A barn in limbo

Well, it has happened again.  Once again, SFD is looking for a home base. 

We have been here before. McKinley Hunt, our last home, came with an awesome landlord, Sue Brown.  Shortly after we moved in, Sue decided to retire and build a house in NM.  The sale of McKinley prompted our move to Red Bridge, which, by and large, has worked out very well. That is, until now. 

As most everyone knows, our landlord passed away in late December.  His widow and son-in-law have been doing a great job of keeping the place up, but she just doesn’t want to live in that big house without her husband. I can’t say as I blame her.  So Red Bridge is on the market.

As of now, we don’t have a deadline, but I’d rather be pro-active than re-active.   I’ve been running numbers, comparing available facilities, making my pro-and-con lists.   Each move has given us better facilities than our last home, and I expect nothing less this time.  Red Bridge has some wonderful strengths, and we’d like our next home to have those strengths, plus a bit more.

The shopping list gets clearer with each move.  We need:

                An indoor and an outdoor

                Larger, better ventilated stalls

                Not too far from my main-line clients

                Heated bathroom, preferably with a shower (I can live without this, but I REALLY like not crunching with sweat if I have to do something after my rides)

                A variety in sizes and topography in turnout (some small, flat spaces for the hotter horses, a hilly pasture for weak-stifles

                A place to hack out and do conditioning

                An apartment for my most-awesome-groom, Lynn

                Be priced so I don’t have to charge an arm and a leg for board

The I-wish-I could-have-everything  list includes automatic waters in pastures and easy stall watering, logical tack room-laundry-grooming area set-up, and is designed so we never need a wheelbarrow or hose, but I think that will have to wait.

So that has been my last week or so, talking to people about facilities, looking at spreadsheets, comparing facilities.

On the horse front, the rehabs are coming along really well. Colonel, the old guy who survived a nasty puncture wound and subsequent hock surgery, is beating the odds and coming back.  Venus started light work this week (YEA!!! YEA!!! YEA!!!), and the therapeutic ultrasound has worked miracles in the thickness of her injured tummy muscle.

The competition horses are knocking my socks off.  Adding hill work in the springtime always makes horses more forward, but Eclipse and Secret have really benefited.  Both of them had all of the technical stuff for their levels, just needed a bit more fitness.  The hills gave them uphill, suspended fitness.  When I ride, it feels  like I’m bouncing on a kid’s jolly ball, and I grin as much as a 4-year-old.  Eclipse came through a tough workout Friday with more gas in the tank – a marked improvement from last year. 

We have another spring schooler at Red Bridge this weekend, then Sunday we hit our first recognized show.  I’ll post pics next week.

Michael Klimke clinic March 2010, part 2

This is the second part of a two-part post -- check out the previous post for  the first part of it.
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Which he did, but not until he had valiantly tried to correct my hands and seat enough that she would reach forward and downward.  As an instructor, I understand why he took that approach, and in my stiff-and-stressed-out state, my seat and hands gave him lots of areas to correct. 

The more he corrected, the deeper I tried to sit, the stiffer my back got, and the more frustrated his tone got. Once I heard the frustration in his voice, my favorite “I’m nervous so I think I’ll ride badly habits” showed up.  You know, those pet bad habits that lie dormant for months and months until you are lulled into thinking you have finally banished them, only to find that once you get nervous, they pop right back up.  

For me, when I’m nervous, the neuropathways between my brain and my right side shut down. 

This time it started with my hand position.  No matter what I told my right hand to do, it didn’t do it.  Instead it did all sorts of random things, things I would never ask it to do.  Really, would any self-respecting dressage rider ride with her right hand nearly touching her thigh?  I know I didn’t tell my right hand to do that, especially not in front of Klimke and 80 auditors.  But sure enough, that’s where my right hand kept drifting.  I’d tell my right hand to come back up, and two strides later, like some rebellious teenager, it’d go sneaking down to my thigh again.

Then there was my right leg.  On a normal day, my right leg is my weaker leg. I know I’m riding well when my right thigh is slightly more tired than my left one. Which thankfully, is more often than not.  But I wasn’t riding well, so my right leg didn’t even join me on the horse.  I might as well have been wearing a prosthetic.  My calf wouldn’t stay connected to Secret sides, no matter how hard I tried.  The more I pushed my knee down, the more my calf would pop off and slide forward.

Then my inner critic kicked in.  Every time Klimke tried to improve my position, my inner critic destroyed it.  By 15 minutes into the lesson, I went from being on top of the world for being selected for this clinic, to feeling like the weakest dressage rider in the clinic, to feeling like the weakest dressage rider ever.   

While I’m beating myself up, Klimke decided to try using transitions within and between the gait to get Secret more through her topline.  She reacted by getting tighter in front of the saddle, doing a very effective impression of a chess piece.  I could practically hear her thinking, “Aunt Ange, this isn’t what we usually do, but if this is what you want, well, ok...”

Klimke, being German, was not one to mince words.  He made it clear what he thought—“Your hands and your seat are not good enough.”  This, of course, got my inner voice screaming, “Well that advice doesn’t really help, does it???” But I kept smiling and riding, hoping my thoughts didn’t show too clearly.

Once we got to the canter work, things improved.  Secret has an amazing canter, naturally very uphill and balanced, and my canter seat is better than my trot seat. As the work improved, I was able to gain control of my right hand and leg, and began to think maybe I was letting Secret show everyone how awesome she is. We worked on the canter-walk-canter transition, and it improved significantly by the end of the ride.

But by day two, Secret was tired of my stiff back and the different training approach. She came into the ring tight and fussy, and seemed determined to stay that way.   Klimke kept changing exercises in a vain attempt to get us to settle.

But nothing really worked.  I tried to ride all bent lines in shoulder fore. I tried riding the lines straighter.  I tried a lighter seat.  I tried a stronger seat.  Klimke kept stopping the lesson to talk, which I quickly learned is Klimke-ease for “this isn’t working at all.”  My mind was going 100 miles an hour, between “c’mon Secret, please” and “Ange, friggin’ ride better,” and “Can we try something else? Like tennis?”  But nothing worked. 

We had one shining medium trot mid way through the ride, but when we got to counter canter, she was through with all of us. 

Klimke started the counter canter work with Friday’s exercise. Secret did the same as she had done on Friday—counter canter nicely to the corner, then swap leads (cleanly, I must say).  So he had me bring her to walk, then counter canter again.  And she swapped leads again.  And again. And again.  And again.  The movie “Groundhogs Day” was playing right there at Riveredge West.  My inner voice was screaming, “enough already!”  Secret kept getting more and more tense.

After what seemed like hours, Klimke finally simplified the exercise enough that we could at least end on counter canter instead of an un-cued flying change.  At the end, he patted her on the neck and said he hoped he hadn’t messed up her canter. 

Then Scott Hassler picked up the microphone and said “I want to commend Ange on her composure and tact.”  And with that, my red-headed-bad-ass facade cracked.  I cried.

Yes, me. 

I wanted the ground to open and eat me alive. 

But of course it didn’t.  I survived.  We watched a few more rides, then packed up and headed home. 

After the clinic I was in a funk. 

I looked at the still photos, and I really didn’t look that bad, but that didn’t help. I watched the video snippet on the Internet, and Secret looked good, but that didn’t help either. I couldn’t get past Klimke labeling my seat and hands “not good enough.”  I was second-guessing my aids, picking my seat apart, and generally feeling sorry for myself. 

With all of this negative mental baggage, I continued to pretty much ride for crap until I saw Scott for a lesson two weeks later. By then, my trainer-ego was battered from my unending self-flagellation.  But Scott had watched the same lessons, and he saw tough training sessions, not embarrassingly ineffective riding.  His words helped me put it in perspective.  In typical Scott fashion, he ended it with “You be you.” 

He is right.  I am me, and these hands and seat are my tools, tools that have a track record of serving me well.  That weekend, I was not at my best.  That weekend aside, my tools have brought a lot of horses up the levels, many who lacked the natural Warmblood balance and looseness.  Heck, several weren’t even born with clean gaits.  But somehow my “not good enough” hands and seat taught them how to become solid competition horses with piles of year-end awards.

So what did I get out of the clinic?  I don’t ride well when my world is crumbling, but then who does?  And my daily track record of riding well, using and re-using and re-using all of the lessons I have learned, trumps one weekend of riding poorly in front of a big-name expert. 

And Venus?  Now, seven weeks after her accident, we are pretty sure Venus will return to a dressage career.

The Honda, though, will forever wear the mark of my horrible week.

The Michael Klimke Clinic, March 2010, Part 1

The short version -- I was not the rider Secret needed me to be during the Michael Klimke clinic in March 2010.  And the clinic had different, unexpected lessons to teach.

The long version —it all started two weeks before the clinic, with Venus, my spicy-red-hot mare.  She handled our snowbound February fairly well until she came into season.  Hormones tend to tighten her back and shorten her attention span, but since she hadn’t been able to roll and buck, she was particularly tight and distracted.  On Sunday, I decided to let her run it off in the indoor arena.  I pulled the barricade across the doorway, hung hopefully-scary stuff on it, and let her loose.

Yeah, that was a bad idea.

She bucked one 20-m circle, trotted up to the barricade, stopped, and jumped it from a standstill.

Well, there’s a reason Venus is not a show jumper.  

On the way over, she shattered the barricade with her left stifle, twisted as she almost fell, scrambled back up, passaged through the snow up to Eclipse’s stall, spun around, and double-barreled the stone wall by his door.  She, of course, was quite lame and swollen from this wild escapade.  When she failed my The Three Day Rule (Simple soft tissue strains resolve quite nicely with three days off and a little anti inflammatories.  If things don’t resolve in that time frame, I call the vet.), I began to worry and scheduled a lameness appointment the following Tuesday. 

But Venus had other plans.

By Tuesday, she was beyond bored, and she started munching on straw. Combine that with sudden inactivity, Venus was working on a bit of constipation, which became the priority.

I didn’t want to go to New Bolton unless Venus looked like a surgical candidate, which she did not, so Dr. Crowley, the-most-amazing-vet-ever, and Leslie, her faithful sidekick, rigged an IV set-up in Venus’s stall.  I spent Tuesday night changing bags and making sure the IV was running freely.  Around midnight, Venus rewarded me with a beautiful pile of poo. 

Wednesday morning’s rectal exam showed a clear colon (which, for anyone who has dealt with an impaction, is really quite fast for it to resolve), so I started the slow process of reintroducing food.  Thanks to Carol’s help, I managed to go home and take a nap in the evening, then was back to the barn Wednesday night to give her small hay feedings every 2 hours.

So this takes us to Thursday, the day we leave for Klimke.  After sleeping on the cold barn floor for two nights, I’m tired, stiff, and worried.

Then, to add insult to injury, I backed my truck into my I-love-this-car-and-will-drive-it-until-it-drops Honda.

Just great.

So with all that baggage, Secret and I headed down to Maryland to ride for one of my idols.  Between rides, I ran back up to PA to check on Venus, and bounced between worrying about impaction colic and worrying she had damaged herself beyond a dressage career. 

Shocker, I didn’t ride well.  Not either day.

Day one began with Klimke asking about Secret’s breeding.  When I said Friesian Arabian cross, his eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped (really, I have it on video).  My stomach sank.

We started with Klimke’s “forward, down over the back” warm up.  This works great on 90% of horses.  But then there’s Secret.  Given her breeding, her tight shoulders and big neck don’t take kindly to that plan.  Lateral work early in the ride loosens her quite effectively.  I know better than to argue with a clinician, so of course I did what he directed, expecting him to see her reaction and adjust the exercise accordingly.

And now, show season is upon us…

Cheryle is awesome, and REALLY organized. I have organizational ideals, but often fall far from them. Like now, when she sent me this blog post almost a month ago, when we were planning the April Schooling show. I found it when cleaning my inbox today, a week AFTER the first show. Oops. Well, by being late, we get some pics of the first show!

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And Now, Show Season Is Upon Us

By Cheryle Oshman Blunt.

I started working for Straight Forward Dressage a little more than a year ago.  When it started, my job was to make a night check schedule for the boarders.  Pretty simple.  A couple of months after I started working for Ange, she decided we should have a staff meeting.  She had told me that one of her ideas was to have some small schooling shows right at the farm, and I knew we’d be talking about that a bit at the meeting.

When the schooling shows came up at our staff meeting, we pored over the show calendar figuring out who would be going where when and trying to figure out where to fit in our three initial shows.  A date would come up, and Ange would say, “Does that date work for you, Cheryle,” or “We need to schedule them when Cheryle is available.”

I thought, “Gosh, I might like to show, but they don’t really have to cater to me, especially since I’m not even sure I’ll ride.”  Oh, yes, the naiveté!  It hadn’t occurred to me that I was to be running these shows myself!  True, I’d volunteered at schooling shows back in Maryland.  True, my SFD job had grown a bit.  True, I had figured that I’d be sifting through the entries and perhaps even making the schedule, but running a horse show?  I definitely didn’t feel qualified for that.  I’m not sure when it dawned on me that I’d actually be in charge on show days, but it was a sobering thought.

The first show was a real learning experience.  How do we handle someone being so late that they’ve missed their ride times?  How do I make sure the judge is comfortable?  How early do I need to be there to beat the first trailer arriving?  (I guess 2 hours before their ride time wasn’t quite enough…)  Where do we park the trailers when the field is muddy?  Perhaps for seasoned secretaries or folks who have done a lot of showing themselves, these questions are not a big deal, but during that first show, they sent me running to Ange in between her many rides.

I learned a lot over the rest of the season and 3 more shows too.  I learned that I am competent and organized, even if I did forget to order ribbons once.  I learned that I actually enjoy planning these events, even when it all goes wrong.  I learned that sometimes I’m not even the most nervous rider and that I trust my pony more than I did a year ago.  I learned that I work with an amazingly supportive community – both inside and outside of SFD.  I learned that volunteers are worth their weight in gold, and by the last show, I didn’t even feel like I had to be everywhere at once!  By the end of the season, I didn’t have to run to Ange with every question, and was even (almost) comfortable the day she couldn’t be at the farm during one of our shows.

And now I’m realizing that our first show of the new season is mere days away.  New questions arise – Where will we park the trailers if the snow isn’t gone?  But I’m really excited for the five shows we have planned this year.  We have some new prizes, which means more tracking, but I’m ready.  I hope I’ll be seeing many of the same faces I saw last year, equine and human, and hope I’ll be seeing some new faces too.  Good luck to everyone this season!  See you in the ring.

Carol Lippa and Merrick

This is by Carol Lippa, who started out as a boarder, became a training client, joined us as staff, and has become a trusted friend. In her real job, she is Head of Memory Disorders at Drexel.  But in our world, she is Merrick's Mom.

 

After a year of Ange

Trotting to the Beat of a Different Drummer

By Carol Lippa

The thrill of having a horse who is athletic enough to win championships, jump the moon, and do a piaffe in hand, has been downsized by our seemingly endless inability to succeed at Training 1. Having a “project horse” can be humbling.

Riding involves a dynamic partnership with the horse-rider-trainer team, always keeping an eye toward how to perform better next time. Most serious riders and many horses thrive on this. Lovable and expressive in other ways, Merrick trots to the sound of a different drummer, often painfully lacking motivation when asked to expend energy at the riders command.


An Angeism: “to do dressage, you need to admit you _ _ _ _, then figure out what to do to fix it.” Complicating our efforts to “fix it”, Merrick’s training slows due to illnesses and interventions. Immunizations give him the flu, injections lead to muscle atrophy, medications worsen his ulcers, and sedation causes him to fall over. Don’t even think about riding after he’s been shod – his angles might have changed a degree. Wouldn’t it be nice to own a normal horse?


Over time, Ange suggests changes in training strategies to suit Merrick’s learning style at the moment, hoping that layering the approaches over time will have an onion skin effect. Maybe this will work; Merrick will happily trot over a jump now, and is starting to get a topline. My heart soars because I love to jump and so does he.

Merrick finally won his first multicolored ribbons. They hang proudly by his stall, and he has a vague sense of what the fuss is about. He seems to enjoy hearing people tell him that he must have been a “very good boy” to have earned them. But grazing remains more important to Merrick. Credit earned is credit due, and he deserves a good long graze for putting up with 20-meter circles, transitions and those annoying half halts.

Photos of Hasslers

I promised you photos, but cold is BAD for cameras.  But we were able to salvage a few.  

Here is Secret's new-and-improved taller canter. Her canter is a BLAST to ride.

Scott helped Linda with her connection, and used this awesome analogy of a wheel barrow to explain keeping the horse in both reins. Linda has ran with this concept--her last two lessons are the best riding I've seen her do.

Look - harmony!! My red girl is emotionally at peace.

I love this shot. This is from Friday, when her back was so tight, hence her croup is higher than I want. But check out her push-off from the left hind, and the diagonal pair of right hind-left fore is so clearly together that her hind cannon bone and front forearm are parallel.  Her canter rocks.

Day Three and Four in Hasslerville

Friday was COLD.  Apparently, this weekend, Hasslerville was in the Arctic Circle.  I’m generally not a wimp, but boy, it was COLD.  When I got on Venus, who I rode second, I couldn’t feel my thumbs.  Not good.  But it takes more than cold to keep me from my education.

Linda came along Friday and Saturday.  On the way down, she said, “How much difference can two lessons make?”  As I’m warming up, Secret answered her question.  As we cantered by I heard Linda’s “WOW.”  Yep, the black mare is getting fancy.

Secret’s big goals for the week were improving the swing in her trot, collection in her canter, having a plan for when she gets try-too-hard-150%-every-stride tension, and being able to move her hind legs around without getting more speed.

Secret has embraced the taller, more uphill outline.  Her canter in particular has changed pretty dramatically.  In her new balance, I can use my outside leg without her rushing forward, so those goals are addressed.  The walk-canter transition has really benefited.

Scott encouraged me to make shorter canter sets, even when it feels divine.  In her first trot steps, evaluate how she maintains her balance.  If she is stellar, then the canter set was productive. If she flattens and runs, then I over-faced her in the canter set, either by making it too strenuous or too long. 

In the trot, her try-too-hard can come out as quickness, so Scott had me ride my straight line work a bit more conservatively.  On lateral lines, even slight ones, that was the time to ask for more swing and power. 

My lateral work homework is to develop lots of smooth, flowing lines that go from one lateral work to the other.  Of course, this creates a little tension, so when it does, I have two plans. If she maintains tempo, hold my current lateral work until she relaxes. If she changes tempo, exit that lateral work, settle her, then re-enter it. 

Then, on Saturday, we took that even further, and started pushing her collected trot a bit.  My homework is to play with that only a little, as Scott says “She doesn’t really need more collection in the trot,” so only 2 or 3 times a week, at the end of the workout, so she doesn’t get it confused with her working trot.  When we pushed her collection during a leg yield, I actually felt hints of her piaffe to come.

Since collecting the trot worked so nicely in the leg yield, Scott broke his own rule and had me do some half-pass work next.  We kept the lines shallow, but she clearly offered crossing both front and hind without speeding up.  That is well on its way.

Friday, since Secret was such a star, we ended our work early, and had Linda hop on.  I thought she was going to pee her pants she was so nervous.  Secret took good care of her, and I think Linda got a lot out of her mini-lesson.

Venus, I didn’t have enough blankets on her Thursday night, and she told me very clearly in the right lead canter—it felt quite tight in her back.  To make herself more comfortable, she wanted to push her hips to the right and get faster.  

We worked on trying to solve it in the canter, but alas, she reacted to each correction with more speed.  So back to trot-halt-trot transitions.  She was brilliant in the upward transition, clearly lifting her shoulders, but took a LOT of strength in the downward.  After several (ok, TONS) of these transitions, we’d go back to the canter and evaluate. Bottom line, I couldn’t fix the canter in the canter, I needed to go to the trot to get access to the right hind, then go back to canter. 

Ironically, her trot work was unaffected by the cold. She was swingy and smooth.  I would have liked for her to be a bit more uphill, but neither Scott nor I was willing to risk it on Friday.  So we got her back swinging more freely, and called it a ride.

Friday afternoon I was able to turn her out to do her buck-prance-buck-prance thing she likes to do in turnout, and added an extra blanket.  It worked. On Saturday, she came out feeling much softer in her back. 

So Saturday we hit her big three–changes, half pass and half steps. 

For her changes, as soon as I have adjustability in the canter, I am to go for it.  I am a dressage rider, so I want everything absolutely perfect before I do the changes.  Problem is, Venus needs energy for clean changes, and my perfectionism is tiring.  When we got to the changes earlier in the workout, before she gets fatigued, and earlier in the canter sets, the changes were clean and calm.    

For her half pass work, the quality of Venus’ half pass is directly related to the work just before the half pass. If her neck and shoulders are awesome going in, she stays balanced and smooth in the lateral work, especially to the left. When her right shoulder wants to lead, I need to correct it with a circle or shoulder in, instead of trying to muscle the half pass itself.  Once again Ange, ride with your brain not your strength. Also, make steeper half passes, she is ready.

Her half steps on Saturday were fabulous. We moved them off of the circle and onto straight lines, asking her to hold them for longer and shorter periods of time, and to keep them more and more in place. 

Venus’ additional homework from the week is to keep her rounder and more committed to the contact in her lateral work, use transitions in and out of collection to bring her frame taller. 

So now the real work begins, being able to make this happen without Scott’s watchful eye.  Doug, the most amazing horse-husband ever, came on Saturday to video, so I have that to refer to. And hopefully we won’t be training in the Arctic Circle much longer. I did order warmer riding gloves though. I like feeling my thumbs.