Hell Hath No Humidity Like the South

In case you weren’t aware, summers are HOT in the south. Like, 97% humidity and 98 degrees hot. It's all fine and dandy to hear about this and to experience it for a week or two on summer vacation, but when you're living it full time, it really sucks. I knew about this thing called summer when I moved here, but reality sure hit me smack in the face. Every time I walk outside, I pretty much melt. Who thought this move was a good idea? Surely it wasn't I, who loves the cold and winter, air conditioning blasting all summer to make it through. Sigh. As much as I love it here, this cannot be forever. I might actually turn into a puddle. And what is with this lack of air movement? As if the humidity wasn't bad enough, for the record, we do have that in NJ you know, there is absolutely no breeze for like 90% of the time. It's like walking outside into a sauna while wrapped in hot, wet towels with nary a breeze to cool your face. Not sure if that imagery is vivid enough, but it's what came to mind. Maybe I'll need to move to the mountains in a few years. There are many perks to living here, but the summer is sure as hell not one of them! At least it's sunny almost every day. And the office is an arctic tundra, which is exactly how I like it.

Making sure her Goose stays hydrated

I’ve not ridden as much as I wanted to this summer, but I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that instead of having light riding time in the winter due to cold, we’re going to have light riding time in the summer due to hellish heat. It’s fine, we’re adjusting. And by adjusting, I mean complaining (obviously). A lot. Goose is not what I would consider a hot-weather horse, thank you Percheron genes, and I haven’t wanted to push him since he’s still coming back to fitness after he had several months off at the start of this year, and a few more months of really light work to make sure we didn’t break anything else. This is the second year in a row I’ve had to bring him back from an injury in the spring, but more on that later. (Warning: I have graphic injury images and I know how to use them!)

Anyway, Goose and I have had a super light summer. He’s coming back so well, and while I desperately miss my trainer and having someone to tell me what to work on and listen to me complain when it’s really hard, I’m pretty proud of how well we’ve been doing on our own. I’ve remembered most of the exercises we worked on last spring when we were starting from scratch after the first injury, and slowly we are reconnecting the dots. So far we’ve rediscovered a forward walk (sometimes), laterals, moving the hind end independently from the front, and are still negotiating moving the shoulder. Goose thinks it’s HORRIBLE and I’m a totally evil human, but let me tell you, he is a very large animal and I HATE riding him when he feels disconnected. There is nothing worse than going from lovely and connected to Goose throwing his head in the air, throwing his shoulder in, and mouth gaping against his perfectly lovely loose ring Myler. It feels like going from riding a unicorn to a giraffe. Not fun.

We are fully walk, trot, cantering and have been for a while, but like I said, it has been HOT and we tend to puddle in the heat. We’ve been working in the fields a bit, and have been jumping some little things too. To be clear, Goose is not the only one out of shape, so we’re working on it together. We’re up to more normal rides and are now working up to not being so winded after everything we do and gaining some stamina. It’s time to up our ride intensities, and I am more than willing to wait to do this until the fall. Goose is a naturally sluggish goon, and fitness is really important to keep him feeling even remotely active. In case I haven't said it enough already, it is far too hot to think about real fitness.

My favorite part about the farm is the giant field that we can ride in. I got ambitious one day last week and had planned to do field sets at the trot and canter. It was a little cooler that day, and I figured it’d be fun for both of us and we could give the dressage a rest for a bit. We got through some semi-forward trot sets, but our canter quickly melted into a casual lope with Zuzu running next to us. Riding with Zu is probably my favorite thing to do, and Goose is incredibly tolerant and was happy to mosey along while the mongrel ran laps around us. I sometimes wonder if he thinks we’re foxhunting and just doing it wrong, “Mom, there are supposed to be A LOT of hounds, not just one reject hound that likes to stay next to us instead of in front.”

Between work, Zu, and living in a pretty cool city, it’s hard for me to get out to the barn as often as I’d like. I used to partial lease him out which pretty much ended in disaster, so I’ve been hesitant to try it again but figure if the right person comes along, we could talk about it. There’s a few girls at the barn who are pretty awesome, and one of them wants to get into some eventing but has been horseless this summer, so I offered up Goose for some riding time. Now, I know this seems sooooo generous of me, but selfishly it makes me feel better that he has a person to love him and put hands on him when I’m not there, and also to help keep him in shape. MK rides him beautifully and is learning how he goes, and nothing makes me prouder than watching that Goon teach someone else. It’s taken five long years of hard work to get to this point, and it’s awesome to see someone else get on and figure out his buttons. Goose is in love with her because she hasn’t quite figured out how to make him work hard yet, and because she has lovely, quiet hands and a great seat. I’m excited to see them keep going together, and it made me SUPER excited when she took him cross country schooling last Tuesday!

First and foremost, I’m super jealous that while I was at work, busy paying for his cushy lifestyle, Goose was playing around King Fisher Park with MK. Sometimes life just isn’t fair. The pictures more than made up for it though, because who doesn’t want to ooh and ah over pictures of their horse jumping fun things?

Goose was a total saint, as I knew he would be, and he was able to help another rider get over some cross country fear. I basically told her that sometimes I like to freeze up and panic, and pretty much no matter what, he will figure out a way to go over. Maybe not gracefully, perhaps not very quickly or with any semblance of style or pizzazz, and whatever effort he manages to put in, it will probably be in slow motion. But damnit, he just doesn’t say no. Unless of course, you pull him up in front of a bank you’re meant to jump down. Then he politely stops and looks back saying, "Lady what is wrong with you, this is not even scary," and proceeds to put one foot at a time down the bank while you hold on screaming in terror. This is absolutely not a true story, I just heard it from someone else… yeah definitely heard it from someone else, in no way my personal experience.

Putting in just enough effort

Never afraid of water

Majestic

Brenna on Bizzy and MK on Goose

Basically, this horse is a saint, and his confidence and willingness are the reasons I have so much fun schooling cross country now instead of just feeling terror at the solid obstacles that are so foreign to my hunter/jumper upbringing. I have exactly zero ambitions of jumping giant solid fences but have the utmost respect for those who do. Goose will be great probably up to novice and schooling higher if we ever get there, but for now, I have no one to impress and am happy bopping around having fun and letting him teach someone else. He’s braver than I will ever be, and I’m thrilled someone else gets to enjoy him.

The rest of last week was pretty boring. Goose got a few days off post-schooling, I hung around town with the Zu, and we all reconvened on Saturday for dressage day. Zuzu was happy to bounce around the farm while I pretended I knew what I was doing in a dressage saddle. I have some goals as a rider, and one of them is to just be patient and stay quiet no matter what is going on. Oh, we’re flinging our head in the air to evade the bit? No worries, let’s just keep going and do some bending while your brain shifts back into place. Oh, you want to throw your shoulder completely to the left instead of bend left like I'm asking? Okay, let’s counter bend and really put your shoulder to the left and I’ll just sit here through your mini acrobatics and wait for you to realize it’s not that hard. Good boy.

What a beefcake

It’s a huge challenge for me to not fight him. He’s a big horse and likes to throw tantrums when things are hard, especially because he’s not really fit enough to hold himself round for as long as I ask him to. Sometimes, I need to remind myself that simply not going around like a giraffe is a win. When he comes round for a few seconds, that’s another win. When I keep my hands still enough and let him figure it out and he comes round off of seat and leg along, throw a freaking party! My patience is really paying off, and we had an awesome school that had me feeling like we’re getting back to where we left off last winter.

Since Saturday was torture day, I figured Sunday we could do something fun. Goose badly needs his feet done so I didn’t want to do anything too crazy with jumps, but there’s been some fun grids set up in the covered arena lately that I’ve been itching to play with. Goose LOVES grids. Well, I’m not sure he really loves anything but food and sometimes me if I’m holding food, but he is surprisingly athletic and handy through challenging jump exercises and we’ve always had fun playing with them, especially with our NJ friends Dawn and Blue.

I set up a raised cavalletti, bounce to a small crossrail, bounce to a crossrail, one stride to a small vertical, one stride to a big crossrail. I have issues keeping him centered over fences, he's very good at drifting and I'm not so good at remembering I have two reins for a reason. Bearing this in mind, I thought keeping striding a little short to encourage him to jump up instead of working harder across with a clear middle of the last jump as a crossrail would help us stay straight. Less leg needed by me to keep him extra forward for a longer stride, and a clear center of the last fence so I had a target point and no excuse to drift. After a quick warm-up, I trotted him gamely at this exercise. And then remembered that, though he’s been back to jumping for two months now, we haven’t done any grids since… November? October? I honestly can’t remember. So here I am, trotting at this relatively simple yet five-jump-long exercise, realizing that I probably should have started with just the bounce and then built up and out. As I considered whether or not I should be worried, Goose happily plodded along and I figured, eh, we'll probably be fine. Worst case scenario, he will probably just stop and walk through it if he gets confused (seriously he’s a saint that doesn’t say no). We continued our approach and made our way through with absolutely no issues. My horse is a perfect unicorn and I love him. After we went through it twice, I found someone to take a quick video for us.

I also found a video last week of his very first grid with me the first summer I bought him in 2012. We were both total goofballs and I love this video despite the horrible quality. I’ll add in some better videos eventually to make up for our hideous first one, but I remember how incredibly proud I was of him that first day as we bumbled our way through, him brave as anything probably thinking, “this human is a moron, why is she pointing me at a pile of sticks! I guess I’ll get her safely to the other side, poor thing must be blind.”

Gotta love this Goose.