The Show... (Happy Canada Day)

NOOOOOOOO!!!!! I just spent way too long writing a post only to accidentally delete it.  Wow, my luck sucks.  Happy Canada day! As it's past 12am here it counts.
Okey, where to begin.  I'm stressed to the max due to an impending horse show, an impending camping trip (in which my friend (who is currently on vacation in Florida and not home to help me) and I take a group of our friends canoeing in Algonquin Park for a week), and a whack load of family get togetherness which I really don't have time for.  However, if I stay, family comes to me.  If I go, family comes to me.  They're unavoidable.  My other major stress is the fact that my last two rides on Cadence have been less than stellar.  Fun fun fun with a horse show on Wed. 3 rides left till the show!

I think it'd be best to start by explaining my previous two rides.  Wednesday, Cadence and I did our dressage work as planned.  Great walk/trot, okay canter, sucky work after the canter.  She was tense, and had that 'if you loosten your reins I'm going to shoot off like a rocket' feeling.  Not good.  I couldn't get her to relax into that nice rhythm and frame we had before.  Not totally working over her back, but on the contact and we were starting to get some beautiful I'm-using-my-whole-body-properly-ish stuff at the start of the ride.  I caught my self thinking 'if only I could stick draws or a martingale on her we could get through this so much faster' and 'If I could just get her to keep this fake frame during our test on Wed, we should still score pretty well on everything but submission'.  Bad Katie!  That bothers me because that's totally not who I am and that's totally against my values/what I believe in.  I hate artificial aids, and try to avoid them at all costs, and this show is not a big deal whatsoever.  She can go and bomb the test, it is all just to see where she's at and to have a fun learning experience.  Naturally I want to do well, and I know she won't be perfect, but sticking her in a frame to get marks?  That's SO against what I believe in; I felt sick.
Our ride today didn't improve my spirits.  Our warm up was fantastic.  Her woah-waits (balancing back... like you do before an XC fence) are fantastic.  I try to do as much of our jumping warm up as possible in a 2point to improve my muscle strength, and all I have to do is sit down and she balances back and slows.  I go up, and out she goes!  In both the trot and the canter, she has it 100%.  However, the actual jumping part sucked.  I wanted to elabourate on Monday's ride and take what we did up a notch.  Our goal was simple: two cross rails on a circle.  Canter a circle with the jumps.  She threw me for a loop when she refused our second warm up fence.  Not good.  I was also getting left behind left right and center.  I'd concentrate on keeping her calm and slow, then she'd get sticky, then I'd have to push a bit and she'd take all these wierd long spots and I'd end up catching her in the mouth.  Poor mare :(  She was better from the canter, but displaying the same behaviour as yesterday only after the jump instead of after the canter.  We did get through the excercise, and then I threw her off by demanding dressage-ness when we came back from the canter.  It only took a couple of minutes and then I got it!  Yay!!! not ALL hope is lost.

I think the worst part of all is that my coach is on vacation till Sat, so I can't use her to get me out of this rut.  I have to do it all by myself, without utilizing the awesomeness that is a riding coach with a sports psyche degree and a whack load of experience.  Generally I'd just email her and set up a lesson/ask for advice, but I've already bugged her once and I am determined to let her enjoy her one week of summer vacation.
Overall, I'm just stressed, worried, disappointed with myself, not at all self confident, and sort of discouraged.  Cadence has tomorrow off, so hopefully I can go play some ground games with her.  Providing I have time, that is.

Mini Unplanned Vacation

This post was written Monday night... sorry for the posting delay. (among other things)

I ought to appologise for dissapearing off of the face of the earth.  I didn't in fact die, I just took an unplanned vacation.  My family was supposed to come up for a visit from the states, but they had to cancel, so I went to them.  Very generous of me, I know.  Anyhow, as much as I'm sure y'all want to know every last detail of my life... I'll stick to the horses ;)
The Mare has been fantastic.  We are officially  in prep mode for her first combined training which is (drum roll please...) next Wednesday!  After which I will take a planned vacation.  It works out pretty well, since we have the show, and the next morning I leave to take a couple of friends up to Algonquin Park for a canoeing trip.  So, Cadence will get the next four days off.  Our show plan for the summer has been shifted a bit.  Due to the Mare's awesome progress, we're doing this CT show at Equus (at pre-entry (like pre-beginner novice)) going for one more cross country school, and then doing PE (pre-entry) at Equus on july 27th.  Hopefully after that, providing all goes well, we'll do two or three beginner novice (Entry in Canada) events, and maybe try a PT event before the season is out.  At least, that's what the long term plan is looking like right now.  My coach has this crazy idea that we'll be schooling Training next summer.  We'll see...
Cadence's work has been fantastic recently.  Her canter is finally coming together.  transitions into and out of canter still need work, but the quality of the actual canter is getting better.  Funnily enough, so is the trot work after :P  Amazing how that works!  She still gets all worked up and doesn't want to give, but she is improving.  Also, I'm pleased to say that as of today her jumping is really coming along as well.  Well, her actual jump's always been fine, but we can consistently get the proper lead after fences, we can not rush into fences, and we can... that's a bit of a lie. She still likes to rush after.  However, it's nothing major.  Plus I can't wait to take her XC again.  Her overall responsiveness and comprehension of my aids in regards to jumping has improved tremendously!  Today we were working on balancing her trot and canter back.  I'll go into a two point, and the second I sit down, she starts to balance back and package herself up.  Up I go, and she's off like a rocket.  Sometimes the ups are a bit too enthusiastic, but it's a matter of rewarding the behaviour and keeping the enthusiasm while not getting too quick and free.  Either way, we're more than ready for 2'6 pre-entry fences.  I'm pretty sure I could just point her at them and she'd figure her way around the course... lets not try that though.

Past Three Rides

Saturday: My coach was at a show all weekend (great results, all 1st and 2nd) so we didn't get a lesson :'(  Too bad, but we had a much better ride!  Only minor pissy mare stuff.  I desided to essentially ignore the post-canter trot work.  We'll focus more on the trot once the canter is all there.  Her right canter was quite good.  Relatively balanced, on the contact for parts of it, and bending a bit.  No rushiness either.  Her left was a bit better.  Gnawing and gnashing of teeth if any attempt to keep her on the contact was made, but she was more balanced and not quite as rushy as the previous ride.  We went straight to walk from the canter.... other way around.  Straight from Canter to walk, which is what we were doign before.  Then she backs off after the canter and she can be pushed foreward into a nice trot.  This takes time though, and it sort of sucks to re-do since she was fine with it.  Baby steps, baby steps.  Under 1/2h.

 From March, I believe

Sunday: Started off with a hack w some other horses for the first time.  Went intothe forest past the evil wood pile (not on te first attempt, but we made it) and walked calmly past some other evil wood piles.  We then went into the arena for some w/t/c.  Actually, we went into the round pen and spiraled in and out on a circle at the trot, then moved to the arena.  Much better ride!  Sat was good, but Sun was great.  Some frame and balance (and a lot less rush) for the left lead canter!  Yay!!!

Monday: off

Tuesday:  Great ride today!  Controlled canter with (inconsistent) frame/on the contact.  Bending both directions, and no real rushing down the long sides.  Nice and soft and light in her trot work, something that had been amiss for the previous rides.  Alright trot post-canter, not truly on the contact/working over her back.  Good freewalk, and OK trot stretch.  Too rushy, and not enough stretch IMO.  Went for a hack past the scary wood pile (s) which she HATED.  Eventually got her past it.  Got off and walked her up to the biggest one.  She wasnervous, but followed me willingly without hesitation.  We went into the indoor and worked on some tests.  Pissy after the canter, so we did some canter transitions.  Really good up ones, and pretty good down.  I was happy, so we called it quits.  The test itself sucked, but the work after was good.

What a week

Well, my last day of classes was today.  The end of the school year tends to be one of those things that comes up way too quickly, but not soon enough.  After writing three tests & handing in two projects and one culminating, my last day was eventful at the very least.  One of these days I'll learn not to leave things to the last minute.  Then again, I've been saying that since like grade 6... probably before then.  Whatever, what's done is done.  Only finals left!  On the riding front, we had a fun week.  Monday cadence got a pedicure, tuesday we rode bareback, and wednesday we dressaged.  The bareback ride was fun and productive.  It was good because my fear of slipping off the side combined with her bony whithers made me insist on a nice slow trot.  She's got enough natural movement in the trot (even when she isn't using her bum) that rhythm really counts!  we kept to w/t, and mostly worked on straightness and keeping her on the contact @ all times.  She's normally fantastic about that, but she wasn't too keen on the whole slow and steady trot thing.  The other thing we worked on was keeping her on the contact in our free walk.  Sometimes she's a bit laxckadaisical about this, so it was good practice.  Our free walks are gonna be rockin by the next show!  The other thing that came out of the ride is that I realized she's still a teeny weeny bit bent to the left when we're going to the right.  She's so much better than when I got her sometimes it's hard to fix the leetle things like that, because she's really straight compared to what she used to be.  Make sense?
Our wednesday ride could have gone better.  My plan was to essentially elabourate on Tuesday's ride.  On the contact in the stretch in the trot, straight in the w/t/canter, and soft at the halt.  Our ride started out fantastically.  We even got some half decent stretching in the trot.  Our training level dressage tests all have a trot stretch.  I personally think it's a silly movement and it should be removed.  If Cadence improves, I may change that opinion, but for now it stays.  We had a great canter right, came back to trot, picked it up again, came back down.  The plan was to canter left and quit, but somewhere between the end of our second right canter and the end of our left canter something flipped.  My beautiful mare went bye bye and a grabby, heavy in the hand, pushy-pully, stiff nightmare replaced her.  I tried everything... stretching, transitions, woah-waits (slow down, release, return to working trot/canter), and just letting her relax.  I don't believe in just letting a horse 'get it out of their system' when they have a rider on their back.  In my experience, it rarely works and is often quite counter productive, so I skipped that method.  At one point I loostened my reins a bit and was just letting cadence trot around in something resembling an angry tense stretch when she cantered off on me.  We were going to the left and she picked up her right lead, neatly swapped it, and continued on her way.  In truth, it was a gallop not a canter, but canter sounds better.  I've never had her do this, and she would NOT stop.  I let her go, I pulled her back, I circled her, I changed directions, she barged on.  Naughty mare.  We resumed work once she  decided to return and she was no different than before, so once I got the teeniest bit of give she was finished. 
All in all, the ride wasn't that bad (save the one episode) in general, just bad compared to the level of work I've come to expect from her and from the awesomeness I had at the beginning of the ride.  She got yesterday off, and is having a lunge session with our BO tonight.  Tomorrow, I reasess.

Henny!

Just in case anyone missed it, congratulations to Peter Atkins who after this whole long and tiring ordeal gets Henny back where he belongs.  I fell in love with that pony when I first saw him at Rolex because of his ears.  Pathetic reason to like a horse, I know.  I'm just so happy he's with Peter now. I really shouldn't be blogging... there's a french film critique that ain't gonna write itself.  Too bad though....