Day 211

My mom read somewhere earlier this week that celery was a good alternative to carrots for horses with insulin resistance. So we figured we'd try it out. Absolutely no one liked it! Brie thought it was disgusting, Nina wouldn't even look at it, and Harry ate one stalk and then spit out the rest that we tried to feed him. Oh well, guess we just have to cut back on the carrot intake!

Brie is looking kind of skinny, but her eye sockets were filling in last week, so that means her sugar was going up...I feel bad for her. Poor Brie. If she ate enough, she'd probably be happier, but we have to keep her underweight to control her sugar...The vet's supposed to come out this month for shots and teeth, so maybe we'll have her test Brie's blood and then give us some more advice about how to manage her.

We were waiting around for the farrier today. While we were waiting, I decided to longe Harry. I feel like I'm dreaming! He's absolutely wonderful longeing now! I got curious after we stopped and had my brother knock over a couple of poles and lay them on the ground for Harry to walk over them. He didn't want to at first, even though he has tons of times before, but after he saw Nina walking over them he just went for it. Then we decided to try the tarp again. Harry didn't learn by example from that! Nina just thought the tarp was the silliest thing and walked right over it, stomped on it, kicked it around, pushed it with her nose, and even picked it up in her mouth and flung it around! Harry, meanwhile, was fearing for his life (and Nina's). We eventually just settled on him being calm and observing Nina and decided it was a good time to have his break. We put him away and got out Brie, who also thought the whole ordeal was ridiculous. In the end, we laid the tarp over Brie and Nina (separately) and walked them around with it. Brie was used to it because I show costume with her and wear a dress, so she's used to something hanging over her butt, and Nina was really well behaved and unphased by it too! At least now I now that if I ever can't bring Brie to a show, I can do costume with Nina! I feel a new outfit coming on the horizon! I better fire up that sewing machine.

We didn't know whether we should ride them or not, but my brother and mom ended up tacking up Nina and Harry to ride. I only put a bareback pad and bit hanger on Brie because I figured with my luck the farrier would show up right as I started to ride. And just as I thought, I was right! I only got a couple of laps around the arena, as Brie wanted to fly, before the farrier showed up. He did Sadie first, but I dismounted anyways to help him out cleaning up and handling Sadie and the rest of the horses.

My mom switched Harry's bosal to a softer one in order to tuck his head in without using a martingale. We changed this because Pasos resist pressure rather than giving in to it, so after this change, his barbada was stronger than his bosal, which would theoretically lower his head. I got the chance to watch him in action today, rather than being on his back, and he looked pretty good! Only time will tell if this method worked.

Last night, I found this video of Harry's father on Youtube. I was so surprised about how similarly they gait, which I guess would make sense, but having never seen his father in action, it makes me realize that Harry's not actually doing anything wrong with his gait --- he only has those little spouts of nervous tapdancing. After watching this, it really made me proud that he's on the right track to follow in his father's footsteps!

Days 209 & 210

Saturday

We got a call this morning from Paco about Nina. He said that Nina looked like she wasn't feeling well, but wasn't rolling around like she was colicking. We rushed out and by the time we got out there, she was looking better than Paco had said, but we got her out and made her run around the round pen until she pooped just to make sure that she wouldn't colic. Thankfully, she did! And remained okay for the rest of the day.

While I didn't exactly "do much" today, I think that today was one of the most influential days I've had with Harry.

After trying to work with the tarp last week, I decided that the first task I would do was confront him with it again. We went out into one of the small paddocks (it's more like a pen) and I held the tarp, folded up. He was not having any of it. He kept running around and away from it and me. Eventually I got him and tried to rub it on his nose, but he didn't like it much. Rather than chasing him around some more, I laid it out on the ground, clipped him to a lead line, and we tried to walk very close to it. He was getting kind of close, but the wind kept picking up and moving it, which would scare him. I hung it on the fence and unclipped him and hoped that he would eventually go by it on his own, but he wouldn't.

After this, I had Paco help me. I've seen Nick doing this trick. He ties the horses short enough to the pole in the arena that they won't get tangled up in it, and swishes a rod with a plastic bag on the end around the horse until they stop fighting and trying to run away from it. Then he goes closer to them with the bag and eventually tries to rub it on them without them being scared of it. Basically, it's the Friendly Game with a bag, not a rope, and tied up so we won't get trampled. So Paco helped me with that. Harry was so scared though! By the time he finally relaxed and let us touch him with the bag, he was soaked with sweat. I didn't ride him, just hosed him off after that and let him relax in his stall.

So no, I didn't do much, but I really think that was one of the best things I could have done for Harry. It's something that will build our trust. Once he knows that I won't let bags hurt him, he'll be more comfortable with tarps, and then other things that come our way will be less shocking.

Sunday

Nina is still looking good! She pooped 3 times before we got there, so she must be feeling better.

No tarps today! Although, while my parents were talking with Paco, my brother and I put everyone outside and got the huge exercise ball that we bought a while back and wanted to play with the horses. Brie was totally unenthusiastic about it, which I guess was good? At least she wasn't running away from it! She was just letting us bounce the ball off of her sides until we felt bad that she looked so bored/sad by the fact that we were throwing a ball at her. So we moved on to Nina.

Nina usually loves playing with the ball, but not today! She kept running away from it. We didn't know if she just didn't want to be bothered or what, so my brother held her while I just rubbed it all over her. She wasn't scared of it, so I guess she just wasn't in the mood.

Then we moved on to Harry. What a baby! No matter how many times we kept coming back to him, he just wasn't having it! We did eventually get to rub it on him, though, which is progress. =]

After all that, I rode Harry starting inside. I didn't put any bracelets or the rear end collector on and just wanted to check any progress we had made in the past two weeks. He was very calm in the indoor, but then when we went in the outdoor, after our little herd of riders broke up to do our own thing after walking around the arena for a while, he got really upset and kept tap dancing. Frustrated (and hot), I decided to go back inside and work with him. He calmed down and gaited really nicely, and then we worked on largo without pacing. Every time he paced, I would just bring him back a little or even stop if it got really bouncy and let him start over again. We ended with a beautiful largo pass over the board and I ended with it so that he could hear what I wanted him to do.

I switched with my mom and then rode Brie outside with my brother, Kimmy, and Samantha. Of course, Brie was their leader! And after we ran into a few branches, raced up a couple of hills, and chased John's car down the driveway, our day was done.

Now back to school =[ It was so nice being on break! I wish I could ride every day.

Days 207 & 208

Saturday

The beautiful weather makes prime picture sessions! We had a little bit of fun with my hat today.

Surprisingly, they all kept it on!

Since it was so beautiful out, I decided that Harry needed some fresh air and we were going to work outside the entire time. He was good longeing again, which is awesome! He was pretty good walking around the outdoor arena too, but once I started to ask him to work, he was all jumpy. Between the wind and seeing everyone else working, he was totally unfocused. After trying to get him to calm down and get his attention for well over an hour, I finally just settled for a semi-calm walk around the arena both ways and called it a day, but not before making him walk up to Gary's house and back to the barn...all by himself. He might have gotten eaten by a caterpillar or something, but he made it!

Sunday

More pictures! No hat today, though.

Decided against riding outdoor first. Before we left, we uncovered our patio furniture from the winter and I brought along a tarp to play with Harry after our ride. Today I wasn't getting much cooperation out of him either, and apparently his head was not set very well, so I got fed up with the rear end collector and bracelets and took them off and just rode and focused on collection. At the end of a very, very long ride, we had a perfect largo. No skipping, no pacing, just a really great largo. I couldn't have been more proud.

After our successful ride, I decided to take out the tarp. I wanted him to walk on it with me on his back rather than getting off and letting him step on it by hand first. He made a lot walks around it, staring at it apprehensively. Then when he started to bend down to sniff it, he was snorting. He let out a really big snort, the tarp moved from his exhale, and he scared himself, jumped up, farted, scared himself again and hopped over about 8 feet, all without me falling off! Haha, it didn't even feel that bad, but Gary was watching and told me to probably try that from the ground first, so I did just because I didn't want him to say something about my "circus antics" in the future. After about 40 minutes of standing around, he finally stepped onto the tarp, scared himself with the rustle, and backed up. At least he stepped on it! I'm glad we made a little progress, he needs to get over himself.

My mom ordered some new supplements and they're supposed to be calming. She got some for Brie and Harry. We'll see if they work at all! Something else I'm concerned with is showing now. It seems that the pleasure horse is being eliminated in the eyes of the judges, or at least, switched with performance. It's very strange. But apparently now performance is being judged on speed while pleasure is being judged on collection...which would make Harry a pleasure horse instead of a performance, which is what I planned on showing him as, and would make Brie and performance horse instead of a pleasure...I want to start working with Brie more and get her ready for show...I can only hope that she'll get with the program and not want to run everyone down in the show ring like the last time I showed her!

Days 205 & 206

Saturday

First, let me show you how I longed Harry last weekend.

I made this little loop around the pole so that he couldn't pull me when he fishtailed out. So that was that!

Here is another picture from last weekend. Nothing too special, just using double reins! His little braid looks so funny =]

Last two pictures from last weekend. We turned walking over the poles into jumping over the poles! At least he was enjoying himself...I remember when he was too scared to even go anywhere near them! And I have to say that I'm proud of my posture, it's gotten way better!

Now, to photobomb you from today! Compared to last weekend, it was beautiful out! I can't even believe that I had to wear a turtleneck last week, today was gorgeous! As it being so beautiful out, we let everyone run around and play before we started to work today.

Harry wins the award for most photogenic today. I have tons more pictures, and he's in the majority of them! He's such a cutie, as soon as I walked into his pasture he ran over to me to see what I was doing.

Running towards the camera.

Being a model.

Then I hopped over the fence to Brie and Nina's paddock. Nina was adamant on playing tag the entire time, so I didn't get very many stills of her. This is my favorite though.

In between chasing Brie to make her stop eating and do something interesting for the camera, I got this one. I'm just bugged that I didn't get her whole face in the frame! She looks so dirty!

Doing her favorite activity -- eating!

Finally some movement!

Harry looking over at me in the next paddock, sadly. He gets sad when he can't play with Nina, but Brie really doesn't like him, so we generally don't put them together unless we're making a Christmas card or something.

My dad caught a frame of Harry and I. He was following me around the pasture when I walked in. I like how both of our hair looks crazy.

This is my favorite of the two of us so far!

 

 I tricked Harry into giving me a kiss. He is clearly disgusted by it! Girls have cooties =]

Now that the photobombing is over, let me tell you about my marvelous weekend! Harry's 7th birthday was this past Thursday and we planned on celebrating but forgot the apples...oops. Anyways, after tacking him up I thought of longeing in the corner of the arena and using the two walls as a buffer for fishtailing. He was super calm and looked great and never fishtailed. My mom even asked, "Wow, what did you do to Harry?" I think it was probably because he ran around outside first, but at least he has this calm idea in his mind now. Hopefully this will work for a while and we can progressively move away from the corner and into the middle of the arena.

My goal for this weekend was to work on the largo. We had a beautiful ride pre-largo. He was collected and calm and gaiting wonderfully, doing everything I asked of him. I couldn't have been happier.

When we got into the largo, he lost all sense of calm and normalcy and began pacing and tapdancing. I tried everything I could think of ---flexing into the wall, stopping to let him rebalance, slowing and speeding back into the largo, pushing him forward...at the end I even pushed him into a canter and he wasn't having that. I was totally out of ideas and discouraged by that point, so I calmed him back down to a walk and collected him back into a corto, passed across the board, and finished on a good note. 

Disappointed, I was talking to my mom about what to do with him. Should we send him to training? I just would hate to do that because I have so much of my own efforts invested in him and even though I can't see it at times, we really have come a long way. Think of those poles, for example! So I made a deal to give me until my birthday next month and if he's not doing better, then we should send him to training, either by Nick here or by Paul who offered it to us last fall at the State Fair. I just hope that we can get somewhere on our own!

Sunday

Today I should have really taken pictures, that way I could have shown you what I did.

While in the car, I started talking to my friend Melody about my situation with Harry and how I've tried everything I could think of. She suggested heavier shoes (but that's not happening) or maybe slightly pulling him off the wall and doing some random shapes to refocus his mind on what he's supposed to be doing and calming him down, then letting him go back into a largo. My mom suggested putting on the rear end collector (a.k.a fruit basket) and the weighted bracelets on his back legs. So I decided to combine the three.

I was expecting hell on legs when I longed him today, but happily, that was not the case! He was just as good as yesterday, and it has me thinking, maybe he doesn't need to be longed before I ride. Maybe longeing is what is working him up with anticipation? As soon as we get the largo down, I'll test out that theory. Until then, our corner will work just fine.

The past two days have been our longest rides since I can remember. They're wonderful. The first part of our ride was him getting used to the collector and the bracelets, so he was pretty bouncy. After he calmed into that, our corto was a little tap dancy. I started the shapes first with circles, but then found that he thinks circles are just the greatest thing ever and loves to spin around and started doing it on his own, so we stopped circles and started doing triangles and squares and stars. He was better with those. His corto relaxed and he was feeling pretty confident and our board was phenomenal.

Feeling good, we started going at the largo. It was tricky and we definitely did more shapes than not, but at the end of our ride, we had an absolutely BEAUTIFUL couple of passes across the board at a largo, no skipping or tap dancing or pacing. He was just giving me all of his effort and it felt amazing. Beyond proud of where we were at, I took off his contraptions and we headed outside, because today was even warmer than yesterday!

I joined everyone in the outdoor and was only looking to have a little fun, so we corto'd around and across the board, where he got a little too excited and danced across it, so I had to refocus him and go across it again, where he did really nicely. Then my mom and I headed out into the front pasture where he was just an absolute doll walking around out there, while my mom was stuck with Brie in her monster mode, trying to run into the trees and fences. Harry was wonderful throughout our whole ride out in front, and after spending 10 minutes trying to close the gate we came out of when we went back into the arena (and failing), we headed inside where my mom was adamant on making Brie walk.

While Brie was trying to walk, Harry and I were cooling down. Feeling especially adventurous because of all our progress today and because I was using the training saddle (which has a horn), I took my feet out of the stirrups and was determined to not fall off. He worked surprisingly well! He didn't get scared that the stirrups hit his side a little bit and walked as if I had them in. 

In all, today was by far one of the most progressive days in my training with Harry. These are the days that I need to remember when he's throwing me around the arena and yanking ropes out of my hands. He is beyond willing to learn, I just have to improve my methods to understand him.

At the end of the day, we hosed everyone down and gave out Harry's belated birthday present - golden apples! Brie's birthday is coming up this Thursday, so I wanted to get to the store to buy these granola oat balls that you hang from the stall that they can munch on, although I have a feeling Brie's will be gone in a day. Hope you all had wonderful rides today as well!

Days 203 & 204

Saturday

Today we had a huge party in celebration of Paco's birthday tomorrow because not everyone would be here tomorrow. It took away from riding time, but it was super fun. But before the party, I worked with Harry. We were doing the same kind of longeing from last week, using the pole, and it was going pretty well. He wasn't running so hard around the pole, but then he started fishtailing out again and didn't want to move back out...sigh. I really don't know what to do with him or why I suck at this so much. But Paco came over and told me to longe him from the bosal like I was a couple months ago, but he still kept fishtailing out, so Paco took him over.

Harry longed perfectly for Paco. =[ It's things like that that make me feel really bad. I don't know what else I could do to get Harry to work for me without thinking I'm a joke.

We bought bell boots for Harry in hopes that they would help him remember his back legs, but it didn't seem like they really did anything at all. He was just okay to ride, but at least he didn't act up. We put down the poles for the figure 8s and walked over them at the end of our ride. He started to even kind of hop over them and I could tell that he really started to like going over them. That made me happy, because the last time that we worked with the poles, which feels like forever ago, he was scared of them. So progress has been made at least in that department.

Sunday


So, the bell boots aren't really working at all. Oh well. At least the set was only $20.

I let my mom work with Harry today while I worked with Brie. We did a lot of bending and flexing and I started trying to teach her to flex while walking, but she more often than not thought that I wanted her to circle. Just tiny flexes is what I'm going for right now. We largo'd a ton and she was just snorting away out of sheer happiness, so I'm glad that she was at least content with what we were doing today. It was overall just a really relaxing ride and makes me so appreciative of everything we've gone through to get to this point. I never thought that I'd be here with Brie!

Nick rode Harry a bit today after my mom did. He basically said the same thing that everyone else did: Harry is a highly anxious horse. And Nick's way of dealing with Harry's anxiety is to circle him on the spot until Harry calms down, even if he's whipping around like a tornado until he calms down. I don't really think this is a great idea, because Harry made himself so dizzy once that he stumbled sideways almost into the wall after coming out of a tornado-spin circle. I'd much prefer to stop and let him calm himself down and continue on the ride. By the end of Nick's ride, Harry was black with sweat, and it was relatively warm enough in the barn, so we decided to wash everyone (with soap!) today. Now maybe they won't be so sticky and stinky! Although I'm sure this hope is futile, especially since the first thing Harry did when he got back in his stall was roll a bazillion times.

But as I was washing him, I got to thinking: maybe we should try a supplement on Harry like we did for Brie. We ordered Brie Smart Paks before (I want to say Mare Magic) when we were out of other options training wise and it worked like magic after only a month. We haven't had to order it again because she's so good now. Maybe something like that would be the way to go with Harry. I know that he doesn't have mean intentions and that he really is just a fearful horse. Maybe if he mellowed out he would be able to focus better.