Clinic report with Lainey Ashker!

Rolex rider and all around cool chic Lainey Ashker came to our farm for a clinic this weekend. There was a dressage spot open, so I took it.

I have found clinics with the eventing crowd to be very relaxed and not as "judgemental" as some with the pure dressage crowd. Plus, Lainey has ridden through I-1 in pure dressage, training the horse herself. So I knew she would understand what I was going through.

Why yes I did buy a pair of baby blue breeches. 

I know there was a big ordeal surrounding her and her accident at Rolex in 2008. Frankly, after meeting her and taking a lesson from her I can only conclude that people are cruel, especially on the internet. Well, duh, but I think this gal was really put through the ringer.

I found her professional, enthusiastic and quite positive.

Here are some things we worked on with Hampton:

* Sharper off the leg in transitions. Think walk to medium canter.
* Down the quarter line, shoulder in ... leg yield to the rail maintaining the positioning.
This made him BOUNCE in the canter. He really started to up the RPMs and jump up to me in the wither. Probably because I had him on my outside rein and his hind leg jumping under, duh.
* Trot serpentine with half-steps at the centerline
* Cleaning up that left to right flying change. I think we are right on the edge of a breakthrough here. We had some good changes and the light started going off in my head. He needs to boing in the canter, and I need to quit taking so much time to prepare. It is confusing to him. My aids need to be black and white for the change, and a tap with the whip if needed. Right to left change is confirmed and quite nice.
* True canter in ranvers positioning. This was hard as f*ck, and we did make mistakes, but I loved the fact that Hampton let me ride him. So what if you screw it up. He was trying, and he was NOT dropping my aids. That is a huge, huge improvement.
* Many many walk, canter, walk transitions. Alternating which lead I pick up. This is making it even more clear to him the aids for each lead. He has to be sharp and quick.
*Trot half passes. We had a left half pass from rail to just pass the centerline that was SOUND. No rein lameness! I almost cried, I really did. It is the first sound left half pass in probably a year?! Right trot half pass was also quite lovely. Canter half passes super.


She is for sure a clinician who will work your butt off! But at no point was I ever over faced, nor did my horse ever become frustrated.

I know we are right on the edge of climbing over this annoying hump we have been facing for the past year. It has been all about the connection, suppleness and obedience to the aids. The "tricks" are there. PSG won't happen this year, but I'm feeling good about hitting the FEI ring in 2016!

If you ever get the chance to clinic with Lainey, I would highly recommend her. For both eventers and dressage people, too. She was excellent with the flat work. And she treated everyone with enthusiasm and respect. I didn't get to stick around for jumping, but I bet she was much the same!

And I do apologize for lack of photos. My lesson was at 7 am. Only the hard-cores were up that early, and they were too busy getting things set up to take photos of me. :( Sad Karen.

My Strange Addiction: Breyerfest

Long-time readers will remember I have written about my "other" hobby before: Model Horses.

You can read more here:

Model Horses: Live Shows
Links (in case you want to join the madness)
Overview

If you are a model horse collector, there is no doubt you are aware of the biggest bat shit crazy model horse convention in the world. Breyerfest.

My poor little brother, me and my sister at Breyerfest .... uhhh, mid 90s?
A LONG time ago. Bless my mother's heart for taking us.

It is held every year at the Kentucky Horse Park and rabid, model-horse crazy children, teens and insane women flock all over the park and the Clarion North hotel for 3 days.

The activities at the KHP are great of course. There are a lot of activities geared toward the kiddos. The indoor arena is packed full of booths and shopping. The Altech arena has a couple of rooms that currently are the location for the live shows. The Breyerfest open live show is widely known as one of the most competitive shows in the country. My sister and I showed there I think back in 2002 or 2003 and got our butts handed to us.

But anyway, typically the horse park is steaming hot, and overrun with screaming children and long lines. I don't like any of those factors, so Breyerfest for me these days means heading to the Clarion North hotel (used to be the Holiday Inn). It is my favorite thing about Breyerfest.

One room just had a shitload of Breyers on their bed.

The hotel walls are covered in posters advertising models and what room they are in. Guests leave their doors open and you can walk door-to-door shopping for your holy grail or just browsing. In the evenings it turns into total madness as there are so many people you can barely get down the hallways. I saw a couple of rooms that had a line formed outside of them.

You see all sorts of people. And I do mean all kinds.

One of the live show champions. STUNNING workmanship on this custom, even a piece
of grass hanging out of his mouth!

In one of the larger conference rooms, there is also an Artisan's Gallery which features artists displaying and selling their work, as well as a display of the Breyerfest Live show champions. Some really gorgeous work is always in this gallery. I actually ended up buying a custom this year that I could not resist. Bad Karen.

Gorgeous custom Peter Stone Morgan in buckskin. He is so pretty in person!
I see him as a pleasure driving or saddle seat horse.
Ganna need more tack!

I also scored a great deal on a Totilas! Woohoo! By by paycheck!

If you ever get the chance, go to Breyerfest at least once. There is always something else for "real horses" going on at the KHP, too, if you get sick of loud children.

And since I now have two new models to add to my skimpy collection ... perhaps it is time to think about getting back into the hobby ...

ZBH: Everyday Fails Blog Hop

I like to keep it real on this blog. It's about to get REALLY real, people. Because thanks to Nicole, I am joining in on this Fail Blog Hop. I usually do a "bloopers" post at the end of the year with plenty of fails, so there may be some repetition but oh well. A good fail is a good fail.

Enjoy.

(Not Hampton) ... yeah this is how I used to ride. "Oh Let me me just pull my horse's head down
and hold it there. That'll work!"

Hampton was super easy to start under saddle. Except for just this one day. haha

This is how Hampton and I used to canter! Have mercy.

Oh how can I forget the constant pig rooting in canter transitions as a 3 year old!

Not really a fail photo, but it was a few minutes after he had slipped and fallen down on me.
At the walk.

The time I put a tie-dye blanket on Hampters. HAHAHA. win!

Hampton (not dead)

My horse hangs his knees? No clue what you are talking about

I have a bad habit of jumping ahead? WHAT! Nonsense.

As you can see, both of us are just better at dressage.

No, seriously.

But we suck at dressage, too, sometimes. I think this was supposed to be a canter to walk
transition?

Croup high kicking out. Classic Hampton move.

Hamps made up a new movement

:)

Lady's Story: The End

Lady Snuffleupagus April 26, 1999 to July 13, 2015

Livestock competition

Typically Hampton is the one who drains my bank account. And for the past few months he hasn't let me down. Between chiros, acupuncture, lessons, vet visits, farrier visits, tranquilizer for said farrier visits and dental work, he has really outdone himself.

But in addition to the horse, I also have a cat. He is a cranky old bastard, and I don't normally talk about him much here because ... well this is a horse blog and he is a feline. But he is going to get some press now because he is now officially the most expensive animal this year. Ladies and gents, the CAT has outdone the horse.

I AM GROVER. OVERLORD OF THE UNIVERSE.

Impressive.

The whole fiasco really started late last year. Grover - the offending feline - started having these gross snotty noses almost constantly. I ran him through 3 different rounds of antibiotics. He has always had constant ear infections as well, so I was treating him for those, too. He ate only the best grain-free food there was.

Eventually he developed a pretty nasty mass/cyst/polyp right outside his ear canal. It grew huge, and started to hemorrhage daily. My pillows, sheets, and a couple of shirts were ruined because he would rest his head on them and leave blood spots. Gross, but it happened. It was so bad that I would wake up in the morning with cat blood smears all over my shoulder and face because Grover likes to head-butt me in the middle of the night. It was awesome, I am telling you.

Off to the vet he went for surgery. Before surgery I found out he has FIV. This explains his chronic infections. I am sure he already had it when I adopted him in 2008 from the shelter. They never tested him, and I never thought to either. He had always lived a normal, healthy, lazy life with me.

So anyway, $1000 later Grover comes home with 5 less teeth and one less ear mass. Pulling his nasty teeth instantly cleared up the snotty nose. Horah! And the bleeding tumor was gone.

All was well for about 3 months.

Now the damn mass is back. It literally grew back in about a week. It's already hemorraging some. Grover doesn't like me to touch it, but otherwise he doesn't seem in pain. He is still eating and drinking and pooping.

The problem is that I cannot afford another surgery for him. His vet said they would most likely have to remove his entire ear to fix this problem. I don't think that's fair to him at all. He has had a very tough life before me. He suffered major trauma in his younger years that left him with a broken and dislocated hip that he functions well on, but still. He also has arthritis in his back (likely a result of the same trauma), plus the FIV, plus asthma/COPD .. and he's 12 .. ... I just don't think it's fair to continue to put him through surgeries. He had a bad reaction to the antibiotics from his first surgery that caused a 3-day asthma attack. I wasn't sure he would pull through but he did.

Because he is a tough old bastard.

He likes to nap on brand new Mattes pads.

But I don't want this thing bleeding all over my house.

Does anyone have any experience with these? I believe it is called ceruminous adenoma?

Is there a way to treat these things at home? Is it safe to drain them?

I know I am better off asking a vet, and I will. But I'm just seeing if anyone has any home remedies or other experiences.

I wish my animals would just knock this shit off already.

6 years with the Porkchop

Holy crap is has been 6 years since I purchased Hampton!

July 2009

July 2015

In June 2009, I sold my Morgan, T-Bone, and decided to try and be horse-less for a while. (I bet you can all see where this is going). The company I work for was going through MAJOR turmoil at the time. Hundreds of people were getting laid off, and we were all taking week-long furloughs every quarter. I was flat broke (I was actually selling my clothes so I could eat on a day to day basis), swimming in debt and wasn't really sure if I would have a job the next day.

Basically a horse was the last thing I needed.

I got a call from a close friend that she has an unbroke, 2 year old colt she needed to sell. He was cheap. I decided to just "go look." I loved him immediately, but told her I would "sleep on it" that night. She smiled at me. She knew.

I think my thoughts were "Holy shit I have a giant 2-year-old here"

My life has changed a lot in 6 years. I'm still pretty broke, but it's more of a horse-poor type situation now. Like all of us. haha. He has been my rock through some seriously rough times.

It was financially foolish and irresponsible to purchase a horse when I did. But I did it anyway.

But it turns out he was exactly what I needed.

One of our first shows (he was 3). This is such a Hampton face.

Brother from another mother (update)

Hampton has a handful of brothers. And I'm not using "politically correct" horse industry terminology here. By brothers, I mean he really has half brothers by the same sire and out of different dams. Many horse people would not even call them brothers. But I do. So sue me.

Same sire, but different mare.
Although mare was also a OTTB, like Hampton's mum.

Anyhoo, one of his brothers lives just down the road from us. He is a year older than Hamps and I wrote about him briefly HERE.

He is now out and about with his owner (an older gentleman who is incredibly nice). Really neat to see considering 2 years ago this horse was not even started under saddle.

I'm still hoping to go ride him one of these days. Will be neat to compare the two boys.

It's really easy to determine who is the more elegant, sophisticated brother.

And as for the original Porkchop, he is doing really well. We are going to train pretty hard next week and then he will get a super easy week because I am taking a 3 day vacation. Which I need desperately.

Over and out.