Week 43: Growing Up

                The last couple of weeks have really been crazy! I made a trip to look at colleges, competed in a dressage schooling show and went to another event. One common theme through all of it is growing up. As I look at colleges all over the east coast I am beginning to realize that my time as a high school student is dwindling. Not only that, but Finn is growing up too!

            

                Yesterday Finn competed in his 2^nd BN event. Although we go eliminated at the water, we had the most fun horse and rider are capable of having. Finn is a hot horse. He came to me as a calm three year old that had little to no interested in running away with me or being playful under tack, suddenly though, all that is changing. In the barn I ride at we frequently talk about horses going through their 5 year old stage; the point in a thoroughbreds life when they truly decide that they are alive. As Finn progresses through his 4 year old year I am beginning to see little glimmers of what may be this stage. Finn is fun to ride overall but he is becoming a bit of a handful to jump. He doesn’t buck or stop or do anything silly like that he just won’t slow down.

                In order to work on this we have been setting up some new exercises. The first one is a trot jump with a sharp turn right after. The point of this exercise is to get Finn focusing on the turn after the jump instead of his urge to accelerate. The exercise also has an added bonus: front-end quickness. By adding a turn right after the fence, the horse has to focus a lot more to ensure a clean jump. The second exercise is one that Megan and Sally swear by: cantering the pole. I am pretty sure that if you took any of Sally or Megan’s horses and attempted to ride them by a pole without going over it they would be very very confused. Not only does this get the horse thinking about pace or striding, it also gets the rider thinking about jumping in a more relaxed way. The more confident I become in my ability to find a distance, the more confident I will get about my jumping.

                Finn is usually a pretty good boy in the dressage however, this weekend he was a bit different. I felt that he wasn’t listening to me and he really just wanted to trot around with his head in the air. I tried to relax my hands and body but thinking back I am still having a hard time figuring out what I was doing to causing that behavior. I am a fairly green rider, at least in terms of OTTB experience so when things go wrong the fairest explanation is that I am flailing around up there. However, it seems that this time, Finn might have has his own problems as well.

                This last couple of weeks was a whirlwind, Finn pulled two shoes and I was once again paranoid about lameness and my ability to ride him. Growing up is scary. Thinking about putting Finn in a trailer a year from now with all of my personal belonging is scary. Most of all, leaving the people who stand ringside at events and clap for me when I finish my round is going to be scary. Even when the event doesn’t go as planned like yesterday, I still know that I have a ton of people behind me and my dreams. Tomorrow is a new day; a new day of challenges, mistakes and exciting new adventures.

                Look for another update midweek! I have some big plans for Teens for TB’s.