Equestrian Team Winter '12 Day 1

Yesterday was my first lesson out with the team for 2012!! I didn't really know what to expect, especially as I'm not driving the vans anymore and have a real lesson group, as opposed to last quarter where it was usually just me and another girl. I appreciated that, having more time on me, but I really love carpooling with more than one person. And anyways, Stacy has proved herself amazing once again by at least seeming like she was giving me the same amount of attention as usual. I was super flattered when she kept telling me how wonderful I was riding, but I'll get to that.

We show up and I see that I'm riding a mare, Cassie, this huge monstrous horse who I've never ridden before. Stacy said that she was a new horse and that they've been working with her for a while, but she's been out of work for a while as she's pretty old. We tack up and mount, and she seems pretty responsive. I think I may have left my stirrups one hole too long because it was hard for me to post...but I guess that's more of a muscle and balance problem that I need to work on.

Anyways, I was proud of myself because I was able to correctly identify when I was on the wrong diagonal all on my own and switch, and I started going back to feeling the leads and realizing then when I pick up to post, I get the wrong diagonal and have to switch. I need to find a new trick for that, because I was listening to everyone else's advice to sit 3 then post, but that clearly isn't working...maybe I just can't count.

Trotting around is great, but I felt myself leaning forward too much. I think it had to do with stretching for the stirrup rather than focusing on balance, which lead to me putting a ton of weight in my toes and falling more forward! But I was safe at the trot.

I'm the first to admit that Cassie got away from me in the canter and I was not pleased with myself about it. I firmly believed that my reins were short enough, and even when I was trying to get her to slow back into a trot, it wasn't seeming to work and I could hear Stacy getting somewhat panicked as I started to lean forward more and stand on my toes instead of leaning back and digging in my heels along with the reins to get Cassie to listen to me. But she stopped, and we continued on our merry way.

Going over the cavaletti poles? Sucked. I felt like I wasn't holding a two-point, but apparently it didn't look back because Stacy didn't say anything.

Then the jump. This tiny, tiny jump, maybe a foot tall. Stacy says she didn't think that she would jump it, probably just trot over it. We're approaching it and I'm more concerned with not falling off and holding position when BAM! Cassie goes flying over this thing like it was 3 feet and I'm lucky enough that I was so concerned with grip and position that I only slightly fell onto her neck as opposed to rolling off onto the ground. We do this one more time, on replay, and then Stacy says that Cassie is getting too excited, so to just to the cavaletti poles. There she keeps telling me to put my heels down, but I'm always finding myself balancing on my toes. Ugh. I need to work on that.

In the end, it was a good first lesson back. I finally sucked it up and told Stacy that as for jumping, I'd feel way more comfortable if I were on smaller horses or even ponies until I get better at it because they're more the size of my horses. And as for Stacy not coming out to ride over break, her voicemail broke, and I didn't call the office, but she's definitely interested to come out when it gets warmer =] I can't wait to show her the horses I train. It's a completely different world.

Last bit of news. My dear Tommy moved away with his owner =[ We worked well together and I'll miss him. I'll always remember him as the first horse I ever fell off of. Good memory, no?

Equestrian Team Fall - Day 7

Tuesday

This was officially my last lesson of the quarter! It was spontaneous. One of the girls was able to get her car and drive us out there, and I'm glad that I got to end my quarter on such a good note.

I rode Wonder, this little white mare. She was kind of hard to get going, but Stacy had me working on transitions more than anything else. I wish I could just pick up the right diagonal when I start posting, I always have to switch and it bugs me that I know that I have to switch right as Stacy's telling me to. Ugh! I wish there were some trotty horses at my barn so I could practice for free over the winter without going out to lessons, especially when I'm not working over break, paying every week for lessons sure adds up!

At the end of the lesson, Stacy said that she thought that Wonder was "too much horse for me". I'm not really sure what she meant by that, because I thought I was handling her fine. She got spooked twice on one end of the arena because of construction noises and although I could have handled it like I would've the Pasos, I didn't know if I would get yelled at for flexing her far to the side into a circle to stop, so I did a big-ish circle to calm her down. It's not like I was going to fall off. I mean, yeah they shouldn't spook, but I don't know if they've worked under construction before, so it could've been okay for them to be scared of the noise. I thought I had a great lesson because I was able to recognize the wrong diagonals and not have to wait until Stacy told me when they were wrong and that as the lesson continued I got better at asking lazy Wonder to pick up her trot and canter.

Oh well. I can't wait to show Stacy how much horse I can handle! She's going to come out and ride at my barn over the break! I can't wait to show her what I deal with, where my roots are. I'm sure she'll just be amazed at how much we stress being like rubber-band flexible, because every time I circle a horse in a circle that I think is huge compared to what we do, she's always like "Not so small! You don't do that on these horses until at least third level dressage!"

Oh and a random note -- that show I was going to go to this upcoming weekend, yeah we're not going to it anymore. There aren't any gaited classes. I supposed I could take Brie for the barrel racing class for fun, but it wouldn't be worth giving up a day of training just for that, especially since it'd be the first time we'd ever do that!

Equestrian Team Fall - NU @ Notre Dame

My first team show of the year! I had a lot of fun. I was debating whether or not I should drive down with the team or go home and drive down in the morning with my family and I decided to go with the team. I'm so happy I did, I feel like I bonded with people =]

On our drive down Friday night, we stopped to see one of our team mates who's in the hospital. This was the first time that I'd meet her. She's so sweet and so young (she's a freshman)! I really hope that she gets better soon.

Then we hit the road for Indiana. The drive seemed so short and as soon as we got to the hotel, I crashed. I didn't even hear another girl come in to share the bed upstairs, that's how tired I was.

There's something about waking up early for a horse show...you know? It's so hard to wake up early for school or work or anything else except a horse show. I could probably wake up at 3 AM for one if I had to! Waking up bright and early, polishing my boots and heading out to the arena, we watched the home team warm up the horses.

Now, I find out that my class is second to last. Wonderful. At least it gives me the opportunity to watch everyone else compete, which is one of the most fun parts. One of our riders, Amy, lost a stirrup on her jumping class and completed the course almost spot on! Of course, she didn't get first, but it was amazing to see someone be able to do that! I certainly would've fallen and probably broken my neck.

After a long day of photography, it was finally my class. In Intercollegiate showing, we just randomly pick a horse out of a hat really and have no time to warm him up and aren't allowed to ride him before we get into the show arena. It's supposed to make it a fair test of horsemanship or something like that. Anyways, I get a horse and he's supposed to be push button. Of course, I didn't know that meant half-asleep!

I start off the class switching from what I thought was the wrong diagonal to the actual wrong diagonal then have to switch back again. That really bugged me because I switched 3 times until I thought I was right, then found out I was wrong. Ugh! So points marked for that. Then going into the canter I could not get this guy to canter soon enough and his canter was really wonky so I couldn't tell if he had the right leads either. On the reverse, I thought I had the wrong lead, so I broke into a trot to pick it back up and apparently it looked really bad...

In the end, I got 5th...it's an understatement to say that I was disappointed. I really just wanted to win. I thought I had everything down pat before I got to the show and the one thing that REALLY bothers me is that I messed up my diagonals. I'm not even mad about the cantering. It's that I STILL don't have those darned diagonals down. So more work. The next show is in March, so I have a long way to go to perfect that and really feel them, since I'm just starting to be able to. Here's to working to ensure my first place next time!

Equestrian Team Fall - Day 5

It's so funny how one week can be the complete opposite from the next.

So remember last week when I was all moody and felt like crying in the middle of my lesson for no apparent reason? Well my hormones are back in check and this week was AMAZING.

First of all, I got to ride with my shmexy show boots a la my mom. I'm telling you, putting the $60 into reconstructing the soles was really worth it, because I didn't have to go through the pain of breaking them in. Thank God that younger-version-of-my-mom and I have the same calf width and shoe size!

So after shining them up from digging them out of the basement this past weekend, I was feeling mighty awesome. Once again, I'm riding Tommy (who looked like he fell into a mud pit for about a week). And I have exciting news.

I CAN FEEL MY DIAGONALS! I never felt them before! It's only taken a year to finally feel that I'm on the wrong one (when I'm paying attention) and switch. I just hope that I don't get too freaked out at the show to forget that and ride the wrong diagonal the entire class, but I'm sure that won't happen.

But wait, there's more.

I JUMPED PERFECTLY!

The first one I got left behind on because I was hesitant, thinking about last week. But then I told myself to get over it and I GOT OVER IT! LITERALLY! My heels were down, my legs on contact, my speed perfect, my position right on key. It was such an incredible feeling to just sail over my little oxer and not fall forward or backwards and stick the landing! I'm so happy =]

Stacy had nothing but good things to tell me. She's confident that I'll place in the show this weekend if I ride like I did today. Also, I'm banned from wearing anything else except my mom's boots from now on. Stacy said that I rode much better in them and I could feel it too. While they still kind of hurt because of one of the wrinkles digging in my ankle every once in a while, they were much better than my Steed paddocks that I've been wearing. Those are especially stiff on my ankle. So I'll just bring those back home to kick around the barn in when I feel like wearing jeans, which will pretty much be all winter until it snows and I wear my insulated Mountain Horse boots.

It's an understatement to say that today was a good day. Can't wait to compete this weekend!

Equestrian Team Day 16

Ugh. I got stuck with Jimmy again.
But we did make progress. I pretty much got him to canter within 10 strides. Not perfect, but an improvement from last week where he wouldn't canter at all on the right track around the arena.

One thing that really bugs me, though, is that while NU has a lesson going on, there's another girl with the other instructor in the ring getting a semi-private with our group. Not cool. Especially when we have to watch out for her while we're all doing one thing and her instructor is telling her to do another.

And the thing that bothers me the most about a horse is when he yanks his head forward and pulls you. It's my pet peeve.

So my last IHSA show for 2010 is this weekend. It really bums me out that we only have four shows a year. It kind of really sucks unless you place high and get points. My goal for this weekend is to place at least 4th. I will not take any crap from these school horses simply because as school horses, they shouldn't give you any.

As much as I'll want to continue showing, I can't wait to get back to jumping. I've been working on the flat for the past month because I wanted to improve my chances for placing at these shows.

Oh and one more thing: I relearned diagonals again! It's so hard to get used to them, especially after coming from Pasos who don't trot. Wish me luck this weekend!