Last post from Florida 2012

Last post before we leave Florida, today is our last day in paradise before we start the journey back home to Canada, it's very bittersweet, it's been a great winter season with a great group of people and though I'm super happy to be heading back home to my friends, horses and clients in Kelowna, I'm also incredibly sad to be leaving our winter home for another season.  The past few weeks with Nico have brought about huge progress, we went through a bit of a tricky stage where we pushed the envelope a little bit and stepped things up so we had a couple of difficult days but then started to have that breakthrough to the next level again, the past two rides particularly he has really started to feel like a whole different horse and I'm excited to see how this will continue to develop over the next few months.  I'm also extremely happy that I've now had multiple trainers tell me that he has the caliber to be a 70% horse in the Grand Prix arena, I'm in no way naive enough to think that this means we'll head up the centerline and magically get 70s all of a sudden of course, I realize the consistency and reliability has to be developed for that to become a reality and that's a long term project especially with a more intricate tempered horse like Nico but I'm thrilled to have more and more people confirming his potential to excel as  a Grand Prix horse as I've always believed in his physical abilities.....now it's just a matter of getting him to be as confident in his abilities as well and that will take some time but I feel like we are really on the right track!  I saw an interesting article online the other day and wanted to share (http://www.horsejunkiesunited.com/2012/03/28/money-matters-how-much-does-it-cost-to-ride-at-the-olympics/) it does a great job of explaining the costs associated with competing a horse at the top level and is very insightful, it's definitely a very daunting task to pack up with your life savings in your pocket to pursue a dream and yet, despite the stress and worry that goes along with it, when you have a passion it is something that one simply has to do, that being said I have to say my sincere thanks to everyone who made this trip possible once again and has contributed to keeping my dreams alive, it means the world to me.  A huge thanks to all of my supporters back home, friends, clients etc, you have all been amazing, I am surrounded by some pretty incredible people and am so grateful for everyone who helps to keep me going, I can only repay you all by continuing to work towards the dream with my utmost determination and steadfast work ethic and am so thankful to those of you who recognize and appreciate this, I am lucky to have a clientele that is so understanding of my being away for a little while, I feel so thankful that my clients truly understand that my taking the time out to continue my own education makes me much more valuable as a rider, coach and trainer as well, that being said I'm looking forward to getting back home to you all to start sharing some of the education:)  Also many thanks to Albrecht for a wonderful season of winter training and everyone at the Lady Jean Ranch for their incredible hospitality at their beautiful facility.....and so the journey home begins bright and early tomorrow morning, will keep you all posted:)

Rozzie's Big Debut

This week it was Rozzie's turn to get out and about, early on in the week she had another in-hand session with Juan Matute, this session was really interesting because I actually got to do some of the in-hand work with her myself, it's definitely a unique skill and takes some practice to keep things organized, same principles as in the saddle apply, equal contact in two reins etc. though it takes a different feel to achieve this while walking on the ground than riding in the saddle that's for sure!  On Thurs we hauled down to the Jim Brandon Center to school before the show this weekend, Roz hauled very well and settled right in at the show grounds like she was an old pro, as is my luck with weather, no sooner had I saddled up and started to walk her around the clouds rolled in and it started pouring but I figured oh well she may as well get used to the rain now!  She was a good girl schooling out in the rain though she was a bit nervous and wanting to look around, she wasn't spooky or naughty at all more just tense and needed to keep moving and wanting to look out at the other horses but for her first time at a big show park in horrible weather I thought she did pretty well!  I decided to keep the tests easy for her first outing and just put her in First Level until she gets the concept of what this showing stuff is all about and then I'll move her up as she's already got her changes and is quite handy with the lateral work.  She overnighted really well and when I brought her out and mounted up she started off with a big giant cat stretch in the middle of the yard that's how stressful her night was haha!  Our first test was green but otherwise quite okay, she got a bit worried about all of the traffic in the warmup ring, she does get a bit intimidated by bigger horses in the ring with her (I've noticed this at home as well) so she got a bit hot out there.  We went up our first centerline and she pulled a typical greenie trick of looking at the judge for the first time and spinning around and trying to leave, she's not the first smart one to try that nor will she be the last, but once I got her turned back around and moving she was totally fine and settled into the test, couple of bobbles in transitions and a bit of nervous jogging in the walk but honestly for her very first test at a show I was very pleased, she ended up with a second place in the class for the day and I was very pleased with her.  This morning the warmup ring was busier for her and again she was quite hot but very well behaved, her test was good, she now knows what centerlines are all about and did a relatively steady test, still wanted to jog in the walk but that's okay for now, that extra energy will serve her well later in her career I'm quite certain, she ended up with a 67% and change and many compliments about how lovely she was from people watching, all in all I was quite happy with her first showing, very proud of her!  She's now happy to be back at home in her stall at the Lady Jean Ranch and will get a well deserved day off tomorrow, good girl Rozzie!!:)

Fun Video

Adding a fun video link below, one of my clients Patti Milare from back home made this from one of the Courtenay Fraser clinics (Courtenay has been doing clinics for my clients in my absence), thought she did a great job on it and wanted to share:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk96kBX-lN4&feature=share

Palm Beach Derby

So this past weekend we attended the Palm Beach Derby, last weekend's show was a positive experience, we kept everything friendly and basically rode just to get through the test nicely which we were able to achieve, being that I kept the pressure off last weekend the tests were rideable but naturally lacked in areas, the piaffe, passage and pirouettes were definitely lacking and nowhere near the caliber that I know Nico is capable of, so having a show the following week I decided I wanted to push things a little bit and find out where the holes were, it's a tricky balance because we have to be able to keep things harmonious but that being said if you never push the limits things don't improve either and then everything just becomes stagnant.  This weekend we had some issues in our tests because I pushed more and sometimes when you push more the wheels come off but now I know where the holes are and what needs to be worked on so I'm happy with the result as I've gained a lot of insight on where things need to go.  Nico has two ways of going right now and I have to teach him to combine the two, he can be relaxed and fluid or he can be expressive but with tension, what we haven't mastered yet is to get him to offer the expression and yet let go and relax within it, this is something I have to improve with him in order to get the maximum horse I know I have, right now it's a little bit like riding two separate horses and I have to get him somewhere in the middle.  I'm very glad I did the two shows back to back with him, although they weren't good shows from the competition standpoint they were necessary for the training purpose as I needed to figure out the pieces that weren't working.  When you train always at home it's so easy to set things up and then execute them very nicely but when you go up the centerline to actually ride a test you really find out if it works in the heat of the moment.  Anyhow, lots was learned from the past two weekends and now I can implement that into our training, there is so much to figure out making the leap from the small tour to the Grand Prix with a horse as it's really a completely different world, in the small tour you can still get by having a few holes and 'coasting' when you step up the Grand Prix you really find out if you've got your horse honestly on the aids and if not then you better do your homework, tomorrow Nico and I will start on ours:)  This extra degree of knowledge with Nico has also helped me to work on a couple of things with Roz, I realized I was letting her push through me a bit too much, she's a very nice ride in the bridle most of the time so I was getting a bit casual about not really bringing her back to me enough, I was going in half way and kind of being satisfied with that and not really getting a full reaction from her, and consequently not putting her onto her hindlegs enough, it's always amazing how something you figure out with one horse can open your eyes to something with another, horses always have something to teach us as  long as we choose to never stop learning.  Rozzie is going to go out to her first show experience this weekend, not sure if I'll actually ride a test with her yet or just school her in the warmup, we'll see how she copes with the atmosphere and go from there.

Busy Week!:)

Lots and lots to update!  Earlier this week Miss Roz got her very first in-hand session with Juan Matute, it's always interesting to see the greenies and how they take to it at first, Roz is a funny girl because she always takes a little while to catch on to something but then when she starts to get it she's eager to try it out, the in-hand work was no different, it took a good while at the beginning to get her reacting but then out of the blue she started to get it, when I got back on her I felt a huge difference, she was stretching more to the contact and her shoulders were much more square in front of me, since then she's starting to play around more and more with her hindlegs, right now it's usually just a clumsy jump behind or hiccup of the croup but that's okay, at this point in time all we are looking for is that she reacts in the right area, after that is more confirmed then we can start to narrow it down and explain to her how it is we want her to react, one step at a time.  Yesterday and today Nico and I attended our first show of the season, just a smallish schooling show and we rode two Grand Prix tests, generally speaking I was quite pleased with him, nothing amazing score wise or anything, it's all still a bit too green naturally and he had lots of little green mistakes but they were honest mistakes not due to him getting distracted or being silly so this I can totally accept.  Yesterday he was particularly focused and I was quite pleased with how our canter work went....except for the centerline pirouettes those are still quite tricky but we're working on it, but usually the canter tour is weaker than the trot tour and this weekend it was the other way around so that's a good step I think!  Our piaffe didn't want to work in the ring yesterday but that's just a bit of time to get him on the same page as me in the ring, we know he doesn't lack in talent when it comes to piaffe so that's just a matter of getting him dialed it to doing it on the mark.  Today we had a pretty big challenge, just as I was halfway to the warmup ring it started pouring, pelting rain and flying leaves, needless to say Nico wanted out of there and spun and took off back to the barn, I can't honestly say I blamed him I didn't want to be out in that either!!  I got back to the barn under cover and thought about scratching him but then the skies cleared to a reasonable amount of rain, unfortunately we now only had about 25 mins to warmup, half our usual warmup time but I figured oh well, got him out to the warmup and he was very tense, got through our warmup and then the rider in front of us missed her ride time so being that none of us could see a rider in that ring and yet we knew she had warmed up we couldn't figure out if there was a delay, then next thing I know the steward is calling me because the previous rider missed her time and now the judge had blown the whistle for my time!  So we trotted straight over and cantered right up the centerline, no going around the ring, relaxing him or anything, hardly ideal for a horse who tends to be spooky, but we managed to keep a lid on things and work it out not too badly, again too many mistakes to be anything spectacular score wise but fair mistakes, I was proud of him for coping under those circumstances, there was a time where that would not have happened at all so progress is being made:)  Basically because we have moved up to a new level it's going to take some time to find the ins and outs of the test, it's a huge leap from the small tour to the Grand Prix so I'm still figuring out where the trouble spots are for Nico and how to best navigate the test for him when we put it all together and he needs to gain a bit more confidence in some of the movements in the ring, it's a joint production to pull this all off, haha who knew dressage was so hard?!;)  Now I am going to sit down and make some notes while the tests of the past two days are fresh in my mind so that I can remember the trouble spots and how I want to ride them on the next go around:)

Half-Time!!

Another week has gone by already, I can't believe how fast the time is passing, we're already at the halfway mark of our time down here.  I did feel a bit homesick the other day, definitely missing my friends, clients and horses back home, but then I heard there was a big snow storm and that cured my homesickness pretty quickly haha!  This Wednesday we had Juan Matute come out to the barn to work a number of the horses in hand, Juan worked with Nico a bit last winter so it was nice to be able to have another session with him, I was especially pleased that he noticed such a huge difference in Nico from last year, said he wouldn't have even recognized him as being the same horse.  Juan is quite amazing to watch with the in-hand work, his timing and patient persistence with the horses is very admirable, he has some videos on dressageclinic.com which I would highly recommend to anyone interested.  Nico is really quite good with the in-hand work now and actually gets quite hot from it which is definitely good as it allows us to tap more into his hindlegs in the collected work, however this is a bit of a careful balancing act as today I had some moments where he felt fantastic but also a couple moments where I could feel him really getting a bit worried about his newfound engagement as, it's always a fine line to up the bar steadily but to also keep things under control so that the horse can achieve success and then relax into their newfound balance and power as well, oh well no one ever said dressage was easy!;)  Rozzie is also finding new pieces of herself out, she is starting to understand about how her hindleg joints work more and more and she gets moments where she really sits more and starts to push uphill, consequently she is starting to come up more in front and get more shoulder as well, she can't hold it long yet as she's not strong in this balance yet so we tend to get some fishtailing while she tries to figure it out then a few steps of really good and then she usually loses her balance and we resume the cycle, today she was able to hold an extension for a whole diagonal in quite an uphill balance and it felt really amazing!  I'm very impressed with her bravery to try and figure things out, she has her moments where she gets a bit pushy but it always comes from a good place, I feel she gets frustrated sometimes when she can't quite figure something out and I love that she's so interested in her work and wants to do things right so badly even when we do get some uncoordinated extras thrown in;)
On a personal note, those of you who know me well know how much I love music, these days I find Bob Seger's Against the Wind turning up on my ipod regularly, such an amazing song and of all the literature I've read and songs I've listened to over the years this one contains one of the greatest lines of all time in my opinion "wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then", that line is so incredibly deep and can relate to so many times and things in life and I'm sure pretty much every person on this planet could find a personal meaning to that very line, anyways just thought I would share that for anyone who is also a Bob Seger fan out there;)

Enjoy the ride!

Training continues to move steadily along, hauled Nico down to the Jim Brandon Center on Thursday again, this was the warmup day of the show this weekend so I was able to school him in the actual show ring rather than just the warmup ring which worked out really well, I was quite happy with how rideable he was, sometimes at shows he can get a bit nervous and consequently a bit touchy and edgy but he felt very much the same as at home, I felt I could really ride him and had good access to all of the movements, so our next step will now be to take it into a test and see if we can maintain this new degree of rideability in an actual test scenario, so in the next couple of weeks we will likely be taking in our first show of the season down here, exciting and scary all at the same time!  On the weather side of things we've had a whole lot of rain down here the past week, I know everyone back home is probably feeling very sorry for me haha!  One of the things about being down here in an environment so full of riders from across the continent is that you really become aware of different styles and techniques, which is natural considering there are so many different educational backgrounds available in this sport.   You really get the opportunity to see so many different riders, riding a variety of different horses and get a sense of how they train and how they've come up the levels etc.  When I look back on my experiences over the years and the horses I learned on I can honestly say that in the end it all worked out to make a path that has suited me well.  While growing up I never had the fanciest horse in the barn, nor the best equipment, nor the most lessons, but I had horses who challenged me and I was very committed to the education that I did receive at the time, and being the determined person that I am this was a good combination, as the years progressed and I rode many different horses and was able to gain consistent education I was able to evolve more and more and this continues to this day (and I hope will only continue to grow more each and every year:).  I can honestly say that every horse I've worked with over the years has had a valuable lesson for me to learn, some have taught me more than others and some it took me longer to figure out for sure, but through all the different types and temperaments I think I've gained really useable insight and many tools to draw upon in my day to day training.  I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that there are so many opinions of what the "best way" to learn is and for my feeling it's to commit to a path and then commit to learning on that path and continuing to evolve because no matter what, in the sport of dressage, you will never know enough and as riders it is our responsibility to continue to learn, continue to better ourselves (as riders, horsepeople and humans in general!) and enjoy the ride!