Month: April 2017

 The best best thing about competing 

The best best thing about competing is when the preparation and the hard work pays off and your horse is simply awesome. The best best thing about competing is celebrating a good day with well earned bubbles. 

Friday at Kelsall Hill felt like it was meant to be a good day for us. The weather was perfect for Cal, cold and slightly overcast with no chance of pollen. The ground was also perfect, firm with just a bit of cut and good thick grass cover. 

The best best thing about competing is being part of a big party. As Kelsall is our local event it was also lovely to see people and catch up on gossip after winter. The team at Kelsall Hill had worked their usual magic and the courses all looked immaculate, although the numbers on the show jumping were almost completely hidden behind the beautiful flowers. Luckily I had walked the course the night before and made sure I had checked every number up close. Some competitors hadn’t been so thorough and were caught out by the START sign leaning on fence 9, jumping that backwards for instant disqualification. How cross would you be?

Dressage was OK. Cal was very pleased to be at a party and was very on his toes. An extra canter transition and a tense walk meant I wasn’t expecting much enthusiasm from the judge. 

All I was worried about was the show jumping anyway! 

The best best thing about competing at BE80(T)  is that coaches are there to help with the warm up. I was glad to see Linda de Matteo was the show jumping coach- I know, like and trust her from previous clinics. She warmed us up very positively and also stopped me from doing too much jumping before we went in.

Cal was a little superstar and jumped a beautiful clear round. After all the angst and doubt and fear, once we cleared the first fence it felt easy. As it should- this is a horse I was starting to do 100 on before he got ill.

Once we had got the dreaded show jumping out of the way I knew cross country would be fine. I decided not to wear a stop watch; we would go at an appropriate speed for him and not worry about the time. The exit from the water wasn’t flagged so I chose the quickest way out to the right so we could trot through sedately and breathe. We galloped the rest in his rhythm, I did not really need to do much kicking, but did do a bit of setting him up for the bigger fences 

And he cruised around beautifully, very close to the optimum time. 

Bear in mind that last year we either had numerous stops or were eliminated at every event. I even got David to ride him at one event to see if he could do better, to see if the problems were all down to my muppetry. 

So what has changed?

When we moved to Delamere Forest, Cal’s breathing was really bad the first summer. He was diagnosed with Pasture Associated COPD and had to have daily inhalers through a babyhaler. 

Last year he had steroid inhalers every day, which seemed to keep the airway inflammation under control but, in retrospect, the steroids completely wrecked his feet. I’ve shown the X-rays in a previous post   

So I have built a better horse from the inside out. I have focussed on the flat work over winter, finally concentrating “enough” on my homework from Patrice Edwards to have transformed my position and learned to use the exercises to train for strength and athleticism. Cal’s trot now has cadence and suspension, and his canter has lift. 

This year he is on Succeed for gut health, Golden Paste Pellets for minimising inflammation, magnesium, salt and a very tight barefoot friendly diet. Spring hasn’t really sprung yet, but so far he looks good, and if there comes a summer day when he can’t breathe, I just won’t ride that day. Feet take months to grow, breathing problems can be variable. 

The best best thing from the last few months, for me, has been having my horse back. When he wasn’t jumping well last year, I lost loads of confidence. He never really looked ill. His feet were never really that sore. I thought I couldn’t ride, that I was causing the stops. Friends came up with various theories- I was catching his mouth, I was blocking his back by pushing with my seat instead of kicking, the horse has lost interest/ confidence/ condition… it is really hard to keep riding positively into a fence, kicking like mad, to then grind to an ignominious halt.

The best best thing about competing again was being reminded that when isn’t right, it just isn’t right. When your good horse stops performing, there’s something wrong. The trouble is that the decline can be so insidious. Horses are hard wired to hide pain or weakness- the easy target is the one that gets eaten by the big cat. So we need to be carefully tuned in to hear their feedback. 

It wasn’t all feet last year. He is still ouchy on hardcore and stony tracks, although he just slows down and he does keep his ears forward when on tough terrain. 

Look at his beautiful hooves- on a good surface he can fly.

That’s my favourite picture from the weekend- there was no flying last year. 

The best best thing about competing is that occasionally we get frillies. 

The best thing about competing

The best thing about competing is that entering competitions makes me focus on my training goals. The best thing about competing is that entering competitions gives me a concrete timetable to direct my work towards, and when eventing is your main discipline, that timetable has to include basic fitness, fast work, jumping practise and cross-country schooling

as well as flatwork. We have had a great winter mostly working on our flatwork, as always with the help of the amazing Patrice Edwards, and Cal has been feeling stronger and better than ever, with a good canter (finally) that feels effortless and adjustable. So the best thing about competing is that it forces me to test the training.

 

The best thing about competing, and training for competing, is that we get to catch up with old friends. Winter can be dark and dreary, especially with working full-time and having horses living out; some days it just seems too much effort to ride, let alone enter anything. This winter my surrogate pony club mum, the lovely Judith, has organised regular riding club jumping clinics with Richard Carruthers. These have been great fun, watching combinations develop, and the camaraderie, thrills and spills and banter have been inspirational. A bit of continuity has also allowed Richard to be inventive: in this lesson he put Cal in a hackamore to see if less inadvertent clutching rein action might improve his way of going. We still had a couple of stops but it did make me realise where I might possibly have been tightening my hand when thinking “oh heck”. My current tasks is to retrain myself to kick every time I think “oh heck”!! The hackamore won’t stay in for ever, but it has been a useful exercise, and doesn’t allow me to micro manage at all, so all I can do is keep asking for forward, which is very much what Cal needs.

The scariest number I ever heard is 4000: this is the number of weeks in an average 80 year lifespan. 80 years sounds like a very long time, 4000 weeks by contrast sounds surprisingly short. It’s so easy to let a week drift by, or a month, when one isn’t focused. Horses set their own timetable, for sure, but a sense of time passing is handy for those of us with busy lives and other distractions, like a full time job and a home business on the side.

Rocky set his own timetable this month; no sooner had I ordered his new saddle then he developed an abscess and was waving his front foot around like a dying swan. He came down to the house for a few days for poulticing, which was quite testing. Note to self, must handle him in more inventive ways, rather than just doing basics, as nappies went flying across the yard and he did pirouettes and levade whilst the tape was going round his foot. After 8 days there was no real improvement so we took him to Brownmoss for x-rays. The x-rays showed a tiny abscess, quite deep in the foot, so no point digging and no point poulticing. We chucked him out in the field again for it to work its own way out. This took another week; he got really good at chasing the dogs on 3 legs and doing perfect pirouettes to turn around. It was all good hind end strengthening. He finally looked sound the evening before we went away for Easter weekend, so will get ridden out tomorrow.

Rocky handing in his note excusing him from games

The best thing about competing is that it makes me clean my tack properly! I’m quite good at looking after my tack for durability and checking stitching for safety, as most of it is second-hand, but it rarely gets a full buff and polish unless we are going out somewhere. Rocky chewed Cal’s leather reins, so I have the choice of looking scruffy in lightly chewed leather tomorrow or doing dressage with rubber reins that don’t give the same nice elastic feel…we’ll see.

The best thing about competing is that it forces me to tackle Cal’s mane so that it can be plaited; as a friend once said, he has two good manes, one on each side, that take quite a lot of taming. He also hates having his mane pulled, so we have to do a few handfuls at a time, or do it really quickly before he gets too cross.

Cal showing off his two manes

After photos tomorrow LOL.

The best thing about competing is the anticipation. To keep ourselves moving forwards, we are told to do something every day that scares us. You can’t grow in your comfort zone, only in your stretch zone. Well, having not competed properly i.e. jumping, since last summer (I don’t count dressage as competing because I am now so detached from the outcome), I am indeed feeling stretched! Here’s to growing!

The dulcet tones belong to Richard Carruthers, videos courtesy of Brent Sansom, many thanks Brent.

And finally, my stepson Barney stomped way out of his comfort zone this weekend, walking 100 miles in less than 48 hours, raising over 4K so far for Cancer Research UK and St Wilfred’s Hospice, in memory of Pam, his dear and wise friend. I am uber proud, and would ask you to consider donating to the 2 very worthy causes.

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/SomeoneSpecial/PAM