School is perpetually in session for my horde of mooles. They're all in various stages of growing up and coming along in their training. In terms of general baby goals for their ages, they are all fully on track to becoming solid citizens, with a few quirks here and there and things to always be worked on.
Uma:
Uma is the same age as Pax, so now approaching 17 months. She is still TINY but filling out in her body. She's got that donkey haybelly which, as far as I can tell, is nearly impossible to get rid of on some of them. She came with it, and it looks much better but it's still there. Clean fecals, regular deworming, you can see her coat is good and shiny... she's just... full of hay. I asked the owner of the mini moole that comes to the driving competitions, because he also has a huge gut, and she said that even though he gets a tiny ration and heavy work literally 6 days a week, he just has it and that's that. Boo.
She has really started to mentally mature a lot more over the course of her yearling year. She is still weird about a lot of things, like you can't just walk up to her in the pasture, nor can you put your hands on her body unless she is tied up, but I think that will continue to get better as it generally has been (slowly). Baby mooles are kind of like horrible obnoxious teenagers. You think baby horses are bad, try dealing with all of their crap but with a donkey brain in there!
Things she does well: halter, lead, tie, wear a flymask, flyspray, stand for hoofcare, stand more or less still to be brushed off, sort of stand for mane clipping, wearing boots
Things she does not do well: body clipping, trailering (haven't tried!), bathing (she likes water but not being sprayed with the hose yet), and not very fond of general touches from people if she wasn't expecting them - just needs more work on that!
Zu:
This little dude is continuing to impress me. It just goes to show that it is SO IMPORTANT to get your hands on these guys as soon as they are born. It makes ALL the difference. He has no meanness in him whatsoever and he loves people and attention. It is very rare to get that sweet adorable temperament in a zebroid, and it has to be cultivated. He's a testament to his breeder's program.
He's a million times easier than all of the mules, which is really saying something. It's all because of his early formative training - they were all feral or mishandled, and he was neither. He was handled straight away as a baby, and it makes a difference.
Things he does well: Easy to catch, halters, leads, ties, trailers (although he has not been in my trailer), clipping, grooming, flymask, wears harness, wears bridle (but still learning about the bit), lunges in harness, starting to long line and learn about steering, ponies, wears boots and wraps, stands for hoofcare
Things he does not do well: Not a fan of baths (although he loves water), or flyspray (but he tolerates it), needs to be a little more secure by himself (the world is scary when you're alone without your herd!)
Lendri:
I long lined Lendri off the property for the first time ever the other day, and nobody died! She actually surprised me with how good she was. She has technically been hitched once, but I feel that she needs to be much steadier in the long lines before we hitch again. There is so much that can go wrong when hitching a greenie so the more I can do on the ground the better. I still am not compeltely convinced that she is going to make a perfect driving moole - she is still so reactive to things sometimes - but I am going to give it the full benefit of my time, because she has come SO far and I'm not ready to give it up just yet.
Things she does well: Easy to catch (runs over!), halters, leads, ties, trailers, mane and body clipping, grooming, flymask, wears harness and bridle, lunges in harness and sidereins, stands for hoofcare, flyspray, long lines, ponies, wears boots and wraps, has been hitched once without issue
Things she does not do well: Hates baths! Tolerates it but is pretty sure I am spraying her with acid. Still can be quite reactive and flinchy to basically anything that touches her that she is not sure about.
Sriracha:
I ordered a new bit for Sriracha - it's a little butterfly mullen mouth driving bit that is mini sized. I should be able to use it on Lendri as well, as it is a 3.75" (standard mini size is 3.5"). For comparison, Lendri can go either in the 3.5" or the 4" that I use for Zu, but she does seem to prefer the 4", which is a single jointed sweet iron snaffle. I don't know that Zu will fit into it, but I might try it on him for giggles. I haven't tried the bridle on her since the last time when she stuck her tongue over it and cut it - it was only her second time wearing a bridle and I didn't want to repeat the incident until I switched bits.
Things she does well: Halters, leads, ties, trailers, mane clipping, grooming, flymask, wears harness, learning to lunge in harness, stands for hoofcare, flyspray, happy to go out alone and do things, wears front boots
Things she does not do well: Not a fan of baths, still sligtly funny about her tail and back legs being handled (although getting better every time), having difficulty accepting the bit and bridle. She's only been not-feral for a few months so it's pretty good, all of it!
Tried the (sans bit, sans adjustment) blinkered bridle on Zu... as you can see he really cares. He was looking around for a minute though going, uhhh I can't see?
When I last left off with O's continual story, I had been able to long line and then drive her hot speedy self down the road following our two weeks off. Following this, she had a day off, and then I long lined her again on Saturday. One minor unforseen problem cropped up though that I honestly just hadn't ever given a second thought to before: the wind. What does the wind have to do with long lining your horse, you might ask?
Well, I'll tell you. In Texas, we have four seasons: Hot, Fire, Wind, and Tarantulas. These seasons can come together in groups of two, or three, or even all four, or they can come as singles. They can come just in a day, or in an afternoon, or even in just an hour. Forget Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall - they do not apply to Texas.
On Saturday, it was Wind season. It was steadily blowing at 40+mph, aided by the big stretch of prairie land behind us. Normally I don't even notice things like that anymore, but that day there was an unforseen consequence to it - the driving lines are super lightweight. Therefore, when caught by the wind, they started whipping around in the air - didn't matter if the contact was tight or loose, because if it was loose it flapped, and if it was tight it vibrated hard. The consequence to this was that poor O thought she was being whipped in the butt repeatedly by the lines. There was nowhere on the entire property that was immune from the wind - it howled no matter where we went. Poor O kept jumping forward, thinking I was spanking her on purpose even though she was doing nothing wrong. Eventually I just had to give up, end on a good note, and put her up. Lesson learned - I will not be long lining her in a strong wind ever again!
She had Sunday off due to time constraints, and then Monday I long lined her again, this time with no howling wind. She was excellent, quiet and responsive. Long lining is a really great tool that I don't use nearly enough, but really should. You do all of the things that you do with a cart, you're on the ground. You can easily work on smoothing out things that are challenging in the cart - for instance, backing her and then going forward again. She is understanding how to back up now, and is doing it very well, but she tends to get stuck in creeping reverse mode, where even when you say "whoa" or "walk on", she still takes a few creeping backward steps. Being the excellent girl that she is, if she does this on the ground I can step up to her butt and put a hand on her to stop her and reinforce my "whoa". (Obviously I can't recommend that with other beasts as it's not a very safe thing to do!) I can also come up to her and pet her and scratch her when she has done a good thing, something that can't really be done from the box seat.
Also, you should all be SUPER jealous of O's AMAZING new halter. Traditional leather-only type folks are probably going to have a heartattack when they see this, but O now has a custom mule tape halter, navy and baby blue colored. I have wanted one of these FOREVER. It is so, so soft, and so pretty. I love it!
Tuesday was a milestone, and was super awesome with some super bad moments interspersed in the middle. A driving friend that I made locally invited me to come drive at her place and have a lesson with W, a trainer that I previously thought I'd never be able to work with due to distance. L is another newer whip so she and I have become friends, bouncing ideas back and forth to each other for the past few months. When she offered a chance for me to come out to her place I jumped on it!
In the morning, I fed the mares and left them to munch hay while I loaded up my cart. This was really going to be the true test - I had taken the cart for a drive while it was in the bed, just to make sure it didn't fly out, but I hadn't gone anywhere far. I ratcheted it down with a million straps, crossed my fingers, gave O her Ulcergard and Pro CMC, loaded up, and headed out.
Thankfully, I needn't have worried - it didn't budge an inch the entire drive. It was super secure! Easy in, easy out, and I have a warrenty on the winch should anything happen to it within the next year. So much success!!
We arrived at L's place around 9:30, and I let O out to eat hay while I unloaded the cart - or well, I parked her in front of her haybag and said a silent thanks to the gods of Ulcergard, because she was only interested in staring at All The Things and fidgeting instead of eating. I ended up having to stick her on the lunge to trot out some of the willies before we harnessed - she was quiet but fixedly convinced that the draft mule next door was an evil scary beast. I don't think she had ever seen a mule before, much less one that was galloping and snorting. Back at the trailer, she munched hay while we harnessed up and headed out to the field.
Going over show rules before the lesson
I have to say, I was impressed with how chilled out she was. She marched into the field like she owed the place, and got right down to work. She got right to it, was supple and forward, and had a really good warmup. We then halted and stood around for awhile while Bob the pony did his dressage test.
When I picked her back up, we went and walked for awhile, and then went to go do our test. At that point, she was extremely quiet, lazy, and not very well connected. I usually take that for what it is (AKA yay you're quiet and not super hot/wild, I'll take it) and bebopped with little fanfare through our dressage test. W said at the end that she just didn't have enough forward motion, enough sparkle. I went to try and run through it again, with more forward motion - but I had none. She thought we had finished long ago, and was not interested in going through it yet again. Usually a quiet cluck sends her shooting forward at warp speed, so I use clucking judiciously when I really need it - but I had no response. I'd cluck, and she'd shudder all over like she had heard me, but didn't choose to respond by going any more forward. I clucked, and clucked, and she shuddered and poked along. I tapped her with the whip, she shuddered and poked along. I clucked louder. This was the point where she decided that she had had enough, and gave me the giant horse middle finger: she bucked. And she bucked HIGH. She bucked so very high that when she came back down, one of her hind feet smashed the rein rail on the dashboard of the cart, and bent it.
Oh HELL NO. That is a cardinal sin when you are between the shafts. She has never once done that before - never even given a single indication that it was something she'd ever even consider. Had I ever thought it would EVER be something she'd EVER do, I would have put a kick strap on her. (And from now on, she'll wear one for every drive. It's a strap that runs from one shaft over the top of the rump to the other shaft - if they try to buck, they can't physically do it, because they'd have to lift the entire weight of the cart.) As a side note: if O was a regular bucker I would never have bothered to break her to drive. If she was a kicker I wouldn't have done it either. If she did either with any regularly, I wouldn't drive her either. This is the first time in two years that she has bucked while being driven (or ridden!) - she bucks like a maniac every single day in her paddock while playing, but never ever gave any suggestion to do it while working. As it stands, she is a horse and horses do horse things - just because she hadn't ever done it before doesn't mean that's a guarantee that this would never have happened. With a kick strap in place I can keep any future incidents from causing major trouble.
To her credit, the noise of the impact did not frighten or upset her (I've seen videos of some spectacular wrecks where the horse kicked the cart and then scared itself half to death). She didn't kick out in any way either, just set herself up for the buck, bucked once, and then came back down. I was so surprised by it that I hauled her to a stop, backed her, and then sent her strongly onward into a tight circle. She was mad by this point, and tried to canter, shaking her head and plowing strongly into the contact. After fighting with her for a minute about her wanting to grab the bit and zoom off, I pulled her out of the dressage ring and set her butt to work for several minutes, darting back and forth from a tight left circle to a tight right circle, back and forth and back and forth in small figure 8's. She quit grabbing the bit and pulling, and settled into a rhythm, back and forth and back and forth like she was hypnotized. Once I felt that she was finally listening and responding, we went back into the dressage ring and did the test over. She was sharply attentive this time, listening to any requests for more forward movement without jumping too hard at them, and really paying attention in her transitions. I thought she might be fidgety and hot when halted, as she tends to get, but she was stock still and attentive, actually waiting for me to ask her to move off. She was a bit above the contact and not very connected during this run through the test, but the fact that she was listening attentively made that less important.
I think there is a really fine line to walk with this horse, and it is constantly shifting. It's easy to either get sucked into a fight, or let her bebop along in order to avoid a fight altogether. I've been talking a lot lately about sweet talking her into being a lady, but I think I am probably just taking it too far. It's easy to fall into the trap of asking her to do something two or three times and being satisfied with her doing it on the third try after ignoring the first two, because she did it without killing anyone, but she really should be doing it right on the first try. I need to be a more proactive driver - I need to communicate with her better, and more. There needs to be a better running dialogue instead of just a few commands here and there.
After my second run through the test, we took another break and chatted for a bit about strategies for cones. We took a few pics too - note O the sweaty, sweaty beast after getting her butt handed to her for a few minutes:
We then ran through the cones course a few times. This was the first time I had gone through a cones course with them actually set to a competition distance, and it's crazy how tight they seemed! I need to practice at home for sure, or else I will be sorry! By this point, O was absolutely on her A game, briskly and smoothly gliding through every set of cones, taking a buttery soft contact and listening to every half halt. W nodded and said, "looks like a winning cones course to me!"
We finished our session with a walk down the driveway to cool out, complete with L's other mare galloping around like a total maniac. O was quite tired at this point, and would have been happy to walk down the driveway, but I could see her brain starting to leak out of her ears when the other mare went zooming around, so we went right back to the trailer when we were done and finished.
Me: "Please whoa damnit"
Galloping palomino for added fun
Definitely lots to take away and think about. Lots and lots to think about! And lots and lots of work ahead of us! It was a great lesson and I am looking forward to the next one.
O was pooped on Wednesday, to nobody's great surprise. I caught her napping in her shed:
And even dreaming!:
Today I was going to drive her down the road for a bit, but unfortunately when I arrived in the afternoon, I found that she must have been laying in something that her skin reacted badly to. Her belly and one side was covered in HUGE hives!
My poor paper-skinned beast. She has tomorrow off anyway due to time constraints; hopefully by this weekend her bumps will be gone.
O's leg has mostly returned to normal, finally. She and the others spent Monday in the barn due to a torrential all-day downpour, and because of this I decided to wrap her fronts to keep the leg from filling back up again. A few hours later, S texted me to report that O was destroying her bandages. Really mare... sigh. Although I guess I'm not surprised, she doesn't ever really wear wraps and she doesn't ever go in a stall unless the weather is terrible. I've seen her grab her blanket with her teeth and pull on it hard whenever she decides she wants it off, so it's not surprising that she'd do the same for wraps. She is a special strawberry, that's for sure. In pulling her wraps, she ripped the wounds open again, *of course*. Despite that, the leg looked halfway normal Tuesday morning, and I decided to trailer her to the small covered arena down the road and lunge her. Everything is a swamp back at the home barn and there's nothing to be done about it. After two whole weeks off, I was not keen to put her between the shafts without having lunged her first. I like living, thanks very much.
She was hot and looky and trembling all over with nervous excitement when I unloaded her, and I parked her in front of her haybag. I never work my horses on an empty stomach - they always are allowed to tank up on hay before we work, as an ulcer preventative. She drives me nuts when we go places and she gets like that though, because she won't eat her hay and instead has to stare at EVERYTHING with huge enormous eyes and big blows. Not much to be done about it either except just try to help her relax, and put the haybag in front of her. She's been to this barn before, plenty of times, but she has been off for two weeks. I didn't really expect any different though, to be honest. I made sure I let her stuff her face with hay for an hour before we left (she also refuses to eat while on the trailer), and dosed her Pro CMC before I went to work her since she was not even considering her bag of hay. Normally when we go places and she has been in steady work, she is looky and curious and then will settle in and eat for awhile before we go to work. I haven't been trailering her many places as of late, and she's been off work, so I was prepared for some goofy, erratic behavior.
I know everybody thinks I am nuts for being so neurotic about ulcer protection but it pays off to be that way, especially with this horse. Even with ALL I do for her in terms of protection - and it's a LOT of stuff - I still worry about it. And if I wasn't so neurotic about it, she'd be burned from mouth to butthole with gastric problems, I can guarantee it. I don't know how people with similarly neurotic beasts can ever get away with less preventative care. I suppose a lot of them *don't* get away with it - every which way I turn, there's another classic ulcer case in just about every barn I go to. Ulcers are debilitating and painful... if only people paid as much attention to the soundness of their horses' guts as they do the soundness of their legs. I guess you only know what you know, until you learn.
Anyway. I digress.
I am a good beast
The covered arena is only really about lunging size, so there's not a ton of space in there. But it's all good dry footing, so it works great for situations like this when the bigger arenas are flooded out. I started off lunging her in the Fauxssoa to get the willies out, and then stuck my driving lines on her. She did not so much have the zooming willies as she did the veering snorties - everything was scary looking, and she couldn't stop staring at everything going on outside of the arena. This passed within relative short order, and while she was still spooky she at least was paying attention. Once the driving lines were on, she was wonderful, and we did lots of transitions, bending, and changes of direction. The long lining is infinitely helpful with the work we do when hitched - it's all the same stuff, I'm just on the ground. Our dressage tests at Training level are very simple: halts, a reinback, 40 meter circles at the trot, and some working walk and free walk. We worked on all of these things, specifically quiet transitions, and she was great. The leg went down all the way to regular size while she was working, and has stayed down. Hooray!
Today I was VERY happy that I had opted to lunge her yesterday. It was foggy and warm this morning, and BOTH mares had the zooms for a little while. P is 307 days pregnant and still got her bucks on this morning! (Not for very long... a few passes back and forth was quite enough for her!)
Run Monster Dog run!
We got her the ball to entertain herself.... aaaaand she hasn't touched it once
Gravity is not kind
After they settled and munched hay for awhile, I pulled O out and hooked her. She was not surprisingly quite hot and jittery still... SO glad I lunged her AND that she got her bucks out in the morning. The neighbors were shooting, and in the foggy still morning every noise was super loud. She normally doesn't care about the noise, but this morning she got the jerking shudders every time a gun went off. A truck went by with a muddy, rattling water tank attached to a trailer, and she almost had a heartattack. The neighbor with the donkeys was moving haybales around with his tractor, and I thought she was going to fall over and die when she saw that sight. Mares...
Despite that, she was actually a pretty good girl. When she gets super hot, she bubbles over with energy and has a very hard time stopping and standing still. When she is quiet, she'll stand immobile for hours if you want her to, but when she is not, she'll halt promptly but then burst forward again of her own accord. She'll do it over, and over, and over again, and if she gets frustrated enough she'll turn her head around and bite the shafts or harness (with her ears pricked forward, never in a grumpy way... weird mare). But, if you're just patient, and insist that no, we really *do* have to stand... then she'll stand. Over the course of the drive, she melted into a much more amicable beast, and was doing some great walk-trot-walk transitions, stretching, halting, backing up, walking off, and halting again (which is the sequence we have to do in our Training 2 test). She walked home on a long floppy rein, quite a lot more relaxed than when we went out.
Feels good to be back in the box seat, that's for sure!
Our monthly recap is right on time - and I even started writing it early, and saved for publishing today! Success is an exciting motivator, and it feels really good to be doing something that both she and I are really enjoying. We've played with A LOT of things over the past year, and it has been hard to find something that we both find to be fun. I love to event and do dressage, but O likes neither, even though god knows I tried every trick in the book to make it fun for her. She thought endurance was great, but I didn't enjoy it at all. Barrels was pretty fun for both of us, but I can't in good conscience go hammering on her shredding her legs around barrels. It's too hard on them, and her legs are crooked and blemished enough already as it is. I'd like to be around and sound for awhile! The other fun sports we did, like cow work/rope work/poles/jumpers, were all enjoyable but were not things I'd bother with seriously. Driving is something I hope we can actually get into more seriously, as she seems to enjoy all of the groundwork so far and it is something I have ALWAYS wanted to get into! The only two major problems I am facing with driving are a) it's extremely expensive to get into, and b) it's a good idea to have a second person along for the ride as a groom. If you get into sports like combined driving, you are required to have a groom/navigator along for the ride. And I... don't like people much. I like to do things alone. Riding is in no way a social sport for me - if I do go out and ride with friends, it's just in a trail riding be-bopping kind of way, nothing serious. If I am knuckling down to proper work, I want to be left alone with my horse. Ah well, safety first!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July Goals:
1) Continue to solidify long lining basics - walk/trot, whoa, turns, backing, and walking down the road/on the trail
Success! Easy-peasy. She's an old pro at long lining now. She does it all in full harness with blinders too! Walk-trot-canter, whoa and stand, all shapes and sizes of turns, backing, going down the road with blinders.... it's all old hat to her now. She is happy to take a contact and get a nice goobery mouth as well.
2) Find a good local driving trainer!
Success! Well, kinda anyway. I managed to hunt down the only recommended trainer within a 200 mile radius of me. There are a *few* others out there, but I was told that they were old school cowboys and that they should be avoided. As I am keen to make all of O's preliminary driving training experiences overwhelmingly positive, I have no problems with staying away from smack-em-around cowboys. Some cowboys are great, I'm sure, but then there are others who will happily tarp my red horse the second she disagrees with them, and that's a risk I'm not willing to take. (If you're wondering what tarping is: take a cantankerous horse out to your outdoor arena on a 100+ degree day, rope them and lay them down, tie their legs together, and cover them with a blue tarp for several hours. If they're not dead by the end of it, then you get on and ride the snot out of them until they are gentle and/or mostly dead. Yes, some people really do that around here, and they think it's normal.)Unfortunately, my only local trainer doesn't have an arena herself, and doesn't come out my way for lessons. So I'm stuck again for now... which sucks.
3)
Possibly search for a decent training harness - nothing fancy, just
comfortable and useful - and start to lunge/long line in it
Success! I got my hands on a decent leather training harness, and while it is nothing special and is also a hair too big (she'll need a cob size instead of a horse size), it gets the job done for now. She is going well in it, crupper and blinders included.
4) Introduce dragging
Success! O has dragged a tire several times with no fuss at the walk and trot, and has also dragged PVC false shafts as well at the walk. She dragged them first in an open bridle so that she could see them, and then again with the blinders on, and she didn't care.
5) Continue with bodywork!
Success! She saw the bodyworker again this month, and I think it did her some good. She also has been mostly doing training type stuff this month - I literally haven't ridden her at all in several weeks, despite working with her on the ground every day - so her body is getting a break from fitness stuff as well. I think it is important not to overtax their bodies or brains when you're teaching them something new, because tired bodies can quickly become sore bodies and lead to frustration and bad associations. Learning to pull stuff is hard work! Breaking things down into bite-size pieces so that both her body and brain can process is important. That goes for me too - it's hard to figure all of these new skills out!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Overall it was a resoundingly successful month. We went far beyond what I expected we would do! She has just been so easy - she is so chill, so quiet, so unconcerned with everything we've done. I'm trying to take great care to make sure it stays that way!
O-Ren August Goals:
1) Continue self-education - learning about driving, parts, carriages/carts, different sports, terminology, etc!
2) Start looking at possible training carts for myself (and possibly a harness upgrade)
3) Continue doing groundwork, long lining, work in harness etc.
4) Continue doing drags with tires/PVC
5) If all goes well - hopefully she will be hooked by the end of the month!
Pangea August Goals:
1) Walk hacks 2-3x per week (just short ones, soundness pending)
2) First rhino shot!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hard to believe that P is almost three months pregnant already. She is exactly 85 days pregnant today.... if you're wondering what an 85 day fetus looks like, it's actually really beautiful and you can definitely tell that it will be a horse!:
And as an adorable throwback, here's a picture of tiny baby O!
O continues to be endlessly impressive when it comes to her driving training. This girl is just the coolest cucumber on the planet. Nothing has phased her yet!
After two deserved days off (I was working long hours and it was over 100 degrees every day anyway), we got back to work on Saturday with a long lining session. O has worked in her blinders several times, but I wanted her to start to get used to the idea of going out down the road with them on. She has been down the road a million times, but she is a very visual horse and she likes to be able to see what is going on around her. I thought she might be a bit looky and confused, but I needn't have worried. She, as usual, was completely perfect.
The donkeys were extremely confused by a riderless horse, and they all ran around braying their heads off. She was quite unfazed by this, although at the first bray (which was literally about 15 feet from her, and LOUD), she quickened her steps a little. Aside from that, she was happy to walk, trot, halt and stand for as long as I wanted, and had a nice goobery mouth and a good walking stretch going by the end.
On Sunday, I eyeballed her growing layer of flub overtop her muscles (I cut both girls back recently, as they're both looking quite round), and opted for a lunge workout to actually get her moving and sweating. She was unimpressed by this idea, and opted to poke along lazily. I actually had to encourage her to move forward... I hardly ever have to do that!
Afterwards, I let her have a nice roll in the sand. She stayed down for a little while rolling, and then looked at me with that "it's nice and cool and soft in this sand, do I REALLY have to get up?" look on her face.
"Ok fine if I have to."
Today we broke the tire back out for another drag session, only this time we did it with the blinders on. This is the first time she has dragged something while wearing them, so it was a big deal! I long lined her at the walk and trot for a little while, and then hooked her to the tire. She has gotten over her initial "wait, I can't walk, I am stuck to something", and now marches off with confidence. Goaded on by S, I put a little of my own weight on the tire, and let her pull that around as well. She didn't mind that either! There's not exactly a safe way to ride around on a tire, so that's about as far as I'm willing to go with that, but I think she's not going to have any problems when we actually put her to for the first time. She's just... easy. And easy is not usually the term I would choose for this mare!
And we of course can't forget old Pmare... the poor thing is miserable now that summer is in full swing. She roasts in the heat, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it. She is miserable in a stall, so I can't put her inside under a fan, and there isn't much in the way of shade in her pen. She can go into her shed and under her one tree to escape the sun, but she usually chooses not to. Instead, she just sweats. And sweats. And sweats. She is bleaching out all over, and there's not much to be done. I rinse her off at least once every day, if not twice, but generally by the time I turn her back out she is already sweating again. The sweat makes her itchy, so if I don't rinse her, she is itching her body all over everything. She gets elytes and has access to loose salt, she gets rinsed, and if she has any itches those areas get treated with my favorite herbal anti-itch spray, but beyond that there isn't a whole lot I can do. She also gets a good grooming every day, even though it is probably her least favorite part of the day (she likes to be a feral dirty animal). She's also rocking the bad scissor cut - she has all her whiskers and there's no point in pulling her mane, but I at least keep it trimmed with scissors to an acceptable length. I keep her tail properly banged too. She might be retired but I refuse to let her look like a scraggly wild animal!
O continues to truck right along with her groundwork like it's nothing at all.
At the recommendation of the trainer, I picked up two 10' PVC poles from Lowe's to use as makeshift shafts. I walked alongside her dragging them for a little while, rubbed her with them, slid them in and out of the tugs, and then let her drag them, one at a time at first and then both by the end. I lightly secured them with baling twine, just so that they wouldn't fall out, and could also be released quickly.
Not surprisingly, she didn't care at all. Looked at one, looked at the other, and then forgot about them. Because she's awesome like that.
One of my friends saw the picture and said that the britching is too low, so I raised it today. I also punched some more holes so that I can lower the tugs some. It's a good training harness but it's not an expensive one by any means, so it needs a lot of adjustments. Lowering the tugs will help her drag them easier - I had to help her on turns by pulling on each pole so it wouldn't poke her in the neck, and when I got behind her to drive I only turned her in big giant arcs. Some fiddling will help fix this.
And today, even bigger news! She dragged a tire with no fuss at all! I managed to get my hands on a singletree, and finally was able to use it. We went through the same process as the introduction to the drag poles, and within no time she was dragging it by herself with me long lining her from the side. The only hesitation she had was when I first moved behind her to continue the long lining (I had been leading her at first). She felt the weight and stalled, wiggled her butt sideways, and looked at me like, "well now what do I do?" A few clucks and she moved right off, and that was all. She walked AND trotted while dragging it! How's that for her first proper drag!
So far, she:
Wears full harness while lunging, w-t-c, including crupper and blinkers
Wears full harness while long lining, w-t-c, including crupper and blinkers
Long lines down the road in an open bridle
Has dragged a tire in an open bridle, w-t
Has dragged PVC 'shafts' in an open bridle, at the walk
Backs and goes sideways on the line lines
Halts and stands immobile
Stands immobile for tacking/setup of exercises/etc.
All of it with no fuss, no drama, no nothing. There's a ways to go get but she's doing great. We're off to a halfway decent start if I do say so myself!
We're continuing to progress with our groundwork! O has worn the full harness three times, and the blinders twice. The first time in harness, she just walked and trotted on the lunge, and the second time I lunged her in an open bridle so I could canter her and let her get used to the crupper at the canter. She was not bothered by it - she did a few good-natured dolphin leaps in the canter, but nothing beyond feel-good crowhops. She put her ear on the crupper, came to terms with it, and moved on.
It still had one hole that needed to be tightened, and I did that today - it was at normal length for her long line session today.
I'm going to be doing a lot of work in an open bridle, so I want to make sure she also knows how to work in the blinders for stuff she always knows. I made some adjustments to the bridle, including raising the blinders and removing the decorative drop. The drop flaps on her face a little and causes some concern on her part - she can be pretty headshy about things popping in her face, understandably. As I understand it, there is discussion about it being kind of a major faux pas for driving a single horse, but I really don't have any idea. I've read up on the history of the vanity of drops to try and make pairs with stars match completely, so it makes sense, but it does look pretty... so I don't know.
Anyway. I opted to lunge her first, which she did fine with, and then we moved on to some basic w-t long lining stuff, all stuff we had done before. She did pretty well! She did lift and move her head around a little, which I think she was doing because of her limited vision. She also stumbled on several rocks, which I think she didn't notice in time. Other than that, she did great.
I'd like to do more long lining stuff with one of the lines around her butt, but unfortunately my lines are way too short for that. I can drive her like this, with the lines through the turrets, and I can drive her with the lines low on my surcingle if I am walking behind her, but I can't drive from the side like that. I don't think she'd care either way, but I really do need longer lines if I am going to try it.
And my old hound seems to be hanging in there... eating well, taking her meds, and getting around with pretty good energy and spirits. Here's hoping she continues to hang in there!
You'll have to forgive my radio silence for the past several days. My elderly greyhound (who you've seen on and off through my blogging experience over the years) had a really terrible week last week. Unfortunately she was crashed by a vet who decided to take a certain route of care without consulting with me first, and now she is in outright kidney failure. We're not really sure what is going to happen, but this is terminal and at some point it will kill her. Whether that happens in a few days or in a year, it's impossible to say.
(Gogo and Ti in 2010)
She had a really good day yesterday after a few really bad days, but today she's not looking so great again. Lots of meds, sub-q fluids, and an emergency diet change after she stopped eating altogether seem to have helped until now, but we don't really even know if she is going to make it long enough to retest her bloodwork in a few weeks.
Ti is my first dog, and I've had her since she was 3 and freshly retired off the track. She has been in my life through college and all of my subsequent moves, jobs, relationships, and so much more. It is very hard to watch your companion age and start to wear out. I trust her to tell me when she's ready, and I'm ready to make that choice for her when the time comes... but I hope I get a little more time with her.
If you could send along some good thoughts for her, it would be much appreciated. I am very, very attached to my old doodle and I'm really not emotionally ready for her to go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In much brighter news, O had several days in a row off while I was attending to Ti's medical needs, but she also drove down the road in the long lines for the first time, AND she wore a harness for the first time!!!
I've ridden on this road 892910873392021938 times, so I wasn't worried about going off property and down the road, and true to form she was fantastic. For a horse that is so new to long lining - and SO hot under saddle - she is incredibly quick to pick up on an idea and is incredibly mellow in its execution. We walked and trotted down the road back and forth, and she walked out away from the property without hardly any of her usual barn sourness (which manifests as walking super slow, looking back over her shoulders, walking in really crooked lines). We trotted along quietly up and down the road with me jogging along behind her, and she is so very chill about this that I have absolutely no trouble keeping up at a wheezing jog (note to self: maybe try running a little more).
She was so good that I dared take a short video while we were trotting along on the way home. Don't try this at home kids... also please ignore my wheezing. I'm not very in shape!
Yes, that is my crazy redhead being decidedly un-crazy. I have a theory on this: she has a lot of bad associations with riding, and carries all of that baggage around with her all the time. She has no bad associations with driving of any sort, so she just jumps right in without any problems or evasions. I want to continue to cultivate this in her, and make sure everything progresses smoothly, because I've seen just how bad she can be when she has a bad association with something.
We also progressed to our next step: an actual harness! I managed to get my hands on this one and I'm pretty happy with it. It's actually quite nice for what it is and will serve us just fine for now. The one thing about it is that it is sized for regular horses, and O is a very small horse (don't tell her I said that). I had to punch a lot of holes in everything, and will need to punch even more. Even everything on the bridle is too big - the blinders are huge on her and I had to punch all sorts of holes to keep her bit from falling out of her mouth. She's a big bodied horse for her size, but she is only 15.1 after all.... about cob size. I'll have to keep that in mind for sizing in the future.
Driving people, what do you think? Does it look ok or do you see something glaringly funky? Something I should change/fix?
The traces on this harness are removable, so I ran the breeching straps up through the breastcollar and back again to keep them out of the way. Since the harness is a little big all over, that worked just fine, although the straps might have to be cut shorter in the future. They are loooooooooong.
True to form, she went, "Ok more stuff on my body... whatever." She goosed herself once with the crupper, and then forgot about it, but I left the crupper really loose (way too loose really) just in case. I'll punch more holes and tighten her backstrap up with care. She had never worn a crupper before today and I think that will be the one thing so far that she'll object some to. I lunged her for a little bit in harness at the walk and trot, but not the canter yet - which is probably when she'll be goosey about the crupper, if she is going to be goosey.
She was not very amused by the blinders. I can't blame her for this - she is a VERY visual horse, and she has to look at things and be able to see in order to process. I led her around for awhile, and she got the hang of them, but they were confusing to her. She figured it out, true to form, and was lunging within short order, but I'm definitely going to continue to do most of my work in an open bridle. She needs to be able to do both, but since she learns new things better if she can see them and process them, I expect I'll do everything in an open bridle first. There seem to be conflicting opinions on this, and there are reasons to have your horse in blinders later on when they're broke, but since O is a very visual horse I'm pretty sure that I'll do everything in an open bridle first until she learns it, so she can see and process things. I never really thought about the pros or cons of blinders (or even why you'd use them, really.... I never thought about them at all until now!), so I'm doing my research and asking my resources for guidance. What do you guys think?
I also spent a long time this evening chatting on the phone with the driving trainer I was able to locate! She is sending me some more information about continuation with stuff that I can do on the ground with her until we can proceed with some lessons!
O is making great progress with long lining. She thinks it is a piece of crumb cake. Therefore, it was time to up the ante and try double lunging!
I've not actually ever double lunged O before. I also hadn't ground driven her with the lines up on the higher surcingle turrets, so that was a good test to see how she felt about the lines sliding around over her back. True to form, she didn't care.
I've lunged her with just the lunge line on one side going from the bit to the surcingle and back to me, but she really hated that (it made her bend properly) and she curled dramatically behind the bit and ran.
This is her second time ever double lunging. Yesterday was her first. She understands the idea much better with two reins, and while she does get a little curled and strong a few times, she figured it out quickly and it was easy to bend and adjust her and keep her neck stretched out better. She can get very hot and strong on the lunge, so it was great that I was able to keep her so mellow. For only her second time doing it, I was pretty happy.
(Note to self: check video to make sure all video transitions are uniform. I don't know why it messed those up but I'm way too lazy to go back and fix them!)
I also managed to locate a reputable driving trainer within a decent driving distance! I'll be giving her a call to speak with her about further progression!
It's JULY already! When did THAT happen!
The most astounding thing of all is that we've reached the beginning of July with not a SINGLE triple digit day. The hottest we've seen so far is about 96. And it has been RAINING. A LOT. Admittedly, the humidity has made up for the lack of super hot weather, but what can you do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June Goals:
1) Continue to play with bitting options - which bits for which things?
Well, we came up with some things. I would really *like* to go back to our snaffle eventually, but for now she is working decently in the double (mostly off the double jointed snaffle, which she quite likes), and going in the combo bit for more complicated work (including any future jumping).
2) Keep doing more flatwork! Flatwork flatwork flatwork!
We did LOTS of flatwork! Lots and lots of it. We're plodding along making slow progress, but it is progress. She's such a tricky critter.... every time I figure out how to troubleshoot one of her evasions, she throws another at me. If I troubleshoot that one, she goes back to the first evasion. She is truthfully hellbent on using all of her energy and intelligence to figure out how to *not* do what she is asked to do. I'm completely convinced at this point that this is entirely due to her mental hangups under saddle.... she's just SO GOOD about everything else. Everything else, she's happy to jump in and get to right away. 3) XC schoolings - there are a few to choose from!
I had a few to choose from, and I ended up picking none of them. Partly because I had to work (and it was Future Hubs' birthday on one of the dates), and partly because I was not particularly enthused about it. I didn't feel that she was ready, and I wasn't really as into it as I thought I might be.
4) If we have time, start trailering over to the local jump arena and use their facilities for gridwork!
Didn't do that either... same reason as above. She wasn't really ready for it.
5) Did I mention flatwork? Do more flatwork!
See above!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's interesting..... in the past two weeks, my seriously burning passion for doing ALL THE DRESSAGE THINGS has fizzed out. Don't get me wrong, I love dressage and want to be doing it, and I'm glad we broke through some barriers.... but once again I'm feeling the curious call to give other things a try. Dressage, you sure are fine, and you sure are important... but there are SO many other things to do too!
And why not give everything a try if I can? I've never had a complete jack of all trades horse before, a horse that could literally do almost any sporty thing that I can think of, and having that kind of critter in my yard makes me want to keep trying MORE new things! As athletic as all of my excellent warmbloods have been, they were all specialists in one or two things. Gogo wiped the floor with most everyone she competed against in eventing, and did pretty well in dressage, but she was no speedy jumper (a tidy and talented one yes, but slow and easy), never saw a cow in her life, and couldn't make a turn tighter than a very, very slow 10 meters. She was the ultimate specialist - not quite fast enough to do jumpers, not quite fancy enough to do straight dressage, and I didn't DARE take her out on rough terrain because of her frail little legs, but she PERFECT for eventing. O, on the other hand, is not a specialist in anything, but can do a little of EVERYTHING... and that makes me want to try all sorts of things that I haven't done before!
To recap, so far we've tried: eventing, dressage, jumpers, endurance, roping, cattle work, barrels, and poles. She is good at all of these things on a lower level scale (and could be great at some of them on a higher level scale if we picked and worked on them). And there is one thing that we haven't done yet that I DEFINITELY want to give a try: Driving.
I LOVE to drive, and I've always loved it. I've always wanted to have a horse that drives, but I'm just never had the time to have one trained to do it (and when you're bouncing around from place to place, having a big huge cart to tote around isn't really very practical). I ground drove Metro a lot while he was in rehab, and Gogo as well... I even bought a harness for Gogo years ago, so that I could start lunging her in it. Alas, I never even got to try it on her, and it was sold long ago. Gogo also had an explosive spook in her, and once she was airborne she would do 180 degree spins. You can't exactly do that in harness and not kill yourself and everyone else around you. She also had a tendency to panic when she was constrained sometimes (she broke more halters that I can count), something else that you just can't have with a driving horse. An explosive personality is not one that is suitable for driving.... it's just not safe.
O, on the other hand, has the makings of a knockout driving horse. She'll whoa and stand forever, doesn't care if lines and things get tangled around her legs, doesn't care if things get dragged behind her, gives to pressure in every direction, isn't spooky (and if she does spook, she stops and lowers her head and looks at things instead of exploding or running or going sideways), and has zero kickiness in her. Under saddle, she can be very strong and zoomy, but she is borderline lazy when she is long lining. As far as I can tell, since she has no bad associations with it, she feels no reason to get her panties in a twist about it. In fact, I can't believe how quickly she has picked it up!
I've long lined her a grand total of four times now. I confirmed with R that she had never had it done before, so I started from scratch. The first time was just teaching her how to walk with me behind her (and I definitely don't recommend just starting out doing this without a helper, but I wasn't worried about O), which she was a little confused about but did well - she has all her verbal commands, so it wasn't hard for her to make the connection. The second time, we practiced walking, turning, and halting, and tried a few steps of trot - she was a little startled by this ("why are you chasing me!?") but she settled quickly. The third time, she was walking, trotting, turning at both speeds, halting, and backing up with a ho-hum kind of air about her, as if it was all old hat. The fourth time, she was happy to take a contact and work up a nice foamy mouth, something she rarely gets when under saddle (she has a tendency to clamp her mouth shut when she is tense), and do all of the aforementioned work with ease. She's a completely cool cucumber about the whole ordeal.
Yes, go ahead and laugh at that outfit. It's classy, I know. Super, super classy. At least my horse looks super shiny and beautiful.
Also, one of my lines is twisted around, something I didn't notice until now... that's not proper, don't do that.
Today, I introduced her to the drag tire. She got to look at it, sniff it, watch it bounce around as I rolled and dragged it, and then lunged next to it. It won't be long before she'll be ready to start dragging stuff behind her!
Here's where my knowledge of driving training ends. I have driving basics myself - meaning I can name parts of harness, can harness a horse, can put it to, and can drive it with reasonable decency (it's a lot like dressage, really!), but I am in no way qualified to teach a horse to pull a cart. I've put out some inquiries to local trainers, but there aren't exactly a ton of them around. We'll see what I can dig up locally!
Given all of these things, my goals for this month are going to look a little bit different!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July Goals: 1) Continue to solidify long lining basics - walk/trot, whoa, turns, backing, and walking down the road/on the trail 2) Find a good local driving trainer! 3) Possibly search for a decent training harness - nothing fancy, just comfortable and useful - and start to lunge/long line in it 4) Introduce dragging 5) Continue with bodywork!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If I do say so myself, my ladies are looking pretty nice. P has this lovely hi-gloss shine, and O has this really interesting metallic undertone shine to her... it's similar to that Akhal-Teke metallic sheen. It's almost underneath her coat... light doesn't reflect on her coat, it looks like it reflects through her coat. Whenever she turns and catches the light, it moves through her instead of across her, and underneath her coat she glows glittering red like she's on fire. She has super fine, super thin hair that lays flat on her almost as if it was painted on, so perhaps she has that same flat hollow hairshaft? If you go back and look at the long lining pictures, you'll see it a bit better there. It's crazy beautiful!
