Fadedwords

So… all of a sudden all my videos that I’ve posted here no longer work.  Any insight about this readers?

Life is kind of status-quo-ish, which is good in some ways but not in others.  I’m very ready for the summer, although I need to find a good part time job a couple days a week to bring in some more money.  I’m hoping that an opportunity with another photographer is going to lead to making some decent cash, as well as starting to photograph a travel baseball team.

Things with the roommate are going well.  It’s nice to have someone to talk to and hang out with, especially because we share so much in common.  Today is her birthday so we’ll be taking a trip to Gigi’s cupcakes and the frozen yogurt place to celebrate.

This weekend I have a hunter show on Saturday, then my friends’ dance recital that evening.  Sunday my farm is supposed to be doing a small dressage show.  It’s a lot of good stuff, but it’s also just a lot.  After a very busy week I kind of wish I just had nothing planned.  That so rarely happens these days.

I’m feeling frustrated with a lot of things personally, sad about a lot of things.  Just not a whole lot of positivity going on in my head.  So I’m keeping that to myself and trying to just keep pushing through until it’s not so blah and gray.  We’ll see when that happens.

I had a bad fall in mid-March, so bad that they actually thought I had broken my elbow.  It was frustrating, especially considering it was one of the best lessons I’d had with Austin.

As you’ll see in the video, you can’t even really tell what happened to make me fall.  It looks like I finished my round and decided, “OK I finished, time to get off.”  *sigh* Lame.

That fall caused me to miss a show, and then I jus worked on flat work.  And then I got a text message from my trainer telling me that the farrier had to pull Austin’s shoes… which was a major bummer.  His feet were a mess and I knew it, but doing it now meant that pretty much the rest of show season was out for him.  So my only option was to get used to Max again.

The really frustrating thing is, because Max hadn’t done anything since January and because I wasn’t used to him, we were back to square one.  I had been jumping two feet solidly on Austin… in fact was looking forward to doing so at my next show.  Max is so different than Austin that we were back to crossrails.

I had a schooling show Sunday at my farm and rode Max… in the crossrails division.  We only did the morning hunter classes, because he was too tired to do jumpers later.  Bethany and Rob came to watch me, which was so cool.  Of course, I felt like a dork because I was jumping these little bitty fences that probably looked lame to them.  It’s frustrating to feel like you’re moving backwards constantly.  We showed well… reserve champion in our division, two firsts, two seconds, a third and a fifth.  I asked the judge what I could improve on with my flat classes (that’s where I always seem to struggle) and she told me that honestly it wasn’t me, it was the way my horse was going.  Granted, that’s something only I can fix for the horse, but she told me that I looked awesome and if they were Eq classes I’d be winning.

I’ll ride in a clinic this Saturday and then see about doing a jumper show Sunday.

Last weekend was my dressage show.  It turned out being a very small, relaxed even… because only members of my barn came!  I rode against two other adults, one of them the assistant trainer at my farm.  I was a little nervous about my Intro C test, because of the canter work.

As it turns out, I had little to be concerned about.

I placed first in both of my classes, earning me the adult high point for the day.  I had set a goal to score above a 5 on some of my movements.  In a dressage test you have a list of things you must do, in a certain order.  The judge scores you on how well these things are done, out of 10.  Since it was my first dressage show, I figured a 5.5 or 6 on some things would really be a good starting point.  At the end of the show you get your test back, with the judges scores and comments.  I was quite shocked when I saw my first test and had nothing lower than a 6.5!  This is a solid score, and there were a lot of 7s as well.

This was taken during my first test.  Austin is on the bit, and round… and quite honestly I look pretty darn great.  I need to relax my elbows a little bit, but otherwise we looked like superstars.

This was the beginning of the first test.  He was very excited to come see the judge!

This is midway through our second test.  You can see I’m smiling, because he was like “screw this dressage stuff”.

Our second test included cantering, which didn’t go terribly, but I did score some 5 and 5.5 in that test.  The judge was very complimentary though and said that we were a “very capable pair” and just needed to work on bending at the canter and on Austin accepting contact (aka- accepting the reins being tighter).  The really awesome thing about our second test is that we scored an 8 on one of our movements, which I wouldn’t have expected in a billion years.

It was a very successful day, and I know that the Intro C test that I did is where I need to stay until I start getting some higher scores on my canter work.  I also have decided I kind of liked the dressage test and had a lot of fun doing it!  My trainer is now calling me the “dressage queen”!

I’m hoping to start riding her horse Jimmy soon.  He’s been out of commission with a leg injury since before Christmas, but he’s better now.  She’s said I can try him and see what I think, and if I like him I can start competing on him.  It would be really great… not that I don’t love Austin.  He’s taken such good care of me and has helped me be incredibly successful.  However, Jimmy is bigger (17 hands) which I will look better on, and he is also a little more capable of doing some of the things I would like to do as I progress.

I’ve loved getting back into things.  It occurred to me the other night that I’ve only been back at this since November.  In four months I’ve competed in several shows and I have a wall full of ribbons to show for it.  I’m having a great time.  I have so many photos of myself doing something I love so much, thanks to the awesome parents of my fellow show team members… and my trainer!  I’m having a really fabulous time.

I’ve been riding since I was ten years old.  I fell in love with horses the moment I first laid my eyes on one in a field near my grandmother’s house.  I decided I wanted to be an eventer when I saw the movie International Velvet.  I still have the VHS tape that I first watched… it hardly plays anymore because I watched it so much.

The one problem with eventing is Dressage.  I’ve always been in awe of people who could do it well, because I understand just how difficult it is.  I took two semesters of dressage lessons at college and was fairly hopeless.  I do OK with the basic ideas of extension, collection and flexion.  I struggle though, to put everything together, make my body do all the things it has to do to make my horse do the right things… and oh the circles.  20 meter circles are my kryptonite.  Circles are everywhere in dressage.  Not only are there circles, but there’s bending on the circles and moving forward and moving laterally.  Ugh.

This is me riding in a dressage lesson in college.  Minus the fact that I have zero bend in my elbow, this is the only photo of me riding and looking like I remotely know what I’m doing in dressage.  That lesson was a super lesson; I felt like a superstar.

Recently my trainer Carrie told me that she was going to “let me ride in the Verne Batchelder clinic.”  Verne is an incredibly well respected dressage rider and trainer out of Florida.  I kind of laughed and said, “I’m really kind of terrible at dressage.” Her only response was, “Dressage is just flat work.” Yeah.  Flat work on steroids.  I knew though, that it was an incredible opportunity to ride with Verne and that I needed to take full advantage of it.

Yesterday was the clinic.  It went much better than I anticipated.  Verne told me that I “didn’t flunk” which was really nice.  He also told me that I was an incredibly quiet, soft rider… which is a great compliment.  I was riding my usual mount, Austin, who is not what one would call a dressage horse.  Obviously he knows how to do much of what we were asking of him, but it’s not his greatest strength.

This is toward the beginning of the lesson.  Verne is talking with me about the importance of flexion and moving forward.

We had started to make a little progress here.  Austin was moving forward a bit better and bending just a bit.  Verne had begun talking with me about how “Contact Takes You Forward”… which we decided is a slogan we need on a T-shirt!

I think we look really nice here.  Austin is on the bit, he’s extending his stride in a good working trot and he’s bending nicely.

We were working on leg yielding here.  I figured out that Austin needs quite a bit of leg aide to get the idea of what I want for lateral movement.  I wish Carrie had been able to stay and photograph a little more, because we eventually worked up and did some shoulder-in work, and toward the end of the lesson we had some really great moments of bending, contact and forward movement.

I’ll be riding in a dressage show next weekend, so we’ll see how that goes!!

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