Just in the middle of august Darby turned four-and he has been under saddle now for a year. He is doing really well-he has great movement and a good mind, easy to work with unless he is being stubborn, but very happy to be ridden and usually tries very hard to please. He is way more capable than I am, and I am not sure how I feel about this! But I love riding him and being around him, he has such a personality. Other than my built in challenges of major arthritis and pain in my lower spine, some of the things I have been working on are keeping the outside rein connection-( I just reworked the words to the Muppets Rainbow Connection in my mind! Someday we'll find it, the outside rein connection) when I can keep good consistent contact, things go a lot better. We recently showed Training level test one and four, one is pretty straight forward-but on test four we have to do this shallow loop serpentine showing two changes of bend, and also a stretchy circle. We haven't worked on the stretchy much, (or at all) so I sort of bombed it in the test. But in a lesson I learned that I need to get him to give downward as far as I can on a short rein before I even think about starting to let the reins out. And guess what? You need outside rein connection and inside bend to make this happen! Its almost like magic when the formula works...so I am committing this to writing so I don't forget!
Outside rein and inside bend....
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
In the beginning-how it all started...
I have always been motivated to get good grades. In school and with most subjects I could easily get an A with minimal effort, (algebra being an exception to this rule!). I loved to see a high score on the top of an exam paper. 98%-yeah for me. I should have known, should have questioned getting involved in a sport where a 65% is a passing score, and people are jumping up and down over a 70%! For a while I actually thought that the scoring in dressage was just different, and that 70% was the highest score you could receive. When I was informed how wrong I was, I got a little nervous. In any other universe a 65% is a D. How could it possibly be so hard to get a good score? I wish I could say that I quickly learned the way to a great score-but I must admit the truth. It is so much harder than it looks. That is what great riding is all about, when done correctly it looks effortless. Nothing could be further from the truth...
I rode as a child, but never had my own horse. Most of my ride time was spent riding behind my cousin on the back of her big draft horse. His name was Chubs, and in those days I had no concept of the ligaments that were stretching as I rode around on his wide back! (these ligaments I would one day know by name)
In my mid thirties, I got my own horse. A beautiful pinto saddlebred mare. She was four and just greenbroke. The woman who sold her to me told me we were a bad match, green horse and green rider-but I was determined to buy her-she was so pretty!
Over the next three years I bounced around between a few local trainers, never really finding the right fit for me or Tess. She was really hyper and spooky, but I just loved her flashy moves and personality. It took a few years for me to realize that my very natrually gaited saddlebred would not make a dressage horse. Tess had a hard time cantering under saddle- it might be that having an unbalanced rider like myself on her back made the job even harder. But I finally realized that I was trying to force her into a mold which she would not fit in.
I still could not let her go-so I decided to breed her to something big and see if I could get a horse out of her that might some day be a better match for dressage. Having a very limited budget- I found a lovely Shire stallion nearby to breed to. About a year later-Tess foaled an adorable black colt. I named him Darby.
I decided to go ahead an sell Tess, and she got a great new home in Chicago. She may in fact be cantering around the show ring as I write this. I bought a ten year old warmblood mare to ride while Darby got bigger, and I even entertained the idea of selling Darby and just keeping the warmblood mare. I was trying to be practical and just have one horse-but what's practical about having horses anyway? So once Darby was three and under saddle, I made the decision to sell the warmblood mare and make Darby the focus of my riding.
This isn't meant to be the story of how I came to have horses-but a riding journal about my struggles and progress as someone who was late out of the gate (my first horse metaphore!) In my next post I will have to catch you up on how Darby turned out, (my budget backyard breeding program) and where we are at in our journey towards a great score on a dressage test.
I rode as a child, but never had my own horse. Most of my ride time was spent riding behind my cousin on the back of her big draft horse. His name was Chubs, and in those days I had no concept of the ligaments that were stretching as I rode around on his wide back! (these ligaments I would one day know by name)
In my mid thirties, I got my own horse. A beautiful pinto saddlebred mare. She was four and just greenbroke. The woman who sold her to me told me we were a bad match, green horse and green rider-but I was determined to buy her-she was so pretty!
Over the next three years I bounced around between a few local trainers, never really finding the right fit for me or Tess. She was really hyper and spooky, but I just loved her flashy moves and personality. It took a few years for me to realize that my very natrually gaited saddlebred would not make a dressage horse. Tess had a hard time cantering under saddle- it might be that having an unbalanced rider like myself on her back made the job even harder. But I finally realized that I was trying to force her into a mold which she would not fit in.
I still could not let her go-so I decided to breed her to something big and see if I could get a horse out of her that might some day be a better match for dressage. Having a very limited budget- I found a lovely Shire stallion nearby to breed to. About a year later-Tess foaled an adorable black colt. I named him Darby.
I decided to go ahead an sell Tess, and she got a great new home in Chicago. She may in fact be cantering around the show ring as I write this. I bought a ten year old warmblood mare to ride while Darby got bigger, and I even entertained the idea of selling Darby and just keeping the warmblood mare. I was trying to be practical and just have one horse-but what's practical about having horses anyway? So once Darby was three and under saddle, I made the decision to sell the warmblood mare and make Darby the focus of my riding.
This isn't meant to be the story of how I came to have horses-but a riding journal about my struggles and progress as someone who was late out of the gate (my first horse metaphore!) In my next post I will have to catch you up on how Darby turned out, (my budget backyard breeding program) and where we are at in our journey towards a great score on a dressage test.
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