part-time eventer

MUSINGS OF AN EQUESTRIAN Anna. Twenty-six. They tell me that I'm supposed to be an adult. Part-time eventer with an absolute child of a horse (he's only six, he's allowed). Hooked on horses at the age of two. I live for solid fences and open fields. Any questions? Just ask.

[musingsofanequestrian]

another day, another round of me helping to shovel sawdust because the delivery came while i was at the barn and i’m incapable of not picking up a pitchfork to help even though i absolutely do not have to

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sometimes the internet reminds me of how spoiled i am. i see someone post about how they have twenty acres of pasture at their boarding facility and think oh, that’s nothing, the field the mares are in right now at my barn is seventeen acres on its own. coop and his three friends are in one of the two “small” summer pastures that are seven acres apiece. that’s not even counting all the “paddocks” around the barn that are 2-3 acres each and the other big field below the house. we probably have fifty acres (at least) fenced for seventeen horses. even when the barn is full it’s still more than two acres a horse of actual pasture, not just the total farm property. we have way more fields than we do turnout groups. there’s a reason why our pastures always have grass and mud is at a minimum.

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another day, another lesson that was just as much a yap session as an educational endeavor

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also i really appreciate the fact that she (correctly) insists on giving me credit for all the work i’ve done with cooper

she absolutely was instrumental in helping me figure out what was wrong with him but we usually only have one lesson a week and she pretty much only sits on him if i’m out of town which is basically once a year and he still keeps getting better because i show up four or five days a week and we do our homework and she notices it every time she gets on again

and she always points out that none of the rest of it (what she says or our vet does or our farrier does) would mean anything if i wasn’t consistently putting in the work to make him stronger and retrain his muscle memory and not let him slip back into old bad habits

he’s much better for her than he is for me (unsurprisingly because it would be concerning if someone who has successfully ridden around the kentucky 5* was riding the same way someone who has never gone above beginner novice does) but (as she says) it’s just because her feel is better so she can ask him more effectively than i can and have him understand faster

she got on him last week for the first time since my kentucky trip in april and when i asked her how he was she told me she had no real complaints and there was nothing glaring that we needed to fix and that it was already a huge improvement in only a couple of months so we just need to keep doing what we’re doing and asking for a little more every week and building on what’s there

i couldn’t have done this without her help but i’m also really proud of myself for the fact that i did this because i’m the one who shows up and makes it happen and i’m sitting on something that i made whose buttons i installed and it’s only going to make me better for my next horse when cooper gets a sibling someday

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another day, another lesson that was just as much a yap session as an educational endeavor

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you know what’s fucking wild

running beginner novice and having john kyle commentating the cross country for, again, BEGINNER NOVICE

never thought i’d be hearing him say my name leaving the start box but apparently this is the world that i live in

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Sometimes we appear serious and I make him look smol even though he isn’t because I am a Tall Person :’)

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we still have such a long way to go but my last few rides have just been… on another level.

i have never in my life gotten to consistently ride a made horse. i’ve ridden a couple of retired grand prix jumpers here and there but i have never spent months and years on a horse that knows what it’s doing.

cooper doesn’t really know what he’s doing yet and he’ll probably be a constant work in progress til the day i retire him, but at some point in the last week something clicked for him and he’s actually through now, properly, and not just in a training level frame. it’s not constant but he actively looks for it instead of fighting me about it. he’s light in my hand and he’s on all my aids and i have just never really ridden something that would do that. i never could make that happen and now it’s just there.

and like, i made that happen! i did that! obviously i did it under the guidance of my trainer, but she’s sat on him maybe ten times in the two and a half years i’ve been in her barn and at least half of those were just her taking him for walks while i was out of town. he learned it with me in the tack. we learned it together.

(i also started running multiple times a week a few weeks ago and have been stretching almost every day so i think that has allowed my seat and leg to be more effective, but the point still stands.)

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i owe my first trainer an immeasurable debt for all those lunge lessons i had as a kid because literally two decades later and even with a lack of core strength i can still drop my stirrups, lengthen my leg, open my hips, and sit the trot forever without bouncing. my body just knows and it knows because she didn’t let me loose until she knew you could take everything away from me at the trot and i still wouldn’t go anywhere. my seat is the single greatest asset i have when it comes to riding from both a safety and a skill perspective and it is entirely thanks to her.

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i fully respect that some people have physical limitations that prevent them from learning to braid and have zero problem with that but for everyone who doesn’t i just have to raise my eyebrows at all those who insist it’s too difficult to learn and they can’t do it themselves

i did this on friday after doing five (5) practice braids on wednesday and having never braided a full mane before and i also did it half in the dark because the barn power didn’t come back on after tuesday’s storm until this evening

yes the forelock is sloppy but that was my last thing and we had no light left and then rode in the pouring rain yesterday so it hardly mattered anyway

they were tidy and they held overnight and the boss (my trainer) said they looked nice sooo people need to stop complaining about how hard it is and instead go buy some quicbraid and practice more

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really warms my heart to get the “you alive??“ text from my trainer if she doesn’t see me for a few days

i talk to her more than i talk to anyone other than my family at this point and 95% of it is not actually about cooper lol

(half of it is truly just us sending each other dumb memes and me keeping her up to date on shit since i’m chronically online and she’s too busy to wade through a 200+ post coth thread to figure out what the root of the latest drama actually is)

on the one hand it’s weird cause i’ve known her since i was ten but on the other hand the fact that i’ve known her since i was ten is exactly why it happens

not in a weird safesport violation when i was younger way either it’s just that i was there for basically everything at the beginning so there are many things that i don’t need context for unlike nearly everyone else

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literally want to fight everyone who thinks that saddle fit isn’t that important.

cooper’s back has changed shape dramatically over the last year and a half to the point where i had to ship my jump saddle off to have the tree widened two sizes and we had to switch out the gullet plate in my dressage saddle for the next width up. he’s developing a proper topline, he no longer has the hollows behind his withers that people love to insist are normal for thoroughbreds, and as soon as i got on tonight post-dressage saddle adjustment, he was immediately more willing to lift his back and come through. his canter was softer and more uphill as soon as i got my jump saddle back a few weeks ago.

yes my riding has gotten better but neither my skill level nor my trainer’s are sufficient to overcome a saddle that doesn’t fit. mine get checked at least once a year, twice if it seems necessary. it’s such an easy thing but so few people pay attention to it or they rely on a brand rep with no idea what they’re talking about.

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on the one hand i love it when cooper is about to trot his shoes off because it means he’s properly through and really over-tracking

on the other hand he’s about to trot his shoes off

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back on my bullshit wherein i strongly believe that if you cannot take your horse off-property without calming substances (whether it’s “legal” like perfect prep or an explicitly-banned substance) then you have no business taking your horse off-property until you learn to ride better and your horse should be taken by someone who can manage them without lunging them to death even if they’re a bit up.

nobody is entitled to ride. nobody is entitled to show. i don’t care how much money you have. if you can’t do it in a way that’s fair to both your horse and your competitors then you should not be there.

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I didn’t wash any of my wraps from basically the entire summer of showing and I haven’t washed saddle pads since like… October? so guess who just did three loads of horse laundry.

Still need to wash my stuff but I don’t have to run the tub clean cycle after I do that so those things can wait.

I also need to pull my show bin out of the trailer and reorganize all of my things before I load it back up so that’s on the list for next weekend because April is coming way faster than I want it to, lol.

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First ride in the outdoor since November 🌞

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We had a very good dressage lesson this evening and I’m already sore, lol. Trainer had us working on shoulder-in/voltes in walk and trot, and in the canter we were working on leg-yielding in and out on a circle as well as adjusting his step via half-halts (I heard “canter in place” a lot tonight), which eventually turned into canter/walk transitions. Cooper has never sat that much in the canter in his life and he was very grumbly about it but wasn’t doing any head tossing or trying to grab the reins away or anything like that so I think he was just trying to release tension (he’s very groan-y in general when he finds things difficult). Afterward he got multiple German muffins that were a Christmas gift from his aunt (our vet hahaha, she has a soft spot for him).

I am getting a little annoyed with my dressage saddle because something about the seat makes me hollow out my lower back and it makes it really hard to actually use my body properly. I can’t decide if the saddle is that off and I never noticed before because we weren’t asking for so much from either me or him, or if the balance is just off because his back has changed a ton in the last six months / we’re due for a visit from our saddle fitter (happening in the next ~month once my trainer’s new saddle comes in) and that’s what’s causing it.

Trainer and I also talked schedules for the first half of show season and I think we have a plan which is still absolutely wild to think about given how I basically never got to show at all until the last few years and have not had a proper season til now due to both his and my physical issues. We’re aiming for a BN three day in the fall so hopefully that works out.

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I need to start updating over here more and spending less time on IG because fuck MZ, so in the spirit of that:

Had my first jump lesson in three months today (Cooper free-jumped once at the beginning of January so this was only his second time over fences since early November) and I am actually super pleased with how it went. He was pretty polite, he’s starting to be strong enough to adjust himself in front of fences to get the distance without my help (beyond me keeping my leg on and keeping a steady contact), and I didn’t completely lose my shit as I am prone to doing over show jumps. We did lots of turning (our indoor arena is only 100’ x 70’) and he was a champ about the whole thing.

Neither of us were bad in October or November, really, but he was bouncing off my half-halts and I was still a bit too in my head. Today he actually listened and didn’t fuss when I asked him to sit and put himself back together, and I didn’t panic coming into any of the fences (they were small due to the aforementioned little indoor, but everything I can be relaxed into is a good thing). We’ve spent the last three months doing tons of flatwork focused on putting him together and having him be adjustable and it has absolutely paid off already (and we’ve still got another ~month or so of being 95% focused on dressage before we switch to about 60/40 so he’ll be even better by the time we actually start showing).

(I know I posted a gif of us jumping a Training skinny back in the fall and that is because I will jump any XC fence you point me at without thinking twice but for some reason *cough* my previous trainer *cough* I lose my shit over colorful sticks that fall down. I don’t get it either.)