Adult Camp 2019 Day One

This year Mom and I each attended camp. This made the situation a little tougher since they scheduled us back to back. My ulcerative colitis have been super bad, so I was worried about having to run to the bathroom mid tacking. Luckily Peggy was able to attend and help me. The horses stay overnight and we leave the truck and trailer at Sprieser. I drove my car loaded with all our stuff and was able to find their stalls before the horses arrived. Good thing too since I only found Rosemary's. I walked the aisle twice, but there was no sign with his name. A staff member was just as puzzled as I was. She remembered his name. Eventually she found his name paper behind another horse's. She found a stall down the aisle from Rosemary and right next to the bathroom. Perfect for me.

Someday his name will be spelled correctly

The horses settled in just fine, chowing down on the hay provided. Mom and I had to work on chipping them out of the mud they gathered from the rain the night before. I could tell Roscoe had to pee, but he is not a fan of pelleted sawdust. God forbid he get splashed. When I got him tacked up, I asked Peggy to walk him in the grass. He had to pee before going into the indoor. NO PEE allowed! He cooperated after scoping out the area.
My mom rode right before me and Rosemary seemed to handle the work okay. We worried a bit about her heaves. I made sure to trace clip her so she would not get too hot.

Roscoe and I headed in for our lesson with Skye Finn, a new trainer to Sprieser.  "This must be the Roscoe I have heard so much about," was the first thing she said. Uh boy, wonder what she has heard. Fair warning, the loud voice is Lauren teaching the other lesson.

Roscoe was full of it and distracted. He spooked at mom walking in, shadows and some mystery stuff. So Skye had us doing baby leg yields and shoulder fore.

 Roscoe started to settle as we worked. He was still a bit tight in his poll. She had us do a  clock exercises of moving his head to points on the clock to loosen him up. I was really wishing I had remembered my spurs. From there we moved to adjusting his trot open and close. Roscoe was deciding all this was a lot of work.

But there was no rest. Onto canter or maybe try to canter. He seemed to forget how his feet work. The tail monster was working overtime. When we finally got a canter, Skye said "he actually has a good canter." I guess he can still surprise people. She wanted to work his transitions. We tried to do a canter figure eight one direction, but my riding could not coordinate, so we changed it around and it worked better. He was still a little dramatic on his left transition. We ended with some nice trot work. Overall though he was distracted, he still did some nice work. I really have to lock down my outside rein so I can support him more.

We had a couple of hours before our cavaletti lesson. Mom and I were in it together. It started with going over poles on a circle and adjusting the number of strides between poles.

 From there we serpentined over poles down the center of the ring. The cobs handled the turns well.

The next part is where it got dicey. Our cobs are pony sized, but they are not pony strided. Both have done cavaletti with horses and not had any issues. Skye ended up closing the distance on the three pole and the two pole to an insanely small stride. We always thought two poles, especially close together, were a no-no. Roscoe decided to just ignore the suggestion and go over both poles in one stride.

We were told to close up our stride. Considering the bad weather this winter, the horses are out of shape. So something happened to Rosemary going over the three poles. We could not see any injury, but she hurt for a little while. Mom eventually was able to get her going again, but the focus changed to Roscoe.
We moved onto some canter work. I can honestly say I let him down. A side effect of the colitis is malnutrition and it drains me. My pony takes care of me and does not hold it against me.

Day one was complete and we survived despite all of us being out of shape. We left the ponies eating their dinner and figuring out that they were staying. Tomorrow we had one more lesson. I was already feeling today. No pain, no gain.