Camping and other sorts of things

Today we got our group together for our first outing of the year. Mira and crew (meaning- Pony/Rem/and Willard ) will be heading to The Spring Horse Trials at the Ark in about a month and now that I have rejoined USEA (have yet to upgrade her to FULL and rejoin USEF but hey who doesn't love broke eventers who procrastinate) I can send my entry off and get EXCITED! I mean who doesn't get excited to start their season? Who do you know that goes, "ugh, here we go again? I gotta train to go jump some big solid dangerous potentially life threatening fences and I just don't wanna do it." If you do know someone who says that please recommend they take up Knitting. SERIOUSLY? I am PUMPED! I just don't know how you couldn't be?

So to start I have been really working hard on Mira's canter transitions and despite her chagrin we are progressing. Slowly. And we have been practicing being slower over fences (if you know my mare she is a good jumper...she jumps like a firecracker smacked her in the rump right before takeoff ) and for myself to be quieter in the tack (although some of the girls on my team from school have watched me jump and are amazed at how quiet I am...I totally have them snowed lol) all to make us look as if we are "floating on a cloud" at the apex of the jump. Who am I kidding? I'm just trying to stay on most days.

And if the weather holds we are going to school some cross-country this weekend. I know I'll be riding a hot tamale but I as I tell my students there is not a word to describe that feeling of jumping a big table when your horse stretches his body to get to the other side. If there ever was a "though shalt fly without wings" moment that would be it. Adrenaline aside, it's the closest thing to flying without wings. It's times like that, that make me marvel at why more people don't try our sport. I mean who wouldn't want to run at breakneck speed at a solid obstacle on a 1000+lb animal who may or may not listen when you ask them to stop. Its my kinda fun.

Now lets add the element of camping in there. In the past on our awesome horse trial camping escapades we have been trapped in trucks because we were missing pieces to the tent, stuck in terrible thunderstorms holding down the tent corners, setting up on rocks not realizing we have done so and waking up feeling as if someone has punched us over and over in the back and sides, and freaking out because we were convinced something was outside the tent and going to get us. We have decided despite these shortcomings that it wasn't "that bad"  to camp again. What this means is sometime in the next three weeks I have to FIND the damn tent, set it up to make sure the pieces are all there, and then figure out if I can get it taken down again (which usually involves a lot of cursing and band aids from trapping fingers in varying parts of the tent). Then we have to get to said event early enough that we are not phishshlapping eachother in the dark while we have way too many "cooks in the kitchen" setting the thing...in the dark...at 9pm

So if your out and about and end up at the Ark look for Shamrock Eventing. Miss Airheart and I will be running Prelim/Training. Maggie Hitron and Willpower (a Shamrock Eventing Adoptee) will be either doing the P/T or Preliminary, Kellie Driscoll and Remmington will be doing the Training/Novice and finally the cutest pony in the world Long Run's Ransom and Catherine Germer will be doing his first recognized HT at Beginner Novice (shameless plug here- Ransom is for sale and there is not a cuter/sweeter/ more perfect pony in the world).

signing off
~Mandy

Comparisons

Alright, I need to rant. If I hear one more person say, "eventing dressage isn't "real" dressage" or "eventing dressage isn't the same as dressage dressage" I may just have to go crazy. I have heard those phrases from no less than ten to twelve different people in the last week or so. Lets clarify some things before I go nuts.

The Art of Dressage is a complete harmony of horse and rider. It is the basic schooling of EVERY kind of horse and rider and should welcome horses of any size, shape, breed, and age.

Dressage by definition is a noun. It is the training of a horse to carry out a series of precise controlled movements in response to minimum signals from the rider. It is an event where the horse and rider are judged on the elegance, precision, and discipline of the horses movements. Its basic fundamental purpose is to develop, through progressive training methods, a horses natural athletic ability and willingness to perform.

 To the untrained eye dressage resembles dancing, especially when performed by a highly trained horse and rider. The rider communicates through subtle motions and shifts of weight which should be almost imperceptible to the observer. It is with these subtle motions that the horse should float across the arena in a harmony all of their own.

Dressage is not meant to be exclusive to the warmbloods and Europeans of the world. It is meant to be used as a systematic training process for ALL equine disciplines; from gymkana, and barrel racing,  all the way up to the top show jumping horses. The basic frame of the horse always being the same with the poll at the highest point and the horses face approaching vertical with most of the horses weight on the haunches allowing elevation of the forehand.

So why my rant you ask? I get tired of people saying Event horses and riders don't know how to do dressage. In this day in age, since the changes made to eventing (no more long format at the upper levels and shorter more technical cross country courses) you have to have a horse who is good at dressage. If your horse is the one cantering sideways down the center line (if they ever even made it TO the centerline) or is snorting at every letter, or is the one seen doing pirouettes and trotting backwards in a Novice level test, then you will not be in the top of the pack when it comes to scoring. At the lower levels a good score in dressage means EVERYTHING. People don't pull rails at Novice (and most of the time either they get around cross country or they don't- theres nothing in-between) so a well schooled dressage horse does better. At the upper levels the same is ringing more and more true, and if you want to make that three-stride-corner-to-corner-bending-line-through-the-trees-down-the-hill-o-death you had best teach your horse some colleciton and elevation or your not going to be one of the pairs on that coveted short list for the Olympics.

So what you ask IS the difference..
Scoring.
Wow, you say? That's it?
Yes.
 And not scoring in the way Weltensternmeisternostro (the Intermediare Dressage horse) got an 8 on his piaffe while Bottle Rocket (Advanced Level Event horse) got a 6 on his 10 meter trot circle.
Its simply in the way the scores are calculated. In Dressage competitions its a percentage, while in Eventing its a penalty. In Dressage you want the percentage to be higher, while in Eventing you want the penalty to be lower. The result both want to have HIGH scores on the test, but the calculations at the END are different.
That's it.
Or well that's the way it should be.

As long as their are people out there who believe Eventers can't do dressage there will always be a discrepancy. And as for me I've put my theory to the test as I know many other eventers are doing these days. I took Cam to a dressage show a few years back and rode against the other fourth level horses. My little Advanced Event Horse up against Weltensternmeistronostro (I love this name BTW) and we finished 2nd. So, the next time someone tells me my Dressage Trainer doesn't know what "real" dressage is I am going to show them the results of a few of the Dressage shows in Florida and show them just how many horses in the top 10 are Eventers by nature. I'll bet there are more than you think.

Ok, happy cold February week everyone. I don't know about you but I can't wait for spring

Signing off
~Mandy

That Good Ol' Spin N Dump

So I noticed my good friend and mentor Georgia was posting about an old friend at Masterson the other day named Cody. I read her facebook status and remembered what fun my little sister, Annie and I had when we worked out there as kids and then I remembered about a time when Annie decided Cody was the only horse she would ride. As with all of my stories this one involves me and my little sister in our usual quarrels.

For those of you who don't know Cody he's a mustang. His "mustangedness" is what makes him so cool. When Dakota akaCody came to us at Masterson he was this cute little black mustang with the classic freezebrand up the neck and a kind eye, but was terrified of his own shadow. He is coal black and has a little white star and stripe going down his face. He has been a staple of the Masterson Station Equine Program for years on end now.

Annie instantly loved Cody when he came. He was short like her and a bit timid (read scared of his own shadow) and he wanted to please. At the time (though I guess still) I was a bit wild when I rode and decided to get us both into beacoup amounts of trouble. We would go ride in the lessons and help teach lessons and sometimes we would take Cody and Duncan (my old horse) out on trail rides around the park. My favorite thing to do to poor Annie was to be walking along and all of a sudden scream, "gallop!!!" and take off. Inevitably Cody would spook, Annie would fall off and then Cody would do one of two things. He would either run as fast as he could away like someone stung him in the rump with a hot iron, tail over his head and snorting all the way or he would stand there and stare at her with a wild eyed look trying to figure out if he should run, but really wanting to be close to the human he loved. I would come trotting back laughing like a hyena to make sure she was okay and usually get screamed at. It was always, " That’s not fair! I'm going home! I HATE it when you do that!", to which I would reply that I was just trying to get her to race, why couldn't she just get him to gallop when I did!

Next was water crossing. Cody wanted us to know he was never meant to be a wild horse roaming the plains, he really did like his little drylot (being a mustang he felt the need to gorge himself at any chance in the event of imminent bad weather...in July...in Kentucky...damn frost might be here tomorrow and Cody knew frost meant no grass) where there was accessible drinking water and he could see the coyotes/wolves/bears/snakes that might approach from any direction. Cody did not feel any need to cross water, no matter what might be chasing or leaving him. He was the best spin and bolter I have ever met, however Annie was the polar opposite to Cody. He spun and she fell off, there was no “sticky” in her style.
 
Even better was on the way home at the end of the day we were always lazy and tired. No one wanted to dismount to open and shut the gate into the yard. Duncan was the quiet, easy to maneuver horse so I always volunteered to do the gate (that and I knew the following outcome every time and my evil nature made me want to see it over and over). Now Cody was no stranger to my ways and anticipated the gate every time. Duncan and I would push the gate open and then go to the other side. Cody and Annie would come through and at juuust the right time I’d swing the gate…It would touch Cody’s rump and he would scoot through at Mach 3000 inevitably unseating Annie who would 9 out of 10 times “say hello to the dirt.” He would then trot on up the little hill and stand himself by his gate patiently waiting to be turned out- tack and all.
I wish I could say this got old, but it never did. Cody was as reliable for a spook as I am to be on time to work. And to this day I still think Cody in his old age would probably remember our rides and might still give Annie a run for her money.
All in all every single “grounding” I got for my little escapades was totally worth it. It never failed to make one of us laugh (and sometimes both) and it taught us a valuable lesson…Cody’s spook at two things…things that move aaannnd things that don’t.
Signing off~
Mandy

Tornado!!!...or not....

So I feel that I haven’t beaten a dead horse enough. I am bored and I feel I must expound on the happenings of my last week. Did you know that wind shear/straight line winds can develop into a tornado? I didn’t. Did you know that the same straight line winds can ignore a house but tear up a barn and vice versa…when said house and barn are within about 15 feet of one another? I didn’t. Did you know that your roommate could miss the whole thing while sitting in the house that is so close to the barn? I didn’t. This was Tuesday January 17^th, 2012…the luckiest friggin day of my life to this point.

To start I was still at work…teaching practice to two students. It’s January and there was a thunderstorm which for Kentucky is HIGHLY usual ßbet you thought I’d say unusual didn’t ya? Nope, it’s Kentucky and strange weather happens here all the time. Still I don’t think I have experienced a thunderstorm in January for as long as I can remember (sadly that’s only a few years- I blame the several concussions I have had in my life..I think my brains are a little scrambled, especially in the memory department). I had told both of the students if the horses got rambunctious to just dismount and we would see if it passed over. Right about the time it started easing up my boss comes into the arena. She wanted to tell me some things, but her phone rang so she answered it. Amidst my teaching I hear her yelling into her phone, “WHAT? A Tornado? Just now? AT JULIES?”  I spun around so fast I almost fell. It was a student who works for Julie telling her that she wasn’t going to make practice because she was helping clean up from what they thought was a tornado at the farm where I live and my horses live.  Needless to say practice ended while I made a phone call to my roommate to see if everything was ok. When I called Kerry said yes everything was ok and asked why? I told her about my boss’s phone call and Kerry flipped out.  She said, “that’s why the house shook so hard and all of the pictures fell off the walls!” I then called Julie to check on her and got the whole story.

She had just pulled in to the farm from grabbing lunch and was sitting in her car eating and waiting out the storm (its Kentucky these things pass fast) when the wind picked up and she watched the barn roof pass her car and hit the electric line that goes into the barn on the way by. It also hit a limb on the nearby tree dropping a branch on her trucks window, smashing it and then picked up the front end of one of the trailers and rotated it a couple feet. The electric line started sparking so Julie called….411…nerves will do that to you and somehow a 9 turns into a 4 when you are watching your livelihood fall apart and the animals you love be in danger. Bless the lady on the other end for calling the fire department for Julie. The most amazing part was the Scott Co Fire Departments response time…6 minutes…we live in the far boonies in Scott Co and they were wicked fast. It was amazing. The turned off the electric line and put out the fire before it got worse. In the meantime Julie and Arizona Hillary turned out all of the terrified horses in the barn. And poor Kerry never even heard the Fire trucks coming down our driveway, sirens blaring…

I decided to leave work for the day and go help with cleanup/moral support. When I got home I was floored to see what had happened. That sheet metal roof weighed hundreds of pounds (I know because we moved some later) and some of it ended up all the way down the road in the farm owner’s yard! There was a small group already doing debris cleanup so Kerry (who came out of the house finally) and I climbed in the rafters of the barn to tarp over the exposed stalls to keep them dry until the roof got replaced. It took us over 3 hours, but we got it done. It was great Tough Mudder training…hanging on for dear life in those rafters and hammering nails at odd angles with nothing to balance with, then swinging like a monkey to the next place. Later we moved some of the roof, I was grateful that I happened to be wearing glasses that day the metal that I was carrying whipped back and smacked me in the face. I have an awesome bruise on my nose as a result.

Somehow in all of this I managed not to fall out of the rafters yet get slapped by sheet metal…the day is not complete until you get slapped by sheet metal. Oh, and you get filmed by the local news channel (Channel 27 woot woot!)- and naturally he chose to film nice butt shots of Kerry and me in the rafters…

This is how we found out on Wednesday that we got lucky. The National Weather Service came out to assess the damage and said it was straight line winds that hit us…and then went a half mile away and became an EF-1 Tornado that flattened another barn (no horses inside).  If that had been a tornado when it hit us, this whole story could be very sad. As it is, the electric company fixed the barn electricity the next day, there is an awesome Amish contracting group that has already done some barn work for Heronwood that will be fixing the roof today (Thursday) and hauling away all of the other debris, and the insurance company fixed the windshield of Julies truck for free.  All that was lost in our house was a couple of picture frames and the little “turny vent thingy” from the roof over my roommate’s bathroom (which incidentally is probably REALLY bad…for reasons I am sure you can guess).

It could have been much worse. No animals or people were harmed and everything is fixable. I hope to never encounter a situation like this again in my lifetime... So, now that I have told and retold this little tale it’s time to move on….

Signing off~

Mandy

Spring Eventing Schedule

Alright gang, everyone has asked for my guess as to where Mira and I will be competing this year. The following is my “wish list” calendar. These are the events that I really hope to attend this year. If all goes well Mira will hopefully go to her first FEI event in the late summer, early fall.

February  4^th and 5^th Poplar Place (PT )…really wanna go, can’t find anyone else to go, have a TON of memberships to renew so probably not going L

I also have the IDA team/Dressage team at school competing in between here, as well as training for the Tough Mudder and competing at the TM, so this event probably won't happen...

March 30^th -April 1^st  FENCE HT (PT) Ok, Maggie wants to go here, so I have at least one other person to go… and it’s a good starting out event. If I wait for this I can get all of the IDA stuff done for the college and the Tough Mudder will be over. This is looking like the best plan…

April 20^th- 22^nd River Glen HT (P) I love this event, especially in the spring and it will be a good first Prelim, and its an easy drive J

May 4^th- 6^th Poplar Place HT (P) This is major tentative…again gotta find people to go with me to this one!

May 18^th- 20^th Greater Dayton HT (P) I had so much fun at this event last summer, so I am excited to go back this spring and again it’s an easy drive

May 26^th-27^th Maydaze HT (P) This one is tentative…I would rather run the previous two and avoid this one…its all the extra fees you have to pay, plus we have run the horse park SO many times…

June 1^st-3^rd Indiana Eventing Association HT (P) I love this event too and its an easy drive.. I think there will be people who will want to go here with me too J

And hopefully if all goes well at these I can run the CCI 1* in June

June 21^st-24^th  Fox River Valley HT/FEI (CCI 1*) This is the plan, but if I don’t run it here I will have to wait until August or September…but money may be a factor as well so August is more realistic.

If not the above then,

June 23^rd-24^th Midsouth PC HT (P) This event was good to us last year, gotta defend our good placement J

This is as far as I have gotten right now. I’ll keep everyone posted as to the rest of the season. I know I shouldn’t rush it, and well I can’t afford to so this is probably as close to definite as I’ll get at the moment.  In between all of these things there are little jumper shows and dressage shows I will attend as well as any events not mentioned with students even if I am not competing. Let me know if anyone has any questions or if you want to go to any of these events with us. The more the merrier!

signing off

~Mandy

scary morning, scary night, and other things

So today I am just going to vent a little. I have a story but I need to vent a little first. I woke up this morning to the one thing every person fears, the smell of something burning. I live in a tiny little house, so naturally that sent me into instant panic mode. I immediately checked everywhere to try to figure out where that hot iron smell was coming from...Kerry's room.. convinced that she had left a flat iron plugged in and it had been sitting for over a day, I searched to no avail. Turns out it was the heating unit in the house. I turned it off and called Julie (who is a worrier like me) and she said to call Jon (the general farm maintenance go-to guy and lawnmower loaner and baker and foaling person for a huge expensive TB farm...see he does it all) who came over at the crack-o-dawn ( he just got off nightwatch) and told me it was the fan not kicking on, so the heating system was overheating. He short term fixed it, but I still turned it off before I came to work. My animals will be fine in a cooling house for a couple of hours while we wait for someone to fix this.

This comes in lieu of seeing that huge explosion in Estill County last night...so very glad no one was hurt, so naturally I was on pins and needles this morning...

Which incidentally sent me into thinking the end of the world was here.....it is 2012 ya know...the Mayans may be right...although we do have until December so I will be doing a ton of things this year that I have always wanted to do to get them in before something bad happens.... carpe diem right?

This also makes me think back to my younger days and another story about my little sister and I. At the time we were living in a house much too large for us. My older sisters had gone to college and my sister and I were still pretty little. Young enough that this particular day we were in the back yard running around on stick horses and setting up jumps with chairs and broomsticks/mops/anything that was long enough and light enough we could make a jump out of it. We heard Mom in the house hollering about something smelling like it was burning. Naturally ( at least in our logic) we ran IN the house to check it out. In our hasty logic we thought we could help. Inside it definitely smelled like something was burning, but in that big old cluttered musty victorian house it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. We searched everywhere and it was getting worse and there was smoke. Now we were all panicked. Instead of calling the fire department just yet, we (mom) insisted she would find it. Finally I think the fear kicked in (all of her antiques might go up in flames) she called 911 and Annie and I in excitement were gallavanting through the house from back door to front door again and again (this has to be where the adrenaline junkie in me started) thinking we would see it if we galloped through the house from back to front, ran around outside for a minute and did it again.

In the end the firefighters found it. It was behind a couch in the living room. A brass candle had fallen off a table and landed on a table lamp cord and caught it on fire (who knew that brass candlesticks would do that, but they will...if you let it sit on the cord of an antique lamp it will cause just enough friction to start a fire.. something about the metals, I'm not a chemist). The reason it didn't go up like a haybarn was because the carpet (this ugly puke green 80's fab thing) was flame retardent so it was smoldering...however by the time the firefighters got there the wall had started to burn. They put it out and cut back the carpet to make sure the floor underneath hadn't caught and that was that.

This little situation scared the living pee out of us. At first it had been fun and games and then when you see the black wall of the room and the torn carpet it becaomes a reality. Its scary and caused both Annie and I some nightmares for awhile. The firefighters said that ugly carpet was lucky (although we had to tear it out after that) and if we had waited any longer to call it could have been much worse. I think that statement is what incited my panic this morning. If you wait too long it could end much worse. You can replace belongings, but you can't replace the ones you love...in my case my two dogs, and my other roomates cats and dog. I would be devastated if I had ignored that this morning and something bad had happened.

And what the heck was my mother thinking letting us galavant around like that. I know what she was thinking...someone left a curling iron on and she was going to find it and unplug it....

Have a good one everyone, stay safe in the cold. Soon I'll have my spring plans for Mira and I. I'll let everyone know. I am hoping for a good year at Prelim culminating in a 1*, so we will see.

signing off

~Mandy





I know its been awhile but I hadn't thought of a new story that was appropriate for the time of year. I have also just been doing a TON of conditioning with Mira, so nothing really new there, accept that she wants everyone to know transitions and canter poles are no fun and neither are placing rails at almost every fence right now. She would like to gallop really fast and jump really big and screw all the finer stuff..at least she isn't in heat right now.

Ok, so the story of the day. I thought I'd go way back to when Jenn and I had the idea to try a new event in the Carolinas. It was to be our first of the spring and with the smarts (read WTF) that we had we thought we would start out at Prelim for the season instead of running one Training and then moving up. We decided The Horse Trials at the Ark would be our event of choice. It was early in the spring it couldn't possibly be THAT hard. When we decided to go we invited other friends to go to, so Jenn, Lauren, Katrina, and I set out on what turned out to be a VERY interesting trip.

The trip down was smooth, and when we arrived at the Ark we got quite a shock. Animals of every shape and size greeted us as we entered the grounds. All I could think at the time was please oh please don't let there be cows ( to Cameron cows were smelly, oddly sized, horse eating monsters)..... little did I know at fence 5 on cross country you had to jump down a bank directly at a buffalo pen. Thankfully on the day of xc they moved the buffalo. Cameron was brilliant although I was terrified (so scared that I actually called my Dad and asked him to please take care of my dog if I died, which he handled REALLY well in spite of how he really felt- when I called him after I finished ecstatic that it went well he told me he was happy for me, but to NEVER call and say that to him again) because I had to be the 1st horse on course that day. It was my first event of the spring, only my 2nd or 3rd prelim ever and I had to go out of the box 1st...yes I was scared pantsless....
In the end everyone had a pretty good weekend, and Cameron finished 2nd which I was over the moon about, it was the trip home that was interesting.

Katrina and Lauren got finished and loaded before Jenn and I were ready to go. They wanted to get on home, so said they were going to go ahead and leave. We didn't think much of it at the time. We also knew in all of the stops we make that we would probably meet up, and at the time Nextel's walkie talkie  cell phone feature was cool so most of us had it and thought we would communicate that way. Jenn and I got on the road about an hour after the other girls.....

We had been on the road for  a while and we get a "beep" from Katrina, she said," hey guys where are you? We are only about an hour or so from Lexington." Jenn and I were flabbergasted. There was no way they had driven that fast... we didn't know what to say, so we talked for a minute trying to figure out how fast they had gone, and how they were now 3 hours ahead of us...I mean we aren't slow so how fast were they? Naturally it took us so long to answer that we got another "beep"... " seriously guys where are you, were gonna stop for gas and thought if you were close we would wait..." Well now we had to answer...argument ensued over who was gonna answer that phone. Finally because Jenn was driving we decided (she made me) that I would answer. " Um, so, we aren't even to Beckley/Bluefield yet...where are you all?" Immediately, " were only an hour from Lexington, how did you all get so far behind? We thought you left an hour after us?" Now Jenn and I know they did something wrong...and it dawns on us that they went East on I-64 at Beckley/Bluefield in Virginia instead of West.... there is a Lexington, Virginia and its much closer to Beckley/Bluefield than Lexington, Kentucky....Now we REALLY don't want to answer...so cautiously I say,  " Um Katrina, which way did you all go on I-64 when you got to the Beckley/Bluefield split?"...... SUPER LONG PAUSE..... she said, "East why"....OH NO... I couldn't answer. If they were that close to Lexington, VA they had gone now 3 hours the WRONG direction.... Now it was a big fight. Neither of us wanted to tell them they were going the wrong way, but we had to tell them soon. It was already 7PM and we all had work or school the next day.

"Um Katrina...you do know Lexington, Ky is West on I-64.. if you went East your almost at Lexington VIRGINIA..." my voice shook so hard because I knew what was going to happen next... " WHAT OH MY GOD THERE IS NO WAY>>>WE DID NOT GO THE WRONG WAY>> OH MY GOD!!!" radio silence....

What ensued was a lot of cursing and Jenn and I trying to console them and tell them we were sure this late that the VA horse center would let them stay overnight and then try to drive home in the morning, which didn't happen unfortunately because they both had to get home. What was originally a 7hour trip took them almost 13 hours to get home. I felt really bad at the time, still do. That was one of the harder phone (walkie talkie) conversations I have had with friends.

We can all look back and have a chuckle about it now. We still joke and all ask eachother if we are sure we know the way home before we leave horse shows.... you never know...you might end up going south instead of north...and this time of year I would be ok with that...

If I don't write again until after Christmas, everyone please had a safe and happy holiday. Make sure and remind your family and friends (and animals) how much they mean to you, you never know when you might need them

signing off ~
Mandy