I pump my arms like I'm pretending to be a train to entertain a toddler.  This, I suspect, is a holdover from my unforgiving palomino mare, Fin.  I suppose this requires a bit of a backstory.

Once upon a time, I got bucked off a lot doing upwards transitions into the canter.  Fin was, (is? She's still alive, just for all intents and purposes, retired.) talented, fussy, sensitive, touchy, cranky, and a diva.  Simply, Fin is a mare.  She required a particular type of ride, and for the most part, we made a decent go of it.  Except for canter transitions.  Due to old defensive riding habits, I tended to lean forward into my transitions.  Fin hated me leaning forward into transitions.  To make it perfectly clear to me how much she hated this particular habit of mine, she would buck.  Sometimes, these were the warning, "I don't like what you're doing, try again," bucks.  Other times they were the, "I'm not dealing with any of your bullshit at all right now," bucks.  Very often, those latter types of bucks would leave me in the dirt.

I imagine that when you have already created defensive riding habits on one horse, and have to learn new defensive riding habits on another horse, weird things happen to your riding.  Well, weird things happened to my riding.

I'm happy to say that my balance and physical position on top of the horse is still pretty decent.  But at the canter, my body will just stop moving with the horse, and I just sorta perch in the saddle.  Unfortunately, perching is hard to do when you're cantering and trying to hold an out of shape horse together.  So you kinda perch and pump.  It's about as unattractive and ineffective as it sounds.

Thursday, C had me work on using my body more effectively.  The right lead is hard for both me and Chip.  He was pretty strung out and I was super stiff.  But on the left lead, I could start to put the pieces of my body in motion to support him, enabling him to round and use his back and butt properly.  

Using the corners of the arena, I asked for a walk to canter transition on a large-ish circle to get a nice bend and to encourage him to step underneath himself.  Once we were moving in a slightly collected canter, I straightened him out to lengthen down the long side.  Once we hit the next corner, another circle to regroup.

We were both tired from Tuesday's trot set, so this exercise was short-lived, but it really gave me some things to think about.  

Take aways:

I need to remember to keep my weight in my outside seat bone and push him into the contact with my outside rein with a supporting inside leg.

Keeping weight in my outside seat bone does not mean that I need to stomp on the outside stirrup, the weight in my feet and seat need to be independent.

I need to stretch more before and after I ride.

Jumping is fun, but dressage work is really freaking important and makes ponies really tired.

Trot Set 1-1

Tuesday morning was my first trot set in about 10 years.  On the bright side, I didn’t die!  Unfortunately, stairs were not my friend for a couple days.

There’s nothing quite like a 20 minutes of posting trot to show you just how sorely out of shape you are.  There’s also nothing like 20 minutes of posting trot to remind you that your right ACL isn’t your original ligament.  Talk about burn.

I seem to have recovered okay, all things considered.  Some residual stiffness in my right calf and hamstrings.  Some soreness in my quads.  My core and back were sore and my shoulders are still tight.  All in all, I’m pretty pleased that with my current level of fitness, I’m not crippled. 

Good thing, too.  I’m on my way to another lesson Thursday morning!

Taking stock

Once I realized that I was going to return to the land of pony, I decided that I needed to take stock of all the remnants on gear in my tack room.  I'm ashamed to say that a lot of it is trashed.  Time, heat, and squirrels can do a lot of damage to tack, saddle pads, blankets and wraps.

I'm pretty sure I'm down a (luckily free to me) all purpose saddle due to red rot.  Also gone are number of bridles and parts to dry, brittle leather.  The leather of my ancient Ariat paddock boots started disintegrating when I pulled them out of my closet and god knows where my gloves ended up.

Thankfully, my dressage saddle is still in okay shape and it's currently getting new billet straps on one side.  Also still usable: two pairs of my Tropical Rider deerskin extended patch breeches (LOVE LOVE LOVE), my TR deerskin full seats have a hole in the fabric on the butt, so those need to be fixed.  My old Ariat terrain boots are still going strong, if a bit ugly, and the Ariat half chaps that I grabbed from a tack sale a few years back are perfectly serviceable.  I have my Charles Owen JR8 helmet, which is unfortunately unvented, so I had to add a new schooling helmet to my shopping list.

Luckily for me, and upsetting for my bank account, I've been picking up some things that I need to get back into horses.  I've been doing a lot of internet window shopping and some purchasing.  And this past weekend, one of my local(ish) tack shops was having one of their giant yard sale events.  I managed to get all the equestrian-specific things I needed for at least 15% off.  Hello new things!  

So far, I've managed to acquire one (with another on the way) Columbia Freeze Degree long-sleeved sun shirt, a Horze Supreme Functional Shirt, a Tipperary Sportage helmet, a pair of Noble Outfitters perfect fit mesh gloves.

After waffling for several minutes I went back inside to buy some Bridleway zip paddock boots.  They were a whopping $34 on super special sale, and I figured, even if they only last for 6 months, I'm not out a whole lot of money. 

When I have more time with these items, maybe I'll review how they're working out for me.

I still have a bunch of stuff on the ol' wish list, but this will be more than enough to get me back into the life.  

Twice bitten

I hid the posts on this blog about four years ago.  That's approximately an eon in internet years, making this blog a fossil.  It's like one of those saddle pads I unearthed in my tack room a couple of weekends ago; old, crunchy, caked in horse hair and crusty with sweat from rides that occurred who knows how many years ago.  However, a run through the extra "extreme-filth" cycle on the washing machine with some bleach and boiling hot water and it's practically brand new.

Or at least serviceable for schooling.

Maybe I should dye it a darker color.  Perhaps a deep brown to hide the weird stains.


It's been a solid six years since I more or less gave up horses.  I remember the emotional roller coaster that was my home buying experience, an ACL tear, marriage, separation, family drama, divorce, financial fallout, changing jobs, another ACL tear (the same damned knee), losing my first horse, anger, anxiety, depression, therapy, etc etc etc.

Determining the moment when riding and horses became less important to me is a pointless exercise.  There was no breaking point, no line drawn in the sand for me to establish where "The End" happened.  It's something that slowly became the new norm.  I'm not certain why I stopped even matters.  All that does matter is that the desire to get back into it has come crashing back with a vengeance.


It all started on the internet, where all great ideas originate (I'm joking, sorta.  The internet is both a wondrous and terrible place).

Anyway, I'm super late to the blog party and only recently discovered She Moved to Texas.  It's an amazing blog, wonderfully honest and well written.  I laughed, I cried, and I realized that I really miss having horses in my life.

So, I did what I usually do.  I obsessed and researched.  I hemmed and hawed.  I back tracked and changed my mind.  I made some phone calls.  I jumped on a opportunity to ride with a friend who owns an old pony that wouldn't kill me while I got my sea legs back.  I even got back on Fin for a few rides, which were not exactly positive, and I'll recount those details later.

After all those phone calls and a few in-person visits, I found a new barn.  It's a small place, but it feels good so far.  The facility is nice, the trainer (C) is talented and honest, the horses are well-kept, it's primarily English with a focus on eventing, which is perfect.  It feels like a good fit.  I've only had a couple rides there, but in my lesson last Thursday I felt like I really accomplished things.  It turns out that I can still dressage pretty well.  And it didn't hurt that I had enough confidence (and strength!) to string together a tiny course of small jumps after not doing any jumping at all for eight (EIGHT!?!) years.  Plus, C has enough confidence in my abilities as a rider (and my trustworthiness) to give me a project.  I'm to get the old(er) lesson master back into shape.  He's a saint and totally awesome schoolie, but he has all these dressage buttons that haven't been pushed in a long time.  He and I are going to do some work and we'll get back into shape together.

I'll be joining in on my first session of trot sets tomorrow.  I'm honestly just hoping not to die.