dressage · dressage tests · soapbox

Soapbox Moment: Dressage Salutes

Amanda8 Comments

Okay. I need to come clean about this.

The way the vast majority of people do their dressage salutes drives me absolutely crazy.

You may argue that since I am very distinctly in the minority here, I’m in the wrong. You may even be right.

I don’t care. Seeing a quick, careless, sloppy salute gets under my skin immediately and fills me with irrational anger.

Please note that I did say “irrational.”

What do I mean? Here are a few examples. Please note: the riders here are more or less a random sampling, and many of them are really lovely riders. I’m only using them to talk about their salutes, not their general tests.



Do you see what I mean?

That quick, hurried flip on an antsy horse, before it’s even settled. The “get this over with” attitude toward the whole thing.

I see it in almost every single test I scribe for, and I do a fair amount of scribing – probably more than your average rider. (I have problems saying no.)

Here’s how I was taught to salute:

Ride your centerline.

Halt. Wait a beat for your horse to settle and square, and while doing so, seek out the judge’s face and make – if not eye contact – then at least a moment of connection.

Lower your head. Wait a beat.

Lower your right hand. Wait a beat.

Return your had to the reins. Wait a beat.

Raise your head, and in the moment that follows, re-find the judge’s face and get your horse ready.

Strike off.

Does that sound really long? It’s not. By “beat” I don’t mean even a full second, but I do mean a pause. Take a breath. Let yourself settle and have a moment of space. The whole thing takes perhaps twice as long as one of those flippy salutes, but by that I mean it takes perhaps 2-3 seconds, total, rather than a fraction of one second.

To me, a quick flip salute like the majority of riders do presents two major disadvantages.

First, it’s disrespectful. The point of a salute in the dressage test is to acknowledge the judge, and his/her role in what’s about to occur. It always makes me think of the (mostly apocryphal) gladiator salute. (“We who are about to die salute you!” though maybe that’s not very cheerful?) It’s a sort of mutual gesture of partnership. You present yourself to be judged, and acknowledge that the judge will be evaluating you. Giving it the space it deserves is only right. (Though, judging by how many people blast through it and the pretty good scores they’re still getting, most or all dressage judges don’t care too much!)

Second, it’s a built-in deep breath. Dressage is stressful. Riders are often nervous, frightened, worried – you name it. Going down the centerline is one of the biggest pressure moments in all of equestrian sport. Why blow through the one moment in the whole test where you can relax for a split second? Take that moment of zen. Appreciate it. Then get on with the business of riding the test. Don’t waste it!

So there. My soapbox moment. I realize this is a really small thing to go crazy over, but it really fills me with an all out of proportion amount of frustration.

Agree? Disagree?

blanketing

Blanket Repair

Amanda6 Comments

I mentioned just before Christmas that Tristan had shredded a corner of his one and only turnout blanket. It’s a midweight that he wears when it’s below zero – which happens more often than it should up here. He borrowed a barn blanket for a week while it was repaired.

I was looking through photos last night and found that I had taken some good pictures of the repair but never shared them! This was a local sewing shop; when I took the blanket in the owner immediately knew what she was looking at – apparently her in-laws have horses!

Here’s what it looked like post-rip, pre-repair:

And here’s the repair:

They did a really, really nice job. It was a fairly complicated fix in a number of different ways. Total cost: $47, far less than a new turnout would’ve been!

gear · product review · winter

STABILicers Ice Cleat: My New Favorite Winter Gear

Amanda1 Comment

Vermont is currently covered in a thick sheet of ice, as I whined about and as Lila Gendal showed on Eventing Nation. Sections of interstate highway were closed down as multiple plow trucks went off the road trying to get sand down. I had to be out and about for about an hour and a half as I re-arranged work details between our two buildings to accommodate the hazardous travel conditions.

This is a very long way of saying that Saturday, for the first time, I tried out a Christmas gift from my parents: STABILicers Ice Cleats. They are like studding your winter boots up for XC. I have been thinking about something like them for a while, since I walk to work on the average day, and of course spend a fair bit of time outside at the barn.

I could not possibly be more impressed with them. They were straightforward and quick to get on – required a bit of muscle to stretch the rubber, but not too much. It added perhaps 2-3 minutes to my morning routine. Then I walked outside…and didn’t slip. Not once. I want to stress that our driveway is a solid sheet, several inches thick, of ice. I stood while chipping ice off my car and was completely stable. I walked down sidewalks, up fairly steep hills, and across roads that were similarly thick sheets of ice without the slightest hint of slipping. In fact, I walked up a sidewalk perfectly normally and a few minutes later watched two men take tiny minute slipping steps down that sidewalk and still fall a few times.

I could instantly feel the grip of the cleats in the ice, and the added traction was amazing. I almost forgot about the ice entirely, and just walked normally. The rubber didn’t threaten to slip off my boots at all. I did take them off on coming back inside – I’m fairly sure that they were sturdy and sharp enough that they would have dug into our hardwood floors!

So two thumbs way, way up – these were a relatively inexpensive and absolutely clutch addition to my winter gear.

lesson notes

Lesson Notes

Amanda8 Comments

(first things first: it is a triumph of will that I even got to this lesson, after my car died 40 miles away and I had it pushed in neutral to the gas station next door and the mechanic called me mid-day and I had a conversation with him that went something like, him: “Did the air conditioning work on this car before?” Me: “It did until it caught fire last summer. I haven’t used it since.” Him: “Wait, what?” All’s well that ends well and I had a working car again by the end of the day. Whew.)

Anyway! Lesson. Good lesson. Ass-kicking lesson for both of us. A solid hour of work, some of it very high-quality, and with stretches that tested both of us equally and separately. I felt some strain in my core & thigh muscles after I got off! Dressage: not for wimps.

The overall theme of the lesson was straightness, and each piece of the lesson addressed a different way in which we were not straight and helped put us straight. First up: leg-yields. Worked on getting the whole body straight: first the neck, then the ribcage, then the hind end. No evasions, just good clean crossover. We also worked hard on getting just the right step: come down the quarter line straight, take one or two good steps, then go straight, then take one or two steps. We moved from quarter-line-to-wall to broken lines, off the wall to the quarter line and back. Walk and trot both.

Then we moved on to transitions: clear, sharp, straight transitions. Here, the challenge was more for me: not to corkscrew my body and drop my inside hand to my thigh. For him, though, less bend, more lift, and more alertness to my aids. We worked on fitting as many good crisp transitions as we could into a twenty meter circle.

Then, changes of direction, on diagonals both short and long. Go deep into the corners, get quality straightness on the short side, go deep into the corner again, and come off the diagonal – off the wall – with shoulders even, reins even, pushing from the hind end. I don’t know that I’ve ever schooled diagonals like that in my life, but it was a hugely useful exercise to have someone really drill me on them rather than just use them as a way to change direction.

Back to the twenty meter circle, and this time, work really really hard on controlling the shoulders around it. We did this by starting with a diamond exercise within the twenty meter circle, as outlined below.

Ride straight lines on the distances from center to wall to wall to wall to center, thinking of the turns off each point almost as turns on the haunches. It’s basically riding a square, which is an exercise I have done in the past but never really nailed. Pretty soon Tris had worked through and figured out what we were asking of him: don’t magnetize your shoulders to the wall, push off with the inside hind to make the turn, be straight and even in the bridle. For me, it was a really good exercise again for the corkscrewing of my body and the over-reliance on my inside rein. Turning those tight corners was all about a deep outside leg and a steady outside rein. We did this at the walk and trot both directions.
Finally, we finished with some very short canter exercises, to get a similar feel of what we had been aiming for through the lesson: straightness, control of the shoulders, a more supple hind end. Eventually in our own schooling we will work on the changes of direction through the diagonal, but for yesterday – since we were both so tired – we worked briefly on canter down the quarter line: come down the long side at a walk, then a trot, pick up the canter in the corner, then come off the short side cleanly and without overbending, and keep straight down the diagonal, then drop back to trot, make the clean turn back on the short side, repeat. We only did it a handful of times, but I could feel how much easier it was to get Tristan straight through his body after all the work we’d been doing throughout the lesson.
In short: whew. But some really, REALLY good tools to work on in our own rides, and a really positive outlook overall. There were some really gorgeous, fancy strides in there, and Tris really stepped up beautifully.

blog hop · meme

Blog Hop: A Dressage Barn in Vermont

Amanda10 Comments

(please note, if you think you saw this yesterday – you are not losing your mind, I apologize! I accidentally published the draft before I was finished adding photos)

SprinklerBandit is hosting a blog hop encouraging everyone to show photos of their barn. I’ve had a couple of photos up here before, but this is a good comprehensive overview. For the record, the barn in question is a dressage barn in semi-rural Vermont. (As in, outside of the capital city, so clearly not the middle of nowhere; but all of Vermont is classified as rural according to broader standards.)

1) A View of the Barn

There are actually two barns on the property. Here’s the main all-season barn, attached to the indoor (which is on the left, and shares the roofline). It has 20 stalls. Not a lot of frills but quality through and through. Everything is lived-in and there are tons of little tweaks that make life easier.

Here’s the summer barn, in winter. It sits just behind the main barn and has an additional 10 stalls. It houses the trainer’s horses in summer, but she’s in Florida November-May. It is quite a bit fancier than the winter barn, and is newer.

One of my favorite pictures, looking back out the door – basically up to where the first two photos were taken. When the visibility is good, you can see a perfect frame of Camel’s Hump through this door. I have watched many sunsets leaning against the wall and just staring.
2) Your Horse’s Living Space

Drunk pony after a vet visit.

Home soon after his surgery.

3) In the Tack Room

Downstairs, looking left. It is actually a bit messy right now, barn manager would probably kill me if she knew there were photos on the internet…

Downstairs, looking right. You can’t quite see it, but the wire racks in the back are the best saddle pad & wrap storage system I have ever seen. Hose in the foreground = a necessity in winter. It freezes in less than an hour if left in the aisle.

Upstairs, where my tack is kept! You can’t see my tack; my trunk is just behind the saddle covered with the towel.
4) Where You Ride

There is basically no way to get good photos of an indoor, especially if you’re almost always there after dark. Regardless: small court dressage size indoor, our primary home right now. Lovely springy mixed rubber & washed sand footing that is dragged every 2-3 days and, believe it or not, doesn’t kick up ANY dust clouds.
Outdoor #1, jumping / schooling arena. Not quite sure of the size, but it’s not huge – a bit wider than a full dressage arena. We are often here in the summer for schooling.
Outdoor #2, fancy-pants dressage arena, all-weather mixed rubber footing. This was taken sitting in the permanent judge’s booth. I have actually never ridden here! This summer, maybe. There are so many other good options and this arena is about 50 ft from the barn owner’s back door, so it often feels invasive to ride there when I’m riding at night.
And, of course, the fields! This is the big hayfield – no idea on acreage, somewhere around 10, maybe? Believe it or not, the dressage arena above is at the very top of this hill.
Oh, and the roads. So may dirt roads. I could go for miles and miles and miles. Did you know that 70% of Vermont’s roads are dirt? Now you do!
5) My Favorite Feature

I have been in some beautiful places, but this one has them beat all hollow. It never comes out well in photos, but the fire of that sunset is touching the tips of the Monroe Skyline; in the winter you can see the ski trails of Mad River Glen and Sugarbush. You can see weather coming before it gets to the barn, in the clouds on the mountains and through the valley. The property itself is sprawling and lush and achingly pretty even on gross days. It’s in one of my favorite spots in my favorite place in the whole world (I will argue to the death that Vermont is, objectively, the best state). I feel lucky every single day that I can live and ride here.
(this is not to say that the barn has many, many other wonderful features! but this is the one that gives me an almost physical pang of happiness in my heart when I think about it.)



road hacking

Sunday Hack

Amanda6 Comments

I did have second thoughts about my planned road hack yesterday when I stepped outside to find it was raining down pellets of ice from the sky, but went ahead anyway. We tacked up quickly and I went with a quarter sheet just in case it did start to come down harder.

We headed up the road and turned off into some new fields that I liked quite a bit. Tris was less than pleased with his lot in life: he had thrown a little spooking tantrum when a flock of birds took off underneath his nose, and the wind was starting to pick up and the icy pellets were actually picking up. Fair enough! That still didn’t excuse the jigging and the refusal to go where he was pointed. So I didn’t feel too bad for him when he flung himself around and onto an icy patch and slipped. I was asking him to go around it, after all.

New galloping field! This photo doesn’t really convey the depth of it.

We also had a fairly stringent conversation heading back down the road toward the barn about walking calmly and quietly when there was ice and snow on the road, especially going downhill, Tristan. Let’s just say I was glad I had opted for a saddle on this particular ride.

meme

The $100,000 Question

Amanda10 Comments

I was folding laundry at the laundromat a few nights ago and feeling slightly grumpy at the state of finances in my world and so I made up a little game and have enjoyed refining it since.

Imagine someone gave you $100,000 free and clear. Assume taxes are already taken care of and you can spend the whole amount. The catch: you have to spend the whole amount on horse-related things. What do you buy?

Here’s my list.


1.) Down Payment for Farm: $55,000

I’m not saying buy the farm right away. I would set the money aside in something slightly more lucrative than a savings account, but not as risky as a stock portfolio. There it would sit until one of two things happened: the right property/opportunity came up, or Tristan was ready to retire.

What’s the right property? 20-30 acres of good land: relatively flat, well-drained, somewhat improved. A 3+ bedroom house on the property. Some setup that could be turned to horses easily; it doesn’t have to have a barn already (though that would be nice), but it should have the house situated in such a way that adding more outbuildings would be easy, and it shouldn’t be entirely forested. It would also be relatively close to my job.

2) 2 Horse Gooseneck Trailer: $18,000

Leftover money would go into a general trailer maintenance + gas fund. For specifics, I don’t need an XL or XXL; just standard size. No mangers! A reasonably sized tack room area, and the ability to put a mattress up in the gooseneck. Lots of ventilation from the roof and the sides. Doors on both sides. Possibly a roof rack on top for hay & shavings.

3) 3/4 Ton Pickup Truck (Used): $25,000

I don’t need brand-new, but I want a late-model GMC or Chevy truck, less than 50k miles. Never plowed. King cab, but not necessarily a full back seat with extra doors. I would love the extended bed but it’s not an absolute necessity. Rigged for hauling. Four wheel drive. Snow tires!

4) Custom Dehner Tall Boots: $1,000

I have coveted these for years. I keep changing my mind about precisely what I want. Something black, but do I want dressage or field boots? Spanish top? Toe cap? I don’t know! So many possibilities.


5) Shopping Spree: $1,000

Let’s call this the miscellaneous category. I need an assortment of small things that could easily fill up $1,000. A stable blanket for Tristan; a breastplate; a few new saddle pads; a couple of training books; new gloves; new breeches; a new winter riding coat. I could gladly go on a bit of a shopping spree and replace some things in my equipment that have seen better days.

Well – what about you? If someone handed you $100,000 that you had to spend on horses, what would you buy?

horse cookies

Still More Joy Day!

Amanda1 Comment

I’m still feeling warm fuzzies over the people who left comments on my More Joy Day post.

Best of all: there are still offers out there for me to mail you some homemade horse cookies, based on the recipes I’ve been experimenting with.

Would you like some? All you have to do is go comment. If you’ve done something awesome recently, something that would bring a smile to someone else’s face, then please share that. If you just want to try some horse cookies, that’s cool too! Comment away.

So go forth! Bring more joy unto the world!

horse racing · secretariat · video

Secretariat and the 1973 Belmont

AmandaLeave a comment

As far as I’m concerned, this is the best video on the internet. Yes, the entire internet. In fact, I have been known to say that this video, this specific video, is the reason the internet exists.

I can’t watch it without breaking into big, ugly, gulping sobs at about the halfway mark.

Enjoy.

They’re on the turn, and Secretariat is blazing along! The first three-quarters of a mile in 1:09 and four fifths. Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine! Secretariat by twelve, Secretariat by fourteen lengths on the turn! Sham is dropping back. It looks like they’ll catch him today, as My Gallant and Twice a Prince are both coming up to him now. But Secretariat is all alone! He’s out there almost a sixteenth of a mile away from the rest of the horses! Secretariat is in a position that seems impossible to catch. He’s into the stretch. Secretariat leads this field by 18 lengths, and now Twice a Prince has taken second and My Gallant has moved back to third. They’re in the stretch. Secretariat has opened a 22 length lead! He is going to be the Triple Crown winner! Here comes Secretariat to the wire. An unbelievable, an amazing performance!