Finally!

Hey Cessa!

What'd we do this weekend?

Yep!  We went riding.

Related: ohgod.  Don't stop riding for like three years and then start again.  Your thighs will not thank you.  Nor will your ass. 

Also... Apparently I will get told on every time I tip forward or fail to use my relatively undereducated seatbones.  lol Not that this is a bad thing, but boy is it a brand new sensation after two decades of lesson horses.

Also, this is what happens when your fat mare is a yak, you're not precisely svelte yourself, it's 70 degrees, and you ride at a walk for half an hour or so.  Fitness: it's what's on the year's plans...

So there's this guy with a boat, right...

Seriously.  It's gonna be a long winter if we spend all of it with me riding one weekend (in this case, last weekend) and then unable to ride for two weeks because it's raining from Thursday/Friday until Monday/Tuesday.  The forecast for this weekend is five to seven inches... again.

I mean, the good news is that every time I ride, we figure out that we need less tack?  On advice from one of the BOs, we're going to try a simple French link D-ring next time, so good-bye weird, floppy Western bit!

Also, please allow me to present a crappy drawing to illustrate why we cut my mare's entire mane off.

Yes, that's right - we had the trifecta of "multiple fairy knots tied together into massive dreadlocks," "partially rubbed out mane," and "what the fuck, that piece of mane is like 2 inches long and standing straight up."

Eeeeeeee

Hey Cessa!

What?

What did we do this weekend?

Well, you got on me and we walked around.

And how'd it go?

Fine, except for the high-pitched squeal of joy you keep making.

:)

So, hard truth time, y'all: re-riding is hard.

Like, here I am - almost twenty years of lessons under my belt.  Plus another five years of just casual riding.  I should be fine to get on a horse and go ride around, especially my horse, and greenness shouldn't matter, because I've ridden greener than "60 days under saddle with a pro trainer."

Yeah.  Hahahahaahahahaha.  About that.

The first time I tried to get on, I was shaking so badly that we all just went, "Yeah, no, let's step back for a minute and try again."  The second time I tried to get on was a back-and-flail - you know, where the horse backs away from the mounting block and you're trying to get on and you just kind of flail your way out of the stirrup and somehow stay upright?

Third time, though - that went the way it was supposed to.  And then I got led around for a bit and hopped down after maybe five minutes, because I am a total weenie and I'm totally ok with rewarding "greenie behaving perfectly for a human having Moments" with "let's putter around long enough for me to relax and test out brakes and steering on a lead line, then call it a day and stuff cookies in your face."

Next time?  Less equipment.  Don't need the running right now - or the snaffle rein.  Still a little skeptical about this cowhorse bit - loose ring snaffle with a ring as the middle joint and curb mouthpieces means it's all... floppy. lol (Also perilously easy to get under her tongue if it's at all too loose, which is why bridling took three tries.)

But I rode my horse!

And yes, I did eventually relax!

NaBloPoMo Day 28 - Helmet or no helmet?

Helmet.

Helmet.

HELMET.

Shown: not my helmet.  That's the helmet of one of my BOs the day a green QH mare freaked out and the BO bailed instead of letting the horse try to jump the 5' arena fence to get away from the "monster" on her back.

That's right.  This was from an intentional bail-out.

I was 100% pro-helmet before I watched the ambulance haul her off for a night of observation, y'all.  Talk about reinforcement of an idea.

(I mean, I'll ride without a helmet in a dude ranch trail ride.  And I forgot to put on my helmet one day, on about the safest horse at the barn.  But that's about it.)

NaBloPoMo Day 23 - Critique a famous/well known equestrian jumping round of your choosing

I don't have a critique.  I just want William Fox-Pitt's lower leg skillz.  lol

NaBloPoMo Day 19 - A discipline you would like to do that you’ve never done before

I think I've always known that I want to try eventing.

I mean, I grew up on a steady diet of eventing on TV - often, as I think we all know, the only horse TV you can get, aside from the Triple Crown races - and it never once occurred to me that those jumps were big and scary.

Yeah, uh, adult brain says different?  But I still want to do it some day...

NaBloPoMo Day 09 - Any injuries that occurred from riding

Oooo, yeah.  I've had one or two - maybe not as spectacular as some, but I am perfectly okay with that, universe!

The very first one wasn't the result of a fall - but it was the result of a totally barn-sour mare, an instructor not paying any attention, and a kid that didn't realize warning signs were being given until the hoof impacted the thigh.

Same mare, different day.

There was the time a certain bay mare of my instructor's decided that she didn't like how I was lunging her.  Her choice of how to express this was to flip me the equine bird and take off at a full gallop for the other end of the arena.

Yes, I'm talking about you.

But hey, that was the day I discovered that:
a) Flat canvas lunge lines can cause some hellacious rope burn, and
b) The water at the bottom of black horse troughs is still cold, even in the middle of summer in an unshaded spot, and
c) Cold water doesn't really do much for rope burn blisters.

There was the time I found out that leather reins can also cause rope burn, when a certain idiot chestnut Arab mare of that same instructor's dumped me.  (Through no fault of her own, really - that was a confidence issues fall.  In hindsight, it's both a vaguely hilarious fall and pretty pathetic.  Hooray for a slow-motion fall as a result of a perfectly predictable behavior!)

Good with kids, but a brain full of butterflies.

Same instructor, third instance (though in her defense, I rode with her for a decade).  Big brown Thoroughbred chickened the hell out when a car went down the gravel road near the arena and spooked, first into a gallop and then out from under me.

Actually, you can almost see the section of fence where I fell in this picture.  It's a bit further to the right.

Two problems here.
1) I was riding in the morning before college classes.  I basically had time to leave the barn when I was done, get back to my apartment, shower, and go to class.
2) When I landed, I landed sitting on one hip, with my elbow slung up on the (tilted) arena fence.  Imagine, if you will, a pose something like this, only sitting on the right hip with the legs extended to the side, and you've just about got the right idea.

I got back on, we finished the lesson, and then I went home, showered, and headed to campus.  My first class was at 12:30.

By the time I got home that night - 5:30 or so - I had a bruise basically from hip to knee on my right thigh, a pair that together perfectly matched the fenceline if I bent my elbow, and one on my left shin that I never quite figured out where the hell it came from.  Every one of them was a spectacular shade of purple.

I would like to note that shoving a gallon baggie of ice down my pants to try and make the giant freaking bruise less sore was not entirely effective.  Hilarious and frustrating, depending on just what it was I was trying to do at the time, but not effective.

NaBloPoMo Day 07 - Your favorite ribbon won at a show and why

HA!  This is an easy one!

I have two ribbons.  Period.  :)

So of course my favorite is the second place ribbon.  That was the first show I'd ever been to.  The barn owner didn't kill us on the way there, but... umm... lady, even as a pre-teen, I was pretty confident that no, having a horse in the trailer was not license to speed through lights that had just turned red.

But me and my noble (and bitchy) (pony) steed and I survived, and we rode our very first dressage test!  I'm pretty sure it was USDF Intro Test A - but the stable called it the Green as Grass Test A, and I could swear the words "medium walk" appear nowhere on the test.  Somewhere, I still have the test results...

That was, I should add, the day I learned what a diagonal was.  I'd been riding for over a year at that point, walk-trot-canter...

NaBloPoMo Day 05- Your first fall

Now this... this I remember.

For reasons I still don't understand, my instructor at the time threw me up on a pony that had a) flunked out of a handicapped riding program and b) had only been at the barn for like a week.

The little felon himself.  Pony is a four letter word...

And then, to make it even better, the night I rode him was the first time he'd been in the covered arena with the lights on.

If you're thinking "recipe for disaster," yes.  Yes it was.

Everything was fine until we started to canter.  He was getting a little sticky and breaking to trot when we passed the flower box sitting in the middle of the arena, so my instructor said to kick him the next time he did that.

So I did.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back in the dirt, staring up at the roof and wondering what had happened.

According to what I was told, the little jerk reacted to me kicking him on by spinning on a dime, pitching me off into the dirt, and took off.  My helmet hit one of the ground poles with a nice solid clunk, although I don't remember being next to a ground pole when I realized I was lying in the dirt.  I didn't have a concussion or anything; I just legitimately do not remember the time between "kicking the pony" and "why am I in the dirt?"  (Not the only fall where I've had that happen, and the others definitely did not involve hitting my helmet on anything.)

And yes, I got back on.  Granted it was after a cry in the bathroom and like ten minutes of getting the pounds of dirt out of my clothing... lol

NaBloPoMo Day 04- A ride that impacted your life

You know, I can't actually point to a single ride.

Sure, I could probably say, "Oh, the first time I rode," or "The first time I rode at my current barn," but they're not these hugely striking rides.

Instead, I think of things like the time where I finally convinced myself to canter again, which I can't point to a single ride where that happened.  I had lost a ridiculous amount of confidence, and then gained a lot of it back.  And at some point, my college-age self looked at the teenagers around me and started thinking, "What the fuck.  They can all canter.  Why can I not canter?  I've been riding longer than any of them."  And a few weeks later, I finally cantered again - for the first time in like five years.

In the absence of riding photos, which I have very few of, have a shot of one of the two worst pieces of equine artwork I own.  I've lovingly dubbed it the Viagra Unicorn.

NaBloPoMo Day 03- Your best riding

In terms of competition, I don't have much to point to.  In terms of weird, random stuff that I'm proud of?

Still having a good seat after 4 years of not riding.

Not falling off when a 6hh Percheron stopped paying attention to her feet and face-planted.

And the biggest of all: still riding after several huge losses of confidence over the years.

NaBloPoMo Day 02- The last time you rode a horse and what you did

Ouch.  Umm... *whispers* 2014?

There was barn drama, major epic barn drama, and the only horses trained for riding either were sold or - in one memorable case - got injured in a freak accident.  And then when I did buy my own horse(s)... well, genius me, nobody's trained for saddle.  So it's... umm... it's been a while.

Shh.  Pretend you never saw that. Be distracted by a picture of Justice's daddy.

NaBloPoMo Day 01- When and why you started riding

Believe it or not, I know this to the month and year - June 1992.

I'd been bugging my parents for years at that point to be able to take lessons, but I wanted to ride English, and I grew up in the Land of Western Riders.  But in 1992, the local rec center partnered with a local English barn, and I got to take a whole four weeks of lessons.

Yep, there are pictures.

Why?

Horses.  Duh.  Pretty much horse crazy from the start.

It's... complicated

No new pony pictures this weekend - between the planned trip to see how Justice's daddy is doing at training (exceptional, from what I've heard) and the rain that pre-empted both said trip and normal barn time... well.  Old pictures are gonna have to do.

Anyway, one of Emma's recent posts reminded me of my whole, "Which discipline am I going to do, anyway?" problem - something I referenced in my comment there as "it's complicated."

Let's talk about complicated.

When I first started riding, I was riding at a hunter/jumper barn.  In hindsight, it was... not a very good h/j barn.  Or, indeed, a very good barn at all.  But it was what I had, so I learned to jump.

Oh god, please don't ask how old I am in this picture. Also, if you've never been to Texas/Oklahoma - yes, the dirt is that color; that's why it's the Red River.

We did a little trail riding here and there, but mostly, we did trot poles, then single jumps, and eventually we worked our way up to courses with four whole jumps.

That was about the time that the mare I was riding in lessons at the time (not the above pony) flipped out a little and started bucking after the last jump on the course.  I... honestly, I've ridden bucks since then that were way worse.  It kinda felt like she was doing something stupid at the canter, but I had no idea what it was until I got her stopped and my mother and the instructor freaked out about the bucking. After that, the decision was made that I wouldn't be jumping anymore.  I assume I was part of this decision, but I cannot for the life of me remember saying, "I don't want to jump." 

Thus began an ill-fated career as a dressage rider.

Well, ill-fated might be an exaggeration.  It might be more accurate to say, "career of being a dressage student while riding with all the wrong people."

First instructor: the same h/j trainer I'd been riding with.  Bless her heart, she had no idea what she was doing.  We made it to two shows, and let's just say that if we got a dressage bingo card going, I could make a line with any of the following:

• "What's a diagonal?"
• Misunderstood judge's instructions
• Plenty of whoa, absolutely no go
• Spooked at judge's box
• Retired or withdrew
• Judge's comments: "egg-shaped circles"

Four of those six were this day, all on the same test...

Second instructor: the dressage instructor from hell.  Thank you for convincing my parents to buy me a saddle, crazy woman, but it's not cool to make teenagers cry because you've decided that we really aren't buying one of your half-broke monster horses.

Third instructor: clinician while riding with Psycho Bitch.  Seemed nice?  Probably would have been more helpful for me if I hadn't been terrified of the barely-broke three-year-old colt Psycho Bitch had me on.

Fourth instructor: another hunter/jumper trainer, this time entirely in group lessons where everyone else jumped and I didn't.

Fifth instructor: eventing instructor.  Going the right direction!  Sort of!  Until she had a baby and stopped teaching.

Such a pretty property. These days, it's a stupid subdivision...

Sixth instructor: dressage instructor!  Real, honest-to-god dressage instructor!  And she even kept teaching after she broke her leg.  Unfortunately, the barn was sold to one of those guys that believes that only he could teach you, and if you didn't have your own horse... well, you weren't going to learn from him.  She moved out of town; we moved on.

Seventh instructor: theoretically a dressage instructor.  Actually cut from much the same mold as Psycho Bitch, but we noticed her directing that at my friend, with whom we were sharing lessons, and the two of us cut and ran.

Eighth instructor: English rider from South Africa who was apprenticing with a Western Pleasure rider.  Meant well, but by this time my confidence in my riding was completely in the can, thanks to a couple of falls and Psycho Bitch, and after another fall, it didn't get better.  Kind of suspect I'm why she stopped teaching lessons (oops).

Ninth instructor: Western Pleasure rider who was game to try teaching me English riding.  Great at rebuilding my confidence, up to a point; I don't think I ever made it back to where I was when I first started.  Taught me all kinds of things, very little of it dressage.

One of the last days I rode with instructor #9, and probably the last time I rode in my old dressage saddle.  Best picture from that day, unfortunately; the rest of the photos are tilted and/or blurry. Yay for letting a random teenager at the barn use my camera...

By the time I stopped taking lessons with #9, I was in college, and I'd realized two fundamental truths:

• I like dressage just fine, but it's not that exciting by itself
• I don't remember actually being scared of jumping

So my first riding instructor that I chose for myself was another hunter/jumper instructor - hilariously, one operating out of the same barn I'd started at, easily a decade before.  I rode with him for a few months, and never did get around to jumping again - which I respect that he had to back things up a bit, I really do.  But I found after a while that there were some things that I had fundamental differences of opinion with him on. (The biggest being, "We put our horses in hackamores so the novices don't chuck them in the mouth with bits."  Practical concerns about leverage aside, the Clyde/TB mare they had me on needed a bit; I got to ride her in both, and she pulled like a goddamned freight train without one.  Shouldn't need freaking gloves just to keep your fingers from being torn up, sorry.)

That's not quite my last formal instruction experience - one of the BOs and I did a clinic a few years ago for what's basically Western Dressage on video - but close enough.

So what discipline do I ride?

All due respect to those that do endurance, but I'm pretty sure if I tried to do more than a short trail ride, I'd be a miserable mess of a human being.  I might could survive an intro ride without breaking down into tears or screaming at someone?  Maybe?

To be honest, at this point, I've had so many confidence issues that it's hit or miss whether I'm comfortable outside an arena at all.  The last time I tried, a combination of an unfamiliar (and HUGE) mare and an individual I didn't entirely trust meant I couldn't do it, even though I knew that mare wasn't going to do anything more frightening than stumble; the time before that, on a mare I trusted, I was fine to motor along on the exact same trail ride in a larger group.


(If you want to be really, painfully honest, me and my confidence issues aren't always comfortable inside an arena.  *wince*  We're working on that.)

So I'm not really a trail rider.

I'm not just incredibly excited by dressage.  I seem to be reasonable at it, and I've got a shitload of technical, book-based knowledge bouncing around in my head that needs to be linked up with experience to really make sense, but it's not something that I sit here and go, "Whee, dressage!"  I'm excited by some of the upper-level movements?  And I kind of feel like I should enjoy watching it more than I do if it's "my" discipline; I love watching the freestyles, but the rest of the tests... meh.

Hunter/jumper... I like watching them.  But I find myself unenthusiastic when I read about the shows.  All due respect to George Morris, but there are too many appearance-based things to hunters.  Jumpers might be too fast for me - speed and my confidence issues aren't always friends - but it's slightly more interesting to me than hunters.

Ask me what discipline I'm enthusiastic about, which one I enjoy watching, and the answer will be eventing.  Except eventing involves at least some being outside the arena, and also immovable jumps, which is somewhat intimidating because I'm used to seeing the size of those jumps at the kinds of events that they televise - you know, Rolex... the Olympics...

I am so not prepared to be a Western rider of any sort.  I have been an English rider way too long; I cannot neck rein to save my goddamned life.  I get the concepts.  I know what I'm supposed to do.  But tell me I have to neck rein, and I am going to sit on that horse with a stupid look on my face and hope like hell I don't have to do anything other than go left and right, because "stop" and "back up" are utterly beyond my ability to actually do.

Also not all that interested in most of the Western disciplines.  I don't do cows; they're stupid and gross and I'm just not interested in trying to herd or rope them.  I'm mildly curious about reining?  I'd like to ride a barrel pattern some time, but not if it's a pattern anywhere near 90% of the "barrel riders" I've met locally?  That's about all I've got.

Play days and the like sound like fun once in a while, but I am clumsy as hell and somewhat competitive; that's gonna end in frustration for me, sooner rather than later.

I know that since I'm not really showing, what discipline I ride doesn't actually matter - except it does matter to me.  I'd like to do some showing - not a lot, but maybe one or two in a year?  I guess I just feel weirdly cheated by the fact that I went to all of three or four shows as a kid.  And I want to have some sort of goal more than, "Putter around the arena for a while."

So:

Me and disciplines?  Yeah.  It's complicated.