Day 259

I was all excited to ride Harry after a stressful week at school, but when we got out there, as I was brushing him, I noticed he was bleeding on his back right hock. After cleaning it up, the swelling went down to just a large bump. After inspecting his stall, since he hasn't been outside, I could only find a couple of places where there were flat screws a little bit out, but they were dull...I could only guess that he got mad at his neighbor Dora (she's in heat) and kicked and scraped his leg during the kick. After we cleaned him up, I brought him in the arena to longe a little bit. He walked, although at one point on a reverse he started to speed up a little, but he started limping pretty badly, so he went back down to a walk. After a good amount of walking just to get the blood flowing, I figured "Heck, I might as well play some games with him" since I couldn't ride him. We played the Friendly Game, during which I was super happy because he finally let me swing the rope over his back. We played a little Yo-Yo game and the Porcupine game in one direction, because the other direction he looked like he was dragging his bad leg, so I stopped. He was really responsive in the direction he was good at though! Then I just walked backwards and he followed me across the soundboard at a walk, then I put him in to rest.

I rode Brie and my mom rode Nina. Brie was so snotty today! She tried to bite Sadie and Harry as they walked by her on the cross tie! But you couldn't tell that from her ride. She was a fantastic ride today. Very calm, very responsive. Most of the time I just let her go where she wanted though, since I wasn't in the mood for working very hard. We let Nina and Brie chase each other around the arena, then they followed each other in circles, all while we did nothing! It was quite cute.

Mom pointed out that Brie is not as collected as she used to be and I had noticed that. I think it's just because we've been focusing in Harry and Nina since they show and kind of letting Brie just do whatever. We're going to put the rear end collector on her next weekend, maybe the draw reins. I am not a fan of those reins!

Days 257 & 258

Saturday

It's days like today that make me realize that the horses aren't getting out as often as they should be, and I wish the sign hadn't been this extreme. We were walking everyone out to the pasture to run around a little bit, and my mom and brother were in front of me with Brie and Nina while I was walking Harry. We were going to split the girls from the boys, because Samantha was there and she wanted to let Tobacco out with Harry. I turn for a second to get the get to the boys' pasture and hear my brother going "MOM!". I turn and look and see my mom face down in the mud in the entrance to the girls' pasture, I couldn't even tell you where Brie was, but my brother ran over to my mom, realized he had Nina still in hand, dropped Nina's leadline and yelled for her to stop and ran over to my mom. Nina didn't know she was loose until she tried to go into the pasture again and my brother yelled at her again, then she turned around and started to walk away towards my dad and walked back towards me so I caught her. I look and my mom's now standing up and Brie is trotting around the pasture with her leadline still on. Samantha and her parents come out with Tobacco and Samanta runs over by Brie, catches her, and takes her leadline off. Once everyone is in their pastures, I get the story: Brie was so obnoxious and she went back around my mom so that the leadline was stretched across my mom's back and before my mom had the chance to switch hands or spin around to not be in the way of the rope, Brie bolted for the pasture and knocked my mom down on her way in through the gate. We were lucky that she didn't get trampled, but she does have a large bruise on her hip where she fell. I blame this incident on a combination of Brie's worsening gate manners and the feeling that they haven't been getting out. I know this is true because Brie is normally so good being lead out to the pasture, but in the past month she's been worse. I think that it culminated with being locked in for almost two weeks while everyone was away at Nationals, but that's no excuse for her behaving like that!

I rode Brie today and she was fine being ridden, not stiff, not limping. Gary decided to keep his massive trailer in the arena for the winter, so everyone bawked at that for a while. My mom rode Harry and I have to admit, he was much better the way she was riding him, the way I was describing last week that I should revert to. More forward seat and hands higher. At the end of the ride, I told her that maybe Harry isn't performance. Maybe he's pleasure. Because being able to watch him and Nina today, there's such a difference in drive between the two of them. Nina looks like a little train, with such determination in her eyes, as she works. Harry meanwhile is very calm, looking like he's taking a basket of fruit to market to sell for the day. And you know what? I don't care if he's pleasure. So what if people say he's "less of a Paso Fino" for being that, or that "we screwed him up" from when we first bought him. If he is able to be that calm and relaxed in what he's doing, I wouldn't want to wind him up just to force him back into a state of mind where he was clearly upset, back in his early days of riding. If he is calm and happy in his work, then I know I did my job, and I can tell that he is happy from the look in his eyes as he works.

We took a ride out to Dover Saddlery today to get saddle pads, but you know we came back with more than that. It was just me and my mom, and as we were in the car, we were talking about the Paso Fino circuit and realized this is the only breed we know of outside of racing Thoroughbreds where the trainers do the majority of the showing. Where's the fun in that? Being able to say that you can afford to support the trainer and buy a top quality horse and then not even be able to ride? That doesn't sound like much fun to me. And the worst thing is that if you aren't someone who pays for a trainer to ride for you in your classes, you get made fun of! You get told either to your face or behind your back that you aren't good enough. Isn't the point of owning a horse to be able to enjoy it yourself?

Sunday

We did a photo shoot for ourselves today! Here are a couple of my favorite pictures.

After all that, I rode Harry. I rode him for forward and with higher hands and he was completely different! He was so much better. He wasn't leaning into the bit at all and he felt more collected. He was still a little pokey, but after some circle work, he was doing beautifully. I really think that the deeper seat and lower hands works better on Brie than Harry because she is just going beautifully with that. But Harry likes to be ridden forward and light, so that's what I'll give him. Now we need to get back to our previous goal: largo without breaking or pacing!

Day 256

I wish I knew what I was doing wrong and how to fix it.

So, I've started really trying to work on my seat and posture while riding. I had this terrible habit of sticking my butt out when it's supposed to be in, and while it's been proving useful on Brie and she is responding very nicely, Harry is just not having it. He thinks that when I do that, he is supposed to go faster, even when I half halt him. Do I need to just have a bad seat in order for him to perform? I don't think that can be so...

Before we rode, we took them all out in the grass out back to longe and play with them a bit. Mom put Brie on the longe line, the really long one, and had her longe around the field and up and down the hill, working her back legs. Brie was like a pro, she even had this beautiful trot going, which meant she was super relaxed. Harry at first didn't really want to do anything except eat the grass, so I just held up the carrot stick and he wiggled it every time he wanted to stop and eat and he was going nicely. Nina slipped and had this dramatic slow fall onto her butt in a muddy spot, but she was okay. When my mom took Harry to go on the longe line, he was like "Oh my god! What do I do!? I'm free! I'm free! Oh no! Why am I still on this rope?! I want to be freeee!" and she had to end up reeling him in quite a bit...I think we will be practicing in the arena with that one for a while until he gets used to being so far out away from us. Then she tried to get him to longe on the hill and he got mentally stuck trying to come back down, so after much encouragement, he tiptoed back down the hill. While she took Nina to longe on the hill, I took Harry to a less steep part of the hill and had him longe over that and he went okay.

By the time we started riding, it was raining. Thank god the heaters were all installed yesterday so we could ride indoors! I put the rear end collector on Harry today because he's been floating out for a couple of weeks and tried to use the draw reins on him as well. They did make his head set really nice, but I felt like I had no contact with his mouth and couldn't really control his speed. Plus then I realized in my autopilot state that I had put the wrong bit on, which might have added to the unresponsivemess, so I took the draw reins off and switched bits and just kept the rear end collector on. He was still a little fast, and he was a little touchy when I was flexing him before I got on, so while I tried to get him to do nice, big, slow circles, he ended up spiraling into tiny medium speed circles. He must not have been that sore if he spiraled in on his own. Then it started thundering and he got a little spooky, but I was determined to finish my ride. He wasn't too great on the board today, he was a little poopy and I don't know how to get him in that right spot where I can keep my leg on him and not have him take off. It's just really such a puzzle to me why he was so good for that 2-3 month time in the spring and now he's like just confused seeming. Am I trying to change too much with myself and he doesn't know how to accomodate that? All the changes I'm making to my posture, my legs, my hands, they're all supposed to be for the benefit of his comfort. Sitting further back and deeper in the seat, not letting my legs swing out in front of my knees, not letting my hands get really high off of the pommel area...and he just isn't doing too great ever since I started those changes. Brie has been reacting so nicely, but Harry...I don't know. I don't think that I should compromise what is supposed to be good for him, but if he doesn't like it, maybe I should go back to riding more sloppily with him. I hate to go back there, but if he performs better....

In the end, we got a good board and walked and while everyone left and we were still cooling, he was circling around the door trying to get out, so I decided to activate his brain a little by dismounting at the mounting block. He wouldn't stand on the correct side to dismount, and barely wanted to stand for the wrong side to dismount, but he did for a bit, so I got off. They built a new sounding board area, and it has patio blocks, a little fountain, and a little raised deck in between the boards, and my dad was sitting on the deck and I wanted to walk over to him, but Harry didn't want to go. I couldn't tell if he was bothered by the mounting block or the fountain, as the block was in front of the fountain, so I told him if we went by the fountain we could go inside. Well he went there and walked around it and then I said "Okay, one more time" and he looked at me like "you've got to be kidding" and just planted himself in the dirt a foot away from the fountain. So I sat down on the edge of the fountain and told him I wasn't moving until he came over by me. I must have sat there for 20 minutes, and at one point my dad left to go close the arena doors. Harry thought that my dad was going to go and push him from behind to go onto the patio to go by the fountain, so he backed up frantically, but I didn't move from the fountain, just gave him more pisador line, and waited. He took little baby steps towards the patio, and instead of going the close way to get to me, he eventually decided to go all the way around to come by me. Then I told him he was good and we left, much to his relief.

Nina was still pawing at the ground when we were leaving, so I gave her a bit of hay to occupy her until it was dinner time. I hope that she doesn't keep doing that all week, or we'll have a serious problem come the next weekend.

Day 255

No one could ride today because workers were installing new heat fixtures in the big arena and it was raining outside. The footing in the new round pen is terrible. It has huge chunks of rocks buried in the sand, and even after just having the horses longe in there for a short while, their feet got chewed up. Harry's hooves were terrible, the wall cracked off all along the sides.

Nina wore here hooves down almost to the meat underneath because she kept pawing and pacing apparently all week. No one was there to tell us, since everyone is at Nationals this week. We think it's because she was switched out of her stall into where Brie used to be and there's no one else on one side of her, only Harry on her right side. So we switched her back so she's in between Sadie and Harry. I hope that solves the problem.

So we didn't get much done today. I played a little Parelli with Brie and Nina. Nothing too exciting.

Day 254

Brie might be due for her next arthritis shot soon. She was skipping today and now she's fighting with picking up her one arthritic leg when I want to clean her hoof, so I think that's a sign that she is uncomfortable. The vet is supposed to be coming out this week, so we'll have to ask his opinion. Brie and Harry are also out of their supplements, so we need to order those too. I want to put Harry on a bulk-up supplement. He's so thin and he needs more muscle mass too, but working him and creating muscle also burns off a lot of his fat and he just looks too skinny for my tastes. He is like a toothpick to get my legs around, he is much more narrow than Brie and Nina.

There is construction going on in the indoor arena, so we didn't ride in there. Instead, we rode in the newly finished round pen! It's decent sized, and although I was just going out there with Brie to lead Jane and my mom out on Taco and Harry, I ended up staying with them because Taco and Harry were pretty nervous about the whole thing, being in a new riding environment and what not. Eventually they calmed down and I switched with my mom for Harry, which leads me to this puzzle.

So, he is not wanting to collect himself lately. My mom thinks that we should put a draw rein on him, but I think that he's something going on with him physically. If he's relaxed, he should be setting his head, but he doesn't want to set his head and just wants to bump along in his gait. This makes me think even more that we might need to bring out a chiropractor. While he was not wanting to really do anything, I asked him for a canter.

He couldn't even canter. I thought that cantering was a natural thing for horses, but Harry just seems like he never ever learned how to use all of his legs in sync. He would go for a few strides and then seem like he was tripping over his own feet and then have to start all over again. We never got an even rhythm. Then, he was doing this weird bit when he would start bopping from not having a rhythm and throw his butt up in the air, not like he wanted to buck, but more like a twitch. I'm thinking that maybe there is some discomfort in his back that's preventing him from figuring it out in his legs. My first instinct after his ride today was to go back to basics and work in the round pen and on a circle a lot at varying speeds so that he develops more of a rhythm, but I don't know if that's what I should be doing or calling out a chiropractor. At the end of our ride, he got a good rhythm going, after his bad take at a canter and then walking a bit. So I don't know. Maybe he is just really uncoordinated. How do you build coordination in a horse?