Field Trips and Frustrations

This past weekend, my friend Jenn and I randomly decided to just go to my old trainer J’s farm in Wellington for a little field trip off the property, and to get some training. I’d been wanting to do this for a while, but after having FOUR DAYS IN A ROW of our ring not being dragged, I just said f*** it,  and had J pick us up.

Of course, my regular boots were in the shop getting patched, and I was breaking in my new pair of boots that I could barely move in. Perfect for a field trip LOL

When we initially told J we were coming, he gave us a quote for the weekend, and we figured it would be for just basic care, but no it was for FULL CARE, and boy did we feel bougie.

How we felt walking up to the ring. No one cared.

It ended up being a very productive weekend for me. As you all know I’ve been focusing on my dressage work as of late, and I hate to say but I hit a wall with Loo. She had just been hard for me the past month, and I couldn’t figure it out. For a while she was great, and I only needed a light tap with the dressage whip to remind her to use herself behind. But lately she’d been requiring much more “encouragement”, and I hate it.  I hate using my dressage whip so much, and I hated feeling like I wasn’t being kind to her. I understand that I only ask for forty minutes of her day, and that, as a hunter, she isn’t necessarily built for that type of work, but I was frustrated and just how hard it was for her, and how much fight she was giving me.

While I will definitely be continuing with the dressage work, it was nice to get another perspective. Immediately when J got on the first day, he explained how she’s getting her head too low. I’m so focused on her being round through her back, that she’s taking advantage of the situation and falling on her forehand.  J was explaining that a couple of days I need to reiterate that her point of balance needs to be withers up and hocks down. He popped her over a couple singles and went through the gymnastics a couple times and brought her in. Didn’t want her getting to tired or body sore for the weekend.

Saturday we got there and got on, wow full care wow, and immediately got to work in the covered ring on the flat. He’d set up multiple pole exercises for us, both trot poles and canter poles. We had a five stride down the long side and two trot pole areas that were set a little different so we really had to control stride length and rate where we were in our gaits. I was worried at first that Libby was going to be hard over the canter poles, because she’s notoriously a bit wild cantering over poles, but she surprised me and was great. After mastering the exercises, Jenns’ horse is just coming back from keratoma surgery so that was it for her, J and I headed out to the outdoor ring for some gymnastic work. The gymnastic work was really so she would sit and get off her front end and she was great for it. She pulled a bit, but I knew for the first time I’ve jumped her in like a year, she was great. After working on the line couple times, we headed in.

Got there Sunday, and again got on and got right to work. Similar flat work in the covered ring first, but this time he introduced a canter exercise in which there were three poles set one stride apart from each other and we had to fit in one stride in between and hold the lead. A lot harder than it sounds. I wanted to control her stride too much that I ended up taking too much away, and once I stopped touching her face except for the random balance check, she was great. She was definitely tired on Sunday though, and I could feel her pulling a bit more. After working through that, we went outside to the jumps and again worked on the gymnastic and a couple singles. This time through the gymnastic I could actually feel her sitting and listening to me while I asked her to bring her front end up. I stupidly asked J if I could hold onto her martingale since she was jumping me a bit out of the tack, to which he said “HA NO!” We ended great though, and I was very happy with her.

I love having any sort of videos or media, but boy I hate watching myself. I see every weakness and just focus on it. We were trying to come in condensed and short, and halt on a straight line. It definitely felt better the more we did it.

So now for the frustration. When our horses were picked up, I got a very passive aggressive text from my BM, saying that J was not allowed on property.  Why, I couldn’t tell you. He was there for literally 7 minutes getting them and picking up our stuff. Not only did she send me that text, but when I responded she never responded back to me. That really just sent me over the edge. Things have been rocky with the ring and a couple of other random aggressive moments she’s directed towards me, and this weekend was just the straw that broke the camels back. She and another boarder started talking about me to other boarders, to the point that Jenn and I really didn’t want to go back. So long story short, we are now for sure looking for other options. Unfortunately, the option I’d been looking at before, a big show barn in the area of Delray, is run by our BM husband, and I honestly want nothing to do with them or the owners after all this.

J is buying property in a community on the outskirts of Welly world, so were hoping to find someone with a small private farm thats looking for a couple boarders to offset costs. And fast because the drama is too much and I’m over it.

It doesn’t help that this place was hella gorgeous, and totally triple my budget, but hey a girl can dream

And yes that is us, taking a sneaky video because we couldn’t believe how gorgeous it was.