Jumping Good, Ground Poles Apparently Paralysis Inducing

I had a lesson today, following our little show debut. We spent quite a bit of time working on how to get round and forward simultaneously with good results at the walk and trot and some improvement at the canter. Then on to jumping. He was quite forward and happy to jump everything in the ring (including oxer with blue barrel under it). When we got to the one stride, we had a couple reasonable gos, then he started to leave long, decided that was a bad idea, put his feet down, then failed to lift them up high enough, resulting on catching the pole between his legs, going down almost to his knees, tipping me onto his neck, but then somehow patting the ground and jumping the out! Like Bobby Meyerhoff's "Million Dollar Horse" over much smaller fences http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJd-U8w_6bw. He then continued happy to jump, but seemed to think the way to avoid landing on them was to leave out a big stride, slightly unclear on that concept. So, Missy put 3 trot poles in front of a crossrail. Finn trotted up and stopped in total consternation. Missy ended up leading him through at a walk. Then he walked through once, then stopped and was led through again. When Missy widened the poles a bit (from about 2 feet between to 4 feet between), Finn bounced perfectly through them. This was repeated about 4 times, then Missy set them to about 3 feet, resulting in a shuffle through (no poles touched, but really random foot placement), then some combination of trotting and bouncing for the remainder of attempts. I'm having big fun with the boy!

Finn's first show

Finn went off to his first show today, a DVCTA dressage schooling show. His buddy J.D. was also there, so that probably helped, but I must say I was truly impressed by how calm and business-like he was about the whole thing, despite lack of consistency leading to poor scores. We loaded up and headed out by 6:30 in the morning and when we arrived, just after 7:00, I tacked Finn up and took him down to the arena, where we were able to do our whole warm-up in the very large indoor that had the small arena at one end. Finn didn't seem to mind leaving J.D. and was quiet and equally well-behaved as he is at home through the whole warm up and two tests. Dawn and J.D. won both of their classes. Their score for the second class was a 71.5 (let me just say in my dreams). Finn appeared to predominantly consider the exercise an excellent grazing opportunity as the grass where the trailer was parked was lush and long, with lots of clover. Many thanks to Trudy for trailering, grooming and keeping us on track. Gotta love it when it goes well and you are totally done, leaving the barn by 10:30 a.m. I'm looking forward to the next one, but have lots of work to do in between.

Cross Country Schooling

Finn went cross country schooling for the first time yesterday. We went to the nearby Laurel Hill, which is a very nice facility for the young horses. Chrissy nicely brought Gator along to babysit. Loading up was excellent, trailered over quietly. No problem tacking up or walking down the hill or walking around with Gator. Being asked to jump was a bit much for his little pea-brain and he acted more like an OTTB than he ever has. When Missy arrived, she sent us to gallop up the hill, which we did 4 times at a pretty impressive clip (perhaps a tiny bit *more* bit than the KK snaffle next time). He was willing to trot serpentines coming down. Then with Gator done with his jumping, we went down to jump. The little logs went well. He was perfectly happy to walk through the water. The first coop took two tries as did the first wine barrels, but all in all he settled down pretty quickly and once he was settled and realized he was jumping was very good. There was the unfortunate vulture-induced spook, but he gets a buy on that one, really vultures - yuck! Gator scared them away for us. He needs to do this a bunch more times, but for his first off the farm venture since arriving at the end of April, it went very well and today's dressage lesson was also really good.

Maryland, Michigan and New York

Big eventing weekend. Kaiti and Truman went to Maryland Horse Trials where Tiamo also redebuted after some time off. http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/orderpage.aspx?pi=0EBK00A7BI0030&po=60. At Stuart Horse Trials, Gillian won the training on Teddy and had a 9th place finish on Choo at Preliminary, even beating Susie. Lesley and Tia won the novice with a ridiculously good dressage score, that left them a needed rail in hand for SJ. Gizmo and Lexi went training level!! Yeah Gizmo!
Lesley and Tia: http://stuarthorsetrials.org/archives/2009/galleries/ndress1, Lexi and Giz: http://stuarthorsetrials.org/archives/2009/galleries/txc1/index.html (8th picture), Gillian and Teddy http://stuarthorsetrials.org/archives/2009/galleries/tstad/index.html (13th picture)

Meanwhile, I went off and played in Michigan. It was great to see everyone at Cobblestone. The course was lovely and the weather was almost perfect (it threatened to rain, but never really carried through). Cathy did forget her dressage test on one horse, but almost everyone I saw looked great and as always Eventing at Cobblestone Rocked!

catching up

Since I last managed to post, there have been many good things and good times. I did the Rock 'n' Roll Seattle half marathon on June 27th. Perfect weather, beautiful course and a PR (still really slow). Then off to a week at Rocking Cs Ranch in Montana where I got to ride a lot, including the lovely Ravenna, kayak down and river and meet a bunch of really great people, including Harry and Wendy who got engaged while I was there (the very prompt wedding was being planned when I left). Then Henry's birthday, a 9-1 homestand for the Phillies, a lovely weekend at Maui Jim (except for the very sad death of Uni Griffin, thoughts and prayers to Lisa Marie Ferguson and others touched by his death). At Maui Jim, I stayed with Cindy Zitko, who generously opened her home. She has a lovely OTTB called Dickens, so I will be watching for them at events (online). Finn also jumped his first barrels. The one between standards with a pole over it did not phase him at all. The ones lying on the ground took 2 tries to be recognized as something to jump over, but then he was very good. I hear he and Duff had a moment on a hack, but he seems mostly quiet as ever and progressing at a great rate. Life is good

In and Out

Because Finn jumped his first one stride on Tuesday and the squirrels on campus are dumpster diving all the trash cans and you see them popping in and out as you walk across campus. Tuesday, we did the little one stride for the first time and he was good, though very wiggly much of the time. He has a bit of a tendency to stall, though today, when we repeated the exercise (and the fences may actually have been 2' high), he discovered his "go" button and seemed to be having some fun. He can also canter a circle now, which means he is on his way to being ready to go to his first event. He remains quiet to the point of laziness, but is willing to try pretty much anything. He tends to step *on* things like rails on the ground and curbs, because stepping over them is apparently either, 1) too much work, 2) really uncessary, or 3) both in his world. Heading out tomorrow for the 1/2 marathon in Seattle, then 5 days at the Rocking C's ranch in Montana. Yeah!

more jumping

OK, I really do need to get a camera out to the barn so there can be pictures. We had another lesson with Missy today, more jumps. There were 3 little fences today and we made a (very little) course: jump the cross rail, turn left around the end of the arena and then across the diagonal to jump the 12" vertical then turn right around the other end of the area and up the opposite diagonal to jump the 14" vertical, canter once around the whole arena, back to trot and do it again. He was very good about the whole thing, and is nonchalant to the point of being lazy. Missy raised the possibility of small spurs as potentially useful. Hacking out is planned for tomorrow, after I run 10 miles in the morning.