Those darned coefficients again!

The sweaty fuzzball at the halt in one of our tests yesterday. Thanks to my brother for taking this cute pic!

I was relieved to ride at 8 this morning in the thick cold misty fog.... only my horse was STILL overheating- yes he's THAT furry. Or, at least he WAS that furry, but more on that later.

We had more umph in our warm-up and generally he felt really good, I felt good and it was a normal happy early morning at a show with the sounds of snorting horses, tractors preparing arenas, and lively chatter among people congregating at the warm-ups. Our warm-up routine went well, he was uphill, infront of my leg and very light in my hand. We went to the showring and he started off that way and it was a case of felt so good I backed off. Grumble.... we completely missed our lead change to the left, however, it had redeeming moments like our med/ext canters and the subsequent transitions back to collected where he rocked back so well staying oh so light in front and our trot tour in general was as good as we have been accomplishing at home - earning mostly 7's. However, that darned change is double point value and he was anxious for the second change knowing we'd made a mistake on the prior one which caused it to jump together behind and not stay uphill.

As we watched for the scores, they came up for the 3rd test 1 class that went before and not a single score over the 60 mark and one down in the 40's! OUCH! I was a bit worried. Then they posted them. We won the class with a 62+, yet another qualifying score AND the only score in the class over 60 several percentage points ahead of 2nd place.

We mainly walked in our warm-up for the second test, riding some variations between straight ahead, shoulder-in, haunches-in and renvers a few walk pirouettes and rein-backs. He was more between my aids. The second test flowed so well. Everything was smooth. Nothing superbly grand, other than 8 on his medium walk. We got our changes, a bit 'jumpy' but correct for a pair of 6 and a 5, and a lot of 7's everywhere else.

It was a good test and I was happy. I knew it would be a better score than the prior ride, but wasn't sure how those coefficient marks would help/hurt us. When they scores came up, we had a 64.8 to win that class too!

Not a bad start to the next show season.... 3 of the 5 qualifying scores we need for the CDS championships (they must be 5 scores from 4 diff judges) and 1 of the 2 I need for the USDF Regional champs (must get one more from a diff. show) However, all our scores were in the qualifying range. YEAH! He's also met the requirement to show a freestyle. FUN FUN!

.... later on at home.....

I put him out in his field to graze for the afternoon. He happily rolled his sweaty self in the grass and munched away for a few hours. I went back out at one point to scrub the water trough and he would not leave me alone. He followed me back to the gate and longingly asked to come with me back to the barn. Since I had plans to body clip him tomorrow and he obviously wanted to hang out with me more, we went back to the barn and got a haircut. He didn't quite meet up with Edward Scissorhands, but since I had not body clipped a horse since before we moved here... uh.... about 6 yrs ago, my skill wasn't quite up to par. I'm certain he will be more comfortable though and since we have no more showing plans until Feb. the "looks" department should be okay. ;-)

Two wins and a good body clip... not a bad day.

Coefficients can kill ya!

All those movements where the score is doubled can really make or break your test. In the 3rd test 2 there are 6 movements with a double point value and in test 3 there are 7 of them. Get a few 6's, 5's or a dreaded 4 and it hurts twice as bad. The flip side is, that a better score of 7 or even 8 can give your total a big boost.

Now, its not wise to ride for those scores in a test. You simply try to ride every step to the best of your ability. Then you hope mistakes and bobbles don't happen there and that brilliant moments do!

Weeeeeelllllll.... we weren't brilliant anywhere, but we weren't half bad today either. My fears of warm weather mixed with fuzzybutt pony were justified as we sweated our way through, however, all the things we have been working on lately were greatly improved from our last outings and the things we hadn't specificially focused on were also better for simply having done what every rider should do every day- focus on getting the basics better.

On that note, our coefficient scores were a smattering of 7's a couple of 6's and only one 4 in each test.... the flying change to the right which up to now had been his easier one. I'd kind of left it alone in favor of fixing the rather overt croup high issue in the change to the left. His changes left in both tests were on the mark, clean AND scored 7's!! ~ times 2 ;-) 7's on our coefficient 2 shoulder-ins and a 7/6 flip flopped in each test on our half-passes and a single non-coefficient 8 in each test one for our medium walk, and one for our halt/rein-back/proceed in collected trot....

Total marks for the day~
3rd Level test 2 ~ 2nd Place with a %63.846 (qualifying score for CDS)
3rd Level test 3 ~ 3rd Place with a %63.023 (qualifying score for CDS Champs and USDF Regional Champs)

Different judge tomorrow- we'll see if we can stay consistent at the very least or better yet, improve on ourselves some.

Starr Vaughn Dressage II

I'm all excited and yet dreading the show. Oddly enough I was crossing my fingers for wet cold weather. It seems my little horse has decided this is the year to be the wooliest of wooly beasts and I had decided I didn't need to body clip. Add to that Mother Nature has given us a quite warm and extended fall.... poor Philipe is a miserable sweaty mess doing anything more than a casual warm-up. *sigh*

Its too late to body clip for this show.... although I pulled them out of storage since they had not been used since before we moved here. They look wonderful and ran well, but I did not dare to begin removing hair lest he look downright ugly for the show.

Now the forecast is not for rain... gggrreeeaaaat.......

Otherwise, I'm completely excited to ride. We have our terrific moments of wonderful self-carriage and collection supremely supple... and then it gets flat and his big neck gets tight until I can get the half-halt to go through. Its all about being quicker to recognize it and use a smaller half-halt. Always me! Our trot work has improved vastly and the canter is getting there. LOL

For those interested here are my ride times:
Saturday Ring 2 2:31 and 3:48
Sunday Ring 1 8:10 and 8:58

At least this way, I can give him his bath and do braids Sat. am.

USDF Sport Horse Seminar

Wow... I just spent 2 days at the USDF Sport Horse Seminar a pre-requisite course for entering the "R" Sport Horse judges program. What an information packed weekend. Starr Vaughn was yet again a lovely hosting facility featuring much of their homebred stock as well as a number of horses from other local breeders.... with a large number of individuals that a great number of us would LOVE to take home. ;-)

The general theme of all judging of sport horses is an absolutely critical one. Trainers, like myself, face this every day and those of us who truly love our horses are compelled to recognize it: Conformational and gait qualities LARGELY affect the trainability and the rideability of the horse for sport (in this case specifically dressage). Therefore, significantly impacting the development of a happy athlete.

Carrots, pastures, plush stalls and the best tack in the world cannot make a horse happy when it is asked to do something for which it is not built or suited to do, particularly if the faults or inadequacies in conformation or gait result in pain, impede balance, or otherwise do damage to the horse when it tries to perform in our sport.

As obvious as this is, it is still far too common to see riders struggling to do things with their horses or blame problems on the horse's mentality when we can see by simply looking at the horse that a certain task would be difficult, not possible, or simply require some added foundation building to ease the way. Further it has significant impacts on how we choose our next horses. Furry, white marked, black, cute, thick tail..... are not good reasons to buy a horse, and beyond that its very good to know how to prioritize the things that really matter and those that aren't such big deals. After all, we may look at a group of horses and clearly pick a 'winner' among them, but even the best of them has its weak points. None is perfect. However, there are always those things we can live with and the 'deal breakers'. It was clear at the clinic that this was something many people had to learn through the course. However, in general, the group became quite consistent and had a clear consensus of critique for the horses we reviewed.

I was happy to get confirmation (not conformation ;-) that in fact I had a good grasp of the conformation and the priorities as well as seeing the movement correctly. My scores and comments were very much on the mark throughout the weekend. *yeah!*

It would be hard to post notes on the clinic as its such a visual process and not even pictures can do much of it justice. We may just have to do a get-together here to look at our horses and those of clients to pass some of the info along. Could be fun... anyone interested?

Half Steps!

Philipe has been beginning some piaffe work and he's starting to get it. Notice these clips from some vid we did today. I was riding a 20m circle and asking for some half-steps in roughly the same place. We really had a breakthrough a few weeks ago when I had taken him for a ride in the back field and after some cantering around in the grass, he was rather hyped up and not wanting to walk. I played with driving him on a bit into my half-halts and he was a little prancing fool.

We've been finding some moments here and there in a few sessions to take advantage of the same effect and my ready supply of sugar cubes (Philipe is highly motivated by goodies!) All this of course with a good dose of working on our walk.... he has a fabulous walk... quite significantly fabulous considering he is an Andalusian, however, he'd really rather get going into the trot or canter once he has gotten "in the zone" for the day.

But, I digress.... here's those stills from our little bit of half-step fun. ;-) Notice that outline: lowering his croups, poll high and nose in front of vertical.....*sigh* I love that boy!

Almost the weekend!

Breanna is riding around in the indoor arena doing all the basic "riding horse" stuff: turn, stop, yield, go.... She just loves it! I think she will be a blast to train in dressage with her clever nature and desire to figure things out.

Everyone else is working along fine. I'm hustling to get everyone worked fully this week since I will be gone to the USDF Sport Horse Seminar at Starr Vaughn this weekend. I'll be posting notes after the event, so stay tuned. This is also a pre-requisite course to the Sport Horse 'r' judges program.

I'm continuing to work on my organizational efforts to categorize and list a substantial list of my "lesson plans". They will be listed and categorized on my instructional "how-to" dressage blog
http://dressage-a2x.blogspot.com/

So, if you are looking for exercises to try or remember lessons we've done here, check out the blog to give you ideas, inspiration, and those ever necessary reminders. ;-)

Check another project off the list...

The covered paddocks are done/restored. The 8 lovely 24' x 24' covered pipe paddocks that had existed for some very lengthy time on our property prior to our ownership have undergone a transformation. This summer we replaced any of the large wooden beams that needed to be replaced. THAT was a chore! We then removed all the old facing boards, replacing them with new ones. Most of the wood had been repainted as the bits of very faded icky blue that were left did not offer much protection to the wood portion of the structures. Then, since the rain started early we left the remaining painting alone while new white vinyl gutters were put up down each long side complete with wonderful downspouts. Today, the final painting was finished!

I don't have pictures, but it looks lovely. The 3" of wood chips are down in all the paddocks which we've done consistently for the past 3 yrs now. The paddocks smell fabulous, NO mud, and in the summer it greatly reduces dust.

It is hard to remember that when we moved in, the grass....er weeds in the pastures grew as tall as the fences, no horses had been in the barns for a couple of years, with the stalls being used as storage for a myriad of odd agricultural items, more than a ton of old molded hay in the haybarn, old chicken coup - tractor implements, various boards and wood awaiting a burn pile, drums, tires etc. lay in the center area that is now our big turnaround parking section.

It really is amazing. Here is a pic showing the main barn and the front of the paddocks at right. Mom shot this one morning this past August. Yeah.... we're pretty proud of our place. (takes a HECK of a lot of work!!! But we are pretty serious about good horsemanship here and aiming for high performance.)

Progress- day by day

Everyone just keeps on moving along. I'm practicing the 3rd level test 3 with Philipe since we will be showing that test for the first time at the Starr Vaughn II show Nov. 17-18. He was very good today (when is he not?) , by that waiting for my aids and not getting too quick to show me how clever he is in guessing what we are doing next! LOL

He continues to offer better half-steps and little attempts at piaffe which is very exciting. The whole "sitting" and connecting the 'hocks to the bridle' is getting solid which is helping his changes become more seated.

Ernie had a week of doing changes, was getting the idea and then I've worked only on straightness and more adjustability in the strides ie: getting him to get quicker behind as we shorten the strides to get more qualities we need for better changes.

I knew Romeo thought he got away with dropping behind my leg in our right lead canter at the show last Sunday, but it was time to go in our class so I just thanked him for the offer of such a seated canter rode him a bit forward for a few steps then got back to trot to go in. However, he never got all the way back up to my hand so we spent 2 rides this week on that concept. Our first ride after the show he was a little naughty in his very sweet totally not a naughty horse way, but never the less I had to actually use a firmer pop with the whip to let him know he MUST go forward to my hand and happily there was no freak out or buck fit. He did get a bit stressed, then figured out what he was supposed to do. The second ride... viola! He was a cantering up to my hand over the back little fool.

The rest of the stable has been enjoying our prolonged early fall like weather getting in a lot of riding time. The young ones are getting more educated and the older ones remind me of how wonderful it is to take the time to do it right :-)

And one final note: Following a discussion on breeding, damlines, and prominent damsires particularly TB in the warmblood breed, I ran a little search for info on Augustinus xx, Ernie's damsire. He is the damsire of some very notable horses. Felix, Debbie McDonald's younger Grand Prix horse is by Fabriano out of an Augustinus xx mare. The stallion Fabuleux is also by Fabriano out of an Augustinus xx mare. Ernie too is and I know of 3 full brothers to Ernie of whom one was a gelding and one was a licensed stallion. I have heard that the 3rd is also a licensed stallion. However, on Horse-Gate I saw there was video footage from the 2001 Hanoverian stallion licensing featuring one of Ernie's brothers. Here's the video. OMG! do they look alike!