What Sisters Are For - Guest Post by Emily

Spring is almost here!  I think, except for this coming week when it is hiding.  Boo!  On a brighter note, Cowboy is entered in the CT at Stone Place on March 10th in both Beginner Novice and Novice!  This could be quite interesting since I haven't been on him much lately but we have put in a lot of work over the winter so I'm ready to see how it will pay off.  Last weekend was full time work at the Maple Syrup Festival and this weekend brings more of the same.  However, once it is over and time changes, Cowboy and I will be getting into serious show shape, this will probably be harder for me than it is for him!  

The count down is officially on for our "big move" to Leigh's barn!  Cowboy will be relocating on either March 24th or 29th, I can't wait!!  

Now onto the important post.  I don't read blogs often enough to know that you should have guest bloggers but Emily wrote this and it says nice things about me so she is my first guest!  While she spent the majority of the post talking about horses and saying good things about her sister, I thought I'd show you the special little monkey that keeps her from jumping the big jumps at the moment, I think most people will understand why! 

I think this litle guy will need a pony soon!  Emily's son Mason

Emily's Guest Post

“Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of

solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he will have to accept that his life will be radically changed”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m sure you have read this quote before. It is plastered all over social media, key chains, and wall hangings. It is usually accompanied by a cute picture of a girl and a pony or a fiercely competitive horse and rider.  You might even have something similar hanging in your tack room at the barn or in the living room of your home. 

Jenny was born with a fervent love for horses. Our childhood was filled with plastic toy horses, countless hours playing “Jim and Jessica” on our bouncy horses, and making show jumping courses in the front yard out of two five gallon buckets and a mop so we could practice jumping. We wore out a VHS copy of National Geographic’s Irish Horses. We would pretend we were famous race horses and race each other. I think she always won.

We had a matching pair

When we were a little older, we started out riding in the local 4-H club as true green beans. After a few years of trial and error, we improved…. a lot.  We started winning…a lot. Jenny bought a thoroughbred off the track and set her sights on the world of eventing. We spent many hours building indestructible Rolex quality cross country jumps around the farm.

Most of them probably looked like this 

  They always needed to be bigger. She always wanted to go faster. Looking back, I’m not sure how we made it to adulthood without some type of permanent, disfiguring injury.

After college degrees and a master’s program, boyfriends, jobs, marriage, and the whole nine yards in-between, horses are still a grand passion for Jenny. She rides in the rain, heat and snow.  She rode with a semi-healed broken leg to make sure Romeo was prepared for the T3D in 2011. She has shed tears of frustration, pain and joy in pursuit of her passion.

I have been two steps behind, going a little slower and not jumping quite as high. I’m in my element grooming, braiding, auditing clinics and making sure she remembers to put her number on. I’ll be at the end of the cross country course with a water bottle and a water bucket. I’ll lend her my boots because I wear a size larger and they fit over a cast. After all, what are sisters for?



The First Time

Does anyone remember the Wendy’s commercial from a few years back where the two guys go somewhere freezing cold and after eating some chicken sandwich they get warm enough to strip down to their underwear?  I don’t eat fast food very often but at this point I’d be willing to give it a try!  Its back to acting like the dead of winter so I’m stuck inside writing another post sadly unrelated to Cowboy.  Ugh!

I’ve had a request to write about former horses (before Romeo).  That post will take time and work to put together since there are so many pictures I want to include, and right now I don’t have time for either so instead I narrowed it down to two options:  The saga of my first event with Romeo and the night we got incredibly lucky at the race track (I promise it’s a cleaner story than it sounds!).  The saga of my event with Romeo won so let’s see how good my memory is!

I’m sure a lot of people have a grand story about how they decided to become an eventer.  I decided that I wanted to be an eventer when I stumbled upon the Omnibus listing for Jump Start on a web site.  I knew what eventing was for the most part from my year in Pony Club but that was about the extent of my experience.  I did what any reasonable person would do when they decided to try something for the first time, I bought a truck, determined that my parent’s old blue stock trailer would stay in one piece for at least the next year, and registered with the USEA.  I also did one mini trial and one cross country schooling with Romeo and then signed us up for our first event:  Novice at Spring Bay 2008.

I had never been to Masterson Station and no one told me that Spring Bay is notorious for interesting weather.  In “no one’s” defense I didn’t ask and at that point, I probably wouldn’t have cared.  I knew that Romeo and I were going to be rock stars.  Emily and I loaded up the trailer, reserved the cheapest hotel in the area and headed down to the Horse Park.  Included in my packing were outfits for a potential jog up, yea I should have done more homework!

I wish I had a video of our first dressage test.  I thought it felt pretty good at the time, but I’m sure the judge wondered when they started allowing gray giraffes to compete.  Romeo’s head was in the clouds the whole time and I’m not sure I even knew what bending was.  We did manage to stay in the arena and I managed to remember my test, so there was a small victory.  Before the event I was hoping for a top 3 finish, however the score board quickly gave me a reality check, we scored a 49.  I think Romeo got brownie points for being pretty.  He is good at that.

Cross country was right after dressage so we quickly walked my course and I decided that the jumps were fairly small so I didn’t have anything to worry about.  Memorizing where I was going would have been nice but since the jumps were small, everything else was going to be easy too right?  Wrong!  The first two jumps went pretty well but jump #3 was a big hedge where a horse eating monster lived.  Romeo took one look at that hedge and slammed on the breaks.  There was a picture of what happened next, I looked for it today but it’s been removed from the photographer’s web site.  There is probably a good reason for that.   I will try to give you a mental picture.  Romeo’s neck was stretched over the hedge, I was on Romeo’s neck and you couldn’t see the rest of him.  Yea, that pretty much sums it up.  I have a crazy “OMG” look on my face and he is looking at the hedge while trying to figure out what rock just fell on his head.  Somehow I managed to regroup and we cleared it easily on the second attempt.   It was only after about 15 strides had passed that I realized that I had no idea where jump #4 was.  I remember at this moment it crossed my mind that maybe we were not going to place in the top 3 and that maybe eventing was harder than I thought.  We finally found the jump and then managed to finish the rest of the course without any more memorable moments, there was only one problem.  Turns out the time limit wasn’t the point at which you started collecting time faults, the optimal time was.  Huh, that’s odd; I had thought that we had 11 minutes to finish the course.  Add on about 20 more time faults. 

Surprisingly, since it became our nemesis later on, show jumping was VERY uneventful.  Looking back on it now, I am really glad it was, I’m not sure I would have gone home and signed up for another event had it been a total disaster.  We pulled one rail but otherwise put in a nice enough round.  The good news, event #1 was behind us.  The bad news?  We finished next to last on a score of 92.  At least it was a number and not a letter! 

That Ribbon Cost WHAT??

Since the weather isn't my friend right now, I have very little interesting Cowboy news.  I am planning to send in an entry for the CT at Stone Place on March 10th.  Right now we are planning on entering both Beginner Novice AND Novice (gulp!).  While we work towards that, I thought I would post what made me decide to start blogging in the first place.  Hope you enjoy!

I love coming home from an event with a ribbon.  I wait patiently for the 30 minutes to be up so I can pick it up, or I get excited like a 10 year old waiting to go into the ring.  I take a picture of it on my horse, with me holding it and of it hanging from the rear view mirror so I can post it on Facebook.  I plot where I’m going to put my latest treasure when I get home, sometimes for several hours on the long drive.  I walk in the door and my husband (who really is supportive of all my crazy horse adventures) asks “exactly how much did that ribbon cost”?  I can see his point of view.  Anyone could buy a ribbon like that, heck for the cost of one lesson I could buy a MUCH nicer, much bigger, much more colorful ribbon than the now slightly wrinkled 5^th place pink and white thing that looks to me like an amazing treasure.  Since I’m really not a 10 year old anymore, and since I happen to teach Econ at our local college for extra horse money, I started thinking this winter (yes it’s been a LONG winter with way too much time to think!) about what each ribbon really cost.  I quickly decided that adding up the dollars of what they ACTUALLY cost was insanely depressing.  Thankfully Econ took me down a different road.  There it was in bold on the first page of the text, “don’t think in accounting cost (dollars and cents), think in opportunity cost (what you gave up to get what you have).  That really made me think, was the opportunity cost of that pretty pink ribbon anymore appealing that the hundreds (ok thousands, lets be honest) of dollars I spent to get it? 

My first ribbon came at Training level in 2010.  Yea, I skipped a few levels I probably shouldn’t have but the big jumps looked a lot more fun.  I’ll call that my “a little more grown up ribbon”.  When I first started eventing, I didn’t have a trainer or a clue.  I don’t think it was mere coincidence that I got that first ribbon about six months after I started taking lessons.   Lessons meant less time and money for my favorite college past time, bar hopping.  Maybe that first ribbon should have been called “giving up the bar scene”, oh well both titles are probably equally appropriate.

My second ribbon came again at Training level in the spring of 2011.  I had broken my leg in February of that year and we had to run one more clean event to qualify for the T3D in June at IEA.  If I had paid attention to the lesson ribbon #1 taught me I probably would have been in better shape but I regress, I’m still young enough to have a little fun!  My doctor told me not to ride until mid-May and the qualifying event (Greater Dayton) was in mid-May.  Not only did we run around it clean, we also trained with my cast on for 8 weeks and did a schooling show 10 days after I got it off.  Getting ribbon number two meant I gave up the excuse to feel sorry for myself and it meant that for the first time in a long time, I wanted something so badly that I was willing to do anything to get it.  Yea ok, so the real opportunity cost was that I could have injured myself pretty badly but I’m sure all you fellow eventers know that it was a very small price to pay!

My third (and most treasured) ribbon came at the T3D (just two months after I got my cast off!) when we finished on our dressage score to be the highest placed amateur in the event.  I can’t even describe the feeling when our number was called.  Yea it’s a fairly small white (4^th place overall) ribbon.  And yea, I spent thousands of dollars on it.  But I can honestly say I’ve never been more proud of myself, my horse, or my family who supported me to get there.  What did this ribbon “cost” me?  A whole heck of a lot actually.  I realized at that event that I didn’t want to be an amateur forever, I wanted to do this and I wanted to be really good at it.  What did I get in return?  A brown Dirt Cowboy who has taught me so many things I'm most likely too stubborn to have learned any other way.

My fourth ribbon didn’t come at an event.  It came in the mail.  I was down in the dumps.  My beautiful Romeo who helped me earn above ribbons was injured and in the stall.  I had realized that he was a stepping stone to where I wanted to be and that after he got better, I would be moving on.  The ribbon that came in the mail was a (HUGE) 3^rd place ribbon for Training Amateur Rider in Area 8 (yea you get a lot of points for a T3D!).  That ribbon taught me to appreciate what you have and not to be afraid to dream big.  It was the end of a great chapter with my gray guy.

My next ribbon is still out there.  I spent last show season trying to learn how to ride Cowboy.  However, I already know what my next ribbon cost me.  When we get the ribbon it will mean that I’m a heck of a lot better rider than I was when I won my last one.  See Romeo was pretty easy and straight forward; my bay baby is anything but.  I’ve given up making the same mistake twice (ok five times), I’ve given up just getting by with my right rein half halts; I’ve given up being happy with being a decent rider.   

There are some things in life that money can’t buy, we all know that.  And while money could buy me a truck load (literally a truck load at this point I’m sure) of ribbons, they would be very little in comparison to the small collection I have going now. 

Meeting the Family

Blogging must be like painting a picture, the first part is always the hardest.  Hopefully I'm better at blogging than painting!  After writing and deleting and writing again, its time to get this show on the road and meet the important people and ponies that make up the Saga of the Brown Dirt Cowboy.

I started my eventing career at the ripe young age of 24 in 2008.  Yes, I realize a lot of upper level riders have been around Rolex several times by 21 but I figure its never too late to try.  I quickly learned that eventing is awesome, regardless of the outcome which is a good thing because I wasn't very good at it at first.  My horse had never done it either so we learned together and with a lot of hard work, ended up completing a Training Three Day in 2011 as the highest placed Amateur rider.  This convinced me that I wanted to really try over the next few years to make it as far as I can.

My first horse was (is) Prepster aka Romeo.  I bought him in 2007 and started eventing him in 2008.  He put up with SO much more than I realized at the time.  He might not have always done what I wanted but he always tried for me and brought me home safe.  Once I started riding a little better, he started going a LOT better and we got really competitive at Training level.  After a minor injury in 2011, I decided that it was time to move on to a horse who would share my goal of moving up the levels.  It broke my heart to sell Romeo but he went to an amazing home in Knoxville TN where he is showing his new mom Emily the ropes of eventing. 

Romeo at the first horse inspection at the IEA T3D

Warming up before a clinic with Nadeem Noon

My current horse is the star of the blog, Dirt Cowboy.  He is a 4 year old (almost 5, I remind him of that when he is bad) OTTB who won a whopping $191 at the track.  He is by far the most difficult but also the most talented horse I have ever been on.  Since I bought him in 2011 I feel like I've learned more than I learned in all the years of riding before that.  We are taking it slow and mainly trained last year at home so he could gain confidence.  We finished the year with a respectable showing at a Starter Mini Trial.  What Mr. Cowboy doesn't know is that I have BIG plans for him this year!  We plan to start our year with a few schooling shows and then get our feet wet at May Daze. 

One of Cowboys first jumps

Learning to relax at a horse show - Stone Place 2012

If I've learned one thing, its that you can't event by yourself.  Trust me I tried and it doesn't go very well.  I'm blessed to have an amazing family to support me, a trainer who goes WAY above and beyond what I pay her for, and an amazing group of barn friends.  My sister Emily is my professional groom and photographer at events.  She always keeps us straight and lets me know when I screw up but I know the truth, she is my biggest fan.  My husband Nic is the lucky man who gets to live with a horse crazy girl.  He puts up with me being gone 5 nights a week and doesn't even get mad when I go to horse shows on our anniversary.  He has learned to like events because you can drink beer.  He is really good at drinking beer and holding my horse while I braid mane.  My mom, and sometimes my dad, comes to nearly all shows and even some lessons.  When I first started eventing my mom would walk courses with me and couldn't believe we were going to jump the Novice stuff.  I knew we were going places when she walked a Training course with me and pointed out that the Prelim stuff didn't look that big anymore.  Maybe someday she can walk my Rolex course with me, if she tells me it doesn't look too big I'm sure we can make it! 

Before I met Leigh (her show name is Leigh Smith, yes I'm lucky enough to ride with a four star rider!), I didn't understand what a difference a good trainer makes.  In a few short months, she took Romeo and I from struggling to finish a Training event to placing consistently finishing in the ribbons.  She really seems to believe in me and Cowboy and that gives me a lot of confidence.  Even after several tequila shots she still says we can make it all the way, that means it has to be true right? 

I'll wrap this up before it gets too long!  I hope you all enjoy reading about our adventures!!  Cowboy and I will be updating soon :)