Up a creek

"The only goal is in the process. The process is the thing - -with little flashes of light --those are the gigs, the live shows …

it's the life in between. That's all I got."

Sleepy pony

I can't say if the barn's Theraplate has had any effect on Hampton's occasional sore muscles or looseness, but it's pretty obvious it at least has a soothing, sleepy effect on him.

Also, today Hampton stood like a gentleman to have his front shoe put back on. The farrier burned the shoe on and everything. NO DRUGS. It is a damn miracle people.

Show Roundup: The Bloopers

I may have sounded a little hard on myself in the last post, and on Facebook. Getting low 60s and high 50s at Third Level is not disastrous by any means. I feel we were competent, but really need a lot more work. Don't we all.

Anyway - the fun stuff - bloopers!!

During my best test (3-3) we were harassed by a horse fly. Our walk work is where we usually pick up several 7s and even 8s, so having this fly interrupt this portion of the test was irritating to say the least. Check out this sequence of me trying to kill the f**%&$*#.



And let's not forget Hampton's rather exuberant flying change.

It doesn't look as bad on video.

But hey we only had ONE late change out of 4 tests. ONE!!! Major improvement in this area. We might get these changes cleaned up after all!

At first it seems like he has enough jump ...

WOMP WOMP. Half a stride late behind.

... meanwhile Hampton is enjoying what I intended to be a short vacation. However this morning I found he has ripped a shoe off, so ... it's damn near impossible to find a farrier to shoe my horse these days so who knows when I can get it tacked on.

Show roundup: The Good

4 off the floor!

Welp, another rated show under our belts. We showed Third-3 and .... musical freestyle! both days. I kept the freestyle a secret because I wasn't sure it was all going to come together with the trouble we have had this summer, and then my cat having health issues and then his death. 

But we made it happen. The freestyle needs A LOT of tweaking and work. In fact I will probably redo the entire thing. But that's ok, it was great to get my feet wet at something like that and I certainly learned a lot.

Saturday's 3-3 test was a little rough. As Hampton has become more seasoned, his warmup needs have changed. I used to have to warm him up for 40 minutes to ride some of the edge off. He was VERY calm all weekend, even a bit lazy. So warming him up for 30 minutes only made him tired and crabby. By the time I entered the ring, he was diving on the forehand and pretty much all out movements suffered. We squeaked out a 58%. Not a great score, but he was so downhill that I feel it was deserved.

Our 3-3 test on Sunday was MUCH improved. I warmed him up for 10 minutes and did nothing but piaffe and turns on the haunches. He went in the ring with much more energy. Our changes were clean and the test was much smoother. Unfortunately, during the walk tour we were dive bombed by a damn horse fly. I have a great sequence of photos of me trying to swat at the fly and do a walk pirouette at the same time. Needless to say, our walk work was dinged by this interference. But the test was still good and we upped our score to a 61% and some change. I'll take it!

Our Sunday Freestyle was again a little rough. Hampton was tired and so was I. It lacked balance and there were a couple of unauthorized flying changes since he was behind my aids and lacking a real connection. Our mediums and extended trot were non-existent, too. Hamps was just out of quarters. I think in the future he can do 2 tests the first day, and only 1 test the second day. He is decently fit but at this level I think 2 tests both days just burn him out.

Even so, we squeaked out a 60% this time and I am happy with that.  I need to change up the music and we need to increase the level of difficulty to up the score. I did keep things simple this time around since I sort of thew it together in a rush and this was my first time ever attempting a freestyle. So much to learn!

I need to keep my elbows bent.

Turn on the haunches

Love the active hind leg here

While our scores haven't really improved this year, it's ok. We faced a lot of setbacks this year as far as finding instruction, Hampton's behavior, rein lameness, ulcers and trust issues.

Can we all just admit dressage is hard? :)

I still believe this horse will be a PSG horse one day. It won't be this year, and maybe not next. But I believe in him. I need to learn to be a better show ring rider. I need to correct his balance quicker in the ring before things spiral downhill (literally). I need to be more accurate and I WITHOUT A DOUBT need to prepare for each movement more. When Hampton gets heavy and dives, I tend to get tired and lose my position. I need to work on that.

Um, SUPER CLEAN flying change!!! WOOHOO~

Pats for a good boy.

Warm up

 So my plan is to get to as many schooling shows as I can. He needs to learn he cannot drop me in the ring. If that means stopping during a test, fine. If it means doing a 10m circle, fine. If it means kicking his ass, fine. He does things in the ring that he never does at home. So, I've got to fix that.

I love the Hoosier Horse Park but you would not believe the amount of bugs here.

We need to maintain THIS balance all the time!

Very minimal rein lameness in left half pass!

Finally, here is our very first musical freestyle! Keep in mind I did this by myself at the last minute. It is not super. I think we appear rushed and unbalanced, and some movements I just sort of fly into without proper preparation.

Also, enjoy Hampton's leaping/flying change and he also kicks out during the extended canter going away from the camera. He was just adding his own flair to our boring freestyle. HAHA. Such a wanker this one.



Next up: Show Roundup: The Bloopers!

Nothing I see can be taken from me

Lots to write about today! Lucky readers. har dee har.

One of my very best friends brought her horse down for the day so we could drink heavily work diligently on all things dressage. She had a really great lesson. My lesson was OK, but Hamps just wasn't in a great mood. The instructor I have been taking some lessons from recently does not have great things to say about Hampton sometimes. That may or may not get (yet another) bitchy post about these damn instructors. I just want help in how to ride my horse better. Keep your nasty comments to yourself.

But oh well. She did not ruin the rest of our day in which I drank WAY too much, or the next day in which we went on a 4-hour trail ride around the connecting trail system.

It was AWESOME! So, we may have gotten "lost" but who cares! It was sunny, breezy and we saw some stunning places on the trails. Both horses were impeccably behaved. I was so thrilled with Hampton and he seemed more than happy to get out of the sandbox. He is a solid trail horse. I couldn't get any photos of the difficult terrain because I was too busy grabbing mane and trusting Hampton with my life. 

Hamps walked around like this the entire time.

Some of the trails started to get rather "challenging" and at one point we almost turned around because there was a ditch with a drainage pipe in it that looked rather sketchy. Hampton was unsure at first, but I just patiently kept asking and he jumped the damn thing! I mean, if you are going to go trail riding, might as well do it right! What a horse. He's no dressage ring snob that's for sure.

Front of the sales pavilion

One of the places we trespassed upon came across was the old L'Esprit sales pavilion. I am not positive, but from what I've heard this used to be a rather grand sales/auction barn for Arabian horses. It was owned by a shiek. It has 52 stalls but the barn area is very run down. It has not been used in years. The pavilion though it kept up rather well and is rented out for weddings, events, receptions, etc. A lot of the old parade railings are still up from the sales days. The place is for sale, by the way, if you have an extra $8 million lying around.

Old parade lane

Right up next to the pavilion.
haha big old Hampton next to my friend's elegant pony

Lane from barn to pavilion
Hamps: "Oh look that's neato!"
Simone: "Who gives a shit."

We ended up doing a big loop, but just didn't realize we were doing a big loop. Our 2 hour trail ride turned into 4 but oh well. We saw multiple abandoned farms (NICE ones, with covered round pens, etc), llamas, many creek crossings, banks, ditches, steep inclines, rocky areas and plenty of wildlife. All 4 of us were pretty tired when we got back. The hangover certainly wasn't helping at that point. lol

Yay! We found a road! We will get home now ...
1 hour later...

More trespassing

I've also been doing a little of this ...

Please ignore my pasty white equestrian legs.

And finally, the big news ... there is a new furrball in my life. 

Meet Buckley!

Life's not too bad at the moment. We have a show this weekend and I am super excited. My only goals are to improve on our scores from May. And to have finish a bottle of wine have fun.

Cheers!

Couple of schooling photos

I love how happy he is here. His attitude and mindset have really improved over the summer!
And look at that, I am reasonably straight in the saddle.
Holy shit, there may be hope for us.

This summer has been all about going back to basics and filling in a BUNCH of holes. 

As a result, Hampton has become much more ridable and some of our major issues are starting to fade away.

The rein lameness is SO much better. It will still mildly show up in left half pass at times, but it's almost always when I go into it without an honest connection, and/or have too much bend.

Our changes are MUCH improved we the left to right change is still late sometimes, but much better than it was. He is much more on my aids and there is less anticipating. I think it will get cleaned up very soon. Chip away. Chip away.

Our connection issues are still being addressed, but we are getting there. 

He is such a good boy.

We have been starting to focus in on canter pirouettes and Hampton has shown INCREDIBLE talent for these. They make perfect sense to him, even though I have no idea what I am doing.

I won't drill these since they come easy to him.

No Corgis were harmed here.
A+ for Hampton and being straight!

 I am so pleased with Hampton's progress this summer. We haven't shown as much as I had planned to, but that's ok. We needed a "development year." There were a lot of holes and major issues with connection and suppleness. 

But I think we will head back out into the big sandbox very soon. I would think our scores will improve but I've learned not to be cocky about that, especially after we went home after the show in May licking our wounds. haha. 

Next week my good friend is coming to visit and bringing her pony. We have a lesson planned and lots of trail riding. And drinking. Mostly drinking.

"To be a champion, I think you have to see the big picture. It's not about winning and losing; it's about every day hard work and about thriving on a challenge. It's about embracing the pain that you'll experience at the end of a race and not being afraid. I think people think too hard and get afraid of a certain challenge."

Crawling back out

I'm slowly emerging from my haze of grief from the loss of Grover. His death and the whole experience of euthanasia affected me more than I thought it would. I still have this low-grade queasy feeling in my stomach, but otherwise I am feeling better each day. I know I did the right thing.

Plus, Hampton has been wonderful this week. Leave it to the Porkchop to really cheer me up. :)

Hopefully I'll be inspired to write more dressage/Hamper posts soon.