UMD blog hop

In keeping with all things Terrapin in honor of my upcoming impending graduation on May 21, I'm participating in a UMD-flavored blog hop.


1. Where are you right now? (You can answer literally, or you can stop giving boring answers to every question you’re asked, and think outside the box.)
I am at the least likely place for me to actually accomplish anything on my to-do list--my desk. I don't know why, but the standard-issue wooden hutch-style desk they give you in the dorms just inspires me to do anything BUT write an essay. So I'm blogging instead. I'm also in the doldrums about my car, a Ford sedan that is only six years old, but about as suicidal as your average horse (very). It's in the shop to fix an ominous rattling noise, which has created logistical problems and  general money and horse-lacking sadness.

2. What keeps you blogging? Your pride? Your mom? Wanting someone other than your cat to tell you that you’re awesome?
I think it's pretty obvious that procrastination fuels my blog. OK, OK, not exactly. I love writing this blog because it makes me feel like my horse obsession is actually valid and not a waste of time. It allows me to look back on my riding progress and look forward to having my own horse one day. Plus I hope that I can help future college riders to sift through the many options available to them.


3. What blogs or bloggers do you look to for inspiration, ideas, or just to get the blog side of your brain turned on?
I love getting small doses of horse from HORSE NATION's contributors all day. They have contests and frequent posts of all different lengths--some are journalistic, some are reflective, and some are just awesome:

Horse Nation disqualified from FEI pictogram contest

Here's a taste from the same article the above picture came from, describing Horse Nation's failed attempt to design the pictograms for the Olympic equine events:

“They rejected our entries,” said Wylie of Horse Nation. “I don’t get it. I guess they didn’t understand our artistic vision.” 

“It was like a six-year-old ate a box of crayons and then threw up all over our computer screen,” the FEI spokesperson continued. “We’re looking for something a little more sophisticated.”


 I would have to say my favorite individual horse blogs are Cob Jockey and Panic and the Pony. Both are training chronicles of sorts--I would say Cob Jockey is more about training the horse (a Welsh Cob named Castleberry's Contender), and Panic and the Pony, as you might guess, is more about training the rider--or at least, trying to quell the anxiety of training a green, opinionated Arab mare. Both are written in a very compelling way--I can tell the writer of Cob Jockey really knows a lot about training, and she has a definite plan for her pony. It's just as exciting to watch a nervous rider's progression toward improving her abilities with Panic and the Pony, though.

4. What is your most Terp-like quality? Is you’re not a Terp, well, I’m sorry, but you should be. Go out and get Terpy. Then report back with your newly acquired Terp quality.
Retreating into my shell. In my personal life I'm pretty introverted, and I have some serious Stranger Danger--I avert my path to avoid people handing out flyers; I'm not very forthcoming with what I actually think (aside from class, when I always have my hand up, all "Pick me! I know the answer! I did my homework!"); and I spend most of my time holed up in my room working. I mean, plotting.

5. If you could pick any celebrity or politician to give your blog a shout out via Twitter, who would it be?
I tweeted Jane Savoie the other day. We'll see if she gets back to me. Beezie Madden would be awesome too. I actually just got a shoutout from Rafalca Romney (Mitt Romney's dressage horse). Does that count?

Here's our conversation:
 

  Collegial Equestrian ‏ @RidingInCollege

A weird look into the future of #dressage http://collegialequestrian.blogspot.com/2012/04/future-of-dressage.html

  Rafalca Romney ‏ @RafalcaRomney

Great post @RidingInCollege! The "genetically modified weirdos" bit reminded me of my owner, #MittRomney. Keep up the great writing/riding!

6. Congrats. Wallace Loh stumbled upon your blog and wants to host an all-night party to celebrate your genius. You get to pick the campus building and the two professors who will be in charge of DJ-ing and food/drinks. Go:
I would choose the backyard of the Benjamin building. Inside, it's nothing to write home about, but out back there's a lovely garden with seating and shade where we could all listen to Belle and Sebastian and make crepes together.

As for professors...hmm. Manel Lacorte, the seriously humorous Spanish professor who really challenged me in Spanish Linguistics would be one. He also has an adorable little girl and another baby on the way so they would definitely be invited. And I'm not sure how down to party she would be, but I would love Leigh Ryan to come by. Though I've never had a class with her, I worked for her as a tutor in the Writing Center, and she has been incredibly generous and helpful with her time and advice when I was researching and creating projects for conferences, and especially now as I try to navigate my way toward a writing/editing job.

7. And finally, a serious question. What have you learned from blogging? Did you learn about writing? Did you learn about people? Did you learn how easy it is to get distracted on the internet? (But j/k on the last one; you already knew that, of course.)
I think I turned about half of these into serious questions already cause I'm a party pooper (my idea of rousing fun is crepes. But seriously, crepes rock). 

Sike, I love parties...fancy parties! This was my 21st birthday party. It was awesome.

I think I'm learning to stop second-guessing myself and to finally assert how important having horses in my life is to me. They're my escape and my challenge, and they are important in my life. I've always scrambled for a way to ride with the resources I had, but until writing this blog, I always thought of it as a luxury, as an "extra."



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Riding at the University of Maryland

You may remember that I'm a Terp, albeit a not-terribly-school-spirited one.

I would much rather spend my time making cute food rather than going to a game. I didn't make this though; Snarky Rider shared it on FB

 A big part of why I chose to come to Maryland was the on-campus riding club. I was only a member for one semester, since I found it rather fishy that four out of their eight horses were lame. I also really didn't like that we only had two horses allotted to our lesson of four girls so we had to switch in the middle of the lesson.

However, I thought it would be fair and useful to see the other side. I haven't been around the campus farm for three and a half years, and I didn't want to show badly enough to warrant the IHSA team dues. I interviewed Leandra Bitterfeld, a student instructor for the University of Maryland Equestrian Club and treasurer of the IHSA team to get some perspective on which riders are best suited to club versus team riding.

Overall: Club versus Team 

via

“The club is where you want to go if you want to learn about horses,” Leandra explains. The Equestrian Club has a barn on the University of Maryland’s 1250-acre campus. Though they do show once a year on Maryland Day, the yearly campus-wide open house, the club is a non-competitive organization focused on horse care, management, and riding. 

“Maryland is the only student-run equestrian club in the country,” says Leandra, which means that all club members pitch in. In addition to attending monthly meetings and a weekly lesson (if they choose to ride), members must do one chore per week, whether it’s haying, feeding, or mucking stalls. The lesson horses play double duty too—they are also used for equine labs in the Animal Science department. Only about half of the students in the club ride, since many are simply interested in gaining experience with horses.

The club also offers students the opportunity to learn to teach. Leandra took two tests and did an evaluation ride to become an instructor for the club’s A lesson group (the club groups members based on ability—A being advanced and E being beginner riders). She has found teaching to be just as educational for her as it is for her students: “Every time I go into the ring I’m learning so much about my riding. When I’m watching these girls make mistakes, I’m also learning so much for myself. And that’s been my favorite part of teaching—being able to share my knowledge and take so much knowledge back from it.”

via

As you would expect, the IHSA team is more focused on competition than the club. According to Leandra, the average club member is just learning to canter, while the average team member is jumping 2’ or 2’6”.  Since the team mostly attracts people who already have horse experience, they require members to at least know how to walk and trot. “The level that we’re taught at is more specialized,” Leandra says, nothing that there are rarely enough dead beginners interested to fill up a group lesson.

Since IHSA riders are not familiar with their host school’s horses, the focus is on rider performance. Potential IHSA members should not stress about the possibility of a host school horse acting up because riders have the opportunity to ask for a “re-ride” which allows them to try again on a different horse. However, this is the exception rather than the norm. Leandra says, “I’ve gotten to ride so many amazing horses that I could never afford, especially as a college student.”

The UM Equestrian Team rocks the sweatpants-over-breeches look on a cold show day! I can empathize.

photo credit: Leandra Bitterfeld/ UMET FB


Finances

• The club is financed by the Student Government, Campus Recreation Services,  member fundraising, and dues. Riding members' dues are $225 per semester and non-riding members' dues are $25 per semester. Definitely WAY cheaper than 11 weeks of lessons, which could cost anywhere from $440-660 in the DC metro area.

• The team is completely financed by its members, who pay $500 per semester to cover the use of Oatlands Stables horses in lessons and shows, IHSA fees, tack, and transportation. Members who do not have show clothes borrow from other members. “We borrow and trade and swap all the time,” says Leandra, who sometimes finds herself lending out her show helmet to two or three riders who only have plastic schooling helmets in one day.

Time

• The team is more of a time commitment than the on-campus club, since weekly lessons at Oatland Stables are 45 minutes from campus (when it's not rush hour--DC traffic is no joke) and the team attends eight to nine shows per year, sometimes staying overnight for two-day shows. The team also has occasional meetings. However, so much time spent with teammates and riders from other schools only adds to the sense of camaraderie and friendship. “The sportsmanship in the region is really strong,” says Leandra. 

• For the club it depends on the chore you have. All members are required to do one barn chore (feeding, mucking, haying, etc.) which could take anywhere from an hour to several hours, and some members also choose to ride in an hour lesson (meaning about two hours to allow for walk time on our large campus plus tacking up).

Hopefully that was useful for any of you who are trying to decide where to go to college. There are so many different incarnations of IHSA teams and clubs that comparing different schools is daunting, so I hope that my stab at it was useful--I hope it showed that just because one person had a negative experience doesn't mean that everyone does. In hindsight, I don't think I was suited to the club from the start--I was raring to continue jumping 2'6" as I was accustomed to in my high school lessons, and I was really disappointed that my group was only doing cross rails and cavalletti to keep the horses sound. I'm only just beginning to understand the gaps in my flatwork that I didn't know enough to recognize back then.

There are many other resources available to compare schools which I covered in another post. Let me know if you've ever ridden for another school's IHSA team--I'd be happy to interview you for the greater good of high school seniors :)

An Illustrated, Video-ified Day in the Life of a Collegiate Equestrian

1. Go to unpaid internship where you get to read and write about horse stuff all day! And file things. (It's OK, they're horse-related things.)

So dreamy, especially in B/W. I was sad to file him away.

2. Go to barn!

We make circles! (I am imagining that in the voice of this video. (You're welcome.))

3. Breeze through traffic! Traffic cannot stop you from...
4. Homework. Well, actually, homework isn't so important. Replace homework with eating a garlic bagel with cheese for now. Mmm. Now no one will kiss you except your horse!

Wait, how did a horse's butt end up on my homework?!

5. Be sad that you're not at Rolex this weekend because you have to do homework and and other non-horsey stuff. And because you're poor.

6. Console yourself with Horse Nation's Rolex coverage.
7. And all the horse blogs that updated today.
8. Okay, now it's really time to do your annotated bibliography.

No more horse butts. :(

9. Wait, maybe you should rummage through your closet for something to wear to that silly family event this weekend that's cutting into your barn time.

Is it wrong that after 4 years of college, I still find the fact that my bedsheets have crabs on them to be a hilarious visual joke?

10. Seriously, write up one of your sources. Run it through EasyBib because you're hip and with it and you don't waste time.
11. Brag to the world about it on your blog as a reward.

The Future of Dressage?

Let me first clarify by stating that I have taken one dressage lesson ever in my life (didn't continue due to a scheduling conflict). Although I've been reading Build a Better Athlete by Leslie Webb, a blog about the adventures of a green dressage Arabian, and many other blog posts outraged about Rollkur, I am pretty much a dressage noob.

So when I was reorganizing a bookshelf last week and I saw a book outlining the future of dressage--with super brightly-colored costumes, fanciful horse torture devices, and extreme, hyperflexed movements--I was not entirely sure what to think.

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that The Official 2060 SuperPrix Fan Guide by Michelle Guillot was intended to be a satire. A satire with eye-hurty oversaturated graphics that doesn't walk the line between humor and descriptions of a dystopian future very well, to be sure. But a satire, nonetheless.

via book website

I only thumbed through the book and took photos of the most bizarre images, but if you ever come across it, it is definitely a trip.

Training pyramid? Why bother?

Though I didn't read it closely, Dressage Today did. The book basically describes how dressage in the 21st century is more popular than pro football (yeah...wishful thinking, huh?) and how freestyle has been glitzed up and technologized as much as any other Olympic sport. The horses are genetically modified weirdos and the saddles clamp the spandex-clad riders into ideal positions to yank, crank, and spank their way to victory.

Click to read the anatomy of the dressage horse of the future

Of course, the author's idea is to criticize current trends in dressage that threaten to reach the extremes she lays out in her book, but as a dressage noob I was overwhelmed by the weirdness. I do think that Ariat's icky Volant boots are a step in the SuperPrix direction though.

Blech. Red? Why? via

 Just thought I'd share my bizarre experience with this book. Has anyone ever read it? It looks like it was independently published so who knows if it is even available anymore.

Making the most of lessons...trying, at least

So for my 22nd birthday this past March, my mother was kind enough to gift me with four riding lessons with the trainer I've been working with for the past six months. I spent the first lesson riding Stan, who is a bit of a Frankenhorse, and very spooky, but never genuinely does anything bad (although apparently I am the only person he is spooky for--which just makes me feel great). Since I do not take lessons very often, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to get my money's worth and it just adds to my tension when I don't do what I'm supposed to, either from fear or muscle memory, or both (for example, acting as if Stan is ALWAYS going to freak out in the scary corner of the ring).

Just because he is a Frankenhorse with a parrot mouth, crooked legs, and a roached back...

...doesn't mean he isn't handsome! This is why we call him Manly Stanley!

I love riding Stan because once we work through the spooky stuff, he is very responsive. However, I do want to make the most of my lessons and challenge myself so that I can actually grow.

Clyde is the first horse I rode at this trainer's farm until he threw me and then was lame for several weeks (related incidents, but I can't remember exactly what the injury was). He is ridiculously finicky about his canter transitions, and WILL NOT canter unless you:

1. Sit deep and half-halt,
2. switch your weight to the inside and bend with the inside leg and rein,
3. then put on the outside leg at the EXACT RIGHT MOMENT of his stride. I am not good at this. At all. So he usually just ends up strung out in a super-fast trot and I usually end up out of breath from clucking and all hunched up from trying to do too many things at once.

Clyde says, "Check out my tattoo!"

So what with Clyde's being lame, Stan being an easier ride, and not having money for lessons until recently, I haven't ridden Clyde for several months. I have been reading the fantastically useful Build a Better Athlete!: 16 Gymnastic Exercises by Leslie Webb, though, and Webb recommends cueing for the canter (step 3 from above) by swinging your lower leg slightly behind the girth and sort of brushing the horse's side with your calf instead of squeezing. I've been doing that with Joey, who tends to rush into the canter and he responds immediately to it--maybe because he is a dressage pony and I guess they tend to do more swinging around with the lower leg for various cues.

Long story short--I wanted to ride Clyde for my lesson so I could try this magical new canter cue. In my first lesson, I went in totally confident and I was able to regain control and calmness after Stan spooked once at the Evil Demon Corner. I was feeling good, ready for a challenge. Even if Clyde didn't respond, at least I would get some practice feeling when the exact right moment of his stride would be to ask.

I didn't count on my trainer saying, "We'll probably just keep it to a walk and trot since you haven't ridden him for a while," immediately when I mounted up. I was disappointed, but I realized that Rome wasn't built in a day, and that maybe I could use my other lessons to work on cantering with Clyde.

Another thing I didn't count on was the wind.

And the fact that the wind would blow the jump filler flowers, making them look like they were up to no good.

Or that Clyde sees dead people in the bushes. Or something. I didn't see what it was that made him decide to suddenly turn tail along the straightaway, since I was concentrating on, "Forward. Straight. Straight, straight, straight," and looking forward rather than at Clyde. What I do know is that once we got about 15 feet away from the corner, I was hanging on his neck and wondering how I got there. There was no chance of me salvaging the situation since Clyde was still skittering away from the dead people in the bushes, so I just slid on down and landed on my butt, thanking my trainer for redoing her ring a couple months ago with wonderfully soft, even footing.

Clyde plots his next scheme.

 I hadn't even seen it coming, but that was it for me. After I mounted back up, my leg muscles were trembling from the shock of it, just like they do every time I fall, and I was frustrated that I couldn't make them stop. My trainer said to just hang out at the halt and take a few deep breaths. This just gave me more time to think about what a disappointment the lesson had turned out to be. No cantering, then I fell off at the trot, and now I couldn't stop my trembling body from telling Clyde, "Yes. Continue to freak out. Everything is scary today."

We picked up a walk, then a trot, on the other end of the ring, but of course that's where the suspicious jump filler was, so our circles were shaped more like kidney beans (sadly, not an exaggeration). Now it seems silly, but I was so disappointed in the difficulty I was having in just making a simple circle that I started tearing up when I asked my instructor what I was doing wrong. When the lesson was over, I seriously wondered whether I should even be riding horses like hers. What had I even learned? I felt that by asking me to retreat to the other side of the ring, my instructor was letting me back down from the problem instead of facing it. Maybe she thought that I wasn't capable of facing it. And maybe I wasn't.

In hindsight, she was crunched for time and probably just needed to wrap things up, but it was still a pretty confidence-crushing lesson for me. I mean, my entire blog is about me identifying as someone who rides whenever/whatever she can, and I fell off at the trot.

This past week, my instructor and I had more time to talk. I asked her whether she thought I should be riding school horses instead of her show horses, and she said that at a certain level, you just have to work through problems like the ones that Stan and Clyde tend to throw at me. And that's true. While I enjoy riding push-button ponies like Joey, I don't really have much to learn from a horse that does anything I ask.

For the rest of the lesson, we worked on my sitting trot and my canter departs, since that pre-canter running trot is where everything falls apart. It was never a problem with the drafts I've been riding through most of college since they are so comfy, but now I'm glad that I'm working on the things that will actually give me a good return on my investment.

Moral: Buck up and look forward to the next lesson, whenever that may be!

Blog Hop

Trying something new. We'll see if this works.

Here are the rules: Answer one or all of the prompts. Link back to Living a Dream's post. Visit other blogs. And don't forget to ask a question of everyone else!

1. Describe how a horse you have known is sometimes a 'cheeky monkey'. What does he/she do that is a bit naughty? Hmm...I'd have to say the cheekiest horse I've ridden has been Magic Carpet.

My favorite picture of him. Oooh artsy fartsy!

"Cheeky" meaning "very angry that I am in the fetal crouch not letting him jump as if it were 3'. Check out those snarly ears.

He was an older jumper who was lazy, lazy, lazy on the flat...but point him at a jump, and you could practically hear him sniggering, "Hehehe...she doesn't know what's coming to her!" He was a missile.
[Photos of Magic Carpet by Deb Kadish, a friend]


2. What is your favorite thing about spring? (Hmmm... I'm thinking there won't be too many people who say 'shedding horses'!) Hmm...with the recently-acquired knowledge that I am allergic to hay, I'm not really looking forward to short-sleeve weather since I can't protect my arms that way comfortably. Actually, my favorite part of spring is that it's almost summer and the horses will be lazier.

3. What care do you provide for feet? Horse or human! Do you have a special product that you have discovered and just can't do without? I don't really do anything special for my feet. In fact, I tend to abuse them with the shoes I wear for work. On a side note, I saw a girl walking barefoot on campus today. Not on the grass, on the sidewalk. Gross!!!

Oh yeah, this is a horse blog. When I had a horse in high school sometimes I liked to treat him with a little manicure of hoof polish :) Not that girly glittery stuff though.

This isn't him, but those sure are some foofy feet.

4. What is your ideal type of horse fencing (wood, vinyl, wire, electric, etc.) and why? I've never been in the position to consider this since I don't own my own horse, but although I love the look of a white vinyl fence, I think plain wire fencing (not barbed) is probably the easiest to maintain.


Now for my question:
5. What's the best horse advice you've ever gotten from a non-horse-person? I know mine is when I was seriously contemplating switching farms after an absolutely terrible lesson on a flighty horse who was killing my confidence. My boyfriend said, "You know, this is supposed to be fun. You don't go to the barn to add stress to your life." It's good to keep that in mind because it's easy to beat yourself up when things go wrong.

Caladhin Conformation Clinic

Ok, so I'm going to do things a bit differently than I originally planned.

It's taking me a while to get through each horse, and what with homework and job applications, it's rather daunting to have all three horses prepared at once. So I'll do longer, more in-depth conformation assessments on each horse using Conformation and Performance by Nancy S. Loving, DVM, then line them up from one to three, based on which horse is best suited to his job. I also took Julie Winkel's Conformation Clinics in Practical Horseman as a guide, but since she mostly judges lighter hunter horses, not all of her preferences are going to be relevant for my purposes. However, I think her general guideline is universal:

"A horse who "fits in a box" will have a body made up of one-third shoulder, one-third back and one-third hindquarters. I like to see the withers and point of croup at the same level. The horse's stance, from the point of shoulder to the buttocks, should equal the distance from the height of the withers to the ground."

First up is Caladhin, a school/trail horse (for no particular reason--I have not judged all three yet).

The good news is that he is very suited to his job as a putzing-around kind of horse. The bad news is that he does have some faults and he is not likely to be a dressage champion. Sorry, buddy. (I think he prefers it this way anyhow.)

Here's a horse anatomy chart for reference (I admit, I had to figure out exactly where the croup was):

Trakehner gelding via Wikimedia Commons

• Head and Neck: Cal has a wide throatlatch, which was once thought to impede flexibility, but that turns out to not be true. He also has a long neck (it is about as long as his body, though of course since it's slightly curved I had to approximate), which makes him a bit front-heavy. Since horses use their head to counterbalance their bodies, it would be very difficult for him to compete in a sport like jumping or cutting that requires quick changes in direction. He's best suited to sports that require a lot of straight lines, like trail or pleasure riding.
• Body: He is "square" according to Jane Winkel's definition. His body is about as tall as it is long, and he divides up approximately into thirds though his hind end is a bit shorter, most likely because he has a short croup. For comparison, see how much of a gentle slope the Trakehner's croup has, above. Caladhin's, like many drafts, has much more of a slant, and thus he is not naturally good at collection--but as a beginner/intermediate school horse, this isn't really an issue. One big thing I saw with Caladhin's general body type is that it is very important for him to have a well-fitted saddle. Because he has a hollow behind his withers (lack of muscling) and his withers are higher than his croup, the saddle may slide back, making his lower back and loins sore. It's best to limit his riding to flat ground for this reason as well.
• Shoulder and Front Legs: The red line from the withers to the point of the shoulder shows that Caladhin has a nice, sloping shoulder which allows for efficient strides. Unfortunately...from personal experience, I know he is pretty short-strided (and his lazy-daisy ways don't help with that either). So why is that? He has a short humerus (that's the second, shorter red line making an angle of slightly less than 90 degrees). A short humerus makes a short strided, forehand-heavy horse that experiences increased concussion on the front legs and increased possibility for injury. His big, heavy head and neck only exacerbate the on-the-forehand-ness, but I don't think he's ever really had lameness problems--his heavy draft legs protect him. As for the green line that is supposed to go through his knee and elbow but doesn't...I think I'm going to ignore it because it looks like he's just standing with that leg a little too far back.
• Motor (AKA his big behind):  Caladhin has short hindquarters, and thus, a smaller engine--you can see that from the red diagonal line going from the croup to the buttock. Hindquarters are considered short if they are less than 30% of the horse's body length, and I'd estimate that his are only about 20%. Again, this would be more of an issue for a performance horse that would need to really engage the hindquarters, but some exercises to improve the strength of these muscles include hill climbing (if he has a saddle that won't slip) and lateral exercises like leg yield and half-pass.

I hope that was enjoyable and educational! More to come.

PS-Thank you Gentle Giants for access to so many Percherons! Sorry for the delay in posting.