Days 249 & 250

Saturday

I was all excited to try riding Brie without a bit this morning and then we only realized as we were 10 minutes away (and 50 minutes away from home) that we forgot our saddlepads and girths at home...so we couldn't ride. We let them all out to play, stayed a while, brushed them off, and then headed home, disappointed.


Sunday

We remembered everything today! And I decided that, since John had asked about a picture on Taco previously, I would bring my show clothes today so that we could have a little Taco photo shoot. Here are a couple of my favorites.

After our photo shoot, I got on Harry. I was kind of disappointed today with him, not because he was bad, but because I couldn't get him to focus on me. The construction workers were burning garbage outside the barn from the new round pen, so he was jittery because of the smell of smoke. Then he started that awkward sidepassing away from one of the walls again that he hasn't done in a while. And then I just felt like he wasn't responding well to the bit. We switched back to his second bit, where he had been riding with his first bit for a while. I think I might change back to that, because he was not even stopping when I asked him to, which is definitely not good. I was having to use a heavy hand, and I hate doing that, and I know he doesn't appreciate it, so the other bit would be better for him.

Meanwhile, my mom rode Brie without a bit and Brie was being absolutely crazy. She was sticking her nose out like a racehorse and nothing made her set her head back! So I think that adventure is done. She clearly needs a bit.

We got those Easy Boots for her in the mail this past week, so we put them on her to hope that it would absorb some of the impact from kicking the wall, since she's started that up again. Paco says that she kicks a lot in the middle of the afternoon, between meals. My suggestion was to cut up her daily rations into three and give her a lunch, but that's apparently unheard of, so that's not going to happen. Instead, we moved her to the end stall where she has a big view of outside towards the woods. She had a window in her old stall, but it's tiny and now she can fully stick her head out and see a lot of the outdoors. But now she can't see Nina or Harry because we had to scoot them down one stall each so Harry wouldn't be harassed by the other mares, so I hope that's not stressing her out too much.

Days 247 & 248

I completely forgot to write this over the weekend, so I'm going from memory here. I'm going to try to write it like it was that day.

Saturday

If there ever was a "best" day for riding, today was the day. It was absolutely gorgeous out and I wanted nothing more than to go around with my little Harry. I wonder what he's really thinking when I imagine he's looking at me with such love in his eyes. He was a little iffy in the warm-up, and wanted to go pretty fast, which is always a surprise to me. I changed his bit back once again and it's too early to tell how he's responding to it, although I can say that he is not having issues flexing anymore, so whatever his deal was with that must have worked itself out, although I still take extra caution stretching him before we start up.

After his ride, my mom, brother and I walked around outside, enjoying the weather. Not the ideal Quarter horse type walk, but enjoyable nonetheless. It was so cute, he couldn't keep up with Brie and Nina's power walk, so he broke into the tiniest canter I've ever ridden and didn't get psycho about it. After that, I don't mind letting him canter around outside a bit. He truly has gotten a lot more confidence outside.

Sunday

Worming day! And well needed, the horses have begun ripping their tails out. Poor things. They look so shabby now, but hopefully it will smooth out soon. Brie has been kicking the stall again and we have no idea why, Paco has supposedly increased her food rations. So we tried on one of Judy's trail boots and Brie didn't seem to mind it, and so she suggested that, since the impact of the kick must be affecting her arthritis, we should buy a boot of our own and just leave it on her all week. It's not so much as a boot, but more of a hoof covering. It doesn't go up on the meaty part of her leg at all. All we can do is give it a shot.

The Easy Boot, via Horseloverz.com

So since we're pretty much decided on not showing Brie again, I've been wondering about how she would react if I started riding her bitless again. When she was being trained, the only reason she started wearing a bit was because we wanted to show her, and it's required, but before she was age 5, she hadn't had one. I think that next week I'm going to try that out and see how she is. She was being pretty compliant today, but I felt like she could have relaxed even more. My goal for her now is to just get her into a calm mindset and keep her there for the entire ride. We walked around outside by ourselves, in which she didn't bolt, so that was a plus. I managed to keep her at a speed-walk the entire way through.

While I was waiting around by myself in the outdoor, I noticed that the serpentine boards had been filled in where the gap was that she got her hoof stuck in, so I hopped off and tried to have her walk over them. She wasn't too keen on the idea, but she walked over them a couple of times before everyone came out and we got back on and walked around some more. She's really doing well lately, I think it might be because she's getting out a little more since the heat wave has subsided. Her leg wasn't swollen at all this weekend and she didn't really limp either day too. I hope that as autumn sets in, she's much more comfortable.

Day 187

 Sunday

Whenever I get told I'm doing something wrong, I feel insanely stupid. I feel even worse about it when I came up with it on my own and wanted to believe my hardest that it was working.

Longeing Harry today was kind of hard. Apparently, it made Paco nervous as he watched, so he came over and intervened. Grumbling, I did what he told me to, which was to throw the carrot stick on the floor, tie up the pisador, and longe Harry from his noseband like he had said two weeks ago. Sigh.

Harry is entirely different from Brie and Nina in that he won't longe if you push him from behind and he'll only go if you literally lead him by the nose.  It's really weird and I have no idea how to get him to do it the proper way, but if this works, then I guess I'll have to go with it.

Once we got the longeing out of the way, his ride was great. Sundays are (almost) always better than Saturdays because we've had Saturday to warm up and remember "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be working". He was going a tiny bit faster in his largo than yesterday which was great! The only thing is it wasn't entirely in gait, but it was closer to gaiting than pacing, so that's progress. I'm just gonna keep pushing the speed until he's confident that he won't lose his step.

Brie, on the other hand, is still kicking the wall. Jane heard her the other day when she was visiting Taco and said she was going to town on the wall. So we've decided that, if it's okay with Gary, that we're going to install rubber mats around Brie's stall. Oh Brie, she's going to live in a padded cell!

Day 184

Harry had a reintroduction to the carrot stick today.

First, let me start off by saying that Taco is now on our side! They were all set up like I described last week, but Paco told us that Brie is still kicking and kicked out a board in the front of her stall this past week, so we moved her back on the end so it's just her next to Harry and a wall. I hope she stops kicking. I don't know what to do! We're gonna look for toys to put in her stall to occupy her from the kicking, and if that fails then we're gonna have to suck it up and buy some rubber matting for the walls. If you have any suggestions on how to deal with this, please tell me!!

Back to Harry. I worked him today. We started out longeing on his bosal (noseband) like we had decided last week and he was doing okay in his usual direction and then started pulling me around the arena in the clockwise direction. After about 20 minutes of being slowly dragged across the arena by his fishtailing, I had enough and got the carrot stick. Using it behind him was such a transformation! He didn't run away from it and he just walked, observant of it behind him. After doing that for a while, we stopped because that's all I really wanted from him at that point, to not drag me around anymore and go about it calmly! Then I put it on the ground and he was scared to step over it. *shakes head* What a strange horse.

Getting on him, we worked lots of circles and spirals and serpentines to warm up first, then we went at a walk. He started out nicely and then started speeding up, but I managed him. Going into his corto, he was tap dancing a lot and I had to play around with my weight and position until he stopped and was happy. Then I started trying to push him faster into a largo and we go faster counterclockwise than clockwise...makes no sense! But we'll keep working at it. I'm so confused as to how to go about this with him. Should I work on collecting his corto or should I keep pushing him to go faster? I don't know. All I know is that I watched a video today of when Paco used to ride him as a stallion and he was sure speeding around (in comparison to how he goes now) without breaking gait! Is it the bit? Is it me? What is going on?! I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow I'll take off the jaquima rein and just work the bit and see how that goes.

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 144

Usually I hate waking up early, but I loved waking up early today. I actually got to be relaxed and not rushed when I rode!

I am very worried though -- Brie is a bit lame. She keeps kicking her stall, I don't know what's her problem. It's not like she's cooped up in there all day or next to a horse she doesn't like. All of them go out whenever it's sunny now and she's next to Nina. We're increasing her food now because she's starting to look a little bony. We usually like to keep her a bit underweight because of her insulin resistance, but her hips are starting to noticeably stick out now that it's getting warmer and she's going outside and spending all that energy up from the winter. Maybe that'll cure her kicking, maybe she's just hungry.

I rode her today, because I thought that she would work it out. Usually she's a little skippy when we start working, she always has been, but her skip lasted all throughout the ride, and we just mostly walked the entire ride anyways. When I got off and brushed her and hosed her off is when I noticed how much she was favoring her hind right foot -- she wouldn't even put weight on it for me to clean out her other hoof. So I put some liniment on both of her back legs after I showered her and I hope that she gets better...Mom said that if it's a ligament or muscle damage from kicking too much she might have to have the entire summer off and I'm not looking forward to that possibility. I hope she's okay, but otherwise we'll have to call the vet out tomorrow.

Apparently Mom had a really rough time with Harry today...He wasn't paying attention to her at all and it was like "some ghost was chasing him from behind" and he kept trying to bolt. We should've known...he went in the trailer like a perfect angel, so of course he would give a bad ride! I hope he's better tomorrow. He needs to get his act together tomorrow and next week because the week after that is Springfield! We need to beat some people! Any body! We just need to beat them!