Playing Catch-Up

So I know I have pretty much disappeared recently but I promise I have good excuses! The last few weeks have been VERY hectic for me so I haven't really had any time to blog and to be honest, I probably won't have too much time for a while going forward. You see, I have decided that it's time to stop being an effing dinosaur and actually do something with my life. To begin, I have signed up for 2 summer classes at the community college, I am also just starting to study for the GMAT and when that's done I'll have the LSAT, and I am researching grad schools to apply to.

However, in the midst of all of that, I am still making time for Gatsby and some lessons and *hopefully* some competitions coming up. Gatsby has done a complete 180 from the last time I wrote. Our rides recently have been awesome, both on the flat and over fences. We went to Woodside a couple weekends ago and had a fantastic schooling, including a big prelim jump into water which he rocked!

Our dressage has also been coming along although we definitely have good & not-so-good days. Our jumping has been phenomenal!! Last week in our lesson we jumped a HUGE 4 ft oxer beautifully. Gatsby was very unimpressed with mine and Alexis' attempts to make him work by raising the jumps. I don't know how much higher we can raise them before I get chicken!!

Anyways, I will try to update more regularly now that I have somewhat of a schedule for my classes/studying but I can't make any promises. Hope you all are having fantastic summers with your ponies!

Ups, Downs, and Scratches

Well I have seriously been neglecting this blog. Honestly it's because I just haven't felt like writing down how awful my rides have been and how frustrated it's been making me. Basically, Gatsby has been pretty much back to his old ways, exploding at random moments, blowing off all my aides, completely ignoring what I'm asking of him. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little but, especially after all the progress we'd been making, I was starting to feel like I was back to square 1.

Last weekend we had a less than stellar jumping lesson and I may have had a near-mental breakdown at some point. In all honesty, he could have been worse. He was still jumping well, locking on to the fences and looking for a job. However, it felt more like a jumper speed round than a relaxed, schooling stadium course. Oy vey...

Monday I took off riding because I wanted to really address where our issues were coming from and, quite honestly, I didn't even feel like riding. That has kind of been the case for the last couple weeks, I just haven't felt like it. It's depressing to get on knowing I'm going to work but tush off and have nothing to show for it. But, I know that this will pass, as similar phases have in the past, so I tried to persevere and scheduled a dressage lesson for Tuesday.

Thankfully we had an actually decent lesson on Tuesday. I'm not going to say good because I had to spend a good portion of the lesson getting him to the point where he usually starts but, we did end on a good note and we did have some really nice canter work.

Unfortunately as I was rubbing down his legs after our lesson I discovered a pretty nasty case of scratches on his hind legs. It doesn't seem to be bothering him much and his legs were still tight and cool so I just scrubbed with Betadine, wrapped and gave him a day off yesterday. When I went out last night they looked a little better and I added some anti-fungal cream, anti-bacterial cream, and diaper rash cream under his wraps. Hopefully today his legs will still be tight and cold and we can have a nice ride!

Also, I know I need to get to work on my goals seeing as we are almost half-way through June but I may have to save that for tomorrow:)

Prepping for Woodside

I have to say, I have been very pleased with our work since we've been back from Twin. We definitely had some solid issues there and although we got away with them mostly, we have to really nip them in the bud before we can even think about moving up.

Last weekend we took the horses to Woodside to school and it went really well. I'm starting to realize that XC really is not an issue for us and I need to stop riding like it is. This horse LOVES XC!! I just need to focus and let him do his job. We jumped most of the Training course and I can honestly say I'm not too worried. He did stop once at the log into the first water but I think as long as I am prepared it will be OK. It is pretty early on in the course and it's hard to say whether or not he'll be in his groove yet but if I ride strongly I think he'll go. We also got to jump the first two Prelim fences!!!! Neither are that big, I mean, they're the first fences, but it was still pretty exciting.

Tuesday we had a jumping lesson with Alexis and we decided to work on getting Gatsby to jump rounder, something we had noticed as an issue at Woodside. At this level, it really doesn't matter that much but, it will definitely effect us moving up. So, we put some draw reins on (Alexis also recommended that I ride in these more often to teach him how to carry himself). I was under the impression that these would magically change my horse and get him nice and round and I could just sit there and focus on me...NOPE! At least, not on my horse. I still worked my tush off even with the draw reins! We kept the fences fairly small, probably slightly lower than Training height and tried a variety of courses. When we finally felt that he had learned the lesson we took them off and just worked on a line, vertical to oxer. The line rode in about 4 strides I think but Alexis told me not to worry about distance. Gatsby jumped really well!! We kept putting the oxer up until the end when it was big, wide and scary with a pole across the top and he didn't even care! Love this horse.

Yesterday I had a short but sweet dressage ride. I worked the walk a lot before moving on to anything else and I think that helped him get down to business. He did feel slightly stiff from the day before though so I didn't do anything too crazy:) Just a little work with lengthenings and then lots of transitions towards the end. He almost always resists through the downward transitions so I decided to make him to some more difficult ones to really get his attention - canter-walk-canter-halt-canter and so on. By then end, he was really focused, relaxed, and attentive to what I was asking for:)

Today he will get the day off and the I will probably do another light dressage school before heading home for the weekend. Although I do want to keep him in steady work I don't want to push him too much as he tends to get burnt out and then blows me off when it really matters (at the show).

April Recap & May Goals

I know, I know, it's almost half-way through May..but that doesn't mean we haven't been working on these goals!!

April Recap

1. Make this the month of dressage. Even though our dressage work has improved tremendously since January, I am still not quite happy with where it's at. I would like our work to be more consistent so that we can start adding in new, more difficult elements. I also really want to feel confident in riding our test so I am not always dreading dressage day at events.

Half-success. We definitely did quite a bit of dressage work and I was pretty happy with our progress. However, I was seriously disappointed when we failed to break into the 30’s after dressage at Twin. I know we can do better than this!

2. Start adding in more difficult questions in our jumping lessons. I am really liking where our show jumping is heading but I want to make sure to keep Gatsby on his toes and thinking about every fence.

Oh god yes. Alexis has pretty much been scaring the pants off of me in all of our jumping lessons. And, judging from how stadium went at Twin, this NEEDS to continue!

3. Follow our conditioning plan more religiously. Although now that I've written that I've realized that I will be out of town the next 3 weekends and we didn't do anything last weekend...I will have to try to get some of these rides in during the week now that it is staying light later.

Ehh…this is probably pretty much a fail. We definitely did not follow our plan anywhere near religiously lol. However, I am happy to report that he was still raring to go after running XC at Twin and I am not too worried about his fitness at this point.

4. Sitting trot! We have definitely come a long way in regards to our sitting trot, I mean, I can actually ride it now! But, we are starting to get to the point in our career where I really should be able to sit the trot for our whole test and we are not even close to that.

We actually had a breakthrough with this in one of our recent dressage lessons and Alexis alerted me to some issues in my position that were hindering my progress her.

5. Finish Twin on our dressage score. My dream goal would really be to finish in the top 10 but I am focusing more on going clean right now. Fingers crossed!

What’s funny is that if it weren’t for my horrendous ride to fence 9 in stadium we would have been in 8^th! But, that cost us both the ribbon and my goal. Oh well:(

May Goals

1. Keep making progress in dressage! I really want to work on keeping him round and working through his back more consistently and this will ultimately help him with his own self-carriage.
2. Along those lines, work on his jumping technique. As Alexis and I discussed yesterday he is just too athletic and too talented to have any rails in stadium. However, his technique leaves something to be desired as he often jumps fairly flat. This isn't a huge issue right now but it will definitely become one as the jumps get bigger.
3. More trail riding! Now that it is warmer and staying light later I want to take him out of the arena more. I think it will be a good break for both of us:)
4. Not score any 4's in dressage at Woodside!
5. On that note, actually finish on our dressage score this time! (top 10 would still be nice:))
   

Prepping for Twin

I have really gotten down to business this week prepping for Twin. Actually, I only got in 3 rides but I feel like we had some big successes in all 3 so I am happy with that and feel that we are on the right track.

Tuesday I rode dressage. Gatsby started out in a butt-headish mood and was back to all his old ways, spooking at nothing, running from my leg, avoiding the contact, sucking back...ughhhh. At this point I was thinking that somewhere in the last month something obviously went the wrong direction and I have NO CLUE how to fix it and how the heck am I going to make it through our dressage test at Twin without crying out of frustration. But, I tried really hard not to let him get to me and to just stay focused and ride through it and cross my fingers that he would respond. Well, eventually he did. He didn't end up nearly as nice as I had hoped and I had to work WAY harder than I should have BUT at least it was progress and I did have to be happy with that. Plus we did have some pretty nice lengthenings. I actually had a friend walk by during our ride and I mentioned that he was being a jerk and then about 5 minutes later she walked by again and commented that "he doesn't look like a jerk, he looks really good!" So, I guess that's all that will really matter when it comes down to it...at least short-term.

Wednesday we had a jumping lesson with Alexis and I was really happy with how it went. I am constantly having to remind myself that my horse does actually listen to my half-halts now and I really don't have to fight with him like I used to. However, I also am having to remind myself that even though he does listen, he gets so excited and focused on course that I really need to make sure my aides are getting through to him. If I give a strong half-halt he really does respond but if I just whisper "woah" he will think about it...and then decide to do things his own way.

We worked a lot on the same things as last week, tight turns and bending lines. We had one line that was a long 4 and I was really proud of myself for actually putting my leg on and getting the 4 instead of chipping the 5 like we normally do. There as also a XC jump in the area, just a little wall with some scary chevrons painted on it. We presented it to him and I figured he would jump it really big and probably squirm all the way to it. This horse continues to surprise me; he cantered up to it nice and relaxed and didn't over jump it at all! I was really happy with him especially considering this will be our last jump school before Twin.

To finish up the week we had another dressage school, this one much more successful than Tuesday. I was going back and forth about whether to do a dressage school or a conditioning ride but I am really happy I decided on dressage because it was the perfect way to head into the weekend, SUCH A CONFIDENCE BUILDER! I don't even know what to say, he was just fabulous. I can really tell how much his gates have improved since January, his canter is much more connected and his trot is much more free and flowing, it's really wonderful to ride. I'm so glad we seem to have overcome whatever we were going through. We will have a dressage lesson with Alexis next week and then hopefully we will be all set for Twin!

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming

I have been a terrible blogger lately. I usually post during my lunch breaks but I just took on some additional responsibilities at work so I have been neglecting blogging. Hopefully I can get back on track before Twin though!

I wasn't able to get out to the barn much last week, sadly. I actually only got in two real rides which is depressing:( We did a serious dressage school on Wednesday. Gatsby was back to his old ways, tossing his head, ignoring my aides, running through the contact, and heavy in the bridle...UGH!!!! I started to get really frusterated but fortunately caught myself before doing too much harm to our ride. I decided to try something new with him since my usual tools were getting COMPLETELY ignored and I did some rapid-fire transitions, lots, while also leg yielding. All of a sudden, I had an responsive horse under me. Our work still wasn't quite as lovely as I wanted but actually, I think it was better than I am giving us credit for. Instead of working through our test as a whole, which I think was frustrating both of us, I broke up the different movements and threw in a few extras to mix things up. Our extended trots are getting quite lovely and I am really happy with the direction our transitions are going in. The one big issue I am still having is with the lengthening at the canter. When he is completely relaxed and responsive he does this beautifully, but, that is about 10% of the time tops. Usually he responds to my lengthening aides but I lose the front end and his head shoots up and our nice frame is done for:( also, he is then resistant to coming back to working canter. Thoughts anyone?

Thursday we had a jumping lesson. It went really well but I could tell I wasn't riding as well as usual which was a bit disappointing. What was nice was that Gatsby kept his cool and took care of me:) We worked on some tight turns and bending lines and finished up over a skinny corner. I could not be more proud of my boy!

Alexis rode him over the weekend and I am super excited for our dressage school today and for our upcoming rides as we prepare for Twin. Hopefully we can get everything figured out an have a successful showing!

We're still here...

Everything has been kind of hectic lately and I just haven't felt like updating. Last week I was only able to get out to ride once which sucks but at least I had a really nice ride! Also, due the the traumatic events that have recently occured in Japan, my trip is postponed indefinitely. It's sad but honestly I am just SO thankful we weren't there! All of my love goes out to those effected by this devastating situation.

On Monday I had a really nice dressage ride. I have been starting my rides with 10-15 min of lateral work at the walk and this helps SOOOOO much!!! When I ask for the trot Gatsby is already in a working mindset and it is much less of a fight. We did a few extensions and some more side pass work which he is slowly but surely starting to get. I also have been working on haunches in, he always stiffens up a lot when I ask for this so that is something we will have to work through:-/.

Tuesday we had another fantastic jump lesson; we kept it short and low since we will be schooling at Twin this weekend. Alexis set up some XC-like questions, reeeeaaallly tough bending lines and some offset verticals. I was horrified everytime he told me a new course! But, true to form, Gatsby jumped like a champ and I am very confident heading in to this weekend. Ever since my bad fall in Feb of 2009 I have been wimpy on XC but I am starting to feel that turn around!

I also talked to Alexis a little about what level I should enter for Twin. We both agreed that I should wait to decide until after schooling but Alexis said he was 99% confident I would be going Training! This is SUPER exciting news for us. Looking back, I know we weren't ready to move up when we did and I regret it now because those outings caused most of my insecurities and therefore more problems for us. I do feel like we are ready now though; Gatsby is much more attentive, responsive, and ride-able, aaaand our dressage has gotten heaps better! So, I will wait to send my entry until Monday but I have T checked for now;)

Somebody pinch me...

Or at least give me my horse back because there is no way this calm, collected, thoughtful steed I've been riding lately in a snaffle bit is actually my horse. Whoever stole my crazy, knuckle-headed, 17.3 OTTB, please return him immediately. Or don't actually. Because this new beast I'm riding is pretty darn fancy and I am falling more and more in love with him every day.

Incase you couldn't tell, we had another fantastic jumping lesson on Wednesday. We worked on a grid - bounce, bounce, on stride - and he was just fabulous so we moved on to some course work. None of the jumps were huge - we kept them around 3'3-3'6- but my horse was spectacular. We worked on the same things we have been and threw in a ton of bending lines and rollbacks to make me really work on keeping that right shoulder from popping out as it tends to. I don't know what happened but something has clicked and he is really starting to get it. He took off from the base of the jumps at most of our fences and the ones where we had an off distance he took it long instead of chipping in that extra, retarded stride like we usually do.

Basically, I love my horse. I am canceling tonight's dressage sesh to go out to dinner in SF with Daniel and then will do a long conditioning hack tomorrow and some dressage on Sunday.

I ordered him some new shipping boots because mine are long gone and found these super cute plaid ones with a matching fleece sheet! I cannot wait for them to arrive!!

Jumping Around

We had yet another AMAZING lesson last night! I am floored by how quickly Gatsby and I have progressed recently. When we came to DK early last month we had both had about a month off but even before that we hadn't really been in full-on training mode. In our first lesson with Alexis we worked over little baby jumps and Gats and I were both pretty rusty and all over the place. Since then we have spent all of our lessons and rides working on keeping Gatsby calm and focused and it has really paid off!!

Yesterday we started out working on a circle to get Gatsby relaxed and straight. We also did some spiral-in/spiral-out to really get him to use he haunches on that smaller circle. We then moved on to a gymnastic exercise which started out as a small cross-rail, one stride to some poles, one stride to some more poles. This quickly built up and eventually we had a cross-rail, one stride to a 3'3 vertical, one stride to a 3'6 oxer. Once Gatsby had mastered this, which he did very quickly, we incorporated the gymnastic into a course. We would go through the grid, bending line to a bounce in the corner, around to a big vertical out of the other corner, 6 strides to a big square oxer, roll back to a vertical and another bending line to a vertical. We did this a few times and I was just astounded by how amazing my horse felt.

The only thing we had a slight issue with was the 6 stride line from vertical to square oxer. Coming off the corner to the vertical I had to really focus on keeping him straight as he really likes to pop that right shoulder. I also used to time on the small side of the arena to really ride him into the canter that I wanted. We got a couple messy lines, a 7 and a couple of 5's. I did afterwards find out that the line WAS set for 5 but we just wanted him to do it in 6. We never ended up with that perfect 6 strides but we did get a nice 6 with a long take-off which I was very happy about because he will normally chip in the extra 7th stride.

I was also extremely pleased after our lesson when I remembered that I had switched him back to a full-cheek snaffle from the kimberwicke and I hadn't even noticed it the lesson!

I am super excited to get out to Twin next month to school cross-country and I am even more excited to start out the season!

Jumping in the Rain

So I finally got my tooth pain all sorted out. Turns out I got dry socket which is fairly common after wisdom tooth extractions. Also VERY painful though. My dentist packed the socked with some gauze soaked in clove oil which works magically and tastes horrid!

Gatsby and I had a jumping lesson scheduled for yesterday and I was SO disappointed when I saw that it was supposed to rain all week:( That is, until I remembered that two of the arenas at our new barn are covered!!! Unfortunately Gatsby had had the last two days off due to dentist appointments (mine, not his) so he was very fresh and frisky when I got on yesterday. Alexis helped me work him through this in our warm up and encouraged me not to be such a passive rider. Basically I am a little too quiet and this actually makes him more high-strung. When I really put my leg on and tell him what I want he relaxes almost instantly.

We worked him back and forth over a probably 3' vertical and I worked on keeping him straight and keeping the same canter stride to the fence. It took us a few tries but we did get some LOVELY jumps out of him. I also realized that when he is truly straight he feels crooked to me!! I guess that means we just have more to work on than I originally though:) After the vertical we moved on to a small course of a vertical, a star burst looking fence, and a one stride cross-rail to an oxer. Gats jumped all of these beautifully and out of stride and didn't even look and the scarier ones!! I could not be more pleased with my horse!! I rode our last couple course with a huge smile on my face.

Today Gatsby is getting new shoes and tomorrow I have a work event so I won't be able to ride but I am confident we can pick up where we left off on Saturday.

In other news, I just found out today that my time off request to go to Japan was approved!! I spoke with one of the managers I support about how important the trip is to me and he made it happen! I am beyond excited. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the beast while I am gone.

Outside the Golden Pavilion in '06

Stopping at fences is a good thing?

If you read the title to this post you're probably just about as confused as I was during my jumping lesson last night. Fortunately, Alexis is very good at explaining and I ended up understanding his point.
We started our lesson last night working on keeping Gatsby straight; he tends to pop his outside shoulder out a bit. We worked at the trot and canter on a circle with me focusing on my outside aids as well as keeping him forward, relaxed, and stretchy. Gatsby is a very smart horse and he loves to please so he caught on very quickly and we moved on to trotting some low fences. We wanted to keep him in that same relaxed mind frame that we got him in last week, once again my horse is very smart and he knew right away what I was asking from him. After popping over a cross-rail a few times we moved on to a small vertical on a diagonal. I'm sitting there thinking how great my horse is for staying so relaxed and responsive when all of a sudden SUPRISE! Gatsby stops. My horse rarely stops so I am a little surprised but I rein back and trot him over it...a little messy but he goes over fine.
After a few more rounds of that we moved on to the tough part. Alexis had me ride a line from a vertical to an oxer, both approx. 3 feet. Gatsby jumped the verticle smoothly, I half-halted, sat back and stayed quite to the oxer (we're working on me not doing anything on the approach and him staying relaxed and figuring it out on his own). BAM! He stops again! I have no idea what is going on at this point and I am racking my brain trying to figure out why my horse is all of a sudden refusing simple, low fences. That's when Alexis says "That's exactly what I wanted to happen." What?!?!?! After a little explanation I understood his point; Gats is used to me riding him to fences with a strong leg and a short rein. He usually rushes to fences and has a very short and elevated stride and it is necessary for me to pick up a strong contact and really guide him over the jump. When we took away all of this "discussion" in the approach and had him come to the fence at a nice relaxed, reaching canter with loose reins, he didn't know what to do. After a few more stops and some very ugly fences Gatsby figured it all out and hopped over the oxer without a second thought.
This whole exercise really got me thinking about how I have been riding him in the past and why we started having problems on course all of a sudden. That's when what Alexis said about him not knowing what to do without me really made sense. I've been letting him do things his own way and accommodating his bad habits by overriding instead of just training him to things the right way. I think that this new style will actually help us develop faster once we're both more used to it. I would have been terrified to ride him around a Prelim course the way we were going before but if I can get him to stay calm and figuring things out for himself, I think I will be much more confident.

Lessons!

So last week Gatsby and I had our first two lessons with our new trainer, Alexis Helffrich. Alexis was highly recommended to me by everyone at our new barn including an old friend and instructor of mine so I was very excited to get his input on my somewhat knuckle-headed steed. Our first lesson was a jumping lesson on Thursday. Since neither Gatsby or I had jumped in over a month *gulp* and Alexis had never seen us go before, we kept the jumps pretty small. We worked on keeping Gatsby relaxed and forward and Gatsby was just wonderful.
To start the lesson Alexis had me trot Gatsby back and forth over a small cross-rail. After noting Gatsby's tendency to rush to the fence and then back off at the last second, Alexis set up a short course for us set on a serpentine. Having those tight turns to help keep Gatsby relaxed and balanced is REALLY helpful for me. Alexis also pointed out that while I have a very strong and stable lower leg, I rarely apply pressure from my thigh so I worked on that as well. We did the course a few times and I worked on keeping pressure on from my whole leg, keeping my hands quite, staying back and letting him find his spot. This worked wonders! By the end of the lesson Gatsby was cantering around the jumps super relaxed and more forward than ever! I immediately texted my friend Nicku to thank her for recommending such a wonderful trainer
:)

We had our second lesson with Alexis on Sunday and this time we worked on dressage. Alexis hopped on Gatsby at the beginning so that he could get a feel for him. He concluded that Gatsby seems to have the same issues in dressage that he does jumping, he gets too tense and agitated and rushes through everything. When I got on we worked on giving Gatsby very precise and correct cues so he knows exactly what I want from him. Being able to rely on me tends to keep him much more relaxed. On that same note, Alexis also had me working on being much stronger in my corrections, as Gatsby tends to be quite rude at times. Especially at the canter, he will start bobbing his head all over the place and refusing to hold a contact. To remedy this, Alexis had me hold my outside hand very strong and steady at his withers so that when he bobbed his head he would catch himself. At the same time, I was giving him an open, leading rein with my inside hand and pushing him forward from my legs. Once again, this worked magically. Gatsby continued to try the head bobbing trick to see what he could get away with but by the end of the lesson he had pretty much given up. I am sure this is something we will continue to work with.

Unfortunately, since then I haven't been able to make it out to the barn:( I had to work late last night because of month end and I will be staying late again tonight to make up for arriving late after a dentist's appointment. We do have another lesson scheduled for tomorrow though! I am uber excited and have started planning out a shoe schedule for us this season:)