Seventh Heaven

I've mentioned previously my affiliation with Pony Club.  For anyone not aware, Pony club exists as a way for young people to get involved with horses, learning to ride and trying out different events.  It provides affordable lessons and the structure and opportunity to advance to anyone who's interested.  There's also a competition called Quiz, which is basically a trivia event on all things horse with three parts.  The first is a written exam (aka the sucky part), the second is tack id (aka i know what this is called but the name isn't on here what the ****?), and the third is an assortment of games (aka how am I supposed to act out splint bone in charades? They just keep guessing leg???). There is a regional quiz held early in the year, and the top individual scores  qualify for the national team.

Anyhow, my regional quiz was back in April, and two friends from my club asked if I would be interested in being on a team with them. It sounded like fun, so they had me talked into it before I knew it. Completely unexpectedly, I found myself finishing fourth in individual in my division and third in team.  Unfortunately, my other team members didn't make the cut, but I quickly found myself whisked off and the senior team were telling me what to expect if I decided I wanted to come to nationals in the fall.

My summer was a lot of riding and otherwise getting ready.  My semi-disastrous testing from back in August was the last piece of the puzzle I needed to attend to to solidify my eligibility.  I bought a bunch of the required reading books off amazon and spent the latter half of the summer and any extra time I had around classes to study.

All that lead up to the big event thanksgiving weekend (Canadian thanksgiving weekend, in case my American friends are confused).  Since my region was hosting, the travel wasn't far, and we got to have 2 teams of 4 members each at the C level instead of just 1.

I arrived at the hotel just before dinner was starting on Friday night, and dropped my bags in my room.  I met one of my roommates, and we headed downstairs to dinner together.  Conversations were a bit stunted amongst the whole group at first, but everyone began to settle in, and I was re-introduced to some of the members I had met once or twice at regional events.  After dinner was line dancing and then everyone headed back to their rooms to regroup, where I met the other two members of my team.  All the members from my region headed upstairs to the senior team's room to cram for the written exam, and there were a lot of flashcards I didn't know the answer to and the official designation of our team's anthem.

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This one. Trust me, it grows on you.

We stayed up hanging out (and some studying) until curfew, and then headed off to bed for the night.  Breakfast began bright and early and then more cramming before the written exam started at 9:00 sharp.  As expected, it was super hard.  If you manage to get a passing grade on written at quiz, you're usually one of few.  There were 'local color questions' about Spruce Meadows, the Calgary Stampede, and the Pan Am games medalists which had very few survivors, but other than that most of the test went okay. I had basically no idea on the questions about the pony club rules of competition, but I did well on conformation terms and came out of written markings 19th overall out of 68 competitors.  My teammates were ranked 1st, 2nd, and 4th.

Lunch and more cramming, this time for tack id.  Tack ID is either a blessing or a curse depending on your experience, and what you have for study materials. Basically, there is a table of fifteen numbered items and a sheet with twenty object names.  At the C level (mine), you have to match ten objects with the appropriate blanks.  At the senior (A/B) level, you have to name all 15.  This category is deceptively difficult because pony club doesn't use the descriptive names (ex. instead of identifying a noseband as a figure-8, you're likely to have to know it as a grackle).  I personally love tack ID, because I have a slight obsession with weird tack. By far the worst table was types of carriages.  I managed to get the sulky and the trolley, which put me ahead of most people.  To say it was the unanimous least favourite table would be an understatement. You're given ten minutes at each table, and I think there were a total of 15 tables, so everyone was starving and exhausted by the time it was all over.


So, we all carted off to Saturday evening's entertainment.  about 150 people all crammed into an arena for beef on a bun dinner and a working cow horse demonstration.  First was reining, and then working a cow.  It's always interesting to see different disciplines, and it was a pretty fun evening.  The night ended more or less the same, with everyone in the region cramming into one hotel room and studying for games.

Bright and early Sunday was breakfast and then waiting for games to start.  As we waited, they posted the initial rankings for team, which are based on the combined individual scores for each team member. Our team was doing well, so going into the games we got to focus on just having fun.  My favourite game was called sculpt it, which was basically pictionary but you had to sculpt the answer out of kinetic sand.  Collectively, our team did really well, and we were feeling really good about our chances by the end of the day.

After lunch was our other outing, this time to the world famous Spruce Meadows.  I've been there before, but it was still fun to have our run of the international ring.  Most of the team, myself included, rolled down the derby bank. It's even steeper than it looks. I couldn't imagine riding a horse down it!

The infamous devil's dike

AB South in the Water Jump

Finally, it was time for everyone to get ready for the big awards banquet. Our region coordinated, so we all had red and black on. The dinner was the best one yet, and before I knew it, the awards were starting.

The placings were announced, starting with the A/B division individual.  Our region did really well, with a few placing in the ribbons! Then it was time for the individual C placings.  The ribbons started at tenth, and it wasn't a long wait before I found myself accepting the rosette for seventh place in individual.  I was thrilled (but not technically surprised, since I had found out when they posted the placings earlier, but I would have totally ruined the suspense of the blog post if I'd said so earlier)!

And I'm modest, too

My team also fared well, with my teammates placing fourth, second, and first! It was awesome to work with such brilliant team members! Plus, the other Alberta south C team placed sixth.

Finally, the announcements came for team, and my team came first! We all got keeper plaques, grooming bags, and of course, red ribbons.

They posted initial team rankings before games started, and since our team was all in the top ten individually, we were ahead of the second place by 25 points, which is not insignificant at quiz.  Most of the differences in individual rankings were by tenths or hundredths of points.  Individual points contributes to the team score, but games don't count towards individual. By the end of games, our team came out ahead of the second place team by 27 points.  It was an amazing experience, especially for my first trip to national Quiz.

After my whirlwind first national quiz experience, I have all you wonderful bloggers to thank. The big benefit of following and reading the blogs of so many of you wonderful people is that I hear all kinds of tidbits specific to the various disciplines you all represent.  I was one of the people who recognized the Tevis Cup as an endurance race rather than a flat race on the written thanks to people like Saiph, and I knew a liverpool bit, and a driving apron thanks to Andrea, and countless other little facts thanks to my continued obsession with reading everything y'all have to say.  But probably bigger than any other specific influence, I want to acknowledge the pure awesome that is the Braymere Custom Saddlery Blog and its insane amount of reference material.  A weird obsession with tiny plastic horses is a huge asset for any national quiz hopefuls reading this.

Horse Rescue

Apparently my blog is now only for me sharing adorable videos I find on facebook.  I do have an event from September I'm still hoping I will get to write about soon, and something else exciting this weekend, so I'll have to ask you all to just bear with me as I attempt to survive classes. Cheers!

EXCLUSIVE: Controversy in the Rambo Factory.

Just thought I would share this breaking news story.  Unbelievable, hiring these new employees of such unknown backgrounds. 















Haha, just kidding. Just wanted to share a video that made me smile this morning :)

Mr. Postman

Today the mail brought me something I have been waiting for for a long time now.  For a long time now, I have been admiring the model horse hobby from afar.  For anyone not familiar, here is a post explaining performance model horse showing (technically it's from She Moved to Texas, but I had an easier time finding the link to her guest post on Braymere Custom Saddlery). Basically model horses get dressed up in awesome scaled down versions of real life tack and do a still frame of real life horse events.  I'm slightly obsessed, and if anyone else is interested, I cannot recommend Braymere Custom Saddlery enough as a resource to learn a little more.  

However, I say admiring because I did not even own one Breyer. I say did because this arrived in the mail today! 

After a very long wait (as in, I first inquired about whether the set was still available back in August, and finally paid a few weeks ago), it's finally here!   One of the hobby blogs I follow is Stage Left Studios, with fabulous stablemate (1:32) scale tack by Grace Ledoux.  She made a portrait set of Secretariat's race tack, and I fell in love, but couldn't quite justify buying it when I had no horse to put it on.  Luckily for me, Grace threw in a horse with it, and I couldn't resist! 

There may or may not have been squealing when I saw how little it was.

I gathered my supplies

And then proceeded to squeal a little more about just how teeny tiny it was.

 Naturally, I had to tack up and play with it right away! It was a lot harder than I had thought it would be, but it was also 8000 times smaller and cuter than I'd expected! It's hard to get an exact scale in mind until you're physically holding something.  I spent maybe 45 minutes fiddling and fussing with wax and tweezers and tiny paper-thin straps before it was on and satisfactory for the time being.  Grace at one point had offered to permanently attach the tack for me, but I said no because I wanted to be able to play with it. I had a little teeeensy bit of regret over that decision when I spent about twenty minutes trying to get the wax on the undergirth to stay while also threading a 1:32 scale buckle for the overgirth and keep the saddle and pad in place.  I realized AFTER all of this fuss of course that the girth goes OVER the pad (duh, have I never tacked up a horse before?) so the wax would probably stick a lot better where it's actually supposed to go.  But for now, I'm not going to fuss with it, I'm just going to ooh and ahh and keep it as far as possible away from my very curious cat.

Mmm blobby bridle sticky wax (just behind the ear)

Overall, I am incredibly impressed with the set.  I am floored by how small it all is.  The leather straps are all literally paper thin and maybe as wide as a toothpick.  I'm particularly impressed with the reins and the blinker hood (surprisingly, my favourite parts are the ones I didn't spend forever fiddling with trying to get to stick).  I would buy from Stage Left again in a heartbeat.  (Say, anyone know where I could get a good simple custom paint job on a stablemate?  I might be able to be persuaded into commissioning a portrait tack set for a certain red pony that was once given as a gift to a certain someone at a certain time of year...)  If I had one and only one thing to say that wasn't absolutely gushing, it would be that I can't find the buckle hole on the overgirth, but a) this strap is the width of a toothpick, and b) it's clearly buckled in the sale photos, so I know it's on there, I just haven't found it yet.  Sometime soon i'll have to work up the nerve to untack and fix the sticky wax blobs and the girth.  I don't think I could possibly have bought a first model that would have made me any happier! Thank you Grace!  

Measuring up

I am officially finished holding out on you after this post.  It's been torturous not updating on our progress, but I was really disinclined to either spoil it or jinx it, and I can't wait any longer or I'll explode!  Though I technically made the vaguest possible allusion to my plans recently, I'm so excited to share that Jazz and I did our first show this past Saturday!

As a quick aside,  I want to note that I'm purposely pretty anonymous. I'm just not comfortable sharing too much personal information on the internet, so I tend to err on the the side of saying less. That said,  it's probably quite obvious I'm young. While I'm still not being specific,  I'm young enough that I'm still in pony club. So,  when my pony club leader sent out an email back in August about some shows coming up, I thought to myself,  "Hm, October 25th... I think I could be ready by then."  So,  it's been a couple months of accumulating proper show attire (a jacket, show shirt, bridle,  new bit without the fancy sides, medical armband, etc.), and working with my awesome trainer on show prep to do the trot poles, and it all came to a head Saturday.

The day started bright and early, with a 6am wakeup, and the show team headed to the barn.  A friend, K stayed over to come and help out at the show, and we went to catch the horse while the slaves  helpers hooked up the trailer.  Just after I'd caught a very confused Jazz - "Why are you here? It's dark and stuff"-, K said, "Are there supposed to be horses there?" while pointing to two horse-shaped silhouettes over by the barn.   I assumed it was the barn manager, who had told me she would be there about that time to load her horses for a different event she was going to.  I told my friend, "It's probably just [barn manager]'s two horses."  At this point it was tactfully pointed out to me that this was three, not two horses running loose in the yard, and the barn manager's car was not there yet.  At this point I called the barn manager and my friend hurried to close the perimeter gate.  I ushered Jazz into the barn where she would be out of the way of the loose horses (all of which were strangers to her).  Meanwhile K was trying to herd or catch the horses back into their pasture, the six  kittens were running around in the dark, and it appeared as though both lights had burned out in the rather dark barn where I was walking around my half-asleep horse (plus my half-asleep self).  Not the start I had pictured for the day. 

Before long, the trailer was hooked and parked in the yard (with the perimeter gate still closed), the horses were herded back into the nearest empty pasture, and the barn manager finally arrived.  Then all that remained was to load the horse.  Har har.  An hour, more than a couple tears, a few scary rears (thanks, young horse attitude), many failed bribe attempts, and much more struggle than could be considered necessary, the horse was on the trailer, and I was trying not to consider the fact that my classes were due to start 55 minutes from the time we got into the truck to leave, with the show being approximately a 50 minute drive.  I was not happy at the prospect that all that work, time, effort, and money may end in missing the show (thanks, early morning start times for baby trot pole classes), and mostly held it together as I also tried to figure out how to do my hair (the show hairnet/clip I had bought was defective and broke a few times before I could rig it servicably), changed, and attempted not to freak out some more.  My trainer was waiting for us at the show grounds, and she had let the officials know we were coming at least.  

This was the beautiful sunrise on the drive over, another welcome distraction.

We pulled in, finally, at 8:52.  Eight minutes to go.  I pulled on my boots (which co-operated and went on correctly for the first time in probably a month.  I really need to sort something out for my boots), and by the time they were on,  my trainer had found us, K had unloaded Jazz, and she was getting ready to tack her up when she asked, "Hey, where's the brushes?"  I said they were just in the back of the truck, and opened the tailgate.  Nope.  "Oh," I said, "I guess we must have thrown them in the trailer tack room." Nope.   "Hey, did anyone perchance grab the brushes from the (dark) barn aisle when we went to load the horse?" Nope.  In a burst of extreme luck, Jazz was spotless (seriously, she is never that clean), and we didn't have to beg the people at the trailers nearby to use theirs, because she was more than passably clean, and there was not a speck of dirt on her saddle patch.  Then my trainer pointed out that I should go start memorizing my course, and the lifesavers grooms got to work tacking up my horse for me.  I read the pattern and then went to walk the course with my trainer who suggested where I could cut corners and where I would have to go around.  Then, the ring stewards kicked us out and called everyone in my division for tack check.  I ran back to the trailer and found a (thankfully) tacked up horse and thanked everyone about a million times before briskly walking back to the ring with horse in hand, and tightening the girth as we went.  

Naturally, based on the course of events of the day so far, I was the first rider to go.  I was registered in three classes, the easy trot poles, the challenge trot poles, and the walk/trot equitation.  

First was challenge trot poles because the show officials accidentally put it first before easy trot poles. Jazz went into the ring nice and easy,  and I decided to trot a little circle before the timer like I always used to do at gymkhanas, but she spooked at one of the jumps. It was a Halloween show,  so there were all kinds of spooky obstacles and decorations. The jump at the front gate that was causing the present issue had two large tombstones leaning against the front standards,  and a skeleton propped up on the back one. Apparently she didn't get the memo that it wasn't really haunted. 

Either way, it was a minute or two before we were ready to actually start the course. Technically, I did try once before we actually did start, but she backed up (apparently the first jump was just as scary as the skeleton jump).  By the time I got her over the first pole,  I was so stoked about starting that I completely forgot my course and where to go. I knew which pole I was supposed to go to next,  but I was not lined up for it at all,  so I circled. Jazz also thought this one was scary,  so she backed away,  at which point the officials in the ring thankfully reminded me I was supposed to approach from the opposite side. Oops. After that I mostly remembered my course, and Jazz paused to consider a few more obstacles (there was one with a big fake spider she really leered at, and I don't blame her. Spiders are creepy). We survived,  and before I knew it we were exciting the arena. 

At this point Jazz decided to pull out her inner rock star and be the chillest chill horse while we waited and watched the other riders. She was behaving really well,  so I left her with K while I went to go figure out my second course.  It seemed much easier, basically a big loop of the arena with a figure eight in the middle.  While we waited, I watched the other competitiors, and talked to the girl next to me, who was riding an adorable little bay pony dressed up as a wizard.  He had a little wizard hat on, and the little girl riding him was wearing a long velvet cape.  Talk about a good pony!  I also noticed at this point that Jazz was, for probably the first time in her life, the tallest horse in the arena.  She looked positively huge compared to all the ponies.  If she's really stretching, she still might not brush 15 hands, but she's been doing so well lately, really starting to use her muscles better and coming into herself, that, odd as it may sound, she just feels bigger when I'm riding her.

After all the riders had gone and I had remounted in preparation for the second course,  they announced the placings.  I came in fifth, and I'm fairly sure the girl on the wizard pony got first.  I was thrilled, as I knew I wouldn't place high since I'd gone off course.

 Almost immediately after the placings were announced, I found myself back in the ring.  I tried to stay nice and relaxed, while still being prepared for spooks.  As it turned out, that was relatively unnecessary, because Jazz kicked into gear and ROCKED IT!  It was probably the best trot poles course we've ever run (to be fair, I did a limited number at home, and they were all bumped up in difficulty to prepare for the highest level of technicality at the show).  Before I knew it, I had crossed the electronic timer eyes, and I was done.

K remarked to me after the second course that my horse was calmer at this show than her very experienced show horse (whose last show was a national finals with her previous owner) was at any show she'd taken her to (so naturally, I had to brag a little about that here).  Our next class was equitation, so my trainer gave me a few tips as I double checked her girth and watched the last few riders do the trot poles.  When the class was over, they announced the placings, and WE WON! I couldn't stop smiling.  What a good pony!

It was at this point, with probably 45 minutes of very patient waiting, that Jazz started to get a little antsy. In fairness it was largely my fault for getting on too soon.  The jumps crew were still moving poles to get the track around the rail clear for the equitation when I mounted up, and Jazz was ready to go right that second.  Of course, considering the fact I literally drove up eight minutes before my classes started, I hadn't been getting on until right before I had to go for the previous two classes, so me being on her and not directing her to do something right then was a little confusing.  I did a little movement, circling and the like, until she chilled out a little, and then hopped off.  Naturally, about 45 seconds after I did so, they welcomed the riders into the ring to walk around and warm up until the judges were ready (the officials were also waiting for a rider who had just gotten there and wanted to make their equitation class).

Jazz went in nice and steady, and when I tried to subtly ask my instructor over the fence how I was supposed to manage passing, one of the officials kindly helped me out.  All the little ponies in the class were awesome and quite well behaved, but moved a little slower on their shorter legs than Jazz, who was energetic but still listening perfectly.  She was just in that perfect sweet spot where she was neither lazy nor raring to go.  Apparently my plans to have 45 minutes to warm her up to that perfect degree (you know, the ones thrown out the window because of the trailer debacle) were unnecessary.
The equitation class was overall quite good.  I felt pretty centered and balanced, and my legs were feeling fairly solid.  There were a few tiny hiccups when I had troubles with speed and distance between the other horses, so I circled through the middle and kind of got stuck.  It took a few tries and redirects, but I eventually ended up back on the rail.  There were a couple of little hiccups where I would apply a little too much leg and Jazz broke to the trot for a couple steps, but overall I felt great about it.  At the end, we lined up in front of the judge, who commented that everyone had very good leg position, and every rider had occasional issues with contact.  She then told us the results would be tabulated and the results posted soon.

We walked straight out the door and across to the racetrack once the class was over.  I probably should have mentioned the show was being held at a racetrack that had been closed a few years ago. I'd had grand ideas of messing around on the track for a while before cooling down, but the ground was pretty hard, so I opted to dismount as soon as she was cooled down sufficiently.  My trainer, and everybody else for that matter, asked how we'd done and what the judge had said, but we were still waiting for the results.  We took a few more photos and headed back to the trailer to get Jazz some food and water.

Demon pony has glowing eyes.

I know I already have this picture at the top, but this was her expression for the entire show.  What a great horse.

I left her with K to go find water and return my number, and headed over to the officials' table to ask where I could find a hose.  Immediately they asked my name, and handed over my ribbons before I could even ask about the water.  They gave me the already expected 5th place green ribbon and 1st place red ribbon (from trot poles), and also a shiny blue 2nd place ribbon from equitation! I was thrilled because I honestly couldn't have expected better considering the little bobbles we had (the short breaks of gait and when I got stuck in the middle of the arena for what felt like forever).  I handed back my number and headed off in the direction I had been pointed to search for water.  The lady at the officials' table had thought there would still be water behind the bathrooms, but most of it had been shut off for the winter already.  I tried the bathrooms, but I couldn't fit the bucket into the sink, and I couldn't even get enough water to cover the bottom of the bucket.  I went outside to wander some more when C came looking for me.  I showed her my ribbons and we were excited about that for a few minutes before remembering that we had no immediate way to get water to my horse.  I suggested we might be able to get a cup or something that would fit under the tap in the bathroom and just dump it into the bucket, and we found a long abandoned water bottle that would fit that bill.  Once I had filled it up in the bathroom sink and dumped it into the bucket four or five times over, C went around the corner and said, "You know there's a shower here, right?"  Oops.  We were sure to let the officials know so no one else would do anything quite that stupid in search of water.

I arrived back at the trailer to an untacked horse eating hay happily as a crew of slaves grooms brushed her.  Jazz was less than impressed that I wanted to tack her back up for photos, but there was no way I was leaving my first show without ribbon pictures with a tacked up horse.

Unfortunately all of the pictures with just the first place ribbon turned out pretty awkward.

Awkward pony and rider are awkward.  Plus return of the demon pony. 

Luckily the ones with all 3 ribbons mostly turned out better.

Of course, the awkward wasn't gone for good.

This one was definitely my favourite. 

 After all that, the drive home was pretty uneventful, and Jazz was back in with her friends before most of the competitors at the show had even ridden.  The perks of riding in baby classes.

It was no sunrise, but my view on the way home wasn't half bad either.  

p.s. I'm hoping to get the videos functional soon! 

  

Long Overdue

Okay, I admit it.  I've been holding out on you guys.

Majorly holding out.

For longer than was probably fair.  Dedicated readers (by which I mean me rereading and overanalyzing all my old posts) may have noted the updates on what I've been doing with Jazz getting vaguer and farther apart since July or so.  The main reason being my aversion to figuring out how to put videos on my blog.  My phone is very annoying to move photos and videos off of, and I wasn't sure I wanted a youtube channel (what seemed like the easiest way to get them onto my blog).  Needless to say, it has been a looong while since I've been wholly... comprehensive, shall we say.

Then I decided to write this post and set the record straight, and ran into yet more video troubles and shelved it again.  I could ramble on and on forever about my horse (as my non-horsey friends will testify), but the hardest part of blogging for me is just getting pictures and videos taken and onto my computer.

Either way, the torture is almost over.  Here's the first teaser of things to come.

That small, grainy cell phone video was the very first time jumping for both of us, and that video was taken August 6th.  So, I definitely have a lot of catching up to do still.

This week in London

Me! I just returned from an eight day trip to England, and I plan to write up the first installment of a few posts I have planned about my trip while I try to stay awake and beat jet lag tonight. More to come!

Excitement

Here's a quick recap of my exciting weekend!

I did a short ride Saturday.  More English, working on my position and keeping my legs glued where they're supposed to be.  More no stirrups, which I still love.  I did my no stirrups posting trot almost right off the bat, and the rest of my ride felt awesome.  A friend and fellow boarder had set up a couple of things in the arena that she said I was welcome to play with, so I had some fun with those as well.

The Labyrinth

This friend has some background with the Tellington-Jones method (TTouch), and so had set up the labyrinth with ground poles.  I did some walking and trotting over the middle of the poles and also did some work bending around through the middle in an S-pattern.  I'm not sure how much I've talked about my lesson work pre-groundwork re-start, but our main problem was that Jazz was straight as a board.  We spent months slowly working on getting her to bend and respond to legs that meant things besides forwards.  So, imagine my delight when I took her through this tight serpentine and she bent, like, all the way around it.  I mean, I really didn't set her up the best for the second turn, so it wasn't perfect, but she was so bendy I could have died of happiness.  There was also a teeny tiny cavaletti cross rail that was maybe nine inches off the ground in the middle that we walked over a couple times.  

like the one in the corner only seven times tinier

I'm very convinced Jazz has aspirations to become a jumper, because if I wasn't vigilant about steering and staying on the rail, she was drifting right to those ground poles and that cavaletti.  I'm hoping that's something we could do somewhere down the road.  

Now, as fun as that all was, here comes the real excitement.

Oops, it followed us home! 

Identity crisis

I was going crazy waiting to post this, but I wanted to be sure rather than tell everyone only for it not to work out in the end.  I have an English saddle! My new trainer mentioned she had an old all-purpose just taking up space in her garage that she was looking to sell, and she brought it to our first lesson together, but she didn't bring the stirrups or the girth.  By the time I had all of that organized, I was taking a short riding hiatus because of Jazz's teeth.  I had put it on once or twice, but she was fighting the bit so much I never got on.  That is, I never got on until yesterday.  

I arrived to the farm in my riding breeches with my knee high english boot socks, and my cowboy boots and a western shirt.  Then I tacked Jazz up with her english saddle and western bridle.  We were quite the sight.  

I had a fairly short ride and Jazz was doing only okay.  She was pretty fussy on the bit (I should mention her ulcer seems almost completely healed over now), which I kind of expected partially because I was sure she'd have pain memories and partially because the insides of her cheeks and stuff are probably still a little cut up so I'm expecting that to be completely better in a week or so.  There was a little head tossing and general aura of 'screw you I don't wanna', but nothing too ridiculous.  Just a nice short walk ride to get a quick feel for the saddle.  

One of the boarders commented on my new Westjet Blue pad

I need to work on keeping my legs under myself better apparently

this is a super blurry picture, but you can kind of see our mismatched saddle/bridle combo

So, I told my trainer I was interested in the saddle and asked how much she wanted (she had told me the price for the saddle, but then threw in stirrup leathers and the girth for my trial so I'm not sure what she wants for those).  I headed back out today and did another walk ride with a little trotting, with a much improved attitude on Jazz's part.  I am so excited for some adventures with my new little English pony!

Jazz was a superstar today.

Coming soon!

Wouldn't you know that the week I have two or maybe three long, picture filled posts with stories planned is one of the busiest weeks of my year so far? I'll get them together as soon as I can, but in the meantime here's a quick hint of what's to come...

Stay tuned! 

I have confidence that spring will come again

In my second life (the non-horsey one), I'm working on a production of the Sound of Music.  One of the more recent additions to the show is the song 'Confidence' from the movie version as a whole ensemble musical number, so it's been running through my head a lot, and now it seems even more appropriate with the return of what feels like real spring weather at last!

So needless to say I finally get to make a happy, excited blog post again! Yay! I've missed those! It's been a bit of discouragement and slow, slow, painfully slow progress for a while now, but I finally have something happy and exciting to report!

But I'll get to that.  I arrived yesterday at the farm to a very water-saturated yard, and a dirty horse.

I see a dirty horse

"Where?"

"Oh.  You meant me, didn't you? Rude.  You try keeping clean in that pasture."

She was just covered with what seemed to be sweat stains.  She's still retaining a lot of her winter hair (I don't blanket, so she has puh-lenty of that), and I tried the shedding blade, but it's just not ready to come out yet.  Oh well, we'll both be full of her hair soon enough when she sheds out.  Anyhow, she stood really quite well while she was tied, and I tacked her up without any fuss (a big improvement! she always used to wiggle around).

We headed into the arena, and I had another engagement later in the evening, so I didn't have an exceptionally long time to work with her.  Because of that, I decided not to concentrate too much on anything specific, because I didn't want to bring out any issues that I wouldn't have the time to deal with properly.  I had a bit of a play day, or a I like to think of it, a crash course.  I did a little taste of all the exercises we've been working on lately, only doing them once or twice per side until I got an really good try out of her, and then moving on.  She was backing, moving her shoulders, her hind end, and bending around a barrel with changing directions and rolling through her shoulders, all like a superstar.  She also did great with the new exercise we started at our last lesson, which involves taking the rope over the seat of the saddle and doing lateral flexion, and once she's got that down, bending her head around and then asking for her to move her shoulders and turn on her hind end.  There was a little resistance on her harder side (moving her shoulders over to the right), but she did almost an entire circle to the left when I had only asked for one step! What a good girl!

Of course the real main event came next....

Ta-da!

 Unfortunately, I didn't have my usual camera, so I had to use my phone.  It looks very much like there was a big smudge on the lense, which would be the cause of the weird haze on the pictures, but it doesn't matter.  I finally, finally got to get back on my horse! Yay!

These were the best of all the pictures we took

 I started off on the ground bending her head my direction and jumping on the ground, pulling on the saddle a tiny bit.  She took that fairly well, so I started jumping around with my foot in the stirrup, and then I laid across her back, as you can see in the last two photos.  She took that no problem, so I got the rest of the way up, and worked on getting on and off both sides equally.  She did awesome! I didn't want to push too much, and I was almost out of time, so I didn't ask for anything else, just standing for mounting.  Nonetheless I am super excited about this big step towards being back to normal!  Spring here we come!