Birthday ride

Typically for my birthday there is one thing I always have on my to-do list, and that is riding. Today was no exception.

I was a bit worried last night, when what appeared to be a monsoon threatened with wind gusts and rain all night long. It was scary out there, and I was in town where there is some shelter offered from neighboring houses. I couldn't imagine how bad the winds might be out on the farm.

At 7 am when I took the dogs out it still looked wet, dark and windy. I went back to bed. My darling husband made us a fine breakfast, during which the sun came out and shone brightly through the front window, tempting me to chance it.  The weather report on the computer said 60% humidity/rain and high winds, but looking to the west it was clear blue skies so that decided it.

Ellie had picked out a pink hair bow for my birthday gift. One for me and one for herself, so I wore mine to the barn and we took some photos.

It was windy, and bright at the barn. 

Sinwaan was fairly calm, considering the elements.

We loaded up for the Lake. I thought because of the sun and the time (10 am) surely there would be a number of horse trailers at the lake. There was only one. Two gaited horses heading out as I was grooming. Sinwaan was a little edgy. He wanted to go with the other horses.

Ellie has found that this is the perfect spot for her. She can grab Sinwaan's lead rope and pull his head over to give him attention and she is up off the ground, giving her a little more height than usual.

There is a wooden rail along the perimeter of the parking lot that works great as a mounting block. The grass growing alongside it is an added bonus for Sinwaan. Usually he will grab a bite but today he was too interested in where those gaited horses went!

As you can see we had beautiful weather complimented by the fall leaves.

Sinwaan thinks posing is silly. He would rather be moving!

He stood nicely for a couple of photos before we set out on the trails. We walked a bit but he was really eager (combination of the lack of other equines + the wind I am sure) and a working mind and body always helps both of us. So off we went in a trot, leaving the family on foot to hike the trails.

We rode around the outer loop and then back on the inner loop. I thought perhaps we would meet up with either the gaited horses, or Laurie, but never saw any of them. Sinwaan had a couple of good spooks but this saddle is great at keeping me secure in my seat. Sometimes I think he jumps just to make sure I am paying attention.  We were a bit short on time (birthday lunch with family) so I trotted when it was safe to do so. We had to walk in a couple of muddy sections but overall I was impressed with the trails considering all the rain just hours prior.

As we were heading along the canal I looked across and saw Matt. I yelled and he heard me. He picked up Ellie so she could see me and wave, then Levi had a turn. Matt hollered "We'll race you back!" I said "ok!" They had the advantage of being on the right side of the canal, I had a little ways to go yet to the crossing point. Sinwaan was happy to trot along and it was only a couple of minutes before I had them in my sights. At that time I saw a deer jump across the trail behind them. Levi was focused on beating me and he was jogging pretty fast. I cantered to catch up to them. Ellie was up on Matt's shoulders and turned around to see us running up to her and she was delighted. Once we caught up we just walked but it was faster then Matt was going so we passed him and Ellie and followed Levi. He stayed ahead of us and beat us to the trailer.

When I ride on my birthday I can't help but think back to my first horse Dee. My last ride on her was on my birthday, four days before she died, 10/24/06. So this was a celebratory, and memorial, ride for me.

Mounted Orienteering

Mounted Orienteering is something that I have been wanting to do for awhile now. It hasn't worked out  mostly due to time and distance limitations. There seem to be a fair number of them up at Tollgate, which is over an hours drive with a trailer.

The last ride of the year (Blue Mountain Mounted Orienteering) was held at Bennington Lake, on my own conditioning trails, so I knew I wanted to be sure to attend.  I tried to rally some of my friends to go with me but they already had other obligations for the day.

Other then the ride managers, Shannon Perkins and Karen Wilcox, I did not recognize a soul. I did not understand how that was possible since I have been a member of the local ladies riding club for a number of years and thought for sure I would see someone I knew to pair up with.  As it turns out, a lot of the entrants traveled over from other towns.

I thought my trailer stuck out but now seeing this photo I realize it was just camouflaged!

The nice thing about trying a ride like this for the first time is the discount. Only $5 to participate!

Karen had brought a compass for me to borrow and I was glad for that. There was a short orientation meeting and I thought I had everything figured out.  As I looked around I felt kind of out of place. Everyone else was riding Western, dressed in multiple layers, and it wasn't until I met my teammates that I even saw another grey horse! I was also one of the few with a helmet.

After the mandatory safety meeting they asked everyone to split up into groups so they could see what they had. They decided to put me on one team, then I got bumped over to another team. I was trying to learn names and keep things straight but it was tough! The team I settled into was a group of beginners, everyone new to the event except for one woman named Michelle.

There were a couple of newbies in our group that seemed to know each other. Tracy was a nice woman on the black and white paint mare. After talking throughout the day it seemed like she would enjoy endurance riding. We had some nice chats and I enjoyed her company.

A small older woman on a big white horse (on the right in above photo) they called "Mom." I will be glad to see the results so I can try and put some names with the faces.

It's a shame I didn't take a camera because it would have been fun to have shots of the ladies working the stations, looking for clues and plates.

As we talked strategy in our group Michelle asked who could read a map. I told her I had limited experience with maps since I do endurance riding, and mostly I follow ribbons. She told me that was good enough and I would be the map reader.  One of the riders, I think it was Tracy, asked me about my saddle. It started one of my nicknames for the day "dressage saddle person." I was also "map-reader" and "endurance gal." It seemed that most of the ladies were having trouble remembering names.

When we were given our maps and clues at the start it took me a little bit to get my bearings. I ride these trails all the time but putting our location together with the map was a bit challenging! They thought we were starting with #8 and no matter how many times I told them that #8 was behind us on the other side of the parking lot they would disagree with me and make me really question myself. Michelle took her job as our leader a little too seriously and I found her to be a bit harsh at times.

While we did find the clues and plate for #3, we were really stumped on #2 and they were close together on the map. Part of the problem may have been that at the time I was not using my compass right. It wasn't until I asked for verification at our third station that I realized that and boy was I embarrassed!

The clues were not too tricky (aside from #2), but finding the plates were really difficult. When I talked to Karen about this after the ride she said that last year when they hosted a ride here the groups were done within an hour and they decided to make it a lot harder this year. As a beginner I would have liked it to have been a little easier to avoid a lot of the frustration that our group experienced. However I can also see how people who do this a lot and travel a ways would want the challenge.

For example, one plate was in a tree, and under a pine limb. So you had to be directly under the limb, looking straight up, to even see the plate! At that particular station I did see a familiar face, Dr Sarah Campbell, riding in another group.

As the ride progressed my map reading skills got a lot better and my confidence went up. My group expressed a lot of thanks after the ride for they would not have found a couple of the stations without my guidance. Score! Although I can't claim much in the way of finding plates. My count for the day was 1 out of 10 on discovery.

Towards the end we joined up with another group and that made for a lot of us going down the trail. Because we had spent so many hours out there looking for clues and plates I was ready to be done and wanted to do more trotting. We had done some trotting throughout the ride and our group seemed fine with it (We had briefly discussed riding speed before mounting up). We had a road crossing and I was out front so we walked until I thought we were all across (but I couldn't see the end). I heard someone say "we're through" and I gave another couple of minutes before picking up the trot. We were single file, with our group ahead of the other group. Then I heard some shouting, so pulled to a stop.  Once we were all able to gather together we discovered that a youth rider got stuck at the other side of the crossing and there had been some traffic so she got left behind. She was crying and quite upset. This is the same rider that I observed earlier (ahead of me for a bit) strategically holding her horse back so she could canter to catch up again multiple times. I felt badly that she was so upset, but why wasn't her sponsor with her? How did this happen?  That was just before our last station, so I directed most of their group on how to get back to the parking lot since they were ready to be done. One of their people stuck it out with us in searching for that last clue.

 

Beat the woman in the green jacket across the finish line!

At the finish was when my group realized that everyone in a group has to be across the finish line before the placement is recorded. We had all stuck together, but the other rider - all of her group had already made it in, we had to beat her to place ahead of them. It was silly but we all started trotting and trying to block the sole rider.

In conclusion, I would definitely do this again. However, I would want a team of people I normally ride with (friends) to be with me. It is always nice to meet new people and make new friends but going into it solo like I did opened it up to too many variables. Too large of a group, too big of a chance the horses won't get along, and riders will disagree on speed, etc. Also personality clashes. I think Michelle did a good job in teaching us a lot about the event, but I also found her a bit hard to take at times. Her horse was misbehaving a lot and she would shout and I was never sure if she was shouting at him or at one of us riders. None of the people in my group had ridden at Bennington before, so they were really relying on me to get them back to the parking lot. I felt like I couldn't have left early if I wanted to. And because the plates we so tough to find, we were out there all day long. I barely got home in time to shower and then take the kids to a birthday party they had been looking forward to.

Thank you Karen and Shannon for hosting the event. With pouring rain the night before, we all got very lucky with the weather! A bit of wind but overall nothing to complain about. I hope to do this again in 2013.

Saddle shopping

Through the past couple of months I have, through trial and error, learned more about saddles. How they fit the horse and how I feel in them. All good things to learn and it surprises me I never encountered all this trouble sooner in my horse-back riding travels. I have come to the conclusion that I really dislike saddle shopping. Part of it is my meager budget and part of it is just all the time it takes to track down something that "might" work and then ride a trial and realize that no, no it won't. I am a bit envious of the people who know what exactly they want/need and can just go and purchase it and have it work for both them and their horse.

With the help of some riding friends who know significantly more about this then I do, we have looked, and put numerous saddles on Sinwaan to see how they fit him.

The first one I really liked the look of, a leather english saddle that had both black and reddish tones. It was a medium tree and what I thought I needed at the time based on the measurement of the pommel gap for the withers. Mine measured 5" and so did this new saddle. However, after just looking at it, Cassandra put her fist in the pommel and quickly showed me that although they appeared to measure the same, mine actually was wider by about 1/3 a fist. That was amazing to me. So no need to trial that saddle. Cassandra also pointed out to me that placing the saddle up on Sinwaan, it wanted to slide down farther onto his back then was correct, and also did not sit level. The cantle sat much lower then the pommel and it just wasn't right.  Another thing she pointed out to me at the time was that Sinwaan's sheath appeared swollen, but that is a topic for another blog post!

At this point I had a list of about 10 local saddles available in a medium tree and my hopes diminished when I realized none of them would work and I would have to start over in my search.

I am thankful to have the resources locally of a ladies' riding club and a dressage club with which to inquire. Word gets passed around and soon various people I would encounter would ask me if I had found a saddle yet :)

Looking for a wide tree resulted in a much smaller selection. There was one about an hour's drive from me, and while it sounded great I hesitated due to the distance. I wanted to be able to put significant time in the saddle before purchasing it. The local tack shop would have let me try anything but they did not have what I was after.

Finally, during a lucky conversation with Annie I discovered that someone that I see every week (Bethany) had exactly what I was looking for. Annie had been planning to buy the saddle from Bethany but was changing her mind about it because she wasn't sure she would be doing much dressage with her current horses. It was a Wintec Isabella dressage saddle, very similar to what I have, but better because of an interchangeable gullet system and knee rolls that were also adjustable. Annie delivered the saddle to me and the next day I was able to go out for a very long ride to try it. I love that it has the same suede ("sticky") seat that I am used to, and I feel very secure in the deeper seat.

I trailered out to the Lake and did the short loop alone, then met up with Laurie and some other riders, one of whom I ended up doing the rest of the ride with, a lady named Stefani. All told I was in the saddle for about 3 1/2 hours doing all gaits, hills and flats. Sinwaan got sweaty but it was really hard for me to tell what was going on with his sweat pattern, other than there was a good air strip down his spine. When I dismounted the outside of my knees hurt. I wasn't sure what to blame it on,  but in talking with Heather later she suggested changing my stirrup length. Bethany's saddle had a deeper seat then mine, and I had used my own stirrups on the trial ride. So it is possible they ended up being just a bit short.

Within about 15-20 minutes the pain in my knees had subsided and overall I was pleased with the saddle but wanted a chance for Cassandra to look at the fit to Sinwaan and tell me her thoughts.  In the meantime I saw Laurie again and she gave me yet another saddle to try, one Betsy had gotten and wasn't using.  So the following week I had Cassandra come out to look at the two saddles. She felt that Bethany's saddle was a good fit for Sinwaan, and with the adjustable gullet it was a great choice because undoubtedly his shape will continue to change as his fitness level changes. He is very fat right now! We put Betsy's saddle up on him and it was ok,  but not as good a fit as Bethany's. So that confirmed my thoughts and I took Sinwaan out for another ride that day in Bethany's saddle, this time adjusting my stirrups down a hole.

I only had a short time to ride at the Lake so I started with the shorter inside loop and ended up on the outside longer loop and was pleased that I managed to do it all in an hour's time. Sinwaan and I encountered two does. One seemed curious about us and ended up jumping the fence and crossing our trail just about 8 horse lengths ahead of us. That was neat to see.  There was one other trailer at the lake but we never saw the other horse(s). It was a beautiful day for a ride. Fall is here and it was 57 degrees at 10 AM.

This time I didn't have knee pain, but with it being a much shorter ride it is hard to tell much at this point. Except for the fact that the saddle seems to be working out just fine. I am so happy to have finally found one! Sinwaan has gained more weight again since he has had a vacation during this summer, so it will be a priority for me to get in a ride every week to try and burn more calories. That seems to be the most efficient way to keep his weight down. Easy keeper!