Days 274 & 275

Saturday

Brie was pretty stiff today, which might have had something to do with the weather. It was unseasonably warm today and although it was a nice surprise, I'm sure it affected everyone in some way. Except Nina! She was working fantastically! If only Brie and Harry could be more like her.

That's not entirely true. Harry looked like he was working really well. I didn't get the chance to ride him today, but I'm planning on it for next weekend. I think that the same groundwork program that we did with Harry would be good for Brie. Maybe not to give her a month off like he did, but to incorporate it into what she's doing now. She really needs to refocus herself and remember what she's supposed to be doing, not just running around all of the time, especially if I want to bring her to show this year. After this summer, I don't know when I might be able to go to another horse show again, or even ride again, once I go to law school in the fall, so I have to make the best of it now! That means enjoying every weekend and every ride to the fullest. I want Brie to be in great condition, physically and mentally, for this show season that way in case there is an empty spot in someone's trailer, she can take it! Maybe after a couple of years of not showing, she will forget how scary the shows were for her.

Sunday

The farrier came out today, which is Brie's favorite day! I think she really likes getting her hooves trimmed, she just looks so happy. While we were waiting for the farrier, I took Harry and the giant exercise ball that we have in the tack room and brought them into the arena. I wanted him to sniff it and eventually push it with his nose, but we got to sniffing it. I let him go up to it and pet him when he did. I started pushing the ball towards him but he was getting scared, so I started kicking the ball away from him and making him follow me and the ball so that way it would perk his interest. It seemed to work! He really needs to get over his timidness and now that he is better after his month off, I think that the next step is really focusing on overcoming his fears on the ground. Especially since they are so simple, like being scared of balls and tarps! Even puddles. We're going to work on those a lot because once we move (hopefully) out West, he'll have to get used to all sorts of new things, especially for trail rides!

Days 269 & 270

Saturday

My mom worked with Harry again today while I rode Brie and, surprise!, Nina for the second time this month! Brie is definitely feeling her arthritis now that it's getting colder and colder out, so we're having the vet come out this week to give her a cortisone shot. Poor Brie. I know how she feels! My knee is aching as well in this cold. I wish I could say more about training with her, but she's really just coasting along for now. She definitely doesn't want to give up speed, so now she just has walk and largo. So I guess I will be working on getting her to slow down again to a nice corto.

Sunday

I had the job of working Harry today. He is still taking his time off from riding. I think that maybe next month we might start riding him again. He is so much sassier with me than with my mom. He doesn't fishtail as much as he used to, but there were definitely a few times when he did and then he got that stubborn look in his eye like "No! I am not going by you!". We got that sorted out. I also did some Friendly Game with him in between lunge rounds. It was a nice little breather. He is still scared of the rope swinging at him from a distance to go over his back, so we're working on little swings right now. Unfortunately I canceled my Parelli Connect membership earlier this month because I just didn't have the time for it. Hopefully I am able to go back and use it again some more to get more ideas for Harry.

I rode Brie for a little bit today, as she was limping a little after my mom rode her. We put lineament on her, so hopefully that helped. I just realized today how young she really is! It's strange, because in the Paso Fino world, at least the part I've been exposed to, you never hear of horses over 15 or so. I don't know where they go, probably just out to pasture, but no one talks about them and if you have a 15 year old horse, jeez, you are knocking at death's door! But in reality, horses are supposed to live to about 30 ideally, right? Brie is only 11. If she lives to 30, that's a whole 19 years from now! I'll be 39! It's weird to think about it like that! I hope that she is still around when I have kids, that way they can love her just as much as I do.

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?

Day 245

Nothing too exciting today. The farrier came out (only 2.5 hours late). I'm hoping that soon I have enough money to call out the chiropractor for Harry. Brie is sore and was having a hard time balancing on her bad leg during the farrier session, so maybe she'll have to have another shot soon. It would just kill me if we had to retire her. She still has half of her life to go! Although I'm sure she wouldn't mind doing nothing but eating until she dies.

Day 235

Sunday

First off, let me say that with only one more view, this blog will have hit 11,000 views! Thank you all so much, it's great to know that someone is actually reading my journey.

I got Brie today, which was nice. I didn't go out yesterday because of a school-related function, but my mom said that she is definitely ordering calming supplement for Harry again because he was ballistic yesterday. She wanted to try him again, so I got to ride Brie, which was nice, because I haven't ridden her for a week or so. She was go, go, go today, as no one rode her yesterday. She was pretty stiff and limping a little, but eventually she worked it out. Poor Brie. She's still so young (11 years old) and she already has arthritis. It just breaks my heart. Once we had all the speed out of her system, we worked on our performance walk, because I want to put her in a performance class.  I figure A) Why not? and B) There are less horses in performance classes so she shouldn't get as nervous as she would in a huge pleasure class. I really hope that I can bring her to State Fair. I don't even care about winning with her, I just want to calmly make it through the whole ordeal and show her that it's nothing to be scared of.

After Brie, I got on Harry for a short bit. He was way better today, but his movements were very vertical. I wasn't really used to that, but he was gaiting nicely and behaving like he should. Now he's been having problems keeping his headset, and I don't want to use a martingale, so I have to keep checking him and reminding him to set his head. His largo broke a lot, so now we have to work on that again. I hate feeling like I'm back at square one with him after that period of him working brilliantly, but I just have to go back to basics again.

I got to ride Nina today! So, we're thinking of going down to this international show with her next week in Florida, and we would only show in three classes: one for my mom, one for my brother, and one for me. Since I don't usually show her and this is not the arena to be testing out pleasure classes when she's been in performance her whole life, I'm going to do a costume class with her! I haven't done costume class since Brie stopped showing, because she is the costume horse, but I thought that it might be fun with Nina and she's so well tempered that it shouldn't bother her that I would ride her with a long skirt on. We brought the skirt today to test her with it and sure enough, she was just fine!

We also brought the shipping boots, as it's about a 15 hour drive, to test her with and she was fine with those too, which is surprising because she hates the farrier so much, we figured that would transfer over into a fear of thing secured around her legs, but she was just fine. When we originally got them, we got them for Brie when she was about 4 years old, and she flipped out, so we never used them. Today we tried them back on Brie and aside from taking a couple of minutes to get used to walking a short distance in them, she was fine. Then we tried Harry. I thought for sure he would freak out, but he was good too! I love when horses give you good surprises =]

Lastly, I rode Taco. The only way that I could bring Brie to State Fair is if we bring Taco in Jane's 2 horse trailer, so Taco HAS to go to State Fair. He was surprisingly good as well! My mom says it's because she rode him yesterday, but usually it doesn't matter how many times you ride him, he does what he wants. He tried to pull a few tricks at the start of the ride, but I quickly corrected him and we went along great! I'm working on not breaking into a canter on the corners and figuring out exactly what I need to do to get him to have a wonderful board, along with making it a goal to slow what I'm now calling his largo into a corto, because his default gait speed is very fast and I'm thinking that if he goes any faster, since he's already breaking on the turns, that he will break into a canter. It might be easier to slow him down rather than try to speed him up. But if he shows like he rode today, he'll definitely place in a class! Which is how it should be, as he was a National Champion in the good old days! 

So now this weekend is the last weekend of practice my mom and brother have before the show next week. I'm so excited, I hope everything works out and we actually go, and that we make it safely down there, and that we win! That way we can prove those people who were supposed to be our friends (no names) wrong and we get to show that our best horse can run with the very best international competition.

Day 226

Today was my mom's first day riding after her surgery! So that means she wanted Harry. Logical choice, because I've been working with Harry every week, unlike Brie, who has pretty much had a vacation since late April. So she took Harry (who was wonderfully behaved) and I took Brie.

I was beyond pleasantly surprised by how good Brie was. I think that a lot of it had to do with her getting her arthritis injection because the last couple of times I rode her before her little holiday and before the injection, she was kind of snotty and bratty. But today she rode like a dream! I didn't attempt making her stand at the mounting block to get on though, because there were a lot of people standing around it watching their others ride in the arena, so I just got on her from the ground. She stayed still! So I already knew from then it was going to be a good ride. Not that she runs away, it's just that she usually fidgets or backs up a little before you get on, but she was perfectly still today.

We did a good amount of flexing, nothing too hard for her to handle after her break, and then some circles with leg yields before we headed off at a nice walk. Her decision! I felt like I died and went to heaven. She and I walked for quite a while before she decided it was go time and settled into a corto. She was trying to canter the corners, so she must've been feeling really good, but I couldn't let her get away with that bad habit. We did figure 8's and serpentines and had a lovely go across the board. Brie is never out of gait. Ever. So when she was sounding kind of iffy in April, that was the surefire sign that she needed another injection. She's back to a perfect gait yet again.

We attempted some walking in the outdoor arena, but I feel like the combo of being in the outdoor for the first time in a long while and it being seriously hot out today made her uncomfortable, so we only stayed for a while. I settled for a relaxed corto instead of a walk and we headed back in to take the shortcut through the arena out back into the pasture.

Of course, when she got out she was kind of hyper, but I was determined to have a good ride outside without either of us getting anxious. She tried to jump the little ditch between the barn and the hill, but we walked around it and through it until she stopped trying to jump or rush it. Walking today was not so much of an option at first. She seemed really anxious about hurrying up to get up the hill, which I really didn't want to go straight to, because she kept pulling towards it. We walked to the fence line near the street, turned and walked back, but she was anxious again to get to the hill and kept reaching her head back to my foot. So I figured "Okay, let me hold her here for a minute if she keeps doing that." She was chomping like crazy on the bit while I held her for a couple of seconds until she stopped and let out a huge rush of air, at which point I let go. I held her back a little going up the hill and she was just as eager to rush back down, but I made her stay up on the top for a while. She eventually stopped chomping again and was silent, relaxed under me, and started looking around and I just pet her. After a while, when she seemed really calm, we went back down the hill. She wasn't anxious going down, but a little rushed, so we went back up again. We did this a couple of times until she just walked up and back down.

We were going to go in, but then this little bird by the pond started squawking at us, and rather than go away from it, I went towards it. Instead of flying away, it spun around and started running away! Once I was focused on following the bird without crushing it as it ran away from us, Brie really slowed without me having to hold her back and managed her speed while I followed the bird. Eventually, the bird got the idea that he should fly away, but it was such a cool feeling knowing that she was actually thinking on her own without me having to tell her everything that she had to do.

We walked in and I traded with my mom. Since he looked like he worked fine inside, I took him outside. He was okay until the last point we had reached outside by ourselves, which was the far side of the hill. Then I wanted him to walk to the fence line. He was very concerned about this, but we got there. When I turned to go back to the barn, that's when he wanted to take off, so I had to bend him to a stop. He didn't really stop, he kept spinning, but eventually he did stop and calmed down. We have to work on halting outside and getting the message across that stopping outside is an option, it's not just go go go. So we climbed up the hill (he was also nervous about that, so we had to go up and down a couple of times) and then waited at the top. He was a little more comfortable at the top of the hill, but still shifting his weight and not relaxing, until Samantha came out with Tobacco. Once another horse was out there with him, he calmed down a lot more. I rode with her all out back and then through the front before I came back in and gave Harry a shower.

I did bring popsicles for them, since they like them so much, but they melted in the cooler before I could give them out! Maybe tomorrow I'll have to give them before we ride.

And now for some pictures!!

Brie's favorite activity

I think this is one of the cutest pictures of Nina

Harry was not being very photogenic today.

My three out with Sadie and Taco.

Sadie: "I want a picture!!"

The Bays v The Black (and White!)

Nina mid-roll!

Eating grass while laying down: the epitome of laziness

The leader and her herd!

Days 182 + 183

Saturday

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans! While I'm sad that today was probably the last warm day of the year, it's a good thing because it's supposed to be cold in November. Unfortunately, that means that my horses will be quite stinky until it warms up enough to give them a bath. I can only shudder when I remember how dirty they got last year.

I thought that Brie was perfect today. She was responsive, well-mannered, and flexible. Perfect in every way --- until she hit the board. It was the most bizarre experience, being on Brie when she sounded like she was pacing. She's never been out of gait since she finished training 7 years ago. I thought, "Could I possibly be doing something wrong? Could she not really be as flexible as I thought she was being?" So we did circles and she still wasn't gaiting. My mom suggested that I ease up and let her just walk because it might have been her arthritis acting up. I felt so bad after that! It's so hard to remember that she might be in pain...my poor baby is getting old. =[ But after a nice (most likely) final bath of the year, she seemed pretty happy to go back and continue eating, as usual.

The reason why her leg could be bothering her is because she's KICKING THE STALL so much!!! I don't know what's her problem! Is she hungry? Is she bored? She has a salt lick and a Jolly Ball to play with. She gets outside. It's the saddest thing, especially when it looks like we'll have to be replacing the boards on the wall soon!

Mom worked with Harry today. He was being such a brat longeing! Paco had to step in and we've now made the decision that he won't be working off of the pisador when he's longeing anymore. He'll be working off of his noseband. I do not understand him. It's not that he ever wants to go too fast to stop him, it's that he speeds off and then fishtails out and back, pulling you forward. You would think that after a year of working on this, he would get the picture without having his nose held.

Sunday

Exciting news today! Taco is going to move over to our side of the barn! But now the baby has to take his place on the other side. I'll miss him =[ We don't usually go over there because it's where Ray keeps all of his horses and where the Gary keeps his and Ray just generally excludes us, but we'll have to wander over now and then to visit the cutie pie!

So now that Taco is moving over, we have to rework the stalls. Going back to Brie's kicking, Paco mentioned that maybe even though Nina and Brie grew up together, it's just a mare thing. It's funny that we never thought of that before because we humanized them so much. "Oh they love each other! It must be something else." But it's worth a shot. We know that Brie hates Harry from when she first started kicking to make damage to her stall and it stopped when she was on the end next to Nina for a while, but Paco says it's gotten horrible lately. So we're going to try moving Brie in between Taco and Harry and then putting Nina on the end. It might make her mad that she's next to Harry, but she seems to like Taco and hopefully her like for Taco outweighs her hate for Harry.

She was much better today, gaiting like normal. It must've been her leg bothering her yesterday. We worked more on flexibility today and keeping her corto contained after a largo, because usually after she largos she just wants to fly at a corto, but that won't do if I want to convince my parents to bring her along to shows this year!

I also got to ride Harry today after my mom worked with him. We put weighted bracelets on his back legs again to see if they would help with his tap-dancing, but I don't think they did...Anyways, we're figuring out what we want to do with his largo/corto difference and we're trying to collect his corto a little more and push is largo a little bit. Just a little in each direction. Going counterclockwise he works phenomenally, but clockwise is a little harder (just like longeing). After some fighting on the counterclockwise, we settled into a super collected corto and a smooth but not very fast largo. Clockwise, I fought with him the entire time until Paco told me to just walk and then quit after he gave in at a walk. I have a feeling that if Harry were a person, we wouldn't get along very well, we're both stubborn. But he did give me a nice walk at the end, so I'll give him that.

The farrier also came this afternoon. We did Brie without tranqing her, which is what's normal. She's 10, she's used to this, but he wanted her tranq'd every time he came out before this. I'm glad she was able to show what a good girl she is for the farrier. We started Harry but when he got to the front feet Harry started to try and rear, so we had to tranq him. Of course we needed to tranq Nina. I wonder if she'll ever be able to do it without being drugged...maybe we should lessen the amount each time until she can remember that it's okay? They're all going barefoot for the winter time, so I hope they don't get any cracks!

Day 177

I hate when my farrier is late.
I mean, I do enjoy that he takes his time when he gets to our barn, but that means also waiting around while he takes his time on other people's horses at their barns before he gets to ours. Which sometimes means showing up at 5pm instead of noon.

We didn't get to stick around to see Nina being trimmed because I had to get back to school, but we tranq'd her and Paco was going to be there to help out.

On the other hand, after my mom rode Harry today, we found out that he severely cracked his hoof just from being on the rocks for a second on his way out the arena into the grass. I had a picture, but I can't get it off my phone right now. So the farrier tried to fix it and basically told us we can't ride Harry until Thanksgiving now because he had to take off a big piece to fix the chunk that happened with the crack. =[ This makes me beyond depressed.

I rode Brie today. She was really good, but stocked up again. We're thinking maybe it's time for another cortisone shot for her arthritis again, because when she's warmed up and ready to start going faster, she snorts, and it took her a long time for her to snort today before she was warmed up. We're going good with the largo, we only break in the corners now in the counter clockwise direction, but we'll be able to fix that by Spring. There might be a local fun show coming up in November, so I'm hoping we can take Brie to that to get her used to being back out in the show ring!

Today, I also rode Kimmy's horse, Sadie. She's an Icelandic Pony/Foxtrotter who was trained for barrel racing...which is an interesting mix. O.o Anyways, Jane, who's Kimmy's grandma, said that Sadie could use all the practice she could get since Kimmy's having trouble with her doing anything really because Sadie hasn't been ridden too often for over a year now. Boy, was that horse snotty! She almost ran over everyone standing by the arena door at least 4 times trying to get back to her stall and tried a couple of little rear/jumps on me too until my mom had to lead me away from everyone for their safety and stand by the pole and make me do circle work. Then Sadie started to calm down. Apparently, she never gaits, but Sadie was gaiting when I was really looking forward to doing some extra trot/canter transitions. In all, Kimmy has a lot of work a head of her, but I'll take the chance to ride any horse I can get! Especially now that Harry's out for the next month =[

I was proud at the end though. Paco congratulated me on riding Sadie so well because apparently she gave Kimmy a really hard time last weekend and Kimmy got off crying. So that made me happy =]

Day 167

Brie never ceases to amaze me.

I passed off Harry to my mom today to work on since I was having no luck getting him to gait yesterday, but I'll talk about him later. Brie is insane! Here I am, all worried about riding her because she hasn't been in a while and her leg was stocked up this morning. It was so relaxing to really brush her and scrub at her elbows and what not and to put lineament on her hock and ankle in the back. She looked like she was happy to go.

Then I got on.

I knew from the minute she started swishing her tail that it wouldn't be a relaxing ride.

All I wanted to do was walk her around the arena, you know, take it easy on her. But nope, she was almost literally rearing to go. So after struggling with her, dismounting, longeing, remounting, and repeating, I just let her go.

We cantered for a while in a huge circle about half of the arena. My better judgement told me this was a bad move with her arthritis, but Brie was telling me, "LET ME GO ALREADY DAMMIT!" So we went. To say that she was in one of her fast modes today would be an understatement. We rode with Allison today for probably our last ride before she changes barns. I'm thinking maybe that's why she was a little goofy, but then again my mom said she was pretty crazy for her ride yesterday, so who knows.

Harry was also in a bad mood today because of the fruit basket. In the beginning he tried to buck my mom off. He really doesn't like that thing. But he looked better in his corto today! Even though we're supposed to be doing largo more, I didn't really get to watch it because Brie was always zooming past him. I do know that we have to do more circle work with Harry in order for him to really think about doing everything at once.

While we were out walking around, Harry started dancing but this time his back feet were keeping up with the front and Allison said "I think he's Fino-ing!" So it's not just us who think that he can do it. If only we had a different trainer to help us out, I'm sure Harry could be a Fino horse. But for right now, we're just gonna try to get him to largo for Nationals. We'll see what the winter brings.

Day 166

Soooo beautiful out today.

I took a bunch of pictures on my new DSLR, but I'll post all of those tomorrow as I'm sure there will be more!

So taking into account Paul's advice of more largo and double reins, that's exactly what I did today.

Boy do we have some work ahead of us. Harry is awful at largo-ing. He doesn't gait, all he does is pace and skip and is unsure of his step. Honestly, I don't understand how it's any different, it's the same walking pattern just faster. Who knows what goes through their minds.

I warmed him up longeing (which was fabulous by the way) and got on for some flexing. He was super while with the double reins on. Then we walked a little bit to warm up and started straight for a largo. Well he skipped pretty much across the entire arena, so we went out into the round pen. I thought he was gaiting and calming down in there when my mom told me that he was still pacing. So we went back into the arena to practice smaller circles and go over the board to hear if he was gaiting or not, and he wasn't. By this time he'd already been (attempting) flying around in a largo and failing, hot and gross, so we did a corto around the arena once, over the board, and went outside for a nice relaxing walk around then a cool bath.

This might take a while. I can't believe he doesn't know how to do this! It's just like power-walking but he isn't getting it! So tomorrow I think my mom's gonna ride him with the fruit basket on and see how he goes with that.

Brie was limping today, probably because she's been cooped up and unridden for a week, so my mom just tried to get her to slow down, because even though she was limping she was all GO GO GO! I put lineament on her arthritic leg after she rode. Hopefully she feels better tomorrow.

And Nina was perfect, as usual.

I have some exciting news! But I'll wait for a week or so to see if it plays out, and then I'll tell you =]