Show What

Show season is underway in Switzerland, and the ladies who ride dressage at my stables are gathering together in the coffee room, cleaning tack and discussing which competitions they’re going to be signing up for.

“Will you be competing this year?” they ask me as I slip coins into the recently installed hot drinks and blubber distributor, caving yet again to the double whammy of a Twix bar and a hot chocolate. I’d go for unsweetened coffee, I swear I would, but there’s no caffeine-free version (I don’t drink any caffeine at all), so until the weather warms up and vanity kicks in, I’m powering towards Cellulite City. I urgently need a sweet tooth extraction.

Will I be competing this year? It’s a good question. I’m not a competition junkie; never was and probably never will be. I get nervous, stressing out at the mere thought of moving up the centre line under the unforgiving gaze of the judges. Nerves even got the better of me on my now-retired, good old show-pro Kwintus, so I can only imagine the wear and tear on my intestines should I sign Qrac up for a program or two. Then again, a good case of show nerves might undo some of the Twix and hot chocolate damage, and if I seriously grab the tiger by the tail and ride every show on the calendar, there might come a day when I find myself cellulite-free, nonchalantly tempi-changing up that centre line with the reins in one hand, à la Juan Manuel Munoz Diaz and Fuego XII (have you ever watched his freestyle program at the Kentucky World Equestrian Games in 2010? It’s upliftingly wonderful!). But one-handed tempi changes are quite a way off, considering Qrac and I can barely ride a decent circle. He’s such a wiggle bum!

Nevertheless, when I think about how complicated I found riding him this time last year (I can hardly believe it’s almost a year since I brought him home!), how he used to just snatch the bit and run after his feet, I can only be proud of our progress. He still gets a little hot under the collar after the canter, his trot goes all “frantic” and it’s often a challenge to bring him back to a nice, swinging, regular tempo. He’s a bit of a social butterfly, and is easily distracted by horses coming into the arena, or leaving the arena, so I need to keep his mind busy in order to keep him concentrated. He’s also pretty pig-headed; when he decides he’s had enough for one day negotiating a little extra can become quite a long conversation! Qrac can go from beautiful to absolutely rubbish within three strides, which can be ever so frustrating. A couple of weeks ago I was having a lesson with my trainer, and she was so thrilled by how fabulously he was moving that she took my iPhone and started filming us. Unfortunately, she was just a little too late; Qrac morphed from dream machine to sewing machine the second she pressed record! I was so disappointed.

Coming back to the showing issue, I’m also a little concerned by how my horse will react on the showground. He’s not the bravest of horses and at the moment tends to slink through the village glancing from left to right, like a soldier on a stealth mission, certain that danger lurks behind every letter box. If I take him to a show, chances are he’ll freak out at the flower pots, spook at the flags, refuse to go anywhere near the judges huts, and shy away from the little white dressage railings. He’ll also probably be totally distracted by all the other horses. Me? I’ll get all flustered and self-conscious and forget my test!

I know, I know, I should think positively and not worry so much. We have to start somewhere, and if we went out regularly enough there’s no reason why he shouldn’t get used to performing in different environments. I’m just not sure I’m driven enough to put myself through the whole palaver, weekend after weekend. A part of me wants to, because he’s a beautiful horse, because I’m proud of what we can achieve (well, sometimes!), yet another part of me recoils in horror at the mere idea. I love training, I love working towards that perfect transition, that perfect circle or shoulder-in or half-pass, but I like to transition WHEN WE’RE READY TO TRANSITION, and not at A or E or M just because the test says we have to!

Even so, Qrac and I can actually ride a semi-decent test; I know because we’ve recently ridden a few, just to see whether we had it in us. As usual, I underestimated my capabilities as a rider and was rather chuffed by what we managed to do. The extended trot will probably never earn us many points; Qrac just doesn’t have a big, extravagant movement in trot. There have been moments when I’ve really felt him try to extend, and even wondered whether he might be doing a touch of fancy toe-flicking, but I think it was wishful thinking. But his walk is superb, his canter is great, so if we do show we’ll just have to make the most of his strong points. We also need to practise standing still, which Qrac tends to think is a waste of time if he’s not absolutely exhausted.

Will I be competing this year? I don’t know yet, but I’m definitely working towards the idea of competing. I’m really enjoying the journey, so I’m not too bothered about when we actually get there.

How about you? How do you feel about competing? What are your goals for this season?

The Kwintus Chronicles: Showtime!

I was determined to be super organized the night before Saturday’s dressage competition. I figured the more organized I was, the more Zen I’d feel when the alarm went off, rousing me from a long, restorative, competition-priming sleep. So, in an élan of efficiency (okay, so it was more of an élan of anxiety, but let’s pretend…), I gathered all my show paraphernalia. I lay my brand new hairclip with the pearl embellished, navy blue chignon basketty-net thing next to my “tubette” (French for dressage hat; what’s it called in English?). I repositioned the pin in my stock, put my pale blue, sleeveless competition shirt on a hanger under my navy blue jacket. I rummaged through my underwear drawer to find my favorite (albeit somewhat frayed) Calida granny knickers and my new, wobble-defying, extreme hold sports bra (do you have ZeBra sports bras in America? They are brilliant! ), and put them on the old white rocking chair beside my bed. I folded my brand new bright white “sticky bum” jodhpurs and placed them at the bottom of a basket, along with a pair of pale-blue and white socks. I added a towel, as well as a sponge bag filled with miscellaneous indispensables: sunscreen, deodorant, lipgloss, a brush and comb, a gallon of Rescue Remedy.

Then, satisfied with my preparations, I took a long, cool bath (it's still mad hot over here in Switzerland), pulled on my PJs and went to bed early, ready for my aforementioned long, restorative, competition-priming sleep.

Yeah right.

Actually, my zzzzzs got off to a good start, and I didn’t even notice Mr. Prescott slip into bed beside me a couple of hours later. I did, however, pick up on his nasal obstruction issues when at two am, snuffling and sniffling, he pottered into the bathroom, unraveled a length of toilet paper and trumpeted away his discomfort at a level of decibels powerful enough to wake up the entire neighborhood. Then, satisfied with the state of his nasal passages, he pottered back to bed.

And started snoring.

I poked. I kicked. I poked again. The nocturnal concert continued. I tossed. I turned. I grumbled. I fretted. I checked the time. Two-thirty. Three. Three-thirty. At three-thirty-five I grabbed my favourite pillow and my mobile phone (set as an alarm clock) and stormed down the corridor to the guest-room. Where I tossed and turned, and fretted and sweated, imploring the Sandman to come back. He didn't. Maybe he'd run out of sand.

Imagine my bleary state at seven-thirty a.m. See me at the kitchen-table, round shouldered and grumpy as heck, sipping my tea and contemplating toast. Witness the ocular ice-picks I hurled at my poor husband as he spread Cenovis across his toast (Cenovis is the Swiss equivalent of Marmite) and proffered apologies for disturbing my peace, before kissing me, wishing me luck, and setting off for an early morning waterskiing session with his friend. I showered and dressed, hoping Kwintus had had a less eventful night.

Kwintus had obviously had plenty of beauty sleep. He looked like a superstar when I arrived at the stables, having already been groomed, plaited (tail too!), oiled and doused in insect repellant. While Steph added the finishing touches, I hauled the day’s necessities into her lorry, my stomach showing increasing signs of preoccupation. My spirits lifted when Kwint - proud as an Olympian athlete - astronaut-strutted into the lorry in his protective boots, clearly looking forward to the task at hand.

The trip went smoothly. We arrived at the show an hour before I was scheduled to tack up, and even found a parking place in the shade. My trainer, Marie-Valentine,
met us with her usual bubbly enthusiasm, and we opened up the lorry to give Kwintus as much air as possible (it was 34° and mega muggy), and went to take a look around. My daughter and her boyfriend arrived, armed with multiple cameras, as did my lovely friend Sybile, the owner of a stunning, seriously talented, young black stallion.

With such a show of support, I definitely felt the love!

But time flies when your stomach’s in a state; before I knew it we were back at the lorry, unloading Kwintus and tacking up. I was lucky to have so many people around because they took care of my horse, leaving me free to take care of myself. Applying a touch of sunscreen, I watched Kwint enjoying the devotion of ladies fussing around him, telling him how fabulous he looked. I could tell he thought he looked rather fabulous, too!

I mounted, and we headed towards the warm-up arena. Thankfully, I was one of the last few competitors riding this test, so there weren’t a gazillion other riders buzzing about, something I always find intimidating. I tend to have a problem with left and right; it takes my brain a fraction of a second to figure out which is which, so even the simple matter of passing other riders on the right requires concentration. We walked on a loose rein for ten minutes, Kwint stepping out proudly, definitely in “look at me” mode, me trying to breathe deep into my diaphragm, mentally revising my program. Gradually, I picked up the contact, shortened his stride, and pushed him into trot.

Wow!

Could this horse be more of a show-off? Marie-Valentine gasped. “Magnifique!” she exclaimed. My daughter Olivia giggled. I grinned, enjoying the swing of his back beneath me, the soft contact in my hands. It was magical, a moment I'll never forget.



Because of the furnace-like atmosphere, we’d planned keeping the warm-up to a minimum. Kwintus isn’t the type of horse to goof around; pick up your reins and he goes straight to work, all he needs is a little time to warm-up his muscles. We’d aimed for fifteen minutes but it still proved to be too much. The heat sapped his energy, and reduced me to a perspiring, nervous, jelly-like blob.

Showtime came. With shaky legs and flagging impulsion we trotted into the arena.

“Breathe,” I told myself, smiling as we passed the judges, urging my horse to step under a little more. “Come on, Kwintus; it’s only five minutes. We can do this.”

The bell rang. We trotted down the centre line. Except it wasn’t quite the centre line. Oops. Oh well, nothing we can do now, I decided, closing my legs and seat to halt at X. Our halt wasn’t quite square, nor was it entirely straight, but at least Kwintus didn’t look around to see if everyone was admiring him, which is what he usually tends to do. Maybe even he knew we’d fluffed it! We moved into a decent working trot. For some reason, I was somewhat caught off guard as we turned right and extended up the long side; we definitely lacked amplitude and brilliance. I then had a hard-drive meltdown and rode the ten-metre circle one letter late. Luckily, I didn’t hear the judges ring the bell to tell me I’d made a program error (there was another arena right next to ours with another test in progress, so the bells were a little confusing. And had I heard the bell and realized my mistake, I’d probably have become irretrievably flustered), and carried on to turn right at E and halt at X for four seconds. Ha! That halt was brilliant! So pleased was I with our halt that I almost forgot the ten-metre circle at R, remembering with barely two half-halts to spare, and then lost his haunches a little as we returned to the track. Bummer. We transitioned to walk at C, turned on the haunches before the corner, moving into an extended walk that lacked ground coverage (Funny how Kwintus can cover ground fabulously when we’re out hacking, yet when we’re working he can’t be fussed). I
collected him before K and pushed him into canter, leaving the track at P to turn into the centre line, transitioning to walk for three strides in the middle, then moving into the opposite canter lead. I probably should have breathed more deeply into the transition as his walk was a little precipitated. We repeated this exercise at S (more smoothly this time), and then cantered past the judges, extending down the long side (H to K), collecting at K to turn into the half-diagonal (F to E) where we transitioned to trot at L. Yay! Good one! We resumed canter at S,
but ran into trouble just after C when I got my collection technique in a twist just before the extended canter down the long side. Oops! Kwint fell into a big, bumpy, trot, and it took me a couple of strides to rebalance him and resume the extended canter. Major bummer, and major loss of points. At A we transitioned to trot again, and I collected him in the corner, determined to ace the extended trot right down the diagonal. Ta-dah!


Then came our bête noire: the twenty-metre circle while progressively giving the reins. As I mentioned in my previous entry, “The Final Countdown”, Kwintus thinks this part of the test is a complete waste of time. I’m not too fond of it either, mainly because Kwint has always had a tendency to stumble when you drop the contact; it’s one of his few weak points. Consequently, I did what I dared, he did something half-way decent, we didn’t fall over, and I collected him at C, rode towards S where we turned into a semi-circle and rode down the centre line towards G, where we executed a pretty good halt. I saluted, dropped the reins and hugged my horse.

Phew!

We’d finished. We’d done it! I’d overcome my nerves, pushed my boundaries, ridden my first test in an unfamiliar environment (the only other tests I’d done with Kwintus had been at my previous stables, on my “own terrain”). Kwintus had done his best for me in temperatures he’s never been comfortable with. We hadn’t made total idiots of ourselves. In fact, some parts of the program had felt pretty darn good!

We didn’t place; didn’t even come close to placing. Precision-wise, we have considerable work to do, and I need to work on controlling my nerves in order to avoid the sort of hard-drive meltdowns that lead to program errors. But in the past six weeks, from the moment I signed up for the competition, my riding has definitely improved. Competitive riding will never be my thing, but I’ve realized that the challenge of riding a test gives me something to work towards. And if only for that reason, I’m sure I’ll be signing up for competitions again.

Besides, I think we look pretty good in the photographs!

Thanks for your support, and for reading this very long, very detailed account of my latest adventure with Kwintus!

I’d love to hear about your experiences with competition. What drives you (or not) to compete?

The Kwintus Chronicles: It's the Final Countdown!

Oh dear. It won’t be long now. Yes, IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (sing it! If you know the song, that is…)! Early on Saturday morning, which is…errr…gulp…the day after tomorrow, Kwintus and I will be travelling in Steph’s horse-lorry (loading/unloading is easier than in my van) to the Chalet-à-Gobet, a village above Lausanne, where, at approximately twenty minutes after noon, we will be taking part in a dressage competition.

If you read one of my earlier posts you will know that I’m not exactly the most competitive person on the planet. Surges of adrenaline do not do it for me; mention the word “competition” and my stomach turns over, refusing to be held accountable for anything that’s been anywhere near it in the past twenty-four hours.
I guess I’ll cross that digestive bridge when I reach it, namely tomorrow.
Meanwhile, this afternoon, I have my final pre-competition lesson with my trainer, Marie-Valentine. It won’t be a long lesson because Swiss/French (we live right on the border) temperatures are totally out of control (it’s supposed to be a whopping 40° centigrade in central France today), making conditions on our white-floored outdoor arena at 3.30 pm seriously sizzling. Then there’s the horse flies, the regular flies, the squadrons of unidentified ugly beasties that insist on vampirising poor Kwintus’ neck.

I’ve been heading out to the stables super early during the past week in order to avoid the worst of the heat, but Kwint and I still sweat buckets. I’ve kept our sessions short: a fifteen minute walk down a shady forest trail, followed by a twenty minute workout, followed by another fifteen minute walk down the forest trail, and then a long, cool shower. Seriously, it’s just ridiculously hot, which is crazy since until it became ridiculously hot about two weeks ago, it had been ridiculously cold since last November. But that’s how the weather tends to be in this part of world.

Anyway, the good news is that I know my program. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that, on Saturday lunchtime, knowledge of the program will be wiped out by a massive surge of adrenaline as Kwintus and I enter at A and power towards our halt at X, leaving me flailing like a moron in the centre of the arena, with no recollection whatsoever of what comes next. Mind you, Kwintus will probably know. We’ve practiced the program so often that he seems to know where the two ten metre circles come, where to stretch into an extended walk, where to transition into canter- walk and strike off on the opposite lead in the centre of the arena. The last part of the program might be a bit of a problem as he clearly thinks the twenty metre circle with the neck extension is a complete waste of time, and always tries to lean into my inside leg to make it smaller. Then, if I don’t collect him properly before the corner and get him into my outside rein before turning into the final half-circle and halting at G (I think it’s G, it’s the middle letter right before the judges), he just kind of roll-flops into it. I mean, I can almost feel him yawning in boredom, asking me “are we done yet?”. He’s such a character!

The bad news is that the weather forecast for Saturday is mega caliente again, so our warm-up session will be kept to a strict minimum: ten minutes walk, then five minutes trot and canter on both reins, and then off we’ll go to face the judges. If I do more than that, Kwint’s engines will fail; he’s eighteen years old and, having spent most of his life under more clement English skies, has a hard time performing in hot weather. Nevertheless, I know he’ll do his best for me, because that’s the kind of horse he is.

Anyway, it’s getting late, so I must change into my riding clothes and head out to the stables for one last practice. My daughter, Olivia, will hack him out tomorrow to preserve energy!

Think of me on Saturday! I’ll let you know how it goes!