Pipestave Horse Trials

Otis and I competed in our first event of the season on July 7th at the Pipestave Hill Horse Trials in West Newbury, MA. We entered the "Grasshopper" two phase division since we have not yet had a chance to school cross country. I really want to do some schooling before we enter another three phase.

We trailered in with my friend Liz who was in the beginner novice division so we got to the show grouds a while before our 11:00 dressage time. It was going to be a super hot day so we parked the horses in a shady spot near some trees and I set Otis up with his hay net and some water.

Otis had never been to this venue before, so I walked him around the grounds a bit and then walked him over to one of the dressage rings to watch Liz and Dreamy perform a lovely test.

Once it was time for us to get ready for dressage I peeled on my breeches, tacked Otis up, and gulped some gatorade. Otis was a bit tense and disctracted in the warm up, but otherwise very well behaved. I walked him over to the dressage ring to wait our turn, and got to see Liz and Dreamy jump their final jump in their cross country round. Otis was very good for our dressage test. He was still a bit disctracted looking at all of the sites and sounds, so it wasn't one of our best tests, but he was very good. We ended up in first place at the end of the dressage round!

We had three hours in between our dressage and the scheduled time for stadium but I noticed they were running about a half hour ahead of schedule so I tacked Otis up early so if we got the chance to jump early we could head home earlier than planned.

He did a pretty huge bunny hop over our first practice fence, but was really good for the rest. It was so hot out, so I didn't want to over do it in the warm up. I told the ring steward we were ready to go, and waited our turn. Otis was awesome for the staduium course. He bunny hopped the first jump, but did the rest of them really well. He was getting a bit crooked in between the fences, but I was able to straighten him out in time to make it over the fences. I think he was just getting really excited everytime he landed that he wasn't really paying attention to where we were going next! I exited the ring with a big smile on my face! What a fun round!

With our clean stadium round we were able to stay in first place and take home a blue ribbon! Despite the heat we had such a fun day, and I am defintely ready to do some more eventing this summer! There is a cross country and stadium schooling day coming up in a couple of weeks at this same venue, so I am hoping to attend that, and hopefully enter a three phase in August!

Otis showing off his ribbon!

Boot Troubles

I am going to venture out of my normal horse show blog posting to share some tips I have found out when you have boot troubles.

The Wednesday before my last horse show the zipper broke on my tall boots. The shoe repair place takes a week to replace a zipper, so I was kind of in a panic! I posted to my Facebook to see if any of my friends had any suggestions for a temporary fix. One of them suggested electrical tape, and even though I was afraid the stickiness might be hard to get off of my boot, it was the best thing I could think of... UNTIL... I thought of black vet wrap!

I bought some black vet wrap at tractor supply and used it to secure by boot around my leg. The only draw back was it was pretty sticky and stuck to my saddle a little to good. It made it hard to properly cue Otis as to what I was asking, so we had a few baubbles at our show. I did find that rubbing a bit of show sheen on the vet wrap help that issue a little bit.

Now that my boots have been dropped off to be repaired, I needed something to ride in while they are gone. The only other boot I have are my western boots. These are pretty much every day shoes for me, but they don't work very well with an english saddle because they are not tall enough, the saddle flap gets stuck in the boot. Enter the least expensive half chaps I could find. They fit over my western boots, and voila.. I have "english" riding boots again! My english spurs even fit on my western boots!

So hopefully this post may be of help to someone that finds themselves in the panic that I found myself in just days before a horse show with broken boots, because there was no way I was going to scratch and lose my entry fee over that! I was prepared to try and do my dressage test with western boots on if I had to..Ha ha!!

Movin' On Up!

Sunday, June 9th was the second show of the season for SMDA at the Hollis Equestrian Park. I entered Otis and I in Into C and Training 1.

Otis was a VERY good boy all day long. He didn't have any naughty moments at all. We went into the warm up ring three or four times through out the day and he never had an issue. I think he is finally starting to realize that it is just easier if he is good ;-)

Otis was awesome in Intro C. He was really paying attention to me and wasn't nearly as tense as he usually is. We had a couple of mistakes that were completely avoidable, but they were 100% my fault. A couple of days beofre the show, the zipper on one of my boots broke, so I used black vet wrap to hold it together. The vet wrap stuck to my saddle so well that I had to keep moving my foot too much to get it unstuck, and Otis mistook this for a cue to do something. When we were going across the diagnal he thought I asked him to canter, so we got a 4 on that movement for having a few canter strides. He also started trotting too soon when we went from walk to trot towards the end of the test. Even with these mistakes we still received a score of 67.5% and a first place ribbon.

Training 1 was next, I was excited and a little bit nervous to finally try Training Level. Otis was again awesome for this test. He took the wrong canter lead in our first canter circle but I corrected him immeidately, so we only got a 4.5 for a score on our first canter. I got a little too worked up I think about making sure I didn't forget my test that I was hurried when asking Otis to do the different movements. Had I calmed down and taken my time we would have done much better. I can't fault Otis for trying to figure out what the heck I wanted, he was just trying to listen and be good. I was a little mad at myself when I left the ring after Training 1, Otis was SO GOOD, and I let him down by getting too nervous and not fully preparing him for what was coming up next, but it was still a good ride and I felt pretty good about our first time doing the test.

When they announced the scores I realized that maybe I had been too hard on myself, we placed first out of five riders with a score of 65.83%. I was so EXCITED! To place first in both tests, one of which we had never done before felt SO GOOD. I think I am going to stick with Intro C and Training 1 for the rest of the season, that way we can really work on each movement, and get really good at each teast and then next year we can do Training 1 and 2, or maybe even 2 and 3 depending on how the rest of the year goes.

Otis and I with our ribbons

Starting the Season off Right!

Sunday May 5th was the first show of the season for Otis and I. We went to the Hollis Equestrian Park for the Southern Maine Dressage Association's first show of 2013.

My goal had originally been to do Training 1 and 2 at this show, but Otis and I had kind of a rocky start to the spring, so I entered Intro B and C instead. The fact that Spring seemed to take FOREVER to arrive gave us a late start getting ready for shows, so I opted to do testes that I am familiar with for our first show.

When I got on Otis to warm up for Intro B he seemed pretty calm for our first show of the year. Last year at our first show, I couldn't even warm him up at all is was so wound up, so I was very happy with this improvemnt. I walked him around the grounds for a bit so he could see the sights, and then headed for the warm up arena. On our way to the warm up a small child ran up behind Otis, which scared him a bit. That combined with some people playing lacrosse down in the cross country course kind of unsettled him a bit. I took him out behind my trailer and rode him around there for a bit and he calmed right down. I am very happy that he is starting to realized that it's okay to be scared, but that it's also possible to recover from being scared and get to work.

I was feeling pretty good when it was our turn for Intro B. The judge rang the bell just after I passed A, so I turned Otis around to head into the arena. Just as we were rounding the corner for A, he spooked at "something" and I thought I might fall off for a split second. Thankfully we were able to pull it together before we passed A and started being judged. Otis was REALLY good for the entire test. He was a little bit tense, and the judge told me I needed to make my circles rounder and less egg shaped, but other wise I was VERY happy with our test. We ended up with 3rd place out of 6 people and a score of 69.38%.

I got some really good canter transitions in the warm up ring before Intro C, so I was feeling pretty good as I entered thing ring. Otis was even better for Intro C. I actually got so excited thinking about how good he was being that I almost forgot my test! I was just trotting along grinning like an idiot, when all of a sudden, I realized... DUH your doing a fricken dressage test..20 meter circle at B!! Luckily I snapped into it just in time, and didn't go off course! As we were heading down the center line to finish our test, Otis tripped just as we were halting and he pulled the reins out of my hands... so not such a great end to a wonderful test, but he tripped, can't fault him for that.  We ended up with 1st place out of 3 people with a 71.5% for that test!! Even with a 5 on our final halt, we got a 71.5!

Needless to say, I decided it was time to try Training level in June. I signed up for Intro C and Training 1 for the June show. I figure Intro C will be a good warm up/relaxer for us before we try Training 1 for the first time.

Wating our turn. He's so cute with his braids.

Our third place ribbon from Intro B

With both of our ribbons

Otis with his fro after I took his braids out! Love it!

I'm Back..

So I had moved my blog over to WordPress becasue they have an iPad app and Blogger did not. Well Blogger has an iPad app now, so I'm back to Blogger :-)

Recap of 2012 and Goals for 2013

I would have to say that 2012 was a great year for Otis and I. We tried a lot of new things, we had a lot of ups and downs, but overall we had a lot of fun! I always say what's the point if your not having fun?!

Otis made a lot of progress during the 2012 show season, he went from acting like a complete crazy horse at the UNH two phase in April, to a perfect gentleman at the September SMDA dressage show (our last show for 2012). Not to say that there weren't some bumps on the way (can't forget him dumping me off in the practice arena at the July SMDA/SPHO dressage show...) but I am really happy with how we have both progressed. I think it is safe to say that we even improved a bit in the stadium phase of eventing. Otis isn't launching himself over the jumps as much, and I think I have improved a tiny bit on my looking down problem.

We even won some year end awards to remember this year by! We received Reserve Champion in Intro Dressage from the Maine Horse Association, Seventh Place in Intro B and Fourth Place in Intro C from the Southern Maine Dressage Association, Third Place in Intro Dressage and an American Paint breed award from the Maine Dressage Society. It was really fun to go to all of the awards banquets and get big pretty ribbons for all of our hard work. ;)

I have a few goals for the 2013 show season. I want to start taking lessons as soon as possible, as I would really like to move up to training level at the SMDA shows this year. I would also like to take some jumping lessons, and do some cross country schooling. I really enjoyed doing the two phases last year, but I am dying to do cross country again. I do however, know that Otis and I both need to gain some confidence before we try another competition.

Our 2012 ribbons displayed on the mantel. To me these ribbons signify that we placed in every class we entered, and did not get eliminated once!  ;-)

These are our 2012 year end awards

Last SMDA of the season

Sunday, September 19th was the last SMDA show of the season. I was feeling very aprehensive about this show, and almost didn't go. Work has gotten really busy, so I haven't had as much time to ride, and when I do it's dark by the time I get done. I only had a chance to ride Otis three times on the week leading up to the show, and he was really bad all three days. I think a combination of the cooler weather, and I'm sure he could sense my stress level, even though I tried not show it. Not wanting to feel like I was quiting, I got home at 8:00 Saturday, gave Otis a quick bath, and double checked that I had everything packed for the show the next morning.

I got to the show and got Otis groomed, and decided to lunge him, just to see how he was gonig to be. Well, he was awesome, nice calm walk, trot, canter in both directions. I got him tacked up, got myslef dressed, and headed to the warm up ring. He was really good in there as well. The show was running a head of schedule, so I rode my Intro B test early, I figured since he was being good I would just go. He was a bit strong, and was doing this weird head thing that he has started doing. He moves his head from side to side, I think it's because he thinks I want him to do something, when really, I just want him to keep contact with my hands. It's just him trying to figure out this dressage thing, so I don't really fault him for it. We are working on it at home, and at our lessons. The judge really didn't like it though, and we got one of our worst scores ever. Her comments stated that is head "wag" is incorrect, and that I was trying to supple him too much. 

I took the comments into consideration for Intro C, and figured she would rather see his head up a little too far, than to see me trying to fix it all the time. Our Intro C test was AWESOME. Otis was so good. He was really calm, and was really paying attention to me. We had really good canter transitions, which I have been working on a lot at home and in our lessons. We got 7's and 8's on our canter and transitions! That made me pretty happy. We ended up with a score of 71% and a second place ribbon. 

I had to apologize to Otis for doubting him before this show. I thought it was going to be a complete disaster, and that he was just going to act terrible! Well he definitely proved me wrong! He was awesome for the entire show! He was a bit strong in Intro B, but he didn't do ANY of his normal naughty stuff (spooking or letting other horses wind him up). I was very proud of him, and I am confident that wtih a lot of work and continued lessons we can move up to training level next year.