I'm Back!

You guys, I'm back! I've decided after an extended break to come back to my horsie blog. Please bear with me as the blog goes though some rebranding.

Scarface and I have both been pretty good. Although most of this summer he was laid up with a pretty bad hoof absess on his right front foot. But I rode him on Saturday and he's feeling much better, just a bit stiff to the right. I'm also looking at moving Scarface to a stable closer to where I'm living now, which would mean I can ride him way more. I'm so excited! Thank goodness for my new job!

Canada Day Riding

I spent the morning of Canada Day doing what I love best: RIDING! Both of my parents rode with me and the bf even came along and agreed to take some photos. Here are my favourites!

Olympic Excitement

Is anyone else getting really excited for the Olympics? I'm super excited. Expecting a few very early mornings to catch some of the equestrian events.

Also, hoping like crazy that my hero, Ian Miller, is chosen to be Canada's flag bearer. It's the man's 10th Olympic games! Unfortunately, he's been eliminated from CBC's fan's choice for flag bearer by a margin of 11 votes (lost to Simon Whitfield).

Ian Miller and Big Ben (my heroes)

Back to Blogging

I took a bit of a break for Megan and Scarface for focus on school and for a few personal reasons, but I'm back again. I'm pretty sure I said that last time, but I guess I'm just an inconsistent blogger all around. Anyway, it's been nearly 3 months since my last post (yikes!), so there is a lot to catch up on!

In April I attended the Mane Event in Red Deer. As usual, it was really great! I got to audit some great clinics by Scott Hofstetter (hunter/jumper), Cindy Ishoy (dressage) and Michael Richardson (horsemanship). I got something great from all of these clinicians. Scott Hofstetter was really engaging and was a real pleasure to watch, listen and learn from. My biggest lesson from him was "be prepared." Don't show up to the clinic (and by extension, the practice pen or show ring) without your spurs and crop in case you need them (which I definitely do). And be prepared to think! Don't just do your course, then zone out. Watch the other competitors and learn from their mistakes so you don't have to make the same ones. Pretty basic advice, but always good to keep in mind.

It was a real honour to watch the Cindy Ishoy clinic, because she is the first Olympic rider I've had the opportunity to see in a clinic setting. She was really great and really emphasized the fitness required by the horse, especially at the higher levels. She also emphasized not to let your horse goof off when you're practicing at home because then you can't expect them not to goof off when you go to the show. For example, she was very adamant that riders not let their horse scratch his face on his leg while stopped and that the horse be paying attention, even when they are just walking to catch their breath. The biggest thing that I got is that I realized Scarface needs to be more forward in his downward transition. He was trained to completely shut down in downward transition, which results in comments like "Stop Very Abrupt" on our dressage test last year.

I also found the Michael Richardson clinics I attended interesting. Michael gained a very different perspective of riding after he became a paraplegic. Instead of being able to physically push horses to do what is needed, he now needs to rely on much more subtle seat cues. The biggest thing I took away from his clinics is how to use my seat cues to improve my free walk. It's about riding actively instead of just sitting there like a passenger!

Other than that, I've just been riding a bit when I can. I took three weeks off riding to prepare for my final exam last week, which definitely showed when I rode on Saturday. In fact, I fell off Scarface for the first time (not counting my 'hasty dismount' last year when I landed behind the saddle, scaring Scarface half to death). Completely my fault though. We had warmed up and Scarface was being pretty good (a bit stiff to the left, but I'm going to get his teeth done pretty quick to see if I can rule that out first before I consider changing bits or anything). Then we cantered up to our first little jump (a 12 inch X rail). Our canter turned into a gallop, then a dive right, correction, dive left, correction, hesitation, big jump and finally a big kick-out with the back end. I lasted through the jump, but by then I was so far out of position, when he kick-out his back end, I went sailing over his left shoulder. Luckily, the ground was freshly harrowed and I managed to land on my back and roll. Not even a bruise (except my ego)! 

Clinic Recap

On Saturday I gave my first clinic! Let's just say Friday night was spent doing some furious planning and serious freaking out! I agreed to do clinics on both general English riding and showmanship for a local(ish) 4-H club. I was in 4-H when I was younger, so I know that it's an awesome program and I was definitely interested in giving back (not to mention it will look great on my vet school application).

Sorry, I have no video or pictures, so this is one super long, text-filled post! I apologize in advance!

Friday night I was feeling much more nervous about the riding portion than the showmanship, but in the end it was the opposite!

To make sure everything started off on the right foot, I got a flat tire while driving down the MAJOR 4-lane highway on my way to the clinic. Talk about a great start! I know how to change a tire, but that highway is so busy and there was hardly any shoulder, so there was no way I was going to try it! I called roadside assistance to request a tow-truck to come do it and they said it would be 40 minutes. 5 minutes later, as I was dialing the number of the 4-H leader to say I'd be late, a SUV pulled over and a man and his son got out and offered to change my tire. Oh my gosh, things like this never happen anymore. I've changed my tire twice in the city (once in the Mr. Lube parking lot) and no EVER stops to help. But these 2 awesome guys stopped and changed my tire right there, despite the cars whizzing by at 120 km/h (70 mph) non-stop. Seriously, these guys made my week. Possibly month!

So once I finally made it to the clinic (only 10 minutes late), I started my first clinic! It's a pretty small club and a lot of the riders were gone and/or only ride western, so I only had 2 girls in my clinic, 10 and about 12. One girl is what I would call an 'advanced beginner'. She had obviously been taking additional lessons and was pretty solid in the trot. Her canter gave her more trouble though; she had trouble picking up the right lead and she tended to pump with her upper body. Oh my goodness though, her lower leg was absolutely gorgeous! Natural talent there and a ton of focus already.

The other girl was green as grass! I think she had only ridden English a handful of times before and her horse was a lazy old ranch horse. She sure was a cutie though! She had so much trouble keeping an even trot and she was a bit weak, so it was often tough to tell what diagonal she was on, especially when she could only keep a trot for a relative short time. Plus, when it came to the canter, her horse was so lazy she would kick and kiss and either be lucky and get a canter for a quarter of the arena or have to stop because she was so out of breath. But in the end she got a half loop around the arena and we were both very happy!

I tried to keep things interesting by doing lots of different things with the girls. They trotted circles, trotted around the arena, worked on the canter in a large circle, worked on the canter in the full arena, trotted a circuit through some cones and even practiced the two-point at the trot. I also had them do some equitation patterns, which I think taught them a lot about straight lines and even circles. All-in-all, I think it went pretty well for my first time! The leader said she saw a definite improvement over the clinic.

Next was showmanship, which turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. I had 4 kids for this one and 2 of them were brand new and had no clue of what showmanship was about. It was really difficult to try to teach them how to do showmanship at the same time as they need to train their horse to do showmanship, since none of the horses had any clue about showmanship either. I swear I must have said "this will come, you just need to practice at home" a hundred times. I saw some improvement and I drilled all of them on their quarters and reminded them "The judge is always watching. Don't stop showing until the judge hands in their card!" and "Smile!!"

I felt pretty bad because one boy had a pretty green horse and the horse kept spooking and moving away when I would walk around it to do the inspection. He was pretty upset after, so I told him it has happened to me in a show (true story) and that he just needs to get the horse used to it. But it's hard when you're only 12 or so!

But it made me feel pretty good when one of the girls I had for both clinics practically begged me to come back the next day and teach her more! I told her there were other people coming to teach and she replied "yeah, but you're better." Can't get a much bigger complement than that!

Nervous

Gah! I'm so nervous to be giving a 4-H clinic today! I'm trying not to dwell on the gory possibilities and instead stay positive and focused, but it's hard! Wish me luck that I don't get eaten by a bunch of 12-year-olds! If they give me any lip, I'll just make them go without stirrups! Ha! Seriously though, I think I'm well enough prepared, but it's tough because I'm not 100% certain of their riding level, so I have to be a little flexible! Anyhow, I still have to get dressed and brush my teeth, so wish me luck!

I'm a bad horsie blogger...

Hi guys,

Sorry for my random absence. I just felt a little overwhelmed and a lot depressed since I have so little opportunity to ride with my horse 2 hours away and no indoor arena. Anyway, I'm over it and back to my horsie blogging.

So what has happened in the last couple months?

1. Generally studying my face off at university. Yep, I've been busy, but I really enjoy most of my classes, especially reproductive physiology. For example, today in lab we dissected cow udders. It was a little gross (smelled like death/rotten milk), but soooo interesting. I will never forget for the rest of my life what a gland cistern looks like! I think if I get into vet school, I may specialize into reproductive stuff.

2. I got to job shadow a local vet during reading week in February (3 1/2 days). No horsie stuff (*sad face*), but lots of other cool stuff. I got to watch a kitty spay, help do urinalysis, watch semen testing of bulls and even preg check so cows. It was very cool, especially since they were only a couple months from calving, so I could feel heads! I'm definitely going to ask if I can come back and job shadow some more in the summer.

3. I went to the NRCHA (national reined cow horse association) judge's clinic. There's a very good chance I will never show in cow horse classes (although my dad is continually trying to convince me), but I find it super interesting to learn how to see things from a judge's perspective. I learned a lot, so it was definitely worth it. They even let me and another girl come free since we're part of the university judging club (it probably helps that my dad is on the board of directors)! For those of you who don't know about cow horse, here is a video of my parents' stallion, CD Ben at the Canadian Supreme in the hackamore class, where he was the open champion (sorry, had to brag just a little!).



4. I've ridden once or twice since my last blog post. No major wrecks, no major breakthroughs. Just hoe-hum, trying to get through winter without losing my mind due to lack of riding!

But I do have some other exciting news! My dad and I sometimes trailer over to a neighbour's indoor arena, where quite a few other people come to ride. I'm always the only one who rides in an english saddle (it is cattle country, after all). Anyway, I've kind of gotten to know another girl around my age who rides there and gives lessons to some younger girls. She's a barrel racer, miles away from what Scarface and I do, but she is a very pretty rider and knows her stuff pretty well. Anyways, she helps out giving clinic to a local 4-H club once in a while. This club wants to put on an english riding and showmanship clinic and she asked if she could give the club my name. I said okay and now I'm going to be giving my very first clinic on Saturday! I'm super excited and super nervous! The leader said that the girls are fairly novice, so I think we'll focus on flatwork equitation (which is what I know best anyway). I'm think body position, picking up diagonals without looking and making nice round circles, but I'll kind of play it by ear once I get there. I'm so excited, I feel like I'm taking a big step within my riding career. (Just so you know, this is just a volunteer thing, so I'm certainly not claiming to be a professional or anything!)