Life sucks...

There is a small local dressage show at the end of February. Last year, before our winter, I had asked the organisers if I could ride H/C and sidesaddle and they were ok about that. Then winter set in, we had bad flooding and all the shows got cancelled for months and I never made my dressage aside debut.

So yesterday I did it. I posted off my entry form for February's competition, with a note asking if I could ride the training test non-competitively and sidesaddle.

Today Molly is LAME!

I'm pretty sure its a stone bruise. She is unshod at the moment, as the farrier came just before Xmas and didn't have time to put shoes on her. I thought she would be alright as she has tough little feet, but obviously not. Last week riding in my neighbour's arena (where the base course is starting to come through really badly) she pitched over on me and felt like a 3-legged donkey. I think she went down hard on a stone in her right front foot. She hadn't felt too bad at home on the grass but today she looks terrible and is obviously favouring it at the trot.

I just hope it comes right before the dressage. Unfortunately she is also nutty on too much grass at the moment and hugely overweight and I can't even lunge her, to help get her exercise level up and to burn some fat off.

It's not fair :(

My next sidesaddle mount...

I'm going to digress a bit here, simply because I had such an exciting day yesterday!
In 2009 I bought a 9 month old filly called "Tui Hills Celtic Mead" or Honey for short. Honey is by the Irish Hunter stallion Te Mania Blue Fable out of a warmblood broodmare.
She has the most fantastic temperament, and just seems to take everything in her stride. She has a massive over reach at the walk, a floaty trot and the most fantastic looking easy canter. But I have to say that between the ages of 1 and 2 she resembled a donkey! Fortunately she started to grow into herself this spring as she turned 2 and just after Xmas she went to a good friend of mine for some work. She has been mouthed and this weekend was her first time long-reining.
She was a wee star and took everything in her stride.

Me learning how to long rein Honey

She was so well behaved my friend suggested throwing a saddle on her as we long reined, just to see how she reacted.

First time with a saddle on

Then at the end of the session my friend asked if I wanted a leg up. Sure I said! Who can resist that first "sit" on your youngster?

First time with someone on her back :)

Honey will have another week or so of long reining, to get her turns established, then I will turn her away for another year to continue growing. She is about 15.1hh or 15.2hh currently, but very slab sided! We think she will grow to about 16 hh and should fill out nicely to a hunter type. Roll on Xmas 2011 so I can have her properly broken in, then I just have to wait a few more years after that before throwing a sidesaddle on her, better start saving for one now LOL

Keeping horses in New Zealand

I thought I would talk a bit about what it is like to keep horses in NZ. We don't have "barns" or "livery" like you do in the USA or UK (although they are just starting to pop up in Auckland, our most populated city). 99% of us are 100% DIY. Which means you pay weekly to rent a paddock which may or may not have any facilities and you do everything yourself!

I live about 45km north of Christchurch in North Canterbury. Christchurch as a region has quite a strong horsey contingent. North Canterbury is on the eastern edge of the South Island, and we are roughly where the pink star is.

Like many Kiwi girls I aspired to own a piece of land where I could keep my horses and in 2000 this became a reality when my partner and I bought 12 acres of bare land. When I say "bare land" that is exactly what I mean! It was one 12-acre paddock with a struggling willow tree roughly in the middle and that was it. Nothing else. We built our house, and during that dug out around the willow tree to create a pond. We then had to fence all the paddocks and after that the stables and hay shed where built. This is the layout of our block thanks to Google Earth:

I have outlined our boundary in dark red (hopefully clicking on the photo will take you to a larger image, to show the layout in detail). I am very fortunate to have a fantastic neighbour who is also a competitive dressage rider. She built her arena before they built their house and she lets me use it free of charge. We have kept a space aside for an arena in front of my stables and hay shed and are currently in the process of getting quotes, to see if it is feasible or not. If I don't use my neighbour's arena I ride in my paddock, but this can often be too wet in winter and rock solid in summer.

This is my stable block (you can just see the hay shed and where I park my float/trailer off to the left). I only have 2 stalls and an outside pen. The stables are open which is quite handy, if the girls are in there I only have to look out the house window to keep an eye on them :)

My horses live out, and my stables are only used when we are waiting for the farrier or if it is snowing. The stable block also contains my tack/feed room.

I intend to do a follow up post about "my girls" as I own 3 mares, who make up my wee herd.

Why dressage aside?

Back in the late 1980s I used to show. At the same time there was a lady who used to ride in the hack classes aside and it absolutely fascinated me. She looked so elegant and it seemed so effortless to her. As an aside, if you ever watch the movie “The Piano” (which was filmed in New Zealand) at the very beginning, during the opening credits, a lady rides sidesaddle across the screen. It is the same lady I used to watch in the hack classes, riding a friend’s horse!

And so sidesaddle sat at the back of my mind, one of those things I always wanted to try or have a go at. Time moved on and in 1996 I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and in 2002, after the birth of my oldest son, it became incredibly aggressive and went on the rampage through my body. Most of my joints are compromised but particularly my hands, wrists, elbows, hips and ankles. I never thought of giving up riding, I always knew I would continue, it just became more a question of “how”. Sidesaddle has been the answer.

Unfortunately in New Zealand sidesaddles and their riders are quite rare, our NZSS Association only has about 40 members for the entire country (population of about 4 million) And of those 40 only a handful are active riders.  Those riders all tend to “show” which doesn’t particularly interest me, as my mare is not really show quality, and I find dressage far more technically challenging. However, no one rides dressage aside here. A couple have done demonstration rides but nobody actually competes in dressage sidesaddle. I was up against a brick wall. Dressage NZ is a bit resistant to anything “different” or “unusual” and I knew I had to find an angle and then it hit me!

In March 2009 I was classified for para-dressage as a Grade IV rider and sidesaddle was listed as my main “compensating aid”. Thus began the battle against bureaucracy to be allowed to compete in dressage aside. In September 2010 I formally wrote to Equestrian Sport New Zealand (which is the governing body for dressage in NZ) requesting to be allowed to use my compensating aid in “able-bodied” dressage. I quoted FEI rules and my para-rider classification and now I am playing a waiting game. I was told I would hear back by Christmas, which hasn’t happened. Now I should expect to hear something back in January.

They can’t ignore me forever, I’m quite stubborn and the more they tell me I can’t, the more I dig my toes in and demand I will. Fortunately I have the NZ Para-classifier on my side. If we have to, the next time the Australian classifier is here I will be seen by her, as I need 2 classifications for my international/FEI competition ticket. Once I have an FEI passport then ESNZ *has* to allow me to ride sidesaddle although it seems like a lot of hoops to jump just to ride training level aside!

A tweed habit

At the beginning of the year I bought some tweed off eBay with the intention of having it made up as a habit.
So about September I contacted the lovely lady who owns Ridir Clothing here in New Zealand. Porscha made my fabric up for me and my lovely hubby paid for it and presented it to me for my birthday (in November). So now Molly & I are all set to take on the show ring. I know this tweed is not correct for sidesaddle showing, but I intend to show Molly in the cob classes, and wanted something quite "rustic" looking - as if we were out for a sunday hack in the countryside :)

Playing dress-up in the back yard!

Let's talk about sidesaddles...

There are numerous hurdles to overcome when wanting to embark on riding aside down in the colonies:

1. Finding a sidesaddle

2. Prising the sidesaddle from the death grip of its current owner!

3. Fit

Stumbling across a sidesaddle with a W to XW gullet was the equivalent of looking for a purple and green striped zebra... it just wasn’t going to happen!

After searching for over 18 months and trying a number of sidesaddles (that all had narrow gullets... grrr...) I finally decided to bite the bullet and have a sidesaddle custom made by Wendy Tidbold of Wendy’s Saddlery. I did multiple wither tracings and sent them off in the mail. After what seemed like such a long wait (as these things do when you are really excited about something!) this is what my rural postie had in the back of his truck one day...

It is lovely to ride :) The next adventure has been reflocking it. No local saddler will touch a sidesaddle and you can't buy flocking irons in New Zealand. I found one saddler who sold me a bag of stuffing, and armed with a long handled screw driver and a wire coat hanger I have had to learn how to repack it myself. I have managed to repack the front but I am having trouble getting flock down into the back of the left panel, so the adventure continues...

Change of picture

I have changed my title picture and that is actually me & Molly! We had a wee sidesaddle day at the beginning of October and we rode our first test sidesaddle. We scored a respectable 74% :)