ladies horse camp

Well, I made it through an all day horse camp...I am sore as can be, but I got through the day with minimal injury. Most importantly, I stayed on and did not look like a flailing mess riding (I even watched the video to confirm this -- do I ever look like a quiet rider these days?)

My mount for the day was Charlie, a 6 year old thoroughbred (and my favorite horse to ride at the barn). I was keeping my fingers and toes crossed that I would be able to spend the day with him (instead of ahem, a chestnut horse I have been avoiding) after 6 weeks off. Phew.

Winter Charlie -- looking a little goofy and bleached

Summer Charlie -- svelte, fit and gleaming

We started our day helping with morning chores, which for me included emptying frozen water buckets, picking out ice and refilling. Instantly I got my hands and feet wet (I kept kicking the ice in the buckets until I got through to water...a good idea, except my waterproof boots are um, not so waterproof anymore) but we successfully got everyone inside watered and left the remaining buckets outside to thaw in the sunshine. We went over our itinerary for the day and collected our respective mounts. Charlie lives in one of the back pastures down a main aisle between the paddocks and it was super slippery walking back there to get him. He had just been turned out with his best friend and was pretty annoyed that I was pulling him from his morning hay snack, but he followed along anyway (he doesn't have a bad bone in his body). He's a bit of a worrier (which I think is a cute horse quality) and he had this terrible look of concern as we gingerly made out way back to the barn. I was curious why he was walking along at such a snail's pace until the woman collecting his best bud from the same paddock said he slips all the time in the snow! Aw, poor guy. So we took it very slow (I don't have a ton of experience with horses in snow), and the aisle was packed very hard with snow from the truck going up and down it.

Our first lesson was all flat work (thankfully) and since there were 6 of us in the indoor, it made for some tricky coordination to stay out of everyone's way. Charlie and Luc (his BFF) were both UP...in a way I have never seen Charlie before, and then B told me that none of the horses had been worked lately (fantastic)...Charlie was just gnashing the bit and poking along like a giraffe for the first part of the lesson. I discovered something while riding Charlie on Saturday...I feel incredibly calm on him...more so than most horses. He doesn't intimidate me with his size, and since I know his antics are not coming from a malicious source, I feel as though he and I meet each other half way. Even when he gets pretty frazzled, I am VERY quiet on him. He doesn't rattle me the way say, Arizona does. This is going somewhere, I promise.

So after warming up a little we did a little exercise where I led the group for our trot work. Luc was racing up behind us and Charlie responded by sucking back and pinning his ears...eventually I got him focused on me and we got a nice working trot to lead everyone around. Only one of the doors to the indoor were open which made Charlie and Luc for looky at that end of the arena, and as we trotted around in two point, Charlie decided there was a horse eating monster outside and spooked right about 10 meters right and then let out a little buck. I'm happy to say, I didn't fall off (after watching the video and seeing my instructor jump out of the way I probably should have) though, in my effort not to catch Charlie in the mouth and drove my hand into his neck and he sprained my pinky pretty bad...whoops! Luc proceeded to dive in the same direction feeding off of Charlie's energy. Luckily we both diffused the boys quickly enough that it didn't get too goofy. We finished our lesson with some pole work and sitting trot (torture when you've been out of the saddle for 6 weeks). Luc managed to get in another couple of meltdowns at the scary end of the arena, but this time I was a little more prepared and wasn't bothered in the slightest.

We put our ponies back out and went inside for lunch and a video on conformation. We would be doing conformation analysis of our horses after our lunch break. The video was awesome, though a little dated and long, and despite what anyone thinks they know about conformation, it always helps to look at examples of the good, bad, and what you can live with. It was neat to go back and look at our horses to pick apart the little weakness in their confirmation and to notice how it affects their overall performance in a particular discipline. After lunch we had a lesson in equine massage, which was awesome (except for my now throbbing pinky) and treated our horsie friends to about an hour of nice massage work. It really is a fantastic way to bond with your pony when it's too cold/wet to ride.

We then took pairs of horses into the indoor and reviewed what we had learned about conformation. It was very interesting to see how the way a horse is put together effects their overall performance and their tendency to excel in certain disciplines.  Charlie has nearly ideal conformation as a good all rounder, with our only complaint being his slightly upright shoulder.

We spent the afternoon playing mounted games on some very frisky horses. Charlie and Luc especially had a tough time keeping it together and I nearly got bucked off during the egg and spoon game. Charlie, sensing my focus placed somewhere else than on him paired with me bridging the reins in my left hand and therefore losing all contact with his mouth encouraged him to act silly. We were trotting around lovely with the egg still perched on the spoon and WAAHOOO! BUCK! I stayed pretty well seated but the egg went flying! Our last game was called the catalog race. Horse catalogs were placed at one end of the arena and you had to race down, dismount, rip out a page (my instructor shouted a number on our way down) and run back with our horses in tow on foot. Everything was going swimmingly for me until ripped out the page (*see: horse eating monster) and Charlie wanted nothing to do with chasing after me and that thing flapping in the wind! All in all, it was a pretty good day, but even after the games were over Charlie was still jumping out of his skin...I would much rather be mounted than on the ground when horses are acting nervous or spooky.

The day finished off with a pot luck dinner (I made strawberry shortcake) and cocktails, and of course, some horse tv courtesy of WEG.

**I am just going to post this rather anti-climactic entry now...sigh.