Succeed or Learn

I want to thank everyone who gave me kind and supportive comments about my show experience- both on FB and on blogger. I do recognize that it was just one day in a show and I really do need to put it in the perspective of our whole season which has been very successful.

I can get a little driven in things I pursue (shocker I know). When I was in University and saw that I have made 95% on an exam my first thoughts were 'what the heck did I miss?'

So it's not surprising that I viewed my inability to get Carmen on track as a failure. But my rational brain knows that it was a learning experience. That is what I would tell myself.

So I've been thinking a lot about this and not sure how much sense I will make.

Because I don't think our test ride was about fear. The incident in the warm up was based on fear. For whatever reason, she found the walker with his dogs super unnerving. While I will concede that she was definitely wary about the open door in the ring she is not afraid of the ramp or that corner. We've ridden by it so many times and I can stand her there and she is totally relaxed. I honestly think that she spooks when she doesn't really want to work. If I get too reactive it escalates but I also can't have her bolt so it's a fine line and one that I don't always get right.

I have to be okay with not having it right all the time.

When I said that Carmen's 'nope' is dangerous, I wasn't really meaning in the ring. My biggest fear is that we will experience something like that when we're out.

I do recognize that she is far more rideable then ever and that sometimes regression will happen.

I do want to focus on the fact that I was able to address it and show her that this behaviour is not the answer.

I took Monday off. While I don't know that Carmen needed a day off I really did so I had a nice and lazy day visiting with family and puttering around. Monday night I set up a small course of obstacles in the ring to play with.

It's hard to tell from the photo but I set up cones for weaving, an L to back through, a landscape rail for side passing, two jump standards to pick up a water bottle and bring to the next one, three cavalettis 12 feet apart, a rope gate and my bridge. Julia joined me to play and despite the heat we had fun. Carmen started off a bit spooky but I ignored her and played around the ring. When she would get distracted and trip over the cavalettis (at walk or trot) I just supported her and let her figure it out. 

Backing through the L was interesting. I can back Carmen up with little difficulty but as soon as there are poles involved she gets really frazzled. And no, I don't think it's me- I honestly feel relaxed. I tried to break it down to step, halt, step halt but she began to fizz and spin. So I put her in a trot circle until she settled and then offered the halt. After about 10 minutes I was able to do the back 1 step, halt, repeat through one part of the L and I gave her a ton a pats. She looked at me as though to say 'is that it?'. 

Honestly, I think she gets frazzled if she's not sure of the answer or if she thinks I'm going to get after her for not doing it. After we went for cool down hack in the woods and she was on a loose rein and relaxed. 

she stuck her face in the spray, note the tongue. 

Today Carmen was back to her old, calm self. I'm sure the heat and humidity helped with that but it was nice to ride a horse that met me half way. We played at schooling and then incorporating the obstacles. It was fun. We even cantered the cavellettis- twice! It was so cool to get into 2 point and let her go through. I could feel her adjusting her stride to make it work and she didn't even get frazzled or annoyed with me. 

I decided we were done so we did the rope gate and stood on the bridge waiting for Julia. I felt Carmen begin to stamp her feet and was surprised because this is not like her. I looked down and saw a bunch of wasps coming up from under the bridge! 

CRAP! I walked her off and she was all 'meh'. Which is surprising because I would view a bunch of angry wasps as a legitimate excuse to run away. 

Someone explain my pony to me please. 

We hacked off into the woods, again on a long rein and she was as mellow as could be. 

happy, relaxed ears

Making Adjustments

Adding a kitten to the household has created a bit of a disruption in the status quo.

 Chester (our other cat) is doing surprisingly well with Willow- no hissing or growling, just keeping a watchful distance.

d'Arcy didn't even know she was in the house for about 24 hours. He's is showing a mild curiosity but not not fixated like he has been in the past.

Guinness is experiencing the most disruption. His nose is a little out of joint over the attention I've been giving Willow. Jealousy + Curiosity + no conception of his size= chaos. However, he's a smart dog and is figuring out that barking or charging the kitten is not acceptable. The kitten is learning that if she hisses he slams on the brakes, whines and backs off. She's getting much less worried about him. Today they even touched noses. I am positive that in a few days they will be doing just fine.

Guinness: But, but I just want to sniff her. Why can't I sniff her? 

 Willow, of all of us,  is adjusting just fine. Everywhere I go I am followed by a large dog and a wee kitten. Also, typing of blog posts is much trickier.

I mean can you even? I don't think so.

Remember when I said I had a lesson scheduled for today? Well it was cancelled because another rider had to cancel (a lost shoe). Shanea needs a certain number to make it viable. Which I understand but I was still disappointed. I had to decide what to do - I didn't want to fall into drilling her so I made some coffee and thought about what to do. I really really want to hit the trails in my woods but I want a companion the first few times so I need someone on Irish.

I decided to set up some poles to play with:

The red line is a landscape tie, the middle is  a configuration of poles (the two parallel to B were 2 trot strides apart) and the '+' are two jump standards. 

It was a very windy day and the wind was cold. I guess summer is over. I started with Carmen on the ground.

Suspicious mare is suspicious

I wanted to play with side passing over the landscape tie- starting in hand. It's funny- Carmen side passes very well in hand but as soon as I took her to the tie she struggled. I kept it slow and simple with lots of rewards. She finally figured it out and I gave lots of praise. Other wise we went up and down the ring playing with our ground work.

I then mounted and we began to play. The wind picked up and the trees were blowing a lot. As I would expect Carmen became tense with all the action. At one point there was a little dust devil in the ring. Carmen was not impressed. I was so happy that I had set up the course because it gave us something to focus on. I played with all sorts of patterns at walk, trot and canter. One exercise that was fun was using the parallel poles to set up a counter canter.  The off-set poles were great for practicing diagonals.

We practiced side passing without and then with the tie. We actually managed to do it a few times too.

In the end we had some really nice work and it was all about making adjustments. I think if I hadn't had these obstacles it would have been a lot easier for Carmen to get fixated on the 'spooky things' but it's hard to do that with 'eek who put this pole here?'

I am hoping I can talk Ed into making me a bull and I need to find some barrels......

Alls Well that Ends Well

After a successful session on Friday, I was really looking forward to Saturday. I didn't have to come to the barn early because Karen looked after feeding her. When I arrived I went to put her outside in a grass paddock to eat and relax until our ride time. I led her out the barn door when she gave a huge spook and splayed her feet. One landed right on my right foot and hurt like a sonofabitch. I yelled and got her off me. I led her back into the barn to do that again. This time she bolted and got away from me. 

You can imagine that a loose horse is a huge nightmare of mine but I kept calm and asked Carmen to 'whoa'. She was unsure and walked off about 10 feet dragging the leadline. I used my deep 'listen to me now' voice and said 'WHOA'. This time she stopped and waited for me to go get her. Honestly, ground work is so very very important. I realized that Carmen was spooking at a pallet of something  covered in white plastic. I guess that she hadn't noticed it on the way in the day before. I let her go and sniff it and we spent some more time on leading. In fact I did a lot of work on this all weekend- she was just so disctracted and forgetting I was there. Sigh. I guess being horny will do that to a girl. 

After I turned her out I took up Stacie's offer of an icepack and ibuprofen.  Fortunately nothing appeared to be bleeding or broken- just really sore and slightly swollen. 

An ice pack, advil and cookies. Must be a horse event. 

Johanna offered to ride Carmen that morning instead of the lesson. Now I could have ridden (my plan was if it got hard to say in a very whiny voice 'I can't my foot huuuurrrts'). However, I thought that was a great chance to have a trainer on my horse working on things so I jumped at the chance. 

I have media of the ride but I'm not posting because it's one thing for me to put myself on the internet, I'm not doing it to someone else. Trust me when I say that it was a great session for both of us. I got to see how Johanna helped Carmen work through her tightness and issues and Carmen benefited from having a training ride from a classical dressage trainer. It was interesting to watch Carmen's demeanour change from defensive and suspicious (stranger danger is real) to softness and understanding. 

After we ate a hearty lunch and did a tack shop run. Then when the lessons were over Karen tacked up Kalimo for Johanna and I tacked up Carmen to go and play in the Working Equitation course that Stacie had set up. I had lunged Carmen in part of the ring earlier and she didn't care about any of the things. It was the same when being ridden. 

Last year Carmen was a hot, spooky mess in the outdoor. This time she was happy as a clam. It was so much fun to play with the various obstacles. 

Playground  Working Equitatoin course all set up. 

Bridges are not a problem for us. We even trotted over it once. 

Trip-trap over the bridge. No trolls in sight. 

I haven't had a chance to play with the clover pattern around barrels so I have no idea if I did it right. What a great way to practice bending aids and changes of bend. 

Carmen: are we barrel racers now? 

The bull, which you would expect to be spooky was no big deal. She marched rigt up and knocked the ball out of the ring (Stacie had tied it so it wouldn't fall on the ground or blow away). I wanted to get a photo and the second time she was all 'I did this already. Pick something else'. But after a bit she decided to humour me and go with it.

We laugh in the face of danger.
Well, I giggle like a 12 year old and Carmen  tolerates my hijinks. 

The gate was interesting. Picking up the rope and going through was no issue. When I asked her to back up she hit the standard and became convinced I was being stupid. We finally figured it out but it will take more practice.

Carmen: are you sure you know what you're doing? 

There were two blue barrels to do a figure 8 around. At first we walked, then trotted them then finally cantered them. I struggled with keeping the barrel in the center when we cantered but honestly I didn't care- I was so thrilled at our soft and easy going canter.

look at us cantering outside with no fence and no worries.
I also think our match game was on point.... 

I tried the side pass over the pole a few times but it was clear that she was confused so I left it and decided to work at it at home in hand for a bit.  At one point she saw Kalimo a bit ahead and was all 'ooh let's go talk to the cute boy'.  I told her that there would be no dating on this trip, thankyouverymuch.

I am convinced that she loves this stuff. I know I do- but she was no longer cranky or balky. I need to do more of this with her. I can get a bit fixated on one thing but clearly that does not work for her. I also need to put the fun back into riding for me too.

Look at that cheesy grin. My inner 12 year old was very happy.
Note that Carmen has one ear on the handsome stallion in the right corner