Updates

I haven't neglected posting because I am lazy (ok maybe a little), a LOT has been going on. So now to get myself all caught up in a boring tiny condensed post instead of the nice posts I had planned before life said "no". I apologize for the lack of media and will have a media-filled post coming up as soon as I can with all of the media I have since I posted last.

So I got laid off of my part-time super fun degree-related job. Everyone did except for my boss. So that sucked. Having a horse to support, I naturally freaked out. So now I am working full time on minimum wage at my other job... not a great solution, but it works. This meant that I was working disgusting hours and so I haven't been riding much. Like... MAYBE 2 times a week. Cool.

I've jumped a couple times since then, my lovely horsey friend came and set me up some fun jumps, and we had a couple decent dressage schools. But mostly the Little-Boat-That-Could has been being lunged quickly after work because I only have an hour after work before the barn closes.

Non-riding-wise he has had the farrier come out, who said that his feet are "the kind of feet you pray for every night." (We have a plan to help them out a little... he's not wrong)... The dentist has come out and told me that his teeth are that of a 22-year-old horse (he's 15) and didn't believe me that he is only 15. So basically he is a wreck, but his attitude has been mostly willing and he's still the best horse ever and he's gained 16 pounds this month (YAY!) and is slowly developing topline muscle. It's not all bad!

And recently, I have gone through another schedule change. I now work at 5am every day until 1. This is good because it means I can go ride whenever I am not dead tired, but as a night owl, it has been ROUGH to get used to. I am still doing so.

So there's the update, and now I can start posting regularly again as long as life doesn't continue to change at a whirlwind pace.

The Cost of Owning A Horse

On the 5th of August I will have owned Otis for 1 month. I am making this post a bit early, because I started purchasing stuff I would need in order to bring him home on the 28th of June. I wanted to make sure only 1 instance of board was on there, as well as 1 instance of making a payment to his past owner.

As a rule, I am absolutely fascinated with how much people spend on their horses monthly, and I have been diligently recording every transaction in order to find out how much I am spending on my equine. Though in reality, I still haven't realized that he's even mine yet. Here's what I have spent so far:

$41 - Lead, salt block, thrushbuster, etc. Little things that I didn't have but would need.
$55 - Heavy weight blanket (I still need at least a sheet before winter) got this on super sale!
$1500 - Purchase price, though I will be making payments monthly until I get to the actual purchase price.
$50 - Trailering to the new barn.
$40 - 2 bags of feed to help transition him onto the new barn's feed.
$370 - Board.
$5 - Wormer.
$32 - Lunge line... should have gotten a lunge whip too but I am stingy.
$50 - Fly spray concentrate, a couple other little things.
$27 - DIY jump poles. The lumber was super on sale so I had to go for it and I also painted them. 6 poles.
$85 - Farrier (trim, patched up a missing chunk, sealed them, and we made a plan to improve them.)
$60 - Approximate amount of money in gas spent to go to/from the barn 7 days a week.

Adding all of that together, and I spent $2,315 in a month. It sounds like a lot to me, but if I break it down into a list of things I will buy in the upcoming months, it became more like $665. That's still a lot of money as a just-graduated-college-with-no-full-time-job human, but when I think about how much I was spending when leasing:

$350 - Lease.
$110-$160 - Lessons.
$140+ - The ASTRONOMICAL amount of gas I had to use to drive to him an hour away.

2 hours added to my trip to the barn made it an entire day kind of thing. Do not miss that.

Not to mention I was still buying him little things constantly. Leasing 3 days a week put me at $650/month. So purchasing did have a much higher up-front cost, but in the long run I was spending about the same. However, I now am allowed to ride as much as I want and can feasibly drive like 14 whole miles round-trip to see him, instead of being limited to 3 by the lease and the inability to drive 100 miles round trip all the time. Another benefit to this is I don't need oil changes as frequently and am not putting as many miles on my poor car. This definitely saves me money in the long run!

Ok this is getting long because I don't have any relevant media to break up the horrible amount of numbers. I realize that a lot of people that buy a horse don't have tack and such, but luckily I have been spending money while in college on used tack, so as of right now we are set on that front! Go past also-poor me!

I'm curious, how much do you spend on your horse a month? 

Good Rides

After posting my "bad rides" post, I did just what I said I was going to. I didn't make it through all of Centered Riding, but I made it through the basics to start. Thinking back, I had planned to use this move/horse ownership to START OVER. I don't know where that goal got lost, but I found myself asking too much of Otie and wanting him to be dressage superstar from day 1, of course he resisted. Yesterday, I did what I actually wanted to and took it all the way back to step 1. I ditched my spurs and focused on him moving off my actual leg promptly and with as little force as he would respond to. He wasn't sluggish, wasn't pissed off, and it was a good start. I tried to do absolutely nothing with his head except maintain light contact, and did a lot of transitions and figures.

Needless to say, it was definitely a better ride. He was a ton happier and so was I. We even had space (it's amazing how much space there is in a pasture when it's not constantly filled with jumps) to do 3-loop serpentines at the canter with nice, quiet, and balanced simple changes.

All of the classical dressage articles and books talk about how if you have their hind end moving and just super light contact in the front their head will naturally drop... I'm not SO sure it's that easy... but he definitely wasn't a giraffe, and I wasn't expecting amazing results for this first ride back at it. He was a lot better than past rides, and he didn't feel boxed in or resistant. That's a good starting point in my book!

I then went through my GoPro footage and saw a much happier, more relaxed, interested horse. No, he's not round, he's not a superstar (yet), but I am super invested in working toward a relaxed, correct horse... instead of a horse that's broken at the third and unhappy.

Working toward something like this, then we can work on him sitting down more and lifting the front end.

Hopefully by then I will have a trainer, because that enters the land of super difficult stuff.

I am not interested in going around like this, which sadly is fine with a LOT of eventers (Because jumping and xc is why you're there, right?).

Ok side note: I love eventing, and am not trying to bash eventers (I am one so...) but I know that a lot of eventers refer to dressage as "stressage" or just simply want to get through their time in the sandbox to get to the more fun things. Dressage is SO hard. If left in a field for 2 years, most people could teach themselves to jump decently by the end. If left in a field for 2 years, most people would still be clueless on how to do dressage. Again, it's so hard to do correctly. It's no secret that there is too much focus on the head and neck, and a lot of people just pull their head down to look "fancy" and think that that's all there is to it. This isn't exclusive to eventing. End side note.

I don't like getting on a horse and feeling them completely drop behind the vertical to avoid even the slightest contact. To the untrained eye, it looks "pretty". But it's not correct, and I am not interested in doing so. I didn't mean to get preachy or opinionated in this post... here are a couple screencaps of my happy horse to offset the rambling. 

This is what we looked like. Look at the tense contact, the spurs digging into him, and the complete

lack of forward movement. I knew better, but I honestly thought this was how you got good scores

because this was all that I saw.

Can we just take a look at that reaching hind leg.

I literally only have the slightest amount of contact and he's seeking it. This is huge for him.

This is what I want. (Also if I could pick up my hands a bit and stop riding in a chair seat, that'd be great.)

So I will probably try to avoid controversial topics like this again, but the good thing is I am trying to better myself and better my horse and have fun with him. I already see an improvement. 

First Jump School Alone (and at the new barn)

Originally my schedule called for Fridays to be jump days, but because of work and the birthday of a fabulous boyfriend, "huuump dayyyyy" was also "jump day" last week. It was super hot, so I just set up 2 little jumps and figured we would pop over them a couple times and call it a day. There was a 2' vertical with "scary" PVC pole ground lines (they're scary for me... I won't be using them again as I have seen the injuries that occur when they shatter) and a simple cross rail that eventually became a little 2'9 vertical. We didn't have enough poles, so the ground line for the vertical was directly underneath it. This caused Otie to get VERY close distances to it each time, but that will change soon. Okay, enough blabbing... let's get to the pictures!

"I hate dressage, this is my favorite day."

Case and point. He was getting close to this one each time,

but that's a nice balanced hind end!

We had only 1 awkward jump to this one, he likes real ground lines.

Awkward 2'9 hop.

It was fine, he wasn't putting much effort into anything, but my goal for the day was to hop over a couple things and assure myself that we can jump without a trainer no problem. The wonderful boyfriend was kind enough to get pics, yell at me to add more leg every once in awhile, and stop me and scold me when something weird happened over the fences. He's learned a lot from watching so many lessons! This week we are going to do either a Lainey grid or a Doug Payne (I believe) exercise to work on me being quiet and strong over fences as well as Otie getting his knees up. I am always writing down exercises to try, so that leads to my send-off question:

What are your favorite jumping exercises, and why?

Bad Rides

So we've been moved for almost 2 weeks now, and though there haven't been many rides so far... they've all been either just ok or quite crappy. At first, I kind of wrote it off as "we just moved here, we need time to adjust" but I can't help but feel disheartened. To start, not being able to have a trainer of any sorts for awhile is NOT ideal. I have always had a trainer, always had at least 2 lessons a month, and for the past 2 years or so I have exclusively jumped in lessons. That all in itself is a change. I am constantly worried now that I am developing bad habits, and questioning every single thing I do, and surely that's not helping me have good rides! On top of that it has been super hot, and Otie has been a complete zombie.

More like a sleeping cat, at least zombies have goals.

So as usual, I am ruining things and both of us are suffering. So how am I planning to fix it? Well, for starters, I am rereading Centered Riding by Sally Swift. The book has ton of ways to help you become more self-aware (accurately, not just by being paranoid) as well as more aware of your horse and how he is moving. Hopefully, re-reading it will help me calm down and be more relaxed, and allow myself to be a leader instead of a flailing sack of potatoes. I also have articles and articles to re-read that talk about proper warm-ups, good progressions of movements to work on, etc. Hopefully, that will help too.

This dinosaur rides 10,000x better than me.

Also, I am bringing out the ol' GoPro. This idea was courtesy of the wonderful boyfriend. I am going to film EVERY RIDE, review it in the evenings (when I can find the time), maybe save a short clip per day, and delete the videos. It's always funny how people describe their own rides, at shows for example. They walk out with an "ew that test was crappy" but you try to assure them that it looked great from your perspective... then if you videoed, you show them the clip and it turns into "oh well that wasn't so bad". Or vice versa (but hopefully not). This is why I do have a riding journal, so I can write down how rides felt and what we worked on. Having a video to watch from them will give me that second perspective, and will allow me to be a hypercritical "trainer" for myself.

Me watching myself ride.

Long story (with no pretty pictures) short, what do you do after a series of bad rides?

Otie's First Week

This is going to be ridiculously long... but mostly because there are a lot of pictures. Otie has been moved in for a week now, and my first week of horse ownership has gone by so fast! Here's a recap:

Tuesday: Moving day! Let him explore the indoor, fed him dinner, groomed, took conformation shots, emptied my tack trunk into new tack locker, and fussed excessively over him (to his embarrassment). There's already a post about Tuesday so, not much more to say!

I could just stare at him all day long, he's changed so much in just the past
couple months!

Wednesday: Turned him out in the arena, and the barn owner told me he tried to turn him out alone for the day but had to bring him in after an hour and a half because he was just screaming for the other horses... wimp.  So I turned him out, tidied up my locker, and we recorded his weight so we can keep track of any loss/gain on the new feed. I also cuddled with the cutest kitten in the world, who followed me around all evening. Then I groomed the now dusty boat, hung out with the kitten in Otie's stall while he ate, and met a couple people. Fun day for me, but not so exciting for a recap!

Thursday: Otie was wormed to get him onto their worming schedule. I got there at dinner time so I just let him eat and groomed him. The BO told me that he lasted outside alone longer today, and that tomorrow morning he's going to go out with 2 other geldings that will hopefully be his turnout buddies. Crossing my fingers! It's so quiet at this barn, I've only run into one boarder so far and it was kind of a polite-greeting-then-go-separate-ways kind of exchange, which I am totally fine with! I also had a different kitten shadow today.

How Otis feels about seeing me every day.

Constantly in awe of my horse. This is a new development

for us since I have been home for 2 months straight instead of 

just twice per month so he's actually being groomed regularly.

Friday: Turned Otie out in the arena and he just followed me around the entire time and wasn't interested in anything else... so I guess he's bored and wants a job again! Then groomed him as usual. The BO told me that he went out this morning with 2 other horses, and it was as if they had been friends for 10 years. No squeals, kicks, or anything. So that's great! They were out for about 4 hours before it was like 95 degrees and they wanted in. Go Boat!

Saturday: My mom came out to the barn with me today, and I'll admit it wasn't the best day... Several boarders were there so after having the past few days with the barn to myself, seeing that many new people made me uncomfortable. Hopefully, I'll get over it. So the Boat was out with his new buds, and it was super cute, so I just brought him in briefly to lunge and get his feet moving a bit before I tossed him back out. Low-key day!

Mom saying "Hi" after not seeing him for a long time. Awh.

Sunday: 1st ride at our new home! Not gonna lie, it was pretty crappy. I was supposed to be out of work at 2, but didn't end up getting out until 5 and I had barely eaten anything all day. I was exhausted and a little grumpy, and Otis wanted to eat dinner and is still under the impression that he is retired. He was very tense and just unwilling to cooperate under saddle. I decided after fighting with him for a bit to just try to work on leg-yielding at the walk and shoulder/haunches in at the walk, and then after all that mentally hard work (he HATES lateral work...oops) he was a bit more willing to trot around so we ended nicely enough. Though the ride did leave me with a bit of an unsatisfied feeling and worries for rides to come.

Monday: Noticed his Micklem was fitting a bit weird... so I readjusted it. Placed some trot poles to give him something to focus on, and even before we did the poles he was SO much better! He was a lot more relaxed, and even though he was a bit lazy and ignoring my leg, he was so much better than Sunday. (Also it was super hot out and the bugs were bad so I don't blame him for lacking enthusiasm.) We even did some more lateral work (still his least favorite thing). I was supposed to do a conditioning ride tomorrow, but I kinda would like to just do dressage again. THAT'S not something I can usually say!

Can we just take a moment???

 "Mom! Did you see they took my friend in? Why did they do that??"

Trying to turn on puppy-dog-eyes so he can go in too.

Tuesday: And finally, the last day in our move-in week. I stuck to my training schedule (been developing it over the past few months) and just did conditioning today. We didn't do the full workout because it was 96 degrees, but enough that we were both tired! Little dude is earning his keep for sure, and I hope he's starting to like it at least a little bit.

News

I actually had a post ready for last week... and it was a doozy. I am SO glad that I didn't end up posting it early because that day it completely changed. What am I talking about, you ask? Well, let me explain.

2 weeks ago I was informed that I had a couple weeks to either:

A. Buy Otis

B: He was going to be sold

How I managed to have a nice lesson with that festering in my brain? Who knows!

Needless to say, I could not come up with the money to purchase him in 2 weeks time. I tried to offer some up front and would make payments until he was paid off, but couldn't do that and drive an hour to see him every day. I had found a nice little barn near my house to move him to, and promised him a forever home... but it wasn't enough. The owner did not want him to be moved until he was paid off, which was something I couldn't do.

I had called the new barn owner and everything after there was no happy ending in sight and told him I wouldn't need the stall... but the next day I got a call that my offer was going to be accepted after all (good timing right haha).

It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. I am in NO position to have a horse... my second job hasn't started yet because the city is being stupid about getting out to the store for inspections, so I will be supporting Otis on ONE PART TIME JOB until that happens... which is pretty much impossible, but I will make it work.

But anyway, we moved. He was a bit nervous when he first got on the trailer, which of course made me worry about how he was going to adjust... but the new BO had me just turn him out to let him calm down, and then he settled in pretty easily! He tried to make friends (the mare in the stall next to him wants NOTHING to do with him, and will let him know by kicking at him... you can always trust a mare to give a warm welcome), but he's going to be turned out with 2 TB geldings today, so I hope that they will make friends :)

"Wait but don't we usually take a friend to shows? Can I bring a friend?"

"This is okay, but where are my friends?"

Long (boring) story short: I bought a horse, he is moved in, I cannot wait to see where we go from here, and I am so happy that our time was not cut short!

 Took some conformation shots to get a baseline and monitor his weight.

*Swoon*

Welcome home,  little boat!

Hunter Pace!

You would think that having 2 jobs (one full-time and one part-time) looming, and the realization that I will be working 7 days a week would give me some motivation to have fun and get stuff done. You thought wrong. I have been spending any ounce of free time laying on my floor moping... because that's what adults do, right? There IS a reason for the moping... but that will be in another post soon, no matter what the result is.

This ended up on my facebook feed somehow. This is how I feel.

I keep telling myself, "It will be fine! You will be able to pay your bills! All those student loans lurking... you can prepare for them!" But my heart tells me, "You won't have time to ride! You won't be able to get to XC school ever or do anything fun because you will be at work!" So... that's where I am at, and that's why it has taken me a long time to give a recap from the Hunter Pace I recently went to.

SO NOW TO THAT.

Hunter Pace. Stonegate. On the jumper team with some weirdo (Maddie, it was Maddie). It was a really nice (but really small) course. The sections in the woods were a bit dodgy, and Maddie nearly got clotheslined (darn, so close) by the almost invisible "don't go this way" ropes, but otherwise it was very nice. The little boat has been getting a little aggressive to fences lately, but since these were so tiny he just stepped over them and continued with his mastermind plan of racing Willie. Good news is, we jumped some things that we hadn't before, and only had one "bad" jump... aka a bit too short of a distance. Because I am lacking motivation, that's all I will say about it as of now, but there are a couple pictures AND the GoPro footage if anyone wants to watch that. Good times, I will conquer this random and annoying fear of XC. Ended up 3rd too, only a minute over, so RIBBONS!

Tiny.

Guess he wanted to have a slight look at this one, hi awkward legs.

Didn't realize that I only had 3 pictures...oops.

And a helmet cam... which I would prefer to delete the sound because I hate hearing myself talk, why do I talk??? The dialogue is, "careful," "good boyyyyy," and "HEY MADDIE WAIT WE ARE SLOW." So it's really not worth listening to...

Unrelated final question: Have you ever had to not take lessons or show for a long period of time? If so, how did you continue to focus and make progress during that time?

P.S. There may be some HUGE changes in my life soon... (good or bad, depends how it goes) so my next post may be... different.

Impulse Buys and Brand Loyalty

Well, I have done a bad thing. You would think that a recent college grad with no real job and no horse of their own would find no need to purchase a SECOND saddle.Well, oops. A boarder posted two dressage saddles on Instagram and my heart almost stopped when I saw one. It was a Stubben Tristan, basically new (purchased new last year for over $2,000 I believe), 17.5" seat, medium tree, and $500.

*Swoon*

I guess some background is in order: I own an older Stubben AP saddle and it's held up remarkably well and has fit every horse I have put it on so far. My trainer had an old Stubben Genesis dressage saddle for awhile that he bought a LONG time ago but still looked pristine, and was lovely to ride in. I know it's not a trendy brand, and its design is pretty simple, but I like that. Rambling over...

The other saddle was a Jaguar. It was definitely fancier-looking, but it didn't fit the boat AT ALL, and I had my heart set on the Stubben so I was glad that it didn't. The Stubben had no gaps, a perfect amount of room between it and his back, and looked great!

I rode in it, it was comfy, and after spectators left and we were alone he gave me the best dressage work we have had since I moved back... so no complaints from him! I could go on about it forever, but will refrain. I am riding in it again today and getting my trainer's opinion tomorrow in a lesson before I make the decision, but I love it and am happy for it to join the family if all goes well. 

Awkward picture so I could see how I fit in it.

The Boat being incredibly bored while I took pictures of it.

This leaves me with one question (if you made it here). Are there any brands that you have loyalty towards? What are they, and why?

First Day Back At The Lease

Today (May 16th) I started my lease back up... and I went in with a PLAN for my ride. It's always hard going from 2 lessons a month to 3 days a week because it's hard to decide WHAT to do and how to structure rides at first.

The photo may be deceiving, but he was covered in dry mud when I arrived.

My plan was to work on walk/trot transitions to get his lazy little brain listening, then move into working on our weakest points from dressage tests in the past (free walk, resistance, bend, etc.). To be blunt, if he weren't awkward over fences he would be more suited as a hunter... he HATES anything dealing with dressage, and lets me know by being a giraffe and resisting any sort of contact. 

This is 2-year-old photo, but it shows how he likes to carry himself 100% of the time. Gross, huh?

Needless to say, it's been a huge struggle. Pair that with the fact that I have been riding only 2 times a month for the entirety of my 4-year college career, and he hasn't improved much. To be fair, he has NO muscle because of his lack of work, so it is REALLY hard for him anyway... but we will be working on that now that I am done with college. 

So we started with the plan I mentioned above... then I worked on sitting trot (because he's giant and it's hard to sit the trot on him so that's a work in progress) and did some bending exercises. We tried to work on him stretching down at the walk instead of flipping his head and only ever offering a walk like this:

It's a long process, and I would LOVE to hear some exercises to help him figure out how to stretch down (WITHOUT widening and lowering my hands a ton and applying pressure to the bars of his mouth like a lot of people like to do). 

Then, toward the end of the ride, all of the horses got let out into the grass pasture at the back of the property, and Mr. Boat lost any tiny amount of focus that he had because, well, HE WANTED TO GO OUT WITH THEM and I was tortuously trying to make him do his least favorite thing (I'm so rude he's convinced he's retired already). 

So, it wasn't a great first ride back... but we did have a few good moments, and that's the important part! That leaves me with a question: How do you structure your rides, and what are your favorite ways to help build proper muscle on your out-of-shape horses?

"Giving me treats and not making me work builds muscle!" - Otis, probably

Welcome!

Hello everyone, my name is Emily, and welcome to my blog!

I'll start off by saying that I'm NO writer... at all... but I have been journaling my rides for a few months now, and think that doing so in an online format will be fun to track my progress over the summer and beyond.

So a bit about me... I'm a recent (broke) college grad with a BFA in New Media Design Practices. Sounds fancy, but I assure you it's not. I am 22, and have been riding (off and on) since my early teen years, and every moment I wish that I could just ride and not have to adult ever.

Semi-recent image of me and my cool horse in a lesson.

And above is the star of the show... my perfect little dude. He's my trainer's horse, and I've been riding him for about 5 years. His name is Otis Township and he's a 2001 OTTB... but we call him Boat because he's giant and slow like a cruise ship. Yeah, that doesn't sound ideal for an eventer, but he LOVES cross country (except water, and mud, and basically anything wet... hold your laughter please).

And now for a couple pics of him on XC.

Can you spot the excited horse? I sure can!

I am back to leasing him again, with the hopes of purchase once I get this whole adulting thing figured out. He's a super awkward ride, and still has a ton to learn, but we have learned a lot together over the past couple years, and we hope to get to Training before it's time for him to retire.

So back to the blog: it will feature posts about rides, lessons, shows (lol next year... post-graduate me can't afford to show this year), budget-related musings, etc. 

Because I haven't figured out a good way to end a post yet!