Training Max – Update 14

Yet again it has been many months since I have written. Mostly because there hasn’t been anything to report. Max has been laid up all summer, and I’m not riding or showing with Sandy Point any longer. I miss it terribly, but being at the shows at the in-gate and announcing and judging has helped a lot.

Max and WallE are best friends. They are inseparable. No, I mean that literally. They cannot be separated. See:

Inseparable

WallE has been doing great with his training. He gets more mature-looking every day but is still under 14.2 hands. He’s so pretty that one day Jamie and I cleaned him all up and took some model photos. He is a pretty pony!

WallE Posing

Jamie is still not comfortable riding him and even took a fall off of him and I am just way too big on him, so I enlisted my friend Katie to ride him. She is a good rider and has enormous patience. She was very good for him throughout the summer.

Katie on WallE

The Problem with “Fillers”

I was at a show this weekend, announcing, and several issues and conversations arose in regards to “fillers.” It got me to thinking, and I honestly don’t know where I stand on the issue. On the one hand, as a rider and a horse show worker, I really want the medals to fill; on the other hand, as a judge and an association officer and delegate, there’s something that just doesn’t sit well with me about using them.

What is a “filler” exactly? A filler is a rider that gets put into a qualifying class so the class will meet the minimum number of riders needed in order for the class to “count” and the winner to qualify (and I’m talking about hunt seat equitation medal qualifying classes because that is my only experience with fillers). Often, the riders that want the class “filled” will split the cost of the entry fee for the filler and sometimes even pay for an association membership for the filler. In turn, the filler is supposed to purposely make an error that would prevent them from winning the class; usually that means they will do a circle somewhere on the course or break to a trot or halt in order to be dropped to the bottom of the pinning.

What does the filler get out of it? The filler gets a little extra mileage in the ring, but mostly they get the gratitude of their fellow horse-show enthusiasts and the possibility that the favor will be returned to them some day.

This also really helps the show managers. They want their shows to have a reputation for always filling their medal classes. That reputation will help ensure that their shows are successful. A show that has a reputation for never filling their medals will slowly get less and less people showing there. Riders and trainers will save their money for a show where they know they have at least a chance to qualify.

So everyone is happy, right?…..well, not everybody….

Training Max (& Wall-E!) – Update 13

Ugh! Update 13…of course!

You may be wondering why I haven’t written in so long, well it’s time, even if it is unlucky 13. When I last wrote, we were thrilled to have Wall-E join our family and were anxiously awaiting spring so we could ride both of them. Well, the winter turned out to be a total nightmare. Last winter when the ring was too hard to ride on, I took Max on trail rides throughout the entire winter. We’d get snow and it would melt and I’d hit the trail. This winter, no go! The snow never melted! It was so icy and dangerous that I didn’t dare ride him or Wall-E. We did take them on a trail ride or two, but nowhere near what I was able to do last year. I really couldn’t wait for spring.

I also had surgery in November and wasn’t able to ride at Sandy Point Stables for a couple of months. During that time, I thought long and hard about the money I was spending there when I had TWO to ride at home and two kids going to college next year. It was very hard, but given the balance I still owed Jay from last year’s shows, the extreme disappointment that I endured at last year’s RI Finals, and the thought that I could work on my own horses with a simple reachable goal of taking them to at least one show in the summer, I decided to stop taking lessons and not show with SPS in 2011. Sooo hard. It is an addiction, after all.

Training Max – Update 12

There have been some changes since I last posted. Gilly was a life-saver but Max just never clicked with him. They stood in the field as far apart as possible and had very little interaction with eachother. Gilly didn’t want to play or run around. Max continued his moping. So I started looking around for something else to move in with him. After asking around and scouring the Internet, I saw that Nora was going horse shopping so I jokingly told her to be on the lookout for a 13.2 hand pony. She replied that she had one that she needed to find a home for. I couldn’t believe it. I was looking all over the place, and Nora had one! We went up to look at him and he looked like a lot of fun. He’s 3 years old but very quiet. He’s had about 25 rides on him and has even been over some crossrails. Nice mover and a gorgeous tail! He was something that we could free lease and put some rides into and either help them sell or buy for ourselves. It was a no-lose situation.

Wall-E

While we were there we also fell in love with a kitten that was looking for a home.

Kobe "Smitten" Kitten

We said “YES!” to both the pony and the kitten.

Losing Nickleby

I never would have thought I would be writing this post so soon after TP’s, but we lost Nickleby the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday. Good name.

Nicholas Nickleby

Training Max: Update 11

When I last wrote, Max was on a 30-day layup with a fractured splint bone. Well, while I was in the hospital having surgery, the vet called my house and left a message that she had decided to re-examine the x-ray because it didn’t add up that Max was so sound. She asked the other vets in the practice to look at the x-ray too. They all decided that it wasn’t fractured after all, but was just a bad bone bruise. So she recommended I finish up the topical anti-inflammatory and then start him back to work slowly. Fantastic news, but with me not able to ride for 8 weeks and the clocks changed so that it’s dark by the time I get home, it was still going to be a while before I got on him. So the quick update is that he is trotting very soundly in the pasture. He is silly and wanting to run around so I know he’s going to be a handful when I do get back on him. Of course, I will let you know how that goes when it happens…

Training Max: Update 10

Okay, if you read my last post, you will know that Max had a cut on his leg that blew up like a balloon. The vet gave me oral anti-inflammatories and told me to hose and poultice it for 3 days. When the vet came back to check on him, he jogged sound and the swelling was gone. She told me that it was possible that the splint bone was fractured so she should really do an x-ray but she said that we could rest him for another week and see how he was.

So after a week, I got on him and he was definitely off. I hopped right down and gave him another week off. By this time, the cut was almost completely healed, but there was a hard, boney lump under it. I got on him again and he was still limping. Not 3-legged lame, but slightly off. I made an appointment with the vet to have him x-rayed.

Losing TP

So it’s been another month since I’ve written, so let me explain why…

As you know, TP is 30 years old. He has Cushings disease and he has had bouts of laminitis. When he first foundered, it took some pretty heroic efforts to get him comfortable again. But my sister, her husband, and the good vets at Ocean State Equine were able to get him turnout-sound. He had another tough spell when he pulled something in his hind end, but that too, he managed to recover from. But at the start of this fall season, his laminitis spiked up again. This time it was really bad. He was very clearly uncomfortable and acting depressed. He usually enjoyed playing bite-fight with Max but he was no longer fighting back. He would cower and squeal rather than fight back or run away. Some times he didn’t want to step over the lip of his stall door to go out. It was hurting my sister to see him like that. Then the blacksmith came out and didn’t want to trim him because he was afraid it would hurt TP too much and that TP might fall down.

TP

My sister has had TP since he was 4 years old–more than 26 years. He has been retired happily for the last 6 years with his best friend, Nicholas Nickleby, living in a gorgeous barn, grazing in two beautiful grassy pastures and doing nothing but being a horse. His entire career he had the best of care. He was a star in the show ring and he made a lot of riders very happy over the years.

TP's Amazing Jumping Style

But now it was time.

RI Finals 2010

So with MHJ Finals a decent success, I was starting to psyche myself out about RI Finals. I thought that with Icy, I had a good chance of being in the ribbons. That thought alone was enough to put this huge pressure on myself and start making me get nervous. Then I had a less-than-stellar lesson on Icy the day before the show. It wasn’t bad, but not lights out either.

The day of the show I was very nervous and couldn’t eat. I went in the Classic, which is basically a warm-up class, and had a pretty poor round. I was not riding confidently and I was too slow. There was a halt and then an oxer and I was late getting Icy to halt and then didn’t have enough pace to the oxer, so I chipped it. On two of the lines, I went too fast and then the jump coming out of the line was snug. I got a score of 69—UGGHHH! Not even close to being in the ribbons. I was very upset with myself. Once again, my friend had a fabulous round and won the class. Believe me, I was very happy for her but also felt some pangs of jealousy. Why can’t I ride without getting so nervous??? Why is it easy for other people? I ride so well at lessons and then choke at shows!

MHJ Finals 2010

August is when we start stepping things up at Sandy Point Stables to get ready for MHJ Finals and RI Finals. Last year I was lucky enough to show one of Jay’s sale horses (Rio), but this year I really didn’t know what I was going to ride. I had mostly been lessoning on Gary, the wonderful school horse that has taught me (and many others) how to ride better. But I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of showing Gary at the Finals. I knew that I could probably have a nice smooth round and he would cover up my distance mistakes amazingly, but I was worried that I would not get the strides. He is older and he just isn’t happy galloping his face off, and neither am I. I get scared when you have to gallop that much to make the strides and then jump big out of the line. I started looking around for something to lease but then Jay said that she had seen a horse while she was judging that she was trying to buy in time for the finals. If she got him, she’d let me show him. I crossed my fingers.