Don't Ever Tell Your Horse....

That he's about to go back to work. Let him be oblivious. Cuz you know what happens when you tell him? He goes out in his pasture and does this::: 

Warning: if you are grossed out by wounds and/or blood, you probably shouldn't read any further

And this::::

Which looks like this after the vet cuts off the skin flap

Awesome, right? He managed to wound himself on two major joints. The vet flushed his stifle to make sure he hadn't punctured or otherwise damaged the joint capsule. Everything was clear, so fingers crossed it stays that way. Looks like a whole lot of boo boo scrubbing in my future. Darn dollar horse is EXPENSIVE. 

Another Schooling Day

On Sunday we took George out to BCHP for some more XC schooling. If everything went smoothly he would be entered in the schooling trial on August 11. Bucks uses a ditch at the BN level with no option, so we needed to make sure he would go over the ditch before I paid his entry. It took a couple tries and a few awkward hops, but now ditches are not a problem! 

      99 problems, but a ditch ain't one!

We schooled a bunch of other BN level fences, mainly the scary ones, so hopefully there will be no refusals this time! 

                    A scary bench

                  And scary steps

      And a not so scary hanging log with         terrifying giant boulders on either side

I'm feeling pretty confident about the cross country phase, dressage should be fine if I can remember the test, and stadium..... Well, I had a bit of a melt down yesterday when I remembered that BN = the addition of some scary fill under the jumps. 

This was me demonstrating how I would ride to this scary rolltop back in 2012 with Theo

Stay tuned!

On a More Cheerful Note...

At the end of July, while simultaneously prepping Reffy for some more dressagey fun at Burgundy Hollow, I was also prepping someone else for his first BN trial. 

          That's right! George is back! 

              Photo cred. Megan Allen

The original plan was to go Starter, considering he's really only jumped maybe 5 or 6 times, but he totally killed it when we took him up to school XC the week before, so we made the decision to go Beginner Novice instead. 

Now, George is a funny kind of guy. Trot towards a jump and there's a pretty good chance he's going to stop. Or run out. But kick on and canter up? 9 chances out of 10 you're up and over before he could even think about putting on the brakes. He gets all his confidence for jumping at the canter. Our game plan was officially "ride like hell". 

Day Of:

Because of scheduling and me having zero time between phases due to also riding Reffy, we walked the XC course as soon as we arrived at Burgundy Hollow. Cue mild panic attack. They had thrown straw all over some of the bigger fences making them even more scary. And they just happened to be fences we hadn't schoole because they were off the course to be repainted. GASP. 

         No problem. We got this. Ha. 

Dressage was mediocre, George decided staring at the horses out on the XC course was more important than paying attention and not hauling me around the silly white rectangle. I think our score had us in 3rd place. Not too shabby. We had a rail down on the first fence of stadium before I swallowed my nerves and rode like hell! That's fine. Green jumper. Good boy. Cross country was a bit of a mess to start, two refusals in the first 4 or 5 fences, but we got it together and finished the rest of the course, INCLUDING the dreaded green table with straw spread all over it. Woohoo!!! 

We didn't win by any stretch, finished 5th overall in front of one rider who was eliminated. But I was still proud! And many awesome photos were taken. 

       Determined jump face for stadium

         Photo cred. Jeremy Benfield

      Photo cred. Karla Dreisbach 

         Photo cred. Karla Dreisbach

     Huffing and puffing all the way home

        Photo cred. Jeremy Benfield 

YAY GEORGE!!!

Sometimes You Have to Take a Step Back

After my last post and a really bad jump school where Reffy decided he was NO WAY, NOT EVER going to jump or even walk over ground poles, we decided to back away from the jumping and focus solely on our dressage basics and the whole "listening to mom no matter what is going on in the rest of the world" thing. Needless to say I've been a little MEH about the blogging since then. 

My plan for the season had been to start out with the CT in April and be killing in at starter HTs in the summer with the possibility of moving up to elementary by fall. Yeah that's not going to happen. Poor Reffy has such a hard time keeping it together off property we've only muddled through a couple dressage tests since the epic CT fail. It is getting better, but I was admittedly bummed about the whole thing for a while. He continued to go like a dream at home, but being trailer-less and poor I haven't been able to do what he REALLY needs, and that is to haul to every schooling show in a 20 mile radius until its completely old hat to him. 

Which brings us up to the present. We went to a trial over at Burgundy Hollow a couple weeks ago to do just dressage. He was the calmest he's been to date off property, put in two decent Intro tests, made his momma proud, had a whole week off, and was lame the day I planned to start riding again, and has been since.

GAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Horses. Seriously. Sheesh. So it's been about a week and a half since then, he's slowly improving, but it seems to have been a stifle issue and they are notoriously slow to heal. Double bummer. 

Combined Test Recap

So yesterday Reffy and I went to our first combined test. It was a bit of an epic fail. Lol. He trailered like a champ, walked around the grounds like a brave boy, and turned into the king of ADD as soon as we started warming up for dressage. I think that our biggest downfall was that we just didn't plan enough time to warm up. For his first outing he really should have had an extra hour to settle and warm up, but that's hard to do when you have an 8:06 ride time and an hour drive.

The Dressage Test::

We actually completed our Intro B test without errors, but also without and semblance of submission or collection. He resisted all my downward transitions and anything that was supposed to be straight was more of a 'haunches in'. We had some really great sideways halts. They take that into consideration, right? Lol. Our score was a 50.625 with only 4s and 5s and a single 6 for rider. Go me! Comments included a whole lot of 'resisting' and 'bent the wrong way'. High points? The judge said he was an attractive horse with potential. Woohoo!

Fast forward to stadium warmup. From the second I got a leg up he was on high alert. Reffy was in racehorse mode! I feel so bad for all the little kids on ponies warming up for our division while we cantered sideways practically into people and other horses. Sadly, we ended up withdrawing and not completing the stadium course. He was just so hot I chose to avoid an E (elimination) or RF (rider fall) and just school him over the warm up cross rail when he was quiet and listening.

In the end, some goals were met (surviving) and others were not. So much for ending with a number instead of a letter!

I Swear I Haven't Died!

Oh HAY! You guys still reading? I hope so. Once again, I'm severely slacking in the blogging department, but definitely not slacking in the riding department. This weekend is Reffy's debut at Bucks County Horse Park, competing starter level in a combined training (CT) event. Yikes! It's only been about 4 and a half months since I adopted him but he needs to get OUT and have his first experience as an eventer.

We've had a lot of really good rides lately and some truly stellar lessons, both jumping and dressage. I've been feeling pretty confident that Sunday won't be a giant flop, until this Tuesday's jump lesson. We've discovered that Ref has some pretty serious ADD when it comes to working while any other horse is doing anything within eyesight. He's ok if he's working outside while the other horses are out in the field, but if his buddy Quincy is in the cross ties while he works in the indoor? No dice. If someone tries to brim a horse in while I'm riding? Concentration is blown. And god forbid his girlfriend is out in the paddock just MOVING while I'm trying to lunge before a lesson? Cue mouse falling off the wheel. That's what we had on Tuesday. He completely ignored me while I attempted to lunge him, and once I got on (after girlfriend had gone back inside) he was still up in arms and not listening. Trying to focus on the job at hand and actually JUMP the jumps was pretty much a battle of epic proportions. We had quite a few run outs, zero brakes, and steering was like trying to turn a car with no power steering (really hard!). By the end I was exhausted, overheated (it was also 80 degrees), and wishing my horse who had worked and acted like an idiot for close to an hour would just WALK. Gah!!! Lol.

But I will not be angry or let down or get too frustrated. Reffy is a green horse who I have only had 4 and a half months. He's only jumped (with me) 3 times. It will get better. I'm not worried (yet).

As an absolutely amazing plus to everything, my horrible eq over fences has disappeared. I don't know if it's the new jump saddle or that combined with things FINALLY clicking in my brain, but my past two jump lessons, my leg position has greatly improved and I am no longer jumping up my horse's neck. Woohoo!!!! Go me! And go Megan for nagging me and getting me to this point. Lol.

So this Sunday, we will debut with an 8:06 am dressage time (ewwwww) and a 10:02 stadium time. Our goal is to end with a number, not a letter, and to just make it a good experience. We also plan to school cross country afterwards so that should be fun!

As usual, I'll leave you with some pictures from the past couple weeks. Not sure what order they'll be in because they always seem to move from the order I upload them in, but here are the descriptions::

-Trotting in a lesson
-Walking on contact (yay!)
-2 stills from a video of jumping through a gymnastic grid
-Reffy showing how handsome he is after a bath/mane pull/leg clipping

First time for everything!

And tonight was my first official fall off the new boy. Go team! We were trotting along, perfectly happy, round and forward and lovely, when mister OTTB caught sight of something out the window and darted inside. Since I was completely caught off guard, I found myself standing in front of him, holding my reins, wondering how I got there. Whoopsie! Luckily 15.3hh is not too far to fall from. And I'm a pro at sticking my landings. Needless to say, mister 'oh my god everything is now SO scary' continued to spook around the ring for a while until he realized mom was not going to fall off again, and thy he should just buckle down and do some work so he could be finished for the night. Horses are ridiculous.

Tomorrow we'll have another ride, then a good lunge Saturday night before our lesson on Sunday. Eventually I may get around to blogging about last week's lesson, but it was a bit of an epic fail on my part due to extreme exhaustion (note to self, lessons after working a 12 hour day of manual labor are not a good idea)

Until next time, here are some more pictures of the handsome Reformation.