And incidentally ... I've now completed my motto: Nana korobi, yaoki. I have fallen seven times, risen eight. I think this is just going to go up incrementally, but ... I'm amused.

It was only a derby. :)

That went, overall, very well. :D

THE GOOD:

* Reveille was a star. She was pretty calm and quite rideable all weekend, even on Saturday when she was somewhat insecure.

* Our jumping rounds went beautifully -- not a hesitation or a spook at a jump anywhere.

* Stabling was comfortable, and Rev was a good girl with new horses.

* We -- the folks from our barn -- had a great time hanging out together and supporting each other.

* I met a lot of really nice people who I'll look forward to seeing again.

* I got to hang out with a lot of really nice people who I already know and only get to see at shows.

* The weather was beautiful and perfect.

* The facility we were at was gorgeous -- amazing scenery, lovely arenas and jumps, all of it; and the owner is a nice fellow.

* I felt very confident going into our jump rounds on Sunday -- I felt like I had my ducks in a row, and there was no fear. Just knowing what I needed to do, acknowledging that I could walk Rev if I needed to, and confidence that we'd get through just fine.


THE BAD

* I don't think I'll ever clinic with that particular teacher again. She started us off with obstacles way bigger than any of us were ready for, including a solid obstacle -- those aren't really okay at cross-rails level. She's not a bad teacher, I think, but she's not one I want to take more lessons from.

* The solid obstacle I mentioned ... well, it was much bigger than we'd ever jumped before. I decided we'd go for it anyway. Rev jumped it the first time, which was good, but I came way, way off balance after. I should have had my feet farther forward. I would have been able to recover if Rev hadn't started bucking. :/ As it was, I cussed once on the way down, then landed on my shoulder and ribcage, rolled all the way over, and rolled all the way onto my feet. I didn't think much of it at the time, but as it turns out, that hurt kind of a lot. I think I damaged some of the soft tissue in my shoulder, as well as an impressive deep muscle bruise. Go, go, gadget ice/ibuprofen/heat.

* Rev was kind of bratty when we weren't jumping. This taught me a few things: one, I can be much more forceful than I was being, and everything will be okay. Two, I shouldn't start warming her up for jumping so early. By the time we went for our cross-rails round, she was pissed. off. at not really doing anything for so long. She was ready to GO. So that's a good thing to know.

* Dressage ride times at 7:30 AM SUCK. SUCK SUCK SUCK. I'm so much better in the saddle when I've been able to get some sleep.

* I don't think I'll tent-camp at a show again. I'll sleep in the back of the car, in the back of the horse trailer, whatever ... I might even sleep in a much larger tent, but not my little dome tent again.



So ... yeah. A success. I will probably post more later, but for now, must work.

Holy crap, it's tomorrow?!

So, yeah. My original plan didn't work out quite the way I'd planned. I ended up having to work a bit late last night, then had to pick up a cot and a camp chair (which took me two stores to do), then had to get some food put together for the show, et cetera. I didn't get to ride, which is a real bummer.

I'll ride tonight, though, and get my tack and barn accessories loaded into the trailer. Then home to pack up the home stuff, test my tent, pack up the dogs, get the cooler ready, do laundry, pack the laundry, and try to get some sleep.

I doubt I'll have a chance to bathe Rev, but maybe I'll find someone to hold her while I wash her tail at least. She'll be clean enough if I just do the hot toweling bit, especially because this is just. a. derby.

Rev has nice neat feet, and new shoes on the front, too. Cliff decided to put nifty aluminum jumping shoes on her, and it's pretty fun. Very shiny!

We had a jumping lesson on Wednesday, too. I got some things right that I hadn't been able to get right in the past, and MT had some good things to say after the lesson. I did, however, find myself spooked about jumping her out of the canter, even though we didn't have any trouble with it. I just need to jump a thousand more jumps, honestly, and lose the nerves. I WILL get over it. As much because I really want to get over it as anything.

I also discovered that certain movements make my back hurt like a bitch. :/ I jumped ahead of Rev once, and when we landed my back seized up and it felt like things were grinding against each other ... ow. Fortunately, Rev seems to know when things are really wrong, as opposed to me just being worried, and she takes very good care of me then. She just walked slowly to the center, without me having to steer her much, and let me move around until I got my back unlocked and my head stopped swimming. Good horse.

But yes, progress is being made. Mantra: I have time. Mantra: It's okay to be scared. Acknowlege the fear, and then focus on what you have to DO. Feel vs. act -- choose act.

I also decided, while pondering fear, that the important part of the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, as written by Frank Herbert, is not "I must not fear."

No, the important part is: "And when [the fear] has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." I, and the knowledge of things I need to do. Thank you, Paul Atreides.

My assigned blackboard lines:

"I must not be nervous. If I'm nervous, Reveille will be nervous, and that doesn't help."

I need to write this on the blackboard 500 times, and I need to not be thinking of things to be nervous about while I do it!

Meanwhile, allow me to demonstrate my neurosis. I'm listing out the things I need to do/get/pack before the teeny tiny little derby:

THURSDAY

* Get tire fixed
* Get wiper fluid
* Brakes?
* empty cooler
* Ride!!

FRIDAY

* Ride!!
* Clean tack
* Grocery shopping, unless I do it Thursday
* Pack car
* Load trailer with tack
* Bathe horse?


SATURDAY

8 AM leave for Rafter K



PACKING LIST

TACK

* dressage saddle
* jump saddle
* dressage show pad
* dressage fleece pad
* jump fleece pad
* jump show pad
* bridle
* breastplate
* side reins


ACCESSORIES

* white brushing boots
* blue show boots
* brushes, etc
* stud chain
* sit-tite
* longe line
* longe whip
* large blue bucket
* hay net
* small yellow bucket
* dish soap (small)
* towel


MY CLOTHES

* helmet
* schooling cover
* velvet cover
* event cover
* event vest
* show shirt
* show coat
* schooling breeches
* show breeches
* white breeches
* event polo
* bandanas
* boots
* spurs
* gloves
* 3x underwear
* 3x socks
* Smartwool socks
* black polo
* 2x t-shirt
* sweatshirt
* black thermal
* jeans
* jammies
* warm hat

MY ACCESSORIES

* bathroom kit
* bug spray
* sunblock
* tent
* cot
* chair
* sleeping bag
* pillow
* medicines


SHOPPING

* cot
* chair
* bug spray
* Powerade Zero
* water
* Luna bars, 3
* ice
* carrots
* green onions
* steak for fire meat


FOOD TO PACK

* marinate fire meat
* rice/dragon noodles?
* veggies
* hard boiled eggs
* cookies
* tinfoil


Why YES, I'm over-packing a bit, especially with the clothes. Why do you ask? Seriously, it'll be in the high 40s at night and in the morning at the show ground, so I'll need warm clothes for Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Anyway. It's JUST A DERBY. JUST A DERBY. JUST a derby. My horse is five. I'm not a professional. If things don't go perfectly, that's totally understandable. Totally. That's what derbies are FOR.

Relax, self.

Somerset Saddlery review

Oh, and in other news: My Bobby's English Tack rubber reins FINALLY got here from Somerset Saddlery. The reins are lovely, they're the right size, right color, everything. I love the product! Somerset Saddlery was the only online retailer I could find that had them in the brown color and cob size, and they had a great price on the reins.

BUT.

Their order processing and shipping was abysmally slow. I ordered on Monday, June 7. I didn't hear back on shipping schedule at all, so I emailed the customer service address on Friday, June 11. I'd expected that the reins would get packed and shipped that week, based on my experience with other online retailers like State Line, Dover, English Riding Supply, and Legacy Tack.

Customer service got back to me on Saturday, so good turnaround time there, but the answer was that the reins would ship the next week. Hrm. Well, okay, not much I can do about it.

The email saying that my reins had shipped came on June 16th, 9 days after I'd ordered them. I expected shipping to be fairly quick, so I looked for them on the 18th and the 19th ... no dice.

They finally arrived yesterday, the 23rd, two weeks and two days after I ordered them.

I'm not happy about the processing or shipping time at all. On the other hand, I don't know the tack shop's situation: they could have been at an event, the owner (who was the one who emailed and shipped for me) could have been the only one working, they might have had to wait for the reins to arrive in their shop before they could send them to me, or any of a million other not-their-fault and totally forgivable circumstances. They also don't guarantee shipping time, so that's okay there.

I am definitely happy with the product and the price. I couldn't find Bobby's brown cob size rubber reins for a better price anywhere else, and in some cases I couldn't find them at all in that color/size combination. The shipping was reasonable, too.

So overall review: If you're in a hurry and don't want to pay expedited shipping prices, just trust that the shop will ship right away, use Dover instead. However, if price is your main concern, and you don't mind waiting a while, absolutely order from Somerset Saddlery.

Derby planning and excitement

So it turns out that Reveille is a whole 'nother horse under saddle when she's in heat. She's forward, energetic, willing, and listening to me. 0.o This is a surprise, to say the least. She's a pain in the neck on the ground, especially on the way back to her pasture, but under saddle, she's a dream. Effortless to ride. Workable. Strange!! I'll take it, though, and I won't complain.

In other news, I'm getting stupid excited about the event derby coming up. It'll be our first show off-site! It'll be her first trailer ride in three years, too. I hope she loads okay -- I have no reason to think she won't, honestly, except that she hasn't done it in a while. With MT and TD there, though, it shouldn't be a problem. They have experience and authority.

I do have a little trepidation, though, about how she'll be at a new place. The last time I took her to a new place -- three years ago, almost! -- she was more than fine. Then again, whenever we get out into the cross-country field here, she gets really look-y. And she's definitely known to spook at things in the field, even at home. I guess the only thing I can do is ride defensively and pre-emptively, like I've learned to do. Just use the experience I got at horse camp: "Even if you do have a problem, you'll ride through it anyway." And as MT put it, "just remember what you have to do, and do it, and don't think about being scared."

So I'm going in with the assumption that this will be BIG FUN!, and that it won't be scary. :) I'm going to assume that Rev will be a star.

I'm having a good time planning for the event, too, oddly enough. I have a list made of things I need to bring/pack/do. I love the anticipation of events! :)

I do need to find out what TD's schedule is for Monday -- she'll be staying an extra day to teach lessons at a friend's barn near where the derby is, so I'm wondering if she will have time to put a ride on Reveille. Alternatively ... I'm pondering whether I can take Monday off, or just part of Monday, or something, to join in the lesson at the friend's barn. We'll see.

So yes. Excited! *bounce*

Synchronicity

Hahahahaha -- ohhh, I have to laugh, because otherwise I'd cry.

Reveille and I have the same cycle. Our bad weeks are the same. How funny. How sad. Not ironic, though, unless you mean "ironic" in the Alanis Morissette song sense, which is to say, not ironic at all, just annoying.

I didn't realize mares' cycles were 28 days, just like women's. Oh dear.

Anyway, she's a serious pain in the ass on the ground, but I thank my lucky stars that she believes (and MT and I reinforce) that once she's under saddle, it's Work Time. I've been doing pretty well lately with demanding her attention and responsiveness, and that seems to work really well for her. MT, of course, is much better at it than I am. ;)

So she's much more energetic and responsive under saddle when she's in heat, or maybe it's just that the camp did a lot for both of us, getting us to gel and bond. Either way, last night's ride was extremely pleasant. She was well forward, listening, and willing to work. It's SO nice. I've learned that if posting her trot is work, then she doesn't have enough energy. Last night, posting was effortless, and she was carrying me. I wish this would last forever!

Heat

Oh argh. I discovered on Saturday that Rev is officially in season. UGH. She was twitchy, whinnying, and generally antsy on the walk to and from the pasture, tender while I groomed her, and squirrely on the longe line -- squirrely like she rarely is any more.

She did work down, though, and I'm very glad that in general, when she's under saddle, she knows that's work time. Still ... ugh. Damn that biological imperative!

We'll see how she is this evening; I took yesterday off to take care of life stuff of my own.

Nikorobi, sanoki. (Warning: Long.)

I wasn't really expecting to have to live up to my motto -- nanakorobi, yaoki, or 'seven times fall, eight rise' -- during event camp. Unfortunately ... I had to embody the motto. And I did, for which I am very proud of myself. Thus the title of the post: 'two times fall, three rise.'

Tuesday went brilliantly. We did a canter pole exercise for the first session, an exercise I'd done before with MT. My teacher for event camp was TD, which is totally fine and wonderful, because she's just as good as MT and, unsurprisingly, has a very similar teaching style. Reveille was a star through the exercise, and I learned quite a bit about riding the ground poles, keeping her steady and in a canter rhythm.

The afternoon lesson was out on the northeast cross-country field, and Reveille was, again, a star. I had no problems jumping her at all -- we did small logs, up and down a mound, and generally getting comfortable in the jumping field. The other two students in the cross-rails class had to repeat the jumps several times, but Rev and I did them right the first time, every time.

(Does anyone see where this is going yet?)

So I praised her a lot, told her what a good girl she was, and put her up for the evening after our two classes.

Wednesday had a few more problems. The weather had turned on us, from nice but windy to cold, windy, and rainy, and the night before there'd been thunder and lightning along with the rain. So I arrived to the barn Wednesday morning to discover that I had a LOT of horse. A. Lot. Not only that, but I also had a LOT of really quite pissy horse. Sigh! She was tired, she hates being out in cold rain, and she was not looking forward to more riding.

But I got her out in the field anyway, and we got started. Not long after the lesson started, TD asked the class to start jumping some logs we hadn't jumped the day before, in the southeast field. One of the logs I know we'd jumped once before, at the event derby clinic, so I figured we'd be okay. I managed to forget or just not do the thing I need to do most of all: ride every step. I just didn't do very well what we'd been practicing all along: keep a steady rhythm and keep the horse steady to the jump and after the jump. Her trot rhythm changed, she started to wobble on the approach, and I wasn't sitting right.

She ducked right really quickly, and I found myself falling. I didn't quite fall all the way, but enough that I couldn't recover my balance, so I kind of kicked out of the stirrups and threw myself out of the saddle. It wasn't so bad -- she'd mostly stopped by the time I fell, and I was able to pretty much control my landing so my event vest took most of the impact. My lower back and sacroiliac joints hurt, but not badly, and I could get on with it.

So we jumped the scary log three more times, and then proceeded. No further falls in the morning lesson -- even when we jumped up a bank and then down the bank for the very first time. I was kind of scared of the down-bank, but ... it came out okay. She did water just fine, too. We even jumped the scary log from the back side, where it's a bit charred and shiny and extra-scary. I rode the approach right, though, and she jumped it the first time. She jumped big and round, but she jumped it.

So then, in the afternoon lesson, we went into the center sand arena for showjumping practice. We'd never done a course as long as the one TD had us doing, and we'd never really done even a small course of cross-rails at the canter all the way through. Things were going just fine, once I remembered the course, and Reveille was being pretty good, if a bit cranky.

So ... somehow, toward the last quarter of the lesson, we were both getting tired. And on one three-jump line, I did the exact. same. thing. I'd done in the morning lesson to get myself dumped. I didn't sit quite right, I wasn't firm enough on the approach, my reins weren't evenly connected, and I let her bobble on the line coming into the jump. She jumped it way to the right, where it was much bigger than the center, and then as we landed, she veered hard right.

I had time to cuss loudly before I went sprawling in the sand. This time, it hurt. I fell in exactly the same way I'd fallen before -- right side first, but mostly on my back, avoiding hitting my head or my collarbones. It took me a minute to really assess my physical condition, make sure that nothing was hurt. I actually thought to myself "you better move, or they're going to think you're really hurt ..." ["they" being the assortment of young teenagers watching the lesson and TD] So I got up on hands and knees and rocked a little to stretch out my lower back, assured TD that I was okay and hadn't hit my head, and then moved to sit on the sand.

It was then that I really started cussing. ;) I was pissed at myself -- I knew what I'd done wrong. I knew what I needed to do to fix it. And yet, I didn't do the right thing. Grrrr! I'm a better rider than that! And dammit, that HURT. HURT, I tell you.

But -- of course, I got back into the saddle, and we jumped that line a few more times in the canter. I rode my best through it, and we had no further problems. We rode the entire course again, and again, no further problems.

I pretty much toughed it out, didn't let on too much how rattled I was -- this proved MT's statement that "falling doesn't do you any good, and it doesn't do [Reveille] any good." I kind of talked to another of the teachers/campers about it, and she assured me that we've ALL been there, and we ALL feel stupid when we fall. This helped a little.

I abandoned my plans to organize a group dinner and just picked up some nachos, made a quick visit to my chiropractor (which helped), picked up an inexpensive breastplate, and then went home to indulge in ice, ibuprofen, and horse liniment. :/

Thursday was the day when we'd put together everything we'd learned and jump a cross-country course all the way round, at our level.

I had SUCH a hard time getting out of bed that morning. My back hurt. Like, HURT. I had to tell myself that I knew it'd get better once I got moving, that I didn't want to look like a wuss in front of the entire camp, that all I had to do was ride that one course and I would be done, and that I didn't want to miss out on the last day. That I'd regret it forever if I called out hurt. And even after all that motivation, I had to pretty much sternly tell myself to cowboy up and just get out of bed!

When we walked the course, I got more and more nervous. I told TD that I needed her to talk me out of being scared -- she's not so good at the reassurance, but she did her best. My friend K did a little better at the reassurance when I rode up to the group she and TD were in and asked, "Tell me again why I shouldn't be scared?" Well, I found out the answer to that question after our course ride.

The warmup went well -- Rev was calm, not pissy, and jumping well. I was even jumping well with her, keeping firmly in mind my seat and leg and body position. Things were starting to calm down in my head. Still, when we got on course, I was tense enough at the first two jumps that she just trotted them, rather than jumping.

At jump 3, she spooked at a jump that'd been moved overnight -- and I just sat down on her and made a wall out of my right leg, right seatbone, and right hand, and we got right back on course. This is when I realized I could do it. We jumped around the northeast field, and then moved into the southeast field for the second part of the course. Which included the scary log she'd refused the day before. TD was standing in the field, helping me out with instructions, and I was only half listening -- the other half was just focusing on my ride. I'd calmed down and was just paying complete attention to what I needed to do.

So we approached the log, my seat and legs firmly on, my hands not hard but not allowing any deviation either, and I gave her a firm leg aid to keep going forward, dammit! And we jumped the log perfectly. TD said later that she saw Rev thinking about ducking out again, but that I'd ridden it correctly and given her no choice but to go over it -- and after that, Rev was much more committed to my ride and to jumping the rest of the course. Hallelujah!

The rest of the course went like clockwork, even the water, and I was so, so proud of myself for it. I was proud of Reveille, too, for working with me, but I was more proud of myself for just doing it in the first place, even though I was hurting and scared - and in the second place, for doing the course well and successfully. I are teh brave. :)

MT talked to me after the ride too, wanting to know how it went, and I was proud to say it'd gone awesomely. I explained where I was with it, and I explained what I'd realized as I put Rev up: the answer to "Why shouldn't I be scared?" is "Because even if you have a problem, you're going to ride through it." MT was pleased with me, and I was too. :)

I think I'll remember that answer now. Even though I have a problem, I can ride through it. And I did, and I did.

What I wish I'd done

I wish that, when I bought Reveille, I'd printed out a copy of her ad on equine.com, saved the receipts I got from the seller, and that kind of thing. :) I'm suddenly feeling like a scrapbook would have been a fun thing.