NATRC vs AERC LDs : some conclusions

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

I came to NATRC as an AERC LD rider.  I know the AERC rules – there aren’t very many and they’re pretty common-sense, straightforward types.  I knew NATRC had more.  I still find myself kind of fuzzy on a lot of them.  Some of the most major differences I noted:

NATRC: no help allowed.  Rider is the only one doing stuff with the horse from the time you’re vetted in to the time you vet out (or maybe a bit before/after, I was a little confused on exactly how this was supposed to work – but not having crew, wasn’t worried about it).
AERC: help allowed and even encouraged!  Others can hold your horse, groom, tack up, whatever.

NATRC: forwards motion must be on horseback.  No walking with the horse, not even a half-mile down the trail to find a better log to use to get on.  Walking back down the trail the opposite direction is fine, though, you just can’t proceed forwards.  Also applies to P&Rs/vet checks, where you have to ride in.
AERC: forwards motion is forwards motion, on or off the horse.  Totally okay to walk/run with your horse, tail up, jog down, whatever.  Often used to try to make it easier on the horse, sometimes used to make it easier on the rider, sometimes just a nice option to have.
I understand why NATRC has the rule, but this is still the one most frustrating to me coming from endurance.  I like being able to get off and walk from time to time.. down big hills, into checks, when I’m not sure I have her brain, etc.  It’s a little intimidating to know I don’t have that choice.

NATRC: minimum AND maximum time (roughly 30 minute window to aim for). Goal is pacing your horse slowly, not racing in.
AERC: minimum time.  To finish is to win, but indeed you could race if so desired.

NATRC: scored for horse & horsemanship & camp set-up – and frankly I’m not even sure what else, but I know there was more.
AERC: no points, just pass/fail criteria at the vet checks based on how your horse is doing.  Either you’re doing well enough to continue, or you’re not.

NATRC P&R stop: stand still for 10 minutes at the check, then have pulse & respiration taken. 16 (64) pulse OK, 17 (68) and you need to wait 10min and try again.  There are also points having to do with whether your P&R stays the same/better/worse all day, so folks may ask for a recheck if you think it should have been different.
AERC vet check: pulse taken as soon as you’re ready when you come into the check. Vet check follows and looks at the whole horse.  At least in my experience out here, 60 is fine, anything higher is not. Recheck whenever you’re ready.

That covers the basic differences that really stood out to me, but it didn’t exactly end there, either.
[Side note: a lot of folks that commented on Funder’s post seemed anti-NATRC.  I’d love to know why and what everyone else has seen!]

NATRC has three divisions.  For this particular ride, Novice and Competitive Pleasure were essentially the same from what I could see, same ~22(?) mile trail with a speed of 3.5-4mph.  Open – what I rode in – had ~26 miles of trail and a speed of 4-4.5mph.

I know there were people in the N/CP division who stayed at a walk the entire time.  They may all have been on gaited horses, but that just struck me as appallingly boring.  People didn’t want to ride Open for various reasons – too fast, too hard, horse not conditioned enough, etc.

Open riders were praised effusively at awards for doing such a long distance and such a fast speed.  Mount Diablo is supposed to be a particularly difficult ride to make time on.  People chose not to ride Open because they felt their horse wasn’t well-conditioned enough.  For Confetti and I, Open was not a challenge.  I feel like we could have done it at a 5mph pace – or at least gotten close to it! – without even getting close to running out of horse.  It never felt like she was really working, though. She was more willing to walk towards the end, but she never got tired or thought about quitting. I held her back almost the entire ride.

I rode the horse I had at the ride. I sat the trot up and down the hills to discourage adding speed. I hauled myself and camelbak up onto the horse – not much grace, but she tolerated it and we generally find bigger hills or stumps at home. I ground-mounted during the ride where needed.  We worked through some herdboundness and never totally lost her mind.  As a training exercise, it worked pretty well for us.

If I had really been training for those obstacles* and all the judging and stuff, I’d be disappointed at not getting anything. AERC has made me a convert, though – I finished the ride with a happy, sound, energetic horse who would have done another loop if I asked.

We had four obstacles, if memory serves – I haven’t gotten my scorecard back yet since I opted not to stay later in the evening.
– judged mount first thing in the morning
– navigate off-trail briefly following the ribbons
– sidepass to a tree, pin ribbon, sidepass away
– big trot/canter on a loose rein, halt, back up, trot off

Would I do it again?
Short answer: maybe.

At this point, I have no desire to ride a NATRC ride just to ride a NATRC ride.  Confetti and I find joy in doing a brisk trot down the trail, flying up hills, jogging together down particularly steep sections.  I’m not interested in chasing points and doing things a particular way just because some idealized rule says they should work that way.
 
I don’t regret going, not at all.  It was a great training ride for us.  Everyone was friendly and helpful (even though I was the last one into camp and I think the first to leave!), willing to share advice, answer questions, etc.

I think NATRC Open rides would be a great sort of intro-ride for folks looking to get into LDs but who aren’t sure about the speed & distance combined.  If you can get through 27 miles at a tiny trot/mostly walking 4mph?  5mph may not seem so bad.  I’ve mentioned to several friends that I would happily go with them to this ride next year.

If or when Confetti deigns LDs to be too much/too difficult, I will probably consider taking her to NATRC rides as ‘retirement’ from AERC.  Slower rides, shorter distance, keeps us with a goal to work towards. 

I can appreciate where NATRC is coming from with their bunches of rules and scoring even as it’s not something I aspire to currently.  No hate for NATRC from me, it’s just not my thing!

Mount Diablo: Open NATRC ride

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

At the end of March, I was lamenting the shortage of local AERC rides prior to Fireworks in July.  I was happy with ‘Fetti’s fitness level and wished I could push her a bit/retrain in a competitive environment prior to Fireworks.  One friend reminded me about the NATRC ride at Mount Diablo; I looked at the dates, sighed, and ruled it out as an option, since it was right after my vacation.  Then it turned out that I might get that Friday off.. and Funder offered to drive the pony.. and even when I didn’t get the full Friday off, my coworker was kind enough to cover the afternoon for me.  Mount Diablo NATRC ride was on.

I made it to the barn by 3 on Friday.  We loaded ‘Fetti in Adventure the Trailer and headed out by 3:30. (Loose in the trailer, with the haybag in the back corner figuring she’d want to ride backwards.  Instead, I spent most of the drive watching her forelock fly out of the front corner of the trailer.. maybe two bites of hay were nibbled.) Ride meeting at 7pm, vetting in til dusk.. plenty of time!  On a Friday afternoon, how bad can it be?  Answer: bad.  What should have been an hour and a half drive took three hours.  And then we had to figure out where the heck to park, since everyone else was up at dinner!  Property up there is expensive, you guys.  Expensive houses, expensive properties, pretty mind-boggling.

Post-ride. Very similar to pre-ride. Note the only partly-eaten grain.. sigh.

With horse on Hi-Tie (woo, fancy!), water bucket filled, and hay bag tied, I headed up the stairs to find registration, picked up a packet with only brief verbal instructions to go with it, and headed back down to retrieve horse and find the vets for a veryquick vetting in not 20 minutes after pulling her off the trailer.  No boots, no grooming, just dragged Fetti dooown through the arenas and up the steep hill-path to (eventually) find the vets.  Verdict: something not-quite-right about maybe the right hind? But given I’d just taken her off the trailer, they didn’t seem too concerned, and told me to bring her by them tomorrow morning with her boots on for a re-check*.  Argh.


She never quite settled in.


Ride meeting ended up starting close to 7:30.  I should have taken that as a sign.  I had to jog down midway through the trail explanation to be weighed in (things I never even thought about!), jogged back up for the rest of the meeting, and stuck around for the new rider’s meeting that went until 9:30 or so.  Tired and slightly migrained still, I braided her mane by headlamp, tried to convince Fetti to eat something, added a haybag, and rearranged for the morning.  Right about the point I went to bed I discovered that we were parked right by one of the arena lights… that stayed on the entire night.  It turned off around 6 the next morning.

For once, Fetti didn’t eat an awful lot overnight.  She got tacked up with boots on anyway; if she didn’t eat well on the trail, we’d pull, but she was still happy to eat mouthfuls of hay when they were given directly to her.  We trotted out for the vets (sound!) and carried on to obstacle #1: the judged mount.  I made it on the horse with a distinct lack of grace and instructed her to channel her inner Western Pleasure pony for the day, please.

After trotting sound in the morning and managing to get on the horse, I decided it was okay to take pictures.

A half-hour later or so, we were off.  We managed somehow to fall in with some very experienced NATRC riders and tagged along with them for pretty much the entire ride.  The pacing has apparently been very tight in previous years and they were expecting similar this year; Confetti and I found the ride to be a bit on the slow side.  We made it into a Real Trot only three or four times during the ride.  Instead, we spent probably 75% of the ride at a tiny 4mph western jog, 15% at a walk (mostly for 10 steps at a time), and 10% at a medium trot.  In hindsight, I might have been better off splitting off and doing a Real Trot for more of the ride and convincing her to walk/halt substantially more often..

Somewhere within the first few miles.  Gorgeous!

There were a few goals that I had for this ride.  I wanted her to rate and not pull on me the entire time.  I wanted her to be willing to walk.  Slightly less high on the priority list was to end the ride with plenty of horse and have her pulse down well.  These actually went fairly well – while she flat-out refused to walk more than ten steps at a time for most of the ride, she wasn’t hauling on me and insisting on lots of forwards.  It was a very polite little western jog to keep up with the gelding ahead of us.  As far as walking went – I did start insisting on 15-20 steps of walk towards the last 10 miles of the ride, and that went better.  Fetti was still pissed at me when I’d half-halt her out of her nearly-trotting more than two or three times, but we could get a bigger distance without fearing for my life.  I never felt like she was out of control at all (well, maybe once in the first half-mile when someone passed us and she wasn’t happy!) and I was able to do a lot of the ride with one hand on the reins and one holding my phone to get photos.

Before lunch somewhere.

Pulsing down is a little different than AERC rides.  NATRC has you come into a P&R stop, stand and wait for ten minutes, and then have both pulse and respiration taken.  You must ride into these stops, not walk the horse in.  Fetti pretty consistently took 3-5 minutes to drop to 60, and at the last P&R stop, took closer to 8.  My heart monitor was often 10 beats above whatever the folks checking her were getting.  Baffling.  She was doing well enough to continue, and I knew how well she was doing.  I didn’t fuss about trying to get accurate numbers on the scorecard.  We jogged into just about every check since the pony refused to walk.. so.  Can’t complain.

Before lunch somewhere still!

Mount Diablo is a beautiful ride with varied scenery and a lot of hills.  For all that it’s supposed to be difficult, I felt like we could have [if allowed] made better time on most of the flats and uphills without much of a problem.  Our slow western jog and occasional medium trotting brought us in right on time to just about every check.  We were smack in the middle of optimum time at the finish.

I rode with all four Renegades on, and they stayed on with no problems until the last few miles, where I suspect we pulled the hind boot, I didn’t realize, and then when we pulled the front I caught on and fixed both.  We were less than two miles from the finish, so ‘fixing’ involved ‘unvelcro, strap back on, it’ll be fine’.  It was.

Even prior to the final vet check I knew Confetti was slightly back-sore.  It’s never been a real problem before.  My gut feeling is that it came from trotting down every. single. hill. We don’t do that at home, I was bracing/leaning back to keep her slow, and the weight would have been towards the back of the saddle.  I’m not thrilled but I’m also not overly concerned about it as long as it doesn’t show up again.  Our final trot-out had more impulsion than the day prior.  Good mare.

After the ride, as she finally deigned to eat when I was looking at her.

It’s likely we placed last in our division.  I finished with a happy, forwards horse who could have done more.  That’s plenty good enough for me.

Our little corner of ridecamp.

We were done with the ride right about 3, done vetting by 4:30.  Dinner was at 6 and awards at 7.  I figured we’d be out of there by 8 at the absolute latest.  Right?  Wrong.  This particular ride has an incredible assortment of 30-something raffle items (aka baskets of stuff), and tickets are drawn right before awards.  That probably took 45 minutes.  With three divisions of awards and up to six placings apiece, awards took a while too.. when things finished up at 9, Funder and I rapidly made our way down the stairs, hooked up the trailer, loaded the horse, and headed home at 9:30.

Have I mentioned before that Funder’s pretty awesome?  We made it to my barn at 11pm.  She couldn’t have been home before midnight, and she wasn’t even riding.  Much love!

*The potential for lameness had me even more worried than usual.  Normally I know she’s sound and am mystified when told there might be something.  The previous two trail rides I’d done, however, both involved about four steps of something baffling in her trot at one spot on the trail, but only there and nothing before/after.  I had visions of vet bills in my head and was nearly ready to beat myself up for not noticing more.  Then I ran out of time to worry and had to zip to the ride meeting.. so I told myself if she was fine the next morning we’d go, but if it was at all questionable or I felt anything during the ride, we’d pull.

Next post: key differences between AERC and NATRC, things I wish I knew, would I do it again?

More photos under the cut.
Lots of green rolling hills. 

A lot of the trail felt like this – dirt trail in the middle of green fields on either side.  Very different from our normal.

More hills in the distance.

There wasn’t an awful lot of flat trail, but it never felt exorbitantly hilly, either. Steeper than Harvey Bear, I think, but less so than home.
Even at an obnoxious western jog, we managed to keep a horse length between us most of the time.

A rancher lets the ride use one of his fields for the lunch break.  This is the view from one side.  Gorgeous.  Pony dutifully did not get her nose into the barbed wire.

Wide trail, lot of green grass and flowers.

The Morgan Fire last year burned a fair bit of the park.
None of my photos really capture the incredibly gorgeous-yet-eerie feeling of riding through the burned sections.  It felt sort of like riding through a moonscape.  Very pretty, yet so terribly wrong at the same time.  The flowers are just starting to come back in.

Sections of green.  Still seeing for miles.

Maybe eight miles to go from here? Maybe not that much.
My riding partners for the afternoon.

This gives a bit of a sense of the hills and trails.  We’re headed to the trail visible through the trees.

Okay, some sections were kind of hilly. Especially when doing a sitting trot for the entire hill.

Closer to reality.  Very eerie.
There wasn’t an awful lot of shade on the ride, much to my dismay and eventual sunburn.

So very, very green!

Somewhere soon before or after Mercury Pond.

Just about done

Coming in to the finish.

Post-ride.

Another view of ridecamp – more rigs in the arena that you can’t see, even more in a higher up arena. 36 riders total, I think.

April recap, May goals

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

April recap:
– Ride more.  Ask harder questions.  Due to car troubles at the beginning of the month and an out-of-state vacation at the end of the month.. total fail.
– Focus on increasing distance rather than increasing speed.  Two 8-10 mile rides, one 13 mile ride.  Nothing very extraordinary to see here.
– Work on within-gait changes of speed.  Hm.  Worked on it a bit.  Needs more focus and more work.
– Weather and time permitting, at least one 15+ mile day, whether all at once or split between two rides.  As long as we’re trotting a good chunk of it, speed is not important.  Check!  One 19-mile day, one 10-mile day.

Total April mileage: 82.52 with me.  Two trainer rides while I was gone, one dressage ride while I was gone.

May goals:
– complete NATRC ride at Mount Diablo tomorrow(!) with minimal drama or panic and plenty of horse left (bonus points if I have energy left at the end and she’s rateable the whole way).
– Again, at least one (other) 15+ mile day, split or not.
– Start adding canter work to build stamina/fix my position, but only on the way out or round pen/arena work.

Eighteen

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

Happy birthday to the best (and only) pony I’ve ever had.  Eighteen today.  Photogenic as ever, and one of the best things to ever happen to me.  ♥

History: How I got a pony

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

I always knew I wanted a horse.  However, I was a practical child.  Horses were not in the budget.  Horses were not going to be in the budget.  Why ask for a horse when I know it can’t be done?

My parents agreed I could take lessons if I found a barn.  In sixth grade, I was in class with a girl talking all about horses.  Her mom was an instructor.  I started weekly lessons at a hunter/jumper barn that year.  I worked at the summer camps there nearly every summer after seventh grade – all the way through college.  For much of high school and college I was giving lessons at the camp, teaching kids basic riding skills.  Often in the summer I’d ride a lesson horse or two for their daily exercise when it came up as an opportunity.

I was never a particularly spectacular rider.  Things got done, but not always in a textbook-pretty way.  Working the camps, though, let me learn a lot of the basic horse-care stuff you just don’t get from hunter lessons – I know how to braid even if I’m awful at it.  I can put polo wraps and stable bandages on.  I know how to pull a mane.  I can longe a horse (and a rider!) and still watch what they’re doing.  Frankly, I don’t even know what I learned, so much of it is intuitive now!  I learned to ride lots of different horses and be generally competent over a 2’3″ course.

When I went to college, I quit riding except for breaks when I went home.  I couldn’t afford the weekly lessons that would be needed to ride on a team, so riding had to be set aside.  After two years of that I was so very done with not-riding.  Goals for the year included buying a car, moving off-campus, and finding a horse to lease.

Buy a car?  Check.  Move off-campus?  Found a place starting September.  Find a horse?  Okay.. hm.

In May, there was a pretty little Haflinger for sale or lease.  I can’t lease til September, she’ll be gone by then for sure.  I tried a lesson at a local Arabian barn and found the driveway traumatic enough to not want to go back.  (In hindsight: not all that bad, but pretty stressful at the time.)
In June, the Haflinger was still listed.  I emailed about an older horse, but concluded he wasn’t enough horse for what I wanted – owner was hoping for someone just to casually walk around bareback on some trails and hang out with the horse.  Nice lady, but the situation was not a good fit.
In July, I sighed and kept looking.  The Haflinger was still listed, but I’m not sure I noticed.
In August, I was starting to despair a bit.  The Haflinger was still listed for sale or lease, with a note to please try her soon if you’re thinking about it, else she’ll go back home midway through the month.  Well then.  I sent off an email or two, one of which got lost in cyberspace, and I had about despaired of things working out when we finally connected over the phone.  Still interested?  Yes!  When do you want to come out?  Well, I can be there in two hours..  Great.  I called up my boyfriend and informed him that actually, we are going to go see a horse, and we’re going immediately.  Oookay, Fig.

We got slightly lost on the way to the barn, showed up late on a summer evening, and I think the mare had already been turned out and moved around some.. so I got on and hacked around the arena a bit.  Her sensitivity was a huge change from duller school horses, and her trot was small but fast, my first taste of pony-type gaits.  I couldn’t get her to canter one way, but could the other, and really wasn’t too concerned about it.  I was sold at this point; nonetheless, we agreed I’d come back a few days later for a second trial ride with her regular rider getting on first.  It was getting dark, too.

In hindsight, I think folks usually have someone else ride a prospective horse first.  I just hopped right on without thinking about it.  It had already been disclosed that she was too much horse for the owner to want to ride much, and I was naive and trusting enough not to worry.  It was absolutely and completely fine.. but I’m still not sure I’d recommend it to anyone else.  Never mind the fact that when I got off, it was good and dark.. trotting a new horse around an unfamiliar arena at dusk, why not?!

We went back that weekend.  Someone had tried her Friday and couldn’t get her to move forwards. I rode again and was again quite convinced I liked her, and apparently she liked me.  It was a bit sooner than I’d planned on, but.. when someone offers you a pony to lease for a reasonable price.. I could make it work.  I don’t think I stopped smiling for a week.

And so, midway through August, I had myself a lease-horse, envisioned as a bit of a project that I could put some more consistent rides on for a while and make her more marketable for an eventual buyer.

First week or so.  Note the rubbed-out chunk of mane 🙁

You all know how that turned out…

I was Confetti’s primary rider for the next two years.  Occasionally her owner would hop on for a bit, or someone else, but not very often.  We worked on cantering and building up both sides evenly.  We worked on trotting politely.  She spooked at the water pump coming on a month or two in to the lease, turned sharply, dumped me, and bolted.  Bit of blood, but nothing major.  I got back on and avoided that side of the arena after that.  We did some trail rides.  I learned to ride her bareback.  She was still, technically, for sale, but not being heavily marketed and not getting many bites (a therapy program, once or twice.  That was not going to happen).

Somewhere in there my mindset went from ‘keep your emotional distance, you can’t have her’ to ‘dang I love this horse’.  And in that second year, I did the math and concluded that if I got a reasonable job, I could indeed make it work month to month.  Her owner offered to give her to me once I graduated (we were riding together, became great friends, and she knew I couldn’t afford to have a horse until I got a job). Two months after graduation, I officially started paying all the bills and had my very own pony.

No regrets.  Life is good!

This and that

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

Motivation can be hard to find some days.  I’m learning that’s okay.

My lovely little car decided to throw a Really Expensive Problem at me early last week, which just so happened to mean that I spent nearly an entire week stressing about said car, while simultaneously borrowing other people’s cars.  I have some lovely friends who are willing to let me do that, but it’s just not quite the same!

It rained on Tuesday.  I dropped off the car for repairs.  I looked at the traffic, and I got an offer to have someone else clean and feed.  I took her up on it.

On Thursday, I turned Confetti and her sister out in the arena.  They ran and ran and ran, and trotted, and ran and ran, and trotted, and cantered through the pond, and then they started hanging out in the pond.  There’s a line to how much I’ll do to make the ponies work.  Walking into the puddle crosses that line.  Out of the arena we went, and into the round pen!  The girls trotted and cantered and trotted and trotted and cantered a little and Fetti said ‘Mom, I’m DONE’.  Her sister, however, was not.  My lovely brilliant mare came and pivoted in the middle with me as her sister kept going around with just a bit of encouragement.  Finally her sister was sufficiently settled and I hopped on Fetti bareback to meander around awhile and mentally destress.

Lots of zooming.

When I came back out to the barn later to do the same sort of meandering, it was actually necessary to put her back in the round pen and create a little more work before she was all the way settled.  Pony was feeling great.  Rider’s mental state was insufficient for riding the extra energy until pony was feeling slightly less great.

Saturday plans involved a trail ride, but it turned into a lazy Saturday for me and we went out late in the evening for a mile or so, after roundpenning her with her sister again.

Naturally, on Sunday we took a friend out to Pogonip for their first out-of-Cowell trail experience.  The river is about four inches deeper than usual; water ended up in my shoes both directions. Luckily, her horse is taller, and she didn’t have that problem!  It was really a fairly uneventful ride, lots of hollering to warn bikes that we were there, aiming for lots of positive-bike experiences.  I am very, very blessed to have a horse who doesn’t particularly care about bikes, even when the bikes come screeching to a halt five feet ahead of us!

Three miles on Tuesday and again on Thursday.  Tuesday we focused on maintaining a consistent speed.  Mission accomplished!  Thursday we threw a few canters in the mix and it was lovely, then rated nicely headed home.  Good mare.

Feisty mare.. but good mare!

March recap and April goals

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

There have been some really good rides lately.  I’ve started at least four separate posts, gone for late rides, come home late and then I’m too tired to blog them out.  On the whole, she’s been pretty awesome.

This past weekend was a local ACTHA event.  I try not to fry ‘Fetti’s brain by asking her to do all the obstacles, but I thought volunteer-riding it would be an excellent experience for her.  Rating speed, bunch of horses, home terrain.  It doesn’t sound so bad!

We headed out in the rain Saturday morning early for a pre-ride.  Five miles of brisk trot to meet up with folks.  She was clearly a bit amped, but I figured we’d be going slow enough she’d be fine.  Instead, she was borderline explosive, needing to keep alternating walk/tinyjog to keep up with the gaited horses in front of us, then stand awhile while the humans chatted.  She threw a few bucks.  I had chosen to ride in my synthetic Thorowgood in the interest of not soaking my good saddle; I decided, after several bucks, that I would be just fine hiking with her for a while.  Even walking, she was pretty amped still.  We made it through the six mile ride relatively incident-free.  She was still lacking in brainpower.  Then we headed home alone.  I knew she needed a good run.  I knew she couldn’t have that run in the round pen (tried that, too muddy) or the round pen or arena at home (same problem).  So.. off we went to the fire road.

In hindsight, I regret not turning on tracking for this ride.  I grabbed the front of my dressage saddle and let her really go up the fire road – full-blown gallop.  We walked for thirty seconds or so while she caught her breath, maybe not that long.  Off again.  Stopped for a few pats by passing hikers.  Off again – still at a full gallop.  Walked past a bike and flew up the last section of the hill.  Lessons learned: I can stick bucks and gallop in the dressage saddle.  We weren’t done, though, much to my dismay.  Headed through the sand wash at the top, a slight downhill.. I let her trot rather than risk another hissy fit.  Trot turned to canter, canter turned to gallop, gallop got mixed with bucks.  Both stirrups gone, wet reins, visions of flying over her head.. in the wet sand.. by myself.  One-rein stop is the usual option – but I didn’t think I could stick the turning.  I hollered at her, hauled back on the reins, stopped her and immediately bailed to walk the next four miles.  I love my horse but man, that sucked.  I did get back on to walk sedately the last mile home.  It was cold, rainy, and very wet, and I was tired of walking.

Sunday, we were given a trailer ride over.  ‘Fetti called a bit when we arrived, but was otherwise well-behaved.  I tacked up, eventually hopped on, and we had an excellent, sedate six-mile walk on a loose rein.  Inner calm and channeling our Western Pleasure dreams made for a wonderful ride.  The trails were pretty slick, so when we rode home, I stuck to our sedate walk.  I stayed on all ten miles and we slid down a bunch of steep hills.  The pony was excellent.  She earned her carrots!  (Come to think of it..  I actually forgot to give her the carrots and they are still in the tack room.  Oops!)

Key lessons:
– Pony cannot go from ‘brisk endurance mode’ to ‘sedate, lazy trail horse’ very easily.
– Turnout.  Turnout.  Turnout.
– Four days of minimal work leaves me with a firecracker horse.  Can I learn this lesson yet?

So, March.
Total tracked mileage on Fetti: 65.79.  Add 22 more for the weekend (or so), but mostly not Real Work.  Wet, slow month for us.
Goals were –
Weather permitting, one 8+ mile ride weekly, aiming for 12-15 twice in March if possible. Hm.  I think we had two days with total (ridden) mileage over 10, but only just. (Not counted: the past weekend’s two days with mileage over 10 both days, but one day of solid walking and one day with over half of it hiking.)  Various factors contributed; weather was a big one.  We’ll try this again in April.
– continue experimenting with Myler combination bit.  Success!  I’m fairly happy with it.  I do need to be mindful to use both bits and not hold her too much with the stronger one, else it will lose its effectiveness as well.
– focus on riding balanced even when fighting her for forwards.  I don’t think I fought for much forwards this month.  I will give myself points for balanced riding and being more conscious of my bareback seat (not slouching to absorb the motion).
– work on Confetti’s confidence when taking 9 out for a solo ride.  I don’t think this happened, mainly because I lacked motivation to work her on 9 in the mud.

April goals:
– Ride more.  Ask harder questions.
– Focus on increasing distance rather than increasing speed.
– Work on within-gait changes of speed
– Weather and time permitting, at least one 15+ mile day, whether all at once or split between two rides.  As long as we’re trotting a good chunk of it, speed is not important.

I have photos and videos, but I am so very fried by non-horse life the past few days that it will have to wait til later this week!

Brilliant pony days

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

A brief Specialized update:  I have not yet worked on my pads, but I have concluded that the dealer I’ve talked to seems more focused on sales than on what’s best for the horse.  The only thing I really liked about the saddle she fitted to the other horse was the shoulder clearance (and I do intend to fiddle with mine as a result).  The withers and spine hitting.. well, I’m not so thrilled about that, and frankly can’t see how that saddle ever fit the horse with her setup.  Very unimpressed.  Luckily, other boarder is looking at other brands of saddles for unrelated reasons, so I don’t have to explain why several of us find the whole situation utterly appalling.

It’s been the strangest winter out here.  The dam goes up, the dam goes down.  Dam goes up, dam goes down.  Normal winters involve the dam going up and staying up for several months, then down again for the rest of the year.  Most likely the lack of rainfall is the cause – can’t let the fish die, I suppose!

So.  Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday?  We trotted circles in the back woods.  I couldn’t motivate myself to take her out on the highway by myself, so we settled for boring work instead.  Average speed was 6+mph.  Good enough!

This past weekend was sunny, warm, gorgeous, and the dam went back down.  I practically skipped out to the barn, tacked up, headed out solo for a longer-but-moderately-brisk ride. Really lovely and moderately forwards for the first five miles.  Next thing I know, she quits on me.  Yes, I pushed for a bit more forwards-uphill than usual, but it was an ‘ask’ and not a ‘demand’.  Pony didn’t want to go forwards, even walking.  She’d give me a few steps and then stop again.  I got off, thinking that might help; she was still reluctant to go forwards.  Cue thoughts that I broke my horse.  Breathing hard, trembling legs, we’re still halfway up this particular hill and there are several more yet to come.

We switched gears three hills later.  Break at the top of the Very Big Hill, so we both had at least five minutes of standing around and recuperating.  Her breathing was back to normal, legs were fine, nibbling at the moss on the trees.  I got back on.  The new mindset: pony gets to pick the pace as long as she’s moving comfortably.  She didn’t really feel like trotting or cantering our usual gallop-hills, so we moseyed on up at a walk, then down the next slope, around the next corner – and look, another rider from the barn!  Never going to get a better time to ride sloooowly with her than when the pony isn’t interested in moving out.  By now my working theory was that she probably needed to pee.  Moving well enough, just incredibly lazy and unmotivated about it.

So.  Joined up with L & her gelding.  Walked awhile, itty-bitty-tiny sitting trot a few times while he gaited along, and thus we went the last three miles home.

I got off and walked her to her stall with tack on, into the stall.  Lo and behold, she peed immediately.  Oh, pony.  I don’t know how to get her over that, but clearly it’s needed.  Barn chores were up next, and then I got back on bareback in hopes of ending on a better note.

We actually ended up going on another trail ride with C.  Two Haflingers, both of us bareback, late afternoon ride as the sun was setting.  This was a really big deal.  I regularly take the other Haffies out bareback walk/trot/canter on trails, but when I’ve tried it on Fetti, she’s been too unpredictable for it to be any fun.  Flounce into the trot, slam into the walk, repeat.  Saturday?  Lovely transitions both directions.  4mph average, 2.4 miles, mostly medium-trot with some walk and photos for good measure.  There was no grabbing mane for dear life, no worries that a spook would unseat me, just a lovely lovely lovely ride.  (Though it would still be dumb to take her out bareback on her excessively forwards days, at least I have more options for our leisurely evening rides now!)

Short trail ride on Confetti on Sunday, some major mane-work with the Haffies, and then seven miles bareback on another Haflinger at a brisk pony-sized trot much of the way.  It’s an incredible feeling to ride the whole thing on a loose rein, relaxed, casually going down the trail with just a bareback pad while sitting a bouncy little pony trot.  Lots of smiles.  Lots of happiness.

Life is good.

Specialized, take two

Topaz Dreams Posted on by

So after writing all that about my saddle fit? I ended up helping another boarder look at her (new, demo) Specialized that had been fitted this past weekend by a dealer.  I learned a few things from this.

1. I’m no longer convinced my shoulder clearance is adequate, and I’d like to work on that.
2. I have not a clue how I’m going to work on that.
3. It’s unclear to me whether the saddle should sit 1-2″ behind the scapula.. or 1-2″ over the scapula.
4. The shims the dealer had placed were at the bottom of the tree, not the top as I’d always mentally pictured them being.  I assume they were to fill gaps & make the (wide) tree narrower for the (narrowish) horse.
5. Back to #3 – rep had the saddle fitted so that it worked well when over the scapula and avoiding the dip this horse has behind the withers.  Not being accustomed to said dip, I slid the saddle as far back as it seemed to want to go – perhaps too far back for this horse?  There are a lot of steep hills that I ride fairly regularly, and I have concerns that a saddle fitted for a static back on a flat surface might be more inclined to shift back to where it ‘wants’ to be on a hill.  It did not occur to me to ask that when I was on the phone with the fitter trying to help troubleshoot, but I will bring it up if it gets mentioned again (especially as the other boarder wants to do casual trails).
6. Wide tree + narrowish horse.. had thin Specialized pad and 3/4″ fitting pads.  I feel like my 1″ Woolback + 1″ pads must somehow be wrong – but it’s actually working reasonably well.  It just feels like maybe I could do better for her.
7. Good thing about Specialized: very adjustable.  Bad thing:  very adjustable.  Very easy to drive oneself crazy.

Specialized Saddle fitting comments

Topaz Dreams Posted on by
So.  Hannah asked for a brief bunch of notes on the Specialized saddles and fitting them, and instead I took a zillion photos of how I know mine’s in roughly the right place and how to check the fit, so this is long and photo-heavy under the cut with a lot of commentary on Specialized saddles!

One of the biggest challenges I’ve had with this horse and saddles is that everything seems to run into her shoulders.  When saddles are tight through her shoulders, it’s harder for her to go down hills with any kind of grace.  Confetti doesn’t have much in the way of withers, just lots of shoulder.  I absolutely have to use a crupper on our regular trails and I’m not convinced there’s a saddle in the world that will change that, and the crupper is tighter than what most people recommend as a result.. but that’s a whole different post.

So.  Here’s what we’re working from:
With her head down, it’s a little easier to see where the braids fall in relation to her shoulder.
Standing, today, left side. Same braids, so same point of reference.

Right side with her half-mane, which is entirely unhelpful for finding her shoulder.  

Right now, I have the Eurolight set up with 1″ thick fitting pads and no shims whatsoever.  I make no claim to this working for any other horse, but despite all I’ve read about shims nearly always being necessary, Fetti doesn’t seem to need them.

Pommel has the pink bags against my jeans; cantle on the ground.  

Always worth looking at the saddle on the horse without a pad.  Left side above, right side below.  I check whether I can slide my fingers under the front of the saddle at her shoulder.  Left: yes, kinda.  Right:  barely.  I know there’s an asymmetry and her shoulders aren’t even, so I ignore the fact that she’s not standing square.  Depending on your horse, the asymmetry may warrant a shim in the front.
Also: placement of my saddle can be determined by looking at saddle in relation to braids on the left, if that’s a point of confusion!  I slide it back, and frequently then slide it back a second time to where it stops comfortably.

Added pad (in my case, Woolback) and put the saddle back on, but not yet girthed up at all.  This is actually the farthest forward that I’m comfortable having the saddle, and I ended up shifting it back another inch or two after taking most of the photos.

Checked the fit again.  I can comfortably get my hand in under the pad on the left shoulder, snug on the right.  For her, that’s ‘acceptable’.  I think ‘snug’ is recommended.
At one point, we tried adding a shim on her left shoulder.  Unfortunately, the difference is small enough that the shims made it too tight on the left, even with the thinnest wedge shim.  I’d rather not go down that road with her, so out it (eventually) went.

Again, that’s all un-girthed.  Girthed it up and checked again – snug on left (pictured), very snug on right to the point where I could barely get fingers under.  If I had shims on the right, I’d take them out and probably be happier without them.  I have no shims, so I live with it.

Pre-ride saddle photos:

This inch and a half of forwards motion displays the need for a crupper.  This is after some downhill steps and the crupper is as tight as it will go.

Post-ride photos:

And sweat patterns.  No dry spots, no swirled hairs.

Other things to check for that aren’t pictured:  does it bridge badly in the middle?  Does it still do so with pad?  Even pressure front-to-back is recommended; we’re running with a setup that seems to bridge slightly, but I figure she can lift her back, it’s not an awful lot of bridging, and the sweat patterns are even.

Previously, I tried 1/2″ fitting pads with a dressage pad underneath.  It seemed to fit relatively well – except for the part where it tipped ME forwards and left the hairs at her shoulder looking curved/wavy when I took the saddle off afterwards.  Saddle tipping forwards?  Too wide, even when I tried it with the Woolback instead of thin dressage pad.  Yes, her shoulders are wide – but make the saddle too wide, it’ll put too much pressure on them.  It’s also possible to widen the tree by moving the front of the fitting pads down – tried that too, but again, we (currently) went for narrow rather than wide.  It feels really counterintuitive to make the saddle narrower because it’s pinching at the shoulders.. but it worked.

I reached out to a semi-local Specialized rep when I was first purchasing the saddle.  She was nice enough, but it seems that as soon as I was definitively not buying a saddle through her (I got one used already, I just want help fitting it!) interest waned.  Plus I would have been paying $200+ to get her out to the barn since I’m at least an hour or two away, and that’s assuming the fitting didn’t take too long…  yeah, no thanks.

Instead, I did a lot of the initial fiddling with it myself.  I screwed things up, checked sweat patterns, got frustrated, tried again, checked sweat patterns, swore at it, and settled for ‘good enough’ for our October ride last year.  Luckily for me, another gal at the barn ended up buying her horse a Specialized saddle straight from the company, and has gotten quite good about figuring out what might work.  Which is not to say she gets it right on the first try either!  We went to 1/2″ shims and dressage pad, then reworked it a while later when I still wasn’t 100% happy with the balance.  It can be an incredibly frustrating process, likely more so if your horse does more than just fuss politely about trotting down hills.

Sometimes I tried putting the shims in upside-down, too.  I know you’re not ‘supposed’ to.  But if it gets results – why not?

I mentioned that I have the crupper fairly tight.  I use that to double-check my saddle fit:  I know approximately how tight the crupper should be at the beginning of the ride, so if it’s too tight, the saddle is too far forwards.  I would imagine something similar could be done with breastplates.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I will happily answer what questions I can, or at the very least sympathize with anyone beating their head against fitting one of these.  Thoughts? Questions?  Fire away.