Pferd und Reiter

I had quite the busy weekend, and rather than blogging the day's events that night, I very heroically fell asleep on the Soporific Couch™. I of course also rode yesterday. Since there are events aplenty to cover, I'll get right down to it.

Saturday, Zhi's trainer invited us to a clinic at her ranch. I can't for the life of me remember the clinician's name, but he was a Bereiter(Germany's equivalent of a BHS Certified Dressage instructor. Read: Awesome) from Germany(of course.). Unfortunately, I had stayed up until 0300 Friday, and as a result, I didn't get nearly as early a start Saturday as I would have liked. But, undeterred, after feeding Zigs, I headed out to Cadence Ranch to find the clinic already in progress. When I got there, Christine was riding a very nice Hanoverian mare, and since she was the only person there that I knew, I sat by my car and watched. I must say that I was very impressed with the clinician. He had the best explanation of "forward" that I've ever heard. He said, "Forward does not mean rushing. Forward means hind legs are active, and rhythmic." I really liked the way he worked with the horses, and hopefully, I'll be able to ride with him the next time he's in town. I must admit that I really can't remember much more about the clinic than that, as it was pretty hard to hear the clinician from where I was sitting, and I spent most of the time looking at all the fancy Warmbloods that kept getting loaded and unloaded from trailers. Maybe one day I'll be able to have a horse like that when I grow up. Of course, I want to event, so more likely there are more Thoroughbreds in my future. Which I suppose is just as well, as I've become rather a fan of the breed. Anyway, I stayed for lunch with the clinician, and met several people named Linda (seriously), one of whom told me that the local Pony Club was connected with one of the local Fox hunts. In yet another demonstration why I need to WRITE MY BLOG IMMEDIATELY AFTER I LEARN INFORMATION LIKE THIS, Linda told me the name of the hunt. I guess I'll have to ask Google to find them. Surely, they have a website. Armed with that piece of useless information, I ran home to get ready for the next horsy activity of the day: trying out a prospect for Zhi.

The horse's name was Sirus, and he was a 16hh Appaloosa. As we drove down to the facility he was boarded at, Zhi filled me in on the details. As the story goes, he was sired by a fairly impressive Stallion up in Washington, but for some reason, his breeder was unsatisfied with him and was going to euth him. His current owner convinced them to instead hand the horse over to her, and she then spent the next few years breaking him to ride with the help of her trainer. As the years went on, though, she found herself less and less interested in horse stuff, and deceided to put him on the market up in Washington. As the story goes, her mom convinced her not to do that, that instead when she moved down to Texas, her mom would start working with him. Long story short, she brought the horse down here and he's pretty much been a pasture ornament.

When I hopped up on him to ride him, I found him to be still very Green. he didn't really respond well to my outside leg, and was difficult to steer. He seemed to have a good brain in there, but he was a little too lazy for my tastes. We thanked the seller for her time, and went on our way, which brings us to Sunday.

I woke up early on Sunday to go and take pictures for my Trainer, Fuzzy Pony and Saga's Mom at anotherclinic. This one was with my trainer's trainer, Bobbie Paulk. You can see my video handiwork over at Saga's blog, and you can see my still photo work here. I was so busy taking pictures and video and trying to figure out the best place to stand so that I got decent shots of everybody that I really didn't get to absorb much of what I heard. I did learn what a volte is, as well as a technique for asking your horse to come round. The "push the saddle forward" visual was an interesting visual, and I'll be experimenting with it on subsequent rides. Shortly after Fuzzy Pony and Saga's mom's rides, I dashed off to meet a friend who came in from out of town, during which absolutely nothing of horsy consequence occurred.

The same can be said for the hours of Monday, until about 1930, at which point I went and saddled up Zigs for a ride around the neighborhood. Since I had a lot going on in my mind, I really wasn't working on anything, I just walked him around the neighborhood. Apparently, our clearance from the neighborhood dogs had lapsed, as we were once again the scourge of subdivision. To his credit, Zigs was a very good boy about it all. He did spook once, though, when a huge Pit Bull came charging the fence out of nowhere at us. I sat it, and got him calmed down while the dog's owner called off Cujo and apologized profusely. Other than that, it was a nice, relaxing ride around the neighborhood, and when we got back into the pasture, I did a little bit of two-point work. I can definitely tell that my balace at two-point is improving, because I don't have to brace my hands on Zigs' neck nearly as much anymore. I'm still not convinced I'm in 100% the correct position, but there's a chance Saga's mom will be able to come over this weekend, I'm sure she'd be willing to tell me.

So what's on tap for tonight? Well, Zhi is getting changed now to ride Zigs. I'll definitely let y'all know how that one goes!

On the Road Again

It's been quite the horsy weekend so far!  I had a Friday off of work, so I went with my Sweetie to check out several prospects down in the Houston area.  First up was a cute little Strawberry Roan Mare down in Sugarland.   Zhizhu and I were a bit uncertain about this mare going in, because a day before, we received a call from one of the other trainers whose horses we were due to look at that day saying that the mare in Sugarland's owner had called her asking her if she could come and fix some of the mare's problems.  

..Problems!?

According to the trainer who called us, the mare had reared when the girl first got her, and at the right lead canter would turn and go to the center of the arena, completely blowing off her rider.  After hearing this, Zhizhu and I almost called and canceled our appointment to see the mare, but after talking to Zhizhu's trainer and Saga's mom, we decided to go ahead and keep the appointment. The ad had her as 15.2hh, but she was maybe 14.2. That was a bit shorter than Zhizhu would have preferred, but not necessarily a deal breaker. I was going to look pretty silly on her, but she'd suit Zhizhu's height ok. After grooming her, and picking out her feet, Zhizhu and the seller went and took her into the round pen to see her move, since the seller had apparently rolled her ankle and wasn't in condition to ride. I never like it when I go to look at a horse and there's no one there to ride it before I hop on, so I usually ask if I can watch the horse move in the round pen. It won't necessarily let me know if the horse is going to be a complete lunatic under saddle, but it will tell me if they're a complete lunatic. At least, that's the theory. At any rate, while Zhizhu watched the mare in the round pen, I switched out my saddle's gullet to fit the mare. Almost on cue, as soon as I was done with the gullet Zhi was walking back to me. Reading her body language, I determined that nothing crazy had happened in the round pen, so we saddled the mare up.

Out of force of habit, we asked if there was a mounting block we could use, before I realized that I could quite easily mount from the ground. I hopped up in the saddle and off we went. Since she was so short, her movement was drastically different than what I was used to. I really don't know how to qualify it other than that she just felt weird. She really didn't listen to seat commands and tried to rush at the trot. She also didn't understand how to round, which I found kind of strange, considering she came from a Hunter background. Of course, it's possible the hunters use different cues than I'm used to. Sort of as a last ditch effort, I shortened my stirrups to jumping length, and trotted and cantered her in two-point. Once I went up into two point, she seemed to go, "Oh! I know what we're doing now!", and listened a bit better. I didn't have any of the problems with her that the seller had mentioned to the trainer, and decided that she was just fine for Zhi to try out.

As I'd sort of expected Zhi didn't like her much. She wasn't really a bad mare but, neither Zhi nor I clicked with her. So, it was onto the next batch. The next batch was a pair of ex-racehorses. One of which was grey, the other was a bay. In the videos we saw, the grey looked nice and quiet, and the bay looked a little hot. As it turns out, the truth was the complete opposite. Not that I'd necessarily call the bay quiet per se... I'd consider him to be more responsive. He took really really light cues and he stumbled and bucked with me. The buck wasn't a "get off me.", it was him spooking from me coming unbalanced. Zhi really liked the bay, and if I'm honest, I did rather like him to, but I'm seriously concerned about my wife having a horse that sensitive. Let me be clear though, it's not that I doubt Zhi's capabilities, its just that although the horse is 9, he really doesn't have much life experiences. I let Zhi up on the bay, and I'll admit that he took good care of her. He acted like a totally different horse while she was riding him. Which is certainly very positive, and indicative of a good mind, but I think at this point, before making the decision to buy this horse, I want to take along somebody with more experience to ride him and tell us what they think, because I feel like this horse falls into a gray area that at my current level of experience, it would be unwise of me to make a decision.

Last up was yet another ex-racehorse that Zhi's trainer passed on. To cut a long story short, this guy was what most people think when they hear "ex racehorse". He was hotter than the sun, and spooky as all get out. I rode him all of 5 minutes before deciding there was no way in hell I was letting Zhi up on him. Hell, Zhi didn't even want me to get up on him. In the future, I'll listen when she says that. Now, before y'all get up in arm's, Zhi's trainer hadn't gone out to see the horse yet, she had simply seen the ad and talked to the seller over the phone, and the horse sounded good on the phone. I can't really fault her for that, I lost count of all the horses I went to look at that sounded great on the phone, but were a totally different story in person. Tune in next week, where the search will continue! :)