Education and schooling

Emma over at Fraidy Cat Eventing wrote a post recently regarding how you know whether your horse is schooled, or rather, well-schooled. I'm sure the answer here varies wildly among horse people and certainly changes between disciplines. In my world... that of OTTBs working on second careers, I rarely see what I would call a "well-schooled" horse. But Emma's post got me thinking about what that means for me and my horse. And more deeply, what the difference is between education and schooling when it comes to riding (results may vary).

Webster’s defines education as ‘knowledge and development resulting from an instructive process’, or more specifically, the act or progression of acquiring knowledge. Regarding horses, I think that education comes from experience, exposure and being confirmed (or tested) in various disciplines (ie, showing or performing a discipline in front of a judge of some kind). I consider most things that Riley experiences as a part of his education, xc schooling, training rides, lessons, hacking... all of it. If it increases his progression under saddle, I count it as education. Schooling refers to education received, so while they almost fall under the same definition, when it comes to horses, I think they are much more nuanced.

So how do we define well-schooled then? Well schooled is defined as having been well trained or educated sufficiently, and here's where the nuance comes in. What is sufficient? What counts as enough to claim a horse as well-schooled? In my world world well-schooled equates to being "confirmed" in some capacity. As in, my horse is "confirmed on the flat" = he/she can walk, trot, canter in both directions with a rider. Confirmed over fences = jumps willingly/cleanly around a course of jumps appropriate for his education. This is a very basic way of looking at it I understand, and I could go into much more detail within each category, But I'm over-simplifying for a reason.

What is a twenty meter circle anyway?

Lots to report over here with another successful weekend of riding behind us. If you live in the Northeast you know that we got an inordinate amount of rain and a freak thunderstorm during the week that left everything a big wet mess. We were able to get the ring sorta dragged Saturday enough to do some flat work and Riley got reintroduced to the Pessoa. In the ring we worked on slightly raised cavalettis and two canter poles set 60 ft apart. I could feel the gears turning in Riley's brain approaching the 4 raised poles like, "Am I supposed to jump all of these"? Luckily he didn't, though he felt like cantering a few of them made much more sense!

I took a trip down to Dover and Maryland Saddlery on the hunt for a few things for the pony and a dressage whip. I was also looking for a new helmet, but they didn't have any of the new ones in yet:/ I did pick out a new whip and also picked up this little beauty that I've been obsessed with (plus 30% off)!

From Dover's site: Because who doesn't love houndstooth?

Let's play catch-up + millions of redundant photos + bonus!

Riley got his shoes back on (since the beginning of December) a few days ago and homeboy was feeling REALLY good about himself. Our new farm is VERY rocky and I was pretty nervous about how he'd cope with the turnout fields (mostly just near the gates). To my surprise, he's held up pretty well for the last two months, at least until the mud arrived. He got a bit sore and popped an abscess, so I switched his turnout schedule so he's in half the time and I think he's appreciating the relief. Temperatures are warming up quite a bit and all of the horses seem to have spring fever! The ring was still sloppy, so i thought I'd hop on him and ride around inside to see how he was feeling... well, that ended quickly as he got all sorts of frazzled and I hopped off and decided we'd do some free lunging -- as a rule, I NEVER lunge or free jump for this sort of purpose, but I had little choice in crappy footing and less than ideal circumstances!

Support System

I learned a long time ago to know better than to question the timing in my life. It's easy to get caught up in all of life's ups and downs and get distracted by what isn't going right for us vs. finding the positive (hint: there's always something). But I am guilty of getting caught up in negative thinking too... so when everything in my life is seemingly coming together, I look around with bated breath waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe it's my Irish Catholic guilt setting in, you know the theory that if something good happens something bad must follow???

But maybe, just maybe all of the things ARE coming together in the right way at the right time?

It's possible, right?

I've been given the most amazing support system. I have a wonderful trainer who believes in me, my horse's ability and pushes me to become a better rider and horse woman. I have a family who support my insane love of horses (since I was a wee little girl) from 4000 miles away in whatever ways they can. And now, my wonderful SO has assisted in making more of my dreams/goals come true.

For Valentine's Day, he told me I was going to the MDHT Adult Eventing Camp in May. You see, he knew I was interested in it, but also knew that it was a luxury I probably wouldn't allow for myself (not to mention is would account for a large portion of my yearly competition budget). I am not into Valentine's Day AT ALL and I made it very clear that I felt like it was a silly holiday and I'd rather treasure someone sporadically throughout the year etc. But he insisted in a very sweet way that he was going to do something whether I liked it or not:)

So imagine my surprise when he told me what he wanted to do! I maybe mentioned this camp once to him in passing!

!!!!!!!!

 

Free bird!

I took a mental health day on Thursday to reset my messy mind a little. I've got lots of exciting things going on in various aspects of my life and I think that taking the time to pause and reflect is important so as not to get bogged down with the details! Horses have always offered me that sort of reprieve and I'm grateful to be able to turn to them when I needed a distraction or support (or just a good laugh).

We're almost snow-free at the farm, but with all that snow melt comes MUD and lots of it. Not to mention the ring is super cuppy and deep right now as it attempts to dry out and drain. It was too sloppy to ride in the ring so we decided to free jump a bunch of the horses (Riley included). Our free jump area is really cool. It was once a ring designed for little kid pony rides so it's essentially a ring with another ring inside it (so that the ponies couldn't dash into the center or run away). It has footing and is large enough for the horses to get a nice pace and rhythm.

Riley heard that Bobby was the fanciest show pony, so he got jealous and struck this sweet pose to show off all his angles.

When things don't turn out the way you hoped...

hehehehehe I'm still "retired"

What do you do?

Well, if you're a horse-crazed lunatic like myself, you do everything you can to spend as much time around those beasts as possible. Everyone knows ponies are good for the soul.

I started making plans for Riley (shhhhh).

I booked a lesson.

I've been riding all sorts of OTTBs to keep my mind busy.

You change your blog header and background.

And when all else fails, there's the pool -- because a little R & R never hurts right?

And I am sorry for the breaks in between posts, and leaving you guys hanging with an announcement of a lesson cliffhanger, but the full report is coming right up!

Keeping a horse in Area II sure has it's advantages. I am a stone's throw from an Olympic rider in every direction. Like, True Prospect farm is a 5 minute hack. Which is great for training purposes because our neck of the woods is just littered with awesome trainers to lesson with. And with Riley still semi out of commission I thought that taking some lessons might help me get some finesse back (because boy have I lost it). Don't get me wrong, I'm stoked I get to ride all the OTTBs, but they're not doing much for my position on the flat and confidence over fences. It's been a really long time since I had a formal lesson with anyone but Emily. She's terrific and knows me inside and out, but we are super good friends and that leads to me bargaining my way out of doing things that I'm worried about and to be honest lessoning on Riley can be very challenging at this stage in his training. So I was pretty concerned I'd make a damn fool of myself. Plus, I needed to find a trainer who had a school horse or two to teach me on (again, a little bit tricky). As luck would have it, the nearby indoor that we hack to frequently, has a BNR who I've known for awhile. She competes a horse owned by the BO at our old place and she's a hell of a rider... I watched her teach a little last time I rode at the indoor and I really liked her approach so I contacted her for a lesson! She has two horses that she teaches lessons on, her former ** ISH and her former advanced OTTB! Woo hoo!