Last night we were picking out paint colors for the barn and talking about how white makes everything looks clean, airy and bright. It got me thinking about this past weekend’s horse show and the show outfits we wore: 1,000 degrees, humid and everyone in head-to-toe white. “How stupid to wear white – no one looks good in the color and it adds 10 pounds to even the slimmest riders,” people always complain. “How can you keep it clean? I look like a marshmallow!” But as the blazing sun was beating down, I was sort of happy to have on my breathable white show shirt and light-colored breeches. As my black boots absorbed the heat, I felt like my toes would catch fire and suddenly the idea of wearing something darker, more flattering, did not seem like the wisest idea. Perhaps there is something to be said for lighter colors – it can give a clean appearance, makes the rider look happy and cool. I am not sure a light grey or blue would be any easier to keep clean and you lose some of that reflective benefit of pure white. As I prepared to enter my last test of the weekend and a breeze picked up, I settled into my white outfit and accepted that it might not be such a bad idea after all. People should wear white more often, I thought. And then the sky opened up and it started to rain, heavily.

Holiday spies something horribly out of place in the middle of his dressage arena! | Photo Courtesy, Stacey Nedrow-Wigmore

Holiday moved up to Fourth Level this year and in preparation I decided to teach him to jump. Note that he is 12 years old and has spent his life being told to stay away from the white poles, not leap them. So when I pointed him at the same trot poles we have used to outline our dressage ring and asked him to go over them, he seemed quite hesitant. I urged him forward and told him this was the key to his dressage success. Confused? He was.

Let me back-track and explain that the whole reason we started jumping is because Holiday is lazy. I don’t just mean that he is a cool-tempered horse. I mean that he actually groans when he gets walk breaks and on days that he feels that cantering above his pay grade, you would think we were on the 100th mile of an endurance race from the first minute of the ride. “Illness, poor diet, call the vet,” you say? All checked out and nothing wrong but a lack of motivation.

So I got the lazy little man out in a field – at the suggestion of many and my former eventing subconscious – and he is ready to do anything. In an attempt to add even more spice to his life, we started to jump. After confirming that he could go over trot poles without stepping on them (yes this happened) or leaping them like the Puissance, we moved on to real cross rails.

Cut to a while later and, thanks to the help of multiple staff members in the office with more recent jumping experience, Holiday was jumping 2 feet. My response? Sign him up for a combined test! A few weeks later, Holiday completed his very first Intro B test and ended up winning his class after an awkward jumping round ended with only 1 rail down (luckily, they don’t deduct for foolish jumping or almost-refusals).

We also entered a Fourth Level 1 test to keep him from thinking he didn’t have to canter in the ring and broke 60% after completing the test in the SMALL arena (there is a training tip no one has ever suggested to me – man was I riding my half halts and corners!).

All in all it was a great day. It has been a while since I was so nervous for a show, but Holiday doesn’t groan at the walk as much and despite spending only 2 days schooling dressage, my instructor saw Holiday and said he looked better in his dressage work than she had ever seen him. I guess we found our way “forward!”

Feeling overwhelmed in the saddle? Think back to to the "good old days" when you started riding and just ride what you know!

They say there are countless roads to Rome. What they don’t seem to add is that there are many BETTER roads to get there. So which is the best? Probably the shortest, fastest, least bumpy… and the more I learn about life (including dressage and writing about it) the more I realize that most of the time the easiest road is the best. Granted, there are times when getting from Point A to Point B requires taking the hardest, bumpiest, dirtiest way–haven’t we all gotten up at 4 a.m. to braid a horse and drive 3 hours to a rainy show? However, most of the time the easiest way is also the best way.

I first started realizing this in my dressage riding when I was having problems years ago with the shoulder-in. The horse was getting crooked, sometimes even doing a poor version of a haunches-in instead and the more I tried to keep my inside leg at the girth, outside leg behind the girth, fix his popping shoulder, sit to the center, look ahead, breath and just ride, the worse it got. The more my instructor tried to help me, the worse it got. Then, one day, a clinician told me to just come out of the corner as if I was on the diagonal and after 1/2 a stride think leg yield along the wall. It wasn’t yet a shoulder-in, but it was the closest I had come to getting there in weeks. Of course! I was over-correcting and messing my aids up because I was tense and instead of trying to just ride something I knew, I was turning my self into a pretzel. Next time around, I added a 10-meter volte into the 1/2 diagonal stride and voila! I had my shoulder-in. It taught me from that point on that the best thing to do when I am riding and cannot get something, just try to ride the simplest version of that movement. Ride the foundation. For example, if your horse is not half halting in the trot, ride a halt transition. What is the foundation of the half halt? A full halt!

So what does this have to do with blogging? Write the foundation! What does that mean? Ride what you know and write what you know. I first learned this when the blog posts that took my the least amount of time got the most feedback. Instead of spending hours coming up with some complex entry, I just wrote in the same voice as how I would tell something to my friend. I also talk about things that I think about, not some complicated idea I think people want me to think about. Whether riding dressage or writing about it, when I am just myself many things in life aren’t as hard as they seem.

Before I begin, let me just say: Bless every farm owner that has ever kept my horse, for you have hauled more garbage, mowed more grass, dealt with more builders/banks/lawyers/insurance agents/fencers/people at the hardware store than I ever could have imagined…
until last week. Exactly 7 days ago, my life-long dream became a reality (a BIG reality) and we bought a lovely horse farm in Germantown, Maryland. So far, all the best laid plans have not gone so smoothly…
1. I packed everything early, so that I wouldn’t be rushed when I had more things to do. That didn’t work out so well, when (for the 800th time) I found myself sifting through boxes to find something I needed.
2. We have managed to buy a lot of things at Home Depot only to discover that the farm already has one hidden in some corner of an outbuilding, basement or randomly in the grass.
3. I totally accepted that there would be a lot of grass to mow, but I did not plan on this much rain coming down the minute we moved in. Going on 7 days with no mowing. Dear neighbors: I swear we aren’t those people.
4. Thanks to said rain, I have also had to reschedule all of the 5,000 people coming to the farm to talk to us about fencing, framing, excavating, building, chopping, cutting, cleaning (and maybe modern dancing? Who knows anymore…).

So, the outdoor projects are on hold, but we did manage to rip out about 1,500 sq ft of carpet and padding. Underneath the downstairs was lovely dark wood. Upstairs, not so much. A thousand tack strips and staples later, my back feels like I was tossed off a horse and the downstairs is good to go. The upstairs required a rented belt sander, paint stripper and a lot of cleaning afterwards to get it down to acceptable pine floors that we will finish later. I prefer to keep my budget for the horses I stumbled upon 2 area rugs for an insane price and $80 later managed to make the guest rooms acceptable. I yanked all the curtains down, which helped to remove the remaining stink bugs in the house. I now consider the house as close to done as it is going to get, because the skies have parted and it is time to get working on the barns!

Until next time… wish us luck. In less than a month there will be the first horses there and pretty soon we will be ready to host the Olympics