Vienna

With sad news to report, Vienna will be out for the 2009 season. At the end of November, Vienna's left fore began showing swelling after two rides. We immediately stopped riding and had a the vet out. An ultrasound showed there may be a small tear somewhere around the fetlock, but nothing specific. We decided to stall rest her and ice.

With no improvement, Vienna last week went in for an MRI. The MRI showed two tears in her lateral sesmoid tendons. The bad news is we do loose her for this season. The good news is we can probably expect a full recovery if all goes well.

She will be laid up for the next 9 months. While I am sad that I am unable to continue the training I had with her at the end of last season, I am very happy that the mare should be back at the end of 2009 and will hopefully be back in full for 2010.

She is only five and a half and if we loose one season at this age, it really doesn't make a difference in the long run. We can still expect a lot from her over the years!

Here's to a healthy recovery to Miss V!

I'm Back.....Back In The Saddle Again

So today is the third straight day that I've ridden since the injury; and so far, so good. I wasn't planning on beginning any sort of riding until next week, but it started feeling good enough to try. I've done limited riding, only 2-3 horses a day, and not doing full work (20-30 minutes in duration).

I'm very happy to report that I have experienced absolutely no pain; as there was one ride where I was stressed and I had no response! If anything, I'm more stiff than anything else. It feels like I've done a couple heavy days of weight lifting.

I can tell my timing is slightly off during the rides since it has been over 3.5 weeks since the injury. I'm pleased where I am at, and I can start back up where I left off fairly quickly.

I'm going to take it easy through the weekend if the response is good, then full bore next week!

One Hell of A Winter

The title says it all. We have finally got out of the deep freeze that sabotaged the last two weeks of December. However with the warmer weather and heavy rains we now have a new monumental issue on our hands: floods!!

As of today (1/8) River Run is completely flooded. The Snoqualmie River reached 8 ft above flood level about 10am this morning. This meant there was 2 feet of water in both the barn and arena. The horses were moved last night to the critter pad (an elevated section of land with portable stalls). The horses are completely safe and sound!!!

I feel completely fortunate to have such wonder owners in Julie and John Bennett, and barn manager Ramon Their care has been absolutely tremendous. I have not been to the barn since Tuesday and not once have I had to worry about the safety of the horses.

I was unable to get to Storybook Farm today because all roads to it where washed out or under water. The farm itself, minus the lower pastures, is completely fine.

So......a reevaluation is now in order. Between the deep freeze/snow, my broken ribs, and now the flood, the horses are now a little bit behind in terms of their fitness. BUT it is only the beginning of January so I'm not stressing at all. I'm hoping to be back riding full time by the beginning of February and will now push back the goals a little bit. First show isn't until the beginning of May.

In regards to the ribs, they are better but I am no where close to feeling pain free. I got on Sabu for a couple of minutes on Tuesday and cantered him for a short time. There was no pain at all during the ride!! However, I've been pretty stiff since. I'm getting massage work done tomorrow and hopefully acupuncture in the next few days.

Let's already write January off and look forward to February and beyond!

It's Just A Rib (But it hurts like hell)

The past week and a half we have been experiencing some "wonderful" winter weather here in the Seattle area. Looking outside my window I can see about 10 inches on the ground. I cannot remember when I grew up here, such a long sustained period of sub freezing temperatures and snow storms.

Because of the snow, and more importantly the cold weather, I haven't been able to work my guys as normal. Most of this is because the footing froze at both arenas. So that has limited the work down to hand walking for a couple of days. In terms of their respective training programs this down time isn't a big deal for the horses as it's only December. It will only take a week or so to be back on track.

However................yesterday, I took out one of my young horses and began to lunge him first to make sure that he wasn't too high when I got on him.

Being cooped up, he immediately tried to get down and roll. I got him going and then 4 steps later he's down on the ground. I got over to him quickly, at his side, so he wouldn't roll on the saddle. Well he popped up and then popped me in the chest with one of his hind legs. I don't know how he pivoted so quickly and got me because I was not in a danger spot when I was at his side.

Regardless, I now have a broken rib (8th rib) on my right side. Frankly, I'm pretty fortunate that it is just a rib and that he didn't kick me higher up in my face, or on the my left chest (heart) or lower and cause an injury to an organ.

So.......I'm laid up here for a little while. It honestly hurts more than I expected. I hope to get out to the farms tomorrow and at least teach a lesson or two. I'm already a little stir crazy laying down all day. It's up in the air on when I'll get back on a horse. Basically, when I feel comfortable enough pain wise. I'm hoping sometime next week.

Merry Christmas!!

Clinic at Mandloin Dressage

A little late on this post: over the last weekend of November, I traveled down to Gardnerville, NV to teach a clinic at Mandolin Dressage. It was a very successful weekend for everyone!! In late March I went to the Rancho Murrieta Horse Show with some of these guys. It was a real treat to work with them again and more importantly to see the progress they had made over the past 6 months.

Below are some pictures from the 3 days:

November Henrik Johansen Clinic

This past Thursday and Friday I rode with Heinrich Johansen again. I was able to ride three different horses this time. I would have had four, but with River Run flooding again, we weren't able to get out there for the clinic.

First things first, this clinic was one of the best I've been to and I was able to take many new theories and skills away from it. Usually if I can get one or two ideas I find it quite a success.

I started off with Cinzano, Wendy Hsue's 4 year old Swedish stallion prospect. First, Heinrich really like him and confirmed that I have him on the right track. Heinrich had me "run" the horse down the long side to get him forward and then once Cinzano was forward to then put the leg on. This will allow the horse to understand what the leg is meant for. Previously Cinzano was a slightly resistance to the leg and now Cinzano is riding off the leg better. The other thing Heinrich had me do was use a little more outside rein (just barely lifting the outside rein momentarily) then I had on previously ridden on circles and corners to keep the outside shoulder in line. The use of a little more outside rein actually played a big difference in the canter!

My second ride was on Deborah Hauk's Hanovarian gelding Nick. The first thing Heinrich introduced me was applying the "Gear System" to the horse. In another blog I'll explain this theory a little bit more. Once warmed up, Heinrich had me start Nick in a extremely collected walk. The pursposed being to get him collected up, but also to have Nick listen to the rhythm I was asking for from my seat. This was challenging for both of us, to hold this collection for long periods of time. From this walk, depending how collected I had it, I could put Nick into a turn on the haunches or piroutte extremely easy.

After we had that down, we moved up to the trot. Again, we held an extremely collected trot that if we had the power and strength could be a "schooling" passage. At moments Nick would come through and actually have some "baby" passage steps! From this extremely collected trot, I would take Nick into a true collected trot, back to the extremely collected trot, out to a medium/extention, back to extremely collected trot, etc. All of the changes within the gait was with my seat.

Once I understood what Heinrich wanted, I started getting some quality work and it felt fantastic. After the lesson, Deborah come up to me and said, "I've never understood why owner's have their trainers ride the horses in clinics and in shows. After watching you and Nick, I completely understand why!". She was so proud of her horse!

On Thursday I rode Joyce Morimoto's 14 year old Swedish gelding, Jumanji. This would be a good lesson for me as I've only ridden Jumanji once a week for the past two months after him coming off a 2 month lay off.

Like the Nick lesson, we applied the gear system to this ride as well. Again, things went really well. We also worked on some half pass schooling and Heinrich gave me a couple of clues on schooling the half pass to keep the forward movement while still maintaining the lateral direction. By taking the shoulder a little more forward at moments on the diagonal line I was eventually able to get a good bend around my inside leg and have the shoulders at a good angle.

Because of the flood at River Run we were unable to hold parts of the clinic there, which meant I couldn't clinic with Cindy Bucceri's gelding Claudius. It would have been nice to work with Claudius, but I am able to take a lot of what I learned over the two days and apply it to Claudius. The last three rides on Claudius have been our best yet where I have gotten Claudius to listen to me and then actually come through in the rhythm that I want. I now have greater confidence in the goals I have set with Claudius ( riding at the FEI level) next year.

I will be taking Cinzano to another farm on Thursday to clinic again with Heinrich which I'm looking forward to.

A big thank you to Wendy Hsue, Deborah Hauk, and Joyce Morimoto for allowing me to clinic their respective horses with Heinrich!

Logo Created

I finally got the logo for Emerald City Dressage created! I'll work on getting the website up and running over the next couple of weeks.