I am soooo far behind on riding posts. I'm going to consolidate all my media into a photo dump with blurbs in between. This seems to be my favorite method of blogging right now. I'm going to go in somewhat chronological order and include Lucy, Lilly, and Booger in here.
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| A quick jump school earlier in the month. |
It should come as no surprise to those of you who have been reading between the lines (or are on my social media) that I recently hooked Booger to a cart.
It's Tevis day!! Michelle and Bryn are out there on Bambi and Maddie so I'll be obsessively refreshing the webcast and Michelle's GPS tracker. In the meantime, life has been wild around here and my brain has turned to mush. I don't have mental capacity to form words, so you guys get a photo dump. As July wraps up, I'm trying to unload photos that are too numerous for the monthly recap. I'll start with Wesley and Ubee.
Wesley is the little buckskin quarter horse I work with at Ashley's. He and his young rider, Angelica, are new clients this year. I picked them up at their old barn at the end of the winter. Wesley was new to them at the time.
He was a ranch horse in his previous life. He has a good mind and is excellent on trail. However, he has pretty limited formal training and had no concept of contact (or being in front of the leg, for that matter).
Additionally, he had a lot of physical stuff going on. He had TMJ that forced Angelica to ride him in a hackamore, but he didn't have enough training to really go well without a bit. His back and pelvis were both out. He required a new saddle (and repeated fittings as his back changed with regular work) and extensive chiropractic work.
This is Angelica's first horse and she's a relatively new rider. They are learning so much so fast and will be a lovely pair, I think. We balance out their combined greenery by having me ride Wesley periodically. He feels so different than he did six months ago, and I look forward to watching them progress.
Angelica and Wesley have already done two schooling shows this year and I am quite proud of their hard work. Some day, these photos will serve as "before" photos of their journey.
My last endurance ride was Fort Valley in 2019. It was the perfect note to end my best ride season to date. Lunar and I finished the 50 and earned my first Triple Crown. The finish put me in the Top Ten in the regional point standings. After a season of competing pretty much every other weekend, riding in just about every state from South Carolina to Maine, and flying out to California for my first Tevis attempt, I was ready for a winter off. We wrapped up the year by driving down to Virginia for the OD Christmas party. As we all got in our cars to head our separate ways, everyone hugged goodbye with promises to make plans for the upcoming ride season. For me, that meant seeing everyone at Rabbit Run and Bunny Hop... in March 2020.
Needless to say, that ride never happened. Instead, we all went into lock down as the mystery virus that would soon become a household name made its first appearances in the US. As you all know, Mike and I took (are still taking) the pandemic very seriously. For me, that meant shutting down my business and not riding for three months. At the worst of it, we didn't stray more than five miles from home unless it was to go grocery shopping. Endurance riding... with its group gatherings, interstate travel, and inherent risk... was the furthest thing from my mind.
As we learned more and restrictions gradually loosened, there was a scattering of endurance rides in the northeast region. Often there were last minute changes or cancellations. Most rides featured crewing limits or additional precautions for social distancing.
Over the course of the 2020 season, I went on two conditioning rides on Maddie. For the first one, I met Jen and Michelle at Allamuchy. Jen is a nurse and had seen COVID up close and personal. Michelle is a vet and was taking the virus very seriously. By this point, we knew that social distancing and masking were very effective, and that the transmission rate outdoors was much lower than indoors. We all took separate vehicles, met outside, and never got within a horse length of each other. About a month later, Jen and I met at her barn and took Lunar and Maddie for another ride together.
By this point, I missed endurance riding terribly.
Both times that I went riding, Jen invited me to join her at the next endurance ride, and both times I declined. While we probably could have gone to a ride safely, it just didn't feel like the responsible thing to do. In fact, I felt like I would be a hypocrite if I preached about the importance of staying home and sacrificing the non-essential things for the greater good, then turned around and went to an endurance ride. Plus my anxiety about the virus was still really high. On top of that, I couldn't really see the point of spending the money to travel and compete for a season that basically wouldn't count for anything. Who is going to look back and care about the point standings for the 2020 season? Nobody. So even though I longed to get back to doing what I loved, and even though I worried about losing my ride on Jen's horses, I politely turned down her offers. Instead, Mike and I stayed close to home and saved money.
In the mean time, along came Lucy and my itch to explore trails on a good horse was temporarily satisfied. Thank god for Lucy. I really think I would have lost my mind otherwise.
Winter came and went and there were suddenly whispers of a viable vaccine. A year after my endurance dreams were dashed to pieces, medical personnel and front line workers became eligible for the vaccine in NJ. By the time I joined Jen and company for another conditioning ride in March, about half of us were already vaccinated. It eased my anxiety a bit, and I was eager for my turn.
By mid May, Mike and I were fully vaccinated, but still taking a ton of precautions while we waited to see how effective the vaccine would turn out to be.
Meanwhile, the endurance season was in full swing, and I watched wistfully from the sidelines while everyone posted ride stories and photos on social media. Jen and I still touched base from time to time, and I congratulated her when Bryn on Maddie and Michelle on Bambi tied for first place at the OD 100 in June. Jen had been so wonderful about respecting my boundaries this entire time, and I will forever be grateful for that. Things were going well for the Whisperstreams crew and I knew that the juniors were doing well on a slew of horses. It sounded like there was a butt for every saddle and I was thrilled watching their successes online. Still, I worried that the virus had cost me my place in the group. It had been the right thing to do, but it stung.
Then Holly called me. She was managing the Muckleratz endurance ride over fourth of July weekend and she needed a ride photographer. Would Mike and I be interested? I confirmed that Becky Pearman didn't want the gig (she was out in Montana for the national championships) then asked Mike what he thought. Together, we decided that this would be a great way to dip our toes back into the endurance world. My plan was to go do the photography, show my face in camp, and tell Jen that I would love to come crew for her and her riders at any other rides they had planned for the season. As always, I kept my plans to myself, and as always, the universe has a funny way of helping a girl out.
A month before Muckleratz, Jen texted to ask me if I'd be interested in doing the LD on Sunday. I told her we were the ride photographers, but that I would discuss it with Mike. Of course, Mike was his usual supportive self and told me he could handle doing the photography by himself on Sunday and that I should ride.
And so it came to pass that 20 months after my last start (but who's counting?) after the longest hiatus I've taken from endurance riding since my first start in 2008, I found myself back on the distance riding trail...
A few weeks ago, when Mike came to take pictures of me riding Booger, I did a little bit of jumping with her. At the beginning of the year, I made a list of goals for each horse. Booger's list included "return to jumping". During this recent ride, I came to the conclusion (as I so often do) that Booger really needs a braver rider. While she and I can pop around some little fences just fine, I lack the guts to really bring out her potential.
Booger has free jumped 4' with style. She will go over anything I point her at. She has scope for days and seems to genuinely love jumping.
I enjoy loping over the occasional fence as much as the next guy, but I am a bit of a control freak (shocking to my long time readers, I'm sure). I want to come in at a collected, rhythmic canter, get the perfect spot, clear the little fence with no drama, and land at the same quiet canter on the other side. My comfort zone ends at about 2'6", and that's on quiet horses.
Boo, on the other hand, would really love to be a jumper (or an eventer). She wants to go. Her idea of the perfect ride would be galloping at some enormous fence with a pilot who will get off her back and out of her way. She's probably make an awesome mount for some super ballsy teen who doesn't care about the quality of her canter, but see previous comments about control.
Shortly after I started musing about needing a braver rider, the Facebook memory of Boo clearing the standards came up. I shared the memory and tagged my former student, Cam. Cam rode Booger once, a few years ago, before she went off to college. Booger was six at the time.
My inbox blew up immediately and Cam agreed to come out the last Monday in June to take Booger for a spin.
Spoiler alert: they looked awesome together!
Eryca and I had so much fun at our first hunter pace that we turned right around and did another one three weeks later. This time, we went to the one held by the Alexandria Equestrian Association. I'm a member of AEA so that I can teach at the indoor, but I've never actually ridden the trails up there. Much like our home trails, the AEA trails are members-only and consist of a lot of private farm land. This pace was advertised as between eight and nine miles, so I figured it would be worth the $45 entry fee and the 45 minute drive.
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| Team What the Foxtrot strikes again! |
Eryca and I juggled wanting to beat the worst of the forecasted heat and not wanting to get up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday. We met at the barn at 8am.
Just popping in to dump some recent photos of Lucy. I am biased, but I think this mare is so beautiful, scars and all.
After months of exploring, mapping, and piecing together dead ends and detours, I think I finally know every single trail between the highway at the end of the Valley and Center Ridge.
In fact, I recently compiled this map using the GPS tracks from some of our regular loops. The green one that's not attached to the rest is from the hunter pace.
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| Why, yes, that does say "61 miles" on the bottom right. Granted, there's a fair amount of overlap, but still. |
One Friday, Eryca had the afternoon off and my schedule also happened to line up. We got together for a trail ride, and I wanted to do what I'm calling the Perimeter Loop. I wanted to combine our usual trails into one route. I wanted to map the continuous trail and I was curious about the mileage. This way, we could see how Lilly handled a longer ride without being more than a few miles from home at any given time.
It is not looking likely that I will ever get caught up on here. Things have suddenly picked up around here and my head is spinning. In fact, I came home at like 2pm because it was too hot to keep riding. I planned to start blogging, but then I laid down to snuggle Julio for half a second. Next thing you know, I'm waking up in a puddle of my own drool. This weather sucks the life right out of me!
Despite the fact that I dumped a bunch of media into mega posts, I am now officially three weeks behind on my ride logs! The good news is that it's because I've been busy actually riding.
The 16th was a Wednesday so Eryca and I got together for our usual evening play date with the mares. I had taken Booger for a solo trail ride that morning already so I threw her out in the big paddock and left her at home.
As we rode out the front gate, I asked Eryca which way she wanted to go. I had ridden with Fran the day before and let her call the shots at every intersection we came to. It was actually a fun way to mix things up and do something other than one of my usual loops. Sort of like one of those "choose your own adventure" books we had as kids. So that's what we decided to do.
"Corn field or across the street?" I asked.
"Across the street."
"Pine Twig or vineyard?"
"Let's do the vineyard, we haven't been that way in a while..."
"Through the woods or across the bridge?"
"Bridge! I don't think we've ever done it that direction before."
And that's as long as I was able to let go of the control for. When we got to the vineyard bridge, I got distracted. I suddenly remembered that I've been wanting to hack up the dirt road for a while now. Road riding is a good activity for the winter when the trails are often closed. We got lucky last year and got to do a ton of winter trail riding, but it would be nice to know some of our options ahead of time for this year. Plus we'd never been that way before.
"Ooh, let's go down the dirt road instead of the vineyard!" I exclaimed. Then, catching myself (because I am trying to be less awful), I said, "I'm sorry. Would you like to go around the vineyard or up the dirt road?"
Of course, Eryca is like the best sport out there. She grinned then cheered, "Up the road!"
And so our choose your own adventure began...
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| This boarding barn is across the vineyard from us. |
Mike came out one day last month to get some more current photos of Booger and me in the ring. I'm not currently taking lessons (on the wish list for this fall) so looking at photos and videos of myself riding is the best way for me to nitpick and try to improve bad habits.
Mike last came out in April and I was pretty pleased with how Booger looked that day over all. However, I was pretty disappointed in her canter at that time.
After this ride, I compared the June photos to the April photos and was pleasantly surprised. There's still a lot to work on (omg, so much...) but Booger looks visibly happier and more comfortable in her body. Her mouth is quieter even without the flash. She's softer and stretchier. Best of all, I'm no longer using the running martingale to warm up. I still put it on the breast collar for trail riding, but most days I leave it in the barn to ride at home.
Her canter is forever a work in progress, but I was happier with the canter photos this time around. Mike also complimented Boo, saying that she had a very clear and consistent rhythm. Her canter still gets sort of flat or lateral, but I'm proud to report that there wasn't a single moment of cross firing this entire ride! And forward definitely isn't a problem.
We even did a bit of jumping towards the end of our ride. I basically rode like garbage and poor Booger had to compensate for it. I resolved to find her a braver, better jumper to ride her in the near future. More on that subject later!
Mike took over 600 photos during this ride and most of them were awesome. I narrowed that down to my 130 favorites. While I'm not going to spam you with all of them, there are still a lot of photos in this entry.
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| My new favorite photo of us together. |
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| I love how relaxed and happy Booger looks here. Forward, tracking up, engaging her inside hind, soft through the poll with a nice open throat latch. She even has happy ears! She is not an easy horse to ride, but when we get it, it's so rewarding!! |
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| So do you think I ever learn to shorten my stirrups or....? |
