Working Equitation

This year, I am finally going to get to participate in something I have ALWAYS wanted to do - working equitation!

I've talked a bit before a long time ago about how addicting dressage is, and how it can kind of be a snooze-fest despite that - but I also had written about WE and how much I wanted to give it a try with O. Obviously that went flying out the window, since O went from a terrible riding horse to the best damn driving horse on planet Earth (I'm definitely not biased or anything). Dylan is completely opposite of this: he'd probably be a terrible driving horse, but he he excellent under saddle. He is hot, and he anticipates *everything*, but when he is listening he is outstanding. His talent for collection is incredible. And his work ethic is magnificent. My desire to give WE a try is actually doable now!

He has really changed over the past few months. When I first got him, he was highly suspicious of me and everything I did. He was SUPER hard to catch. He was wild about the mares. He was weird about his food. He walked the fence constantly. He was thin and super wound, all the time. 

I've had him now going on six months and he is totally different. He walks right up to me. He is FAT and sleek. He doesn't walk the fence anymore (unless the neighbor's stallion is out, then he goes down there and promenades back and forth to show off his manliness, but that's quite acceptable). He is best buds with Zuul and he really enjoys having a friend around. He leads with just a cotton lead rope. He doesn't fret about the mares anymore, although he always keeps an eye on them and talks to them whenever they come near him.


Just letting him be a horse changed all of these things for him. I think his old trainer took great care of him and was a wonderfully skilled rider, but I just do my management differently and I think he has benefitted from it. He was in a stall constantly with little turnout because he walked the fence so badly that he would walk himself to skin and bones if he was left outside for too long. He was isolated. He was getting fed a commercial processed feed but it wasn't doing much for him. Now, he's out 24/7 with hay and pasture in front of him all the time. He eats a minimal amount of Crypto Aero and a tiny bit of fat - I had to cut him way back recently as he had gotten so huge I thought he might explode. He has a buddy. He lounges under the trees. He is mellow. He is content. And he is friendly too - I don't know many mature stallions that you can just hang out with loose in a field and not at least be watching them all the time, much less worrying about your safety. I don't worry about that with Dylan.

He still has his little quirks - he hates the spray bottle, he's not a huge fan of his ears being handled, and he anticipates literally everything you do under saddle. But these are just things that make him who is he - and I like a bit of spice anyway.

Whoa there wild steed don't let those mares distract you too much! 

Also you're jealous of this tail aren't you.

Tailmasta has the tail magic. Sadly today it looks brown and gross again

He could see the reflection of the mares in the window and was super confused 

I think he has grown some mane too! Not much though. He has the worst mane I've ever seen on a Spanish horse EVER

I thought when I got Dylan that I was going to leap right back into USDF shows straight away, but I haven't done this. Instead, I've spent the past six month getting to know him better, trying to sort out my physical issues, and feeling my strength and seat gradually returning to me. I've been seeing my physiotherapist regularly and we have made real progress in getting some mobility back into my calf. I still don't have a ton of flexibility yet but I am able to ride mostly pain-free, which is something I haven't been able to do in years. YEARS! This is so exciting and opens up so many possibilities for me. 

This weekend our local WE club is putting on a free practice at one of the training facilities around here. It's probably a solid hour from me, but to be able to work with all of the obstacles for the first time - and for free too! - is really a great opportunity. I'm eager to dip my toes into a new sport the same way that I did with O - just like with combined driving, working equitation has a basis in dressage but with SO MUCH MORE on top of it. 

Secretly, I am hoping one day to go to the Haras Cup, but we'll just have to see about that!

Tre(s) Bien

Now that Tre is here, O (much to my surprise) looks like a perfect angel compared to her. Not that Tre is naughty.... I just don't know her and don't know what to expect from her all the time. I look back at O and how horrible she was that first week that I brought her home (thrashing around in the crossties, dragging me around, trying to kill me under saddle with no steering and brakes... you know the drill. She was just AWFUL!), and look at her now, and can't really believe how far she has come. She's just SO cool about everything!
I try every ride to incorporate a little dressage into everything that we do. This is a great payoff for both of us - we don't have to sacrifice fun for training, or training for fun, because we get to do both at the same time! For example: last night, we went to one of the local barrel races. S is DESPERATE to get O running (and to be honest, she'd be really good at it!), so I exhibitioned her for fun. She is patterned on the barrels, so she went trotting into the huge scary coliseum all by herself, saw the first barrel, and got right to it. (She's actually only ever seen the blue barrels before... these were brightly colored pop up barrels, but she didn't care!) The footing was very deep, so she fumbled around the third a little bit, but came galloping on home like she had been doing it her whole life. Once we were finished, we did some nice w/t work and ended on that.
Another example: last week we hacked down the road for awhile, and then decided to go check the neighbor's cows. O used to be VERY afraid of the cows, but has since gotten used to them and quite enjoys chasing them around now. S and I pushed the lot of them (41 cows/calves) into the holding pen, pushed them back out, drove them down to the stock pond, pushed them around the stock pond, and pushed them back up and into the pen again. O is more than happy to chase down breakaway calves, keep everyone together, and even run at the cranky old bull. And the best part is that we are doing dressage while we are working the cattle! Everybody wins.

(Be proud... I resisted the urge to roach it and just pulled it instead!)

Tuesday, after a week of groundwork and walking over poles and up hills, I finally got on Miss Tre. I made sure S was around (because you just never know), but she was perfectly quiet for tacking and mounting. I walked around in the small pen for awhile, trotted a lap or two around to see how she feels (she feels a little weak all over but sound), and stood for awhile while mounted. She was perfectly quiet and agreeable. S hopped up on her big yellow horse bareback, and we went for a lap around the top part of the field (where ideally I'll be doing most of her rehab/legging up). She was forward and broke to the trot once, but behaved herself otherwise. S needed to go grab something from the barn, so I stayed up where we had been riding while she rode him away. And Tre.... Tre did not appreciate this. She pitched a little hissy fit and spent a few minutes fussing. She finally settled down into a figure-8 pattern at the walk, and was actually quite good from then on. Not exactly how I had planned on our first ride going, but there you go! In her defense, I don't know that she has ever been ridden alone, she has not been in work for several months, and she assuredly has limited out-of-arena time. It was kind of a lot of ask of her! I think she just needs more miles. I'll be riding her down closer to the barn for a little while just to get her going, and then when S gets back from being away, we'll start toodling on the trails some. (Or I will pony her off of O, but O does not like that much!)

I was going to do a lot of tackwalking to get Tre going, but honestly, the horse is sound. She looks great! She is ready to roll and she looks better and better every day. The more she moves around outside - the more she walks and eats and relaxes - the better she gets. Better and better and better! I decided to start lunging her lightly and keep an eye on her movement, but she honestly just looks GREAT.

Here's a quickie link to a video her Tre lunging yesterday!



And today, I decided to put the Faux-ssoa on... and she was even BETTER!

JEEZ. Pretty mare, no?

Pretty, pretty mare. 

Happiness and nomnoms for all. 

Dressage Saddle!

First and foremost, I want to send my condolences to JenJ, who lost her beloved Saga on Tuesday. Jen has really become a good friend ever since I moved to Texas, and from lunches and horse shopping all the way to frantic phone calls ("is this an abscess?" "is this roundpenning thing a horrible idea?"), I can always count on her for advice, opinions, or a shoulder to wail on when things go horribly wrong. Take a minute to go read their story, and to send your own condolences to her too. 

On the same page, Wednesday was the 7-year anniversary of Metro's death. I've written a lot about him over the years; you can find some of it on the old Eventing-A-Gogo blog. It is amazing how things come full circle - how his only remaining daughter is now here with me, acting every bit like her father's child every day. They look SO much alike too... they have the exact same head! (Aside from her crazy facial markings, of course!)

Miss you, Cookieman. Miss you all the time, every day.

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Onto some cheerier things! While I am still a bit worried about the state of Immy's hindgut (ordered some Equishure to try as per recommendation here, and thanks to everyone who gave suggestions!), everything else is progressing very smoothly. (Well, mostly.) We've had a bit of a strange week weather-wise - it actually SNOWED here on Tuesday! It was miserable, cold, blustery, and snowy all day long, so I called it a day early and stuffed some extra hay into their shed for good measure. We are now up to TWO WHOLE SNOWS for the season. That is two more than we had last year! Thankfully, this OUTRAGEOUS winter weather is probably completely over for the year, thank god. It was in the 60's today and will be in the 70's this weekend, which is more more reasonable for this time of year. At least all the grass is growing now that we've had some precipitation! 

Not sure how Immy felt about that, but P acted a bit like, "Oh thank god, the weather is FINALLY nice!" As evidenced by the snow on her blanket, she was more than happy to just stand out in it all day.

For Immy's fourth ride, I decided to switch over from the rope saddle to my dressage saddle - time to start learning to be a proper event pony! I had S hold her again while I mounted, and I am glad that I did - the difference between the fenders of the western saddle and the, well, nothingness of no fenders in a dressage saddle is a bit of a leap. Instead of a big piece of leather between my leg and her side, suddenly it was just my leg, and as expected it surprised her a bit! Thankfully, it didn't take more than a moment for her to settle in, and off we went to work on some more steering, stopping, and trotting!

I have some equitation issues I need to work on... badly. Yikes.

This picture makes me laugh - I was exaggerating my bad habit of doing puppy paws (AKA piano hands), and the super exaggerated movement got caught on camera. Rest assured, I do NOT usually ride like this.... although sometimes my mitts get the best of me!

She looks pretty stinking cute in dressage tack, does she not? She even offered to take a contact on several occasions at the walk, which is sort of what she is doing in that picture. 

Today, I kept things simple with a nice easy lunge and a good grooming session. I was able to pull the rest of her mane (YES!!), all except for one small area right behind her poll. I figured I had done quite enough, and left it at that. Someday, I will be able to give her a proper bridle path, and then we can REALLY do up her mane the way it should be... but that day is not today. As for now, I was most impressed that she stood still and allowed me to finish pulling, despite the fact that she was not very amused by it. She did her best to be a good girl!

Tomorrow, we ride again for the 5th time - and I may even ride in the even bigger paddock, so that we have a little more space to maneuver and work on steering. We shall see!

Interference of the Bad Kind

Well! We've had an interesting (and not in the good way) few days. As a preface, everything seems to be back to normal... I hope!

As you know, I rode Imogen for the first time on Sunday, and it was fantastic. I gave her Monday off, and all  I did with both girls was to let them out of their runs at the end of the day (they had been up because of the rain). Nothing out of the ordinary happened... all was well. The next day, Tuesday, I had plans to pull the girls up and give them a good grooming, and give Immy a second day off. Both girls were standing near the gate when I arrived, waiting. Much to my surprise, when I went to go catch her and bring her in, she raised her head in alarm and moved away from me, turning on one heel and bolting off. Uh.... okay.... not normal. She wouldn't even come near me after that. I never ended up catching her at all. P came up and had dinner, then went back out again and left. Immy kept coming to the gate, but any time I walked towards the gate myself, she took off again. Eventually, I just gave up and went home, leaving her standing by herself at the gate. She was still there when I drove away, waiting for me to catch her but not wanting to be caught all the same.

Okay... what was going on?

The next day I arrived at around the same time, and both girls as usual came to the gate when they heard people arriving. Another boarder had arrived at the same time as I did, and she went into the pasture to bring her horses in first. Both P and Immy were at the gate when I arrived, but when I went out to catch them, they were gone. P came back within short order, but when I went to catch her, she too threw her head up and backed away, like she was afraid of being struck or chased. P is never, EVER, hard to catch. "Did you shoo them away from the gate?" I asked the other boarder. She replied that yes, she had chased them off to get her horses in. My heart sank as I spotted Immy down the hill, standing still and watching me with an eagle eye. The moment I turned to face her, she galloped in the other direction.

I understand now. She is getting aggressively chased away whenever anyone goes out to catch their horses... that terrifies her. Absolutely terrifies. I had no idea if I was going to be able to catch her... she wouldn't let me within 30 feet of her without galloping away. 

I enticed the yearling in the pasture over with a bunch of cookies in my pocket. It didn't take long before Immy's curiosity got the best of her, and she too came over and got a cookie from me. I stroked her cheeks for a minute, and then moved to touch her neck with my hand. Just the motion of raising it made her recoil in fear, and she bolted. (The "shooing" motion that scares her so much.) I couldn't get near her again, and night had completely fallen by this time. Over a half hour into it, I was nowhere near catching her.

I needed to get her to switch from right brain to left brain, and walking her down was never going to work. 

It was time for Plan B. I poured a whole bunch of cookies into a bucket, took it out into the field, and shoot vigorously. Hey, I'm not above bribery when I need it.

It worked like a charm. Immy and the filly came over, and after some nervous snorting, they both stuck their noses in the bucket started to snack away. I was able to reach up and pet Immy on the neck, and she no longer flinched away. I had a rope around her neck within short order, and was able to put her halter on with absolutely no fuss at all. She gave me her best Joyful Cookie Face, and I brought her up for dinner. She was a changed woman - all over me, cuddling up to me, happy to be in my presence and happy to be touched and loved on. 

Well... I guess we know the problem now. We can't have this happening though. She is nowhere near ready to have interactions with strangers, much less negative interactions. 

I formulated a new plan for the week: 

Wednesday: Just be able to catch her and love on her (SUCCESS!)

Thursday: Groom, love on, low-key lunging without bridle (SUCCESS!)

Friday: Lunging/Grounddriving with bridle

Saturday: Ride

Sunday: Ride

As per my schedule, I caught Immy, gave her a thorough grooming (including a leg wash), and lunged her in just a halter in the big arena. I wanted to keep everything low-key and stress-free, and was very successful in that pursuit. She was happy, relaxed, and peaceful in the crossties, happy to have her grooming and eat her cookies. She lunged like a perfect angel. To top it all off, she let me PULL HER MANE!! Or well, part of it... but it is DEFINITELY a start! It wasn't that long ago where I couldn't even cut it with scissors without her completely losing her mind, so this is a HUGE step for us. I only did a small portion of her mane at the base of her neck, but everybody has to start somewhere. Amazingly, after some preliminary wiggles, she stopped moving and let me do it without fuss. I kept shoving cookies into her mouth every time she let me pull without moving, so she had some pretty good incentive to hold still. 

Not saying it for sure helped or did not help, but when I first crosstied her, I tried out my bottle of Soothe Me spray from Zephyr's Garden (I LOVE their products and can't say enough good things about them!). She was very, very peaceful... maybe it helped! I am trying out the Soothe Me, Calm Me, and Settle Me sprays... I firmly believe in their other products, and regularly recommend them to clients and friends alike, so I can't wait to see if this helps her too.

There is supposedly some wintery mix coming in tonight (maybe, possibly, no idea... Texas weathermen can NOT predict winter weather to save their lives!), so we'll see what we have to work with tomorrow!

AND! January Goals and 2013 Goals coming up soon! 

Gotta be clean for the New Year!

Poor Bay Girl... the final afternoon of 2011 was filled with HORRIBLE TORTURE for her! And by horrible torture, I mean.... a bath.

Actually, she was completely perfect about it. It was 75 degrees and beautiful outside, so I decided to bite the bullet and clean her up - it will probably be my last chance to do so for awhile! I've given her only one bath before, and it went pretty well, so I expected her to behave for this one as well. And I wasn't disappointed.... I even sprayed her face off with the hose, the poor thing. She was not particularly pleased about that but she allowed it with only a few minutes of facemaking following completion:



And if that is an upset face, I think I'm doing pretty well.


I was also horribly cruel and cut her mane with - o horrors! - a pair of dull scissors! Three months ago, I hacked off her long and scraggly mane with a pair of scissors, and she pitched a right fit about it... it was the first time I had ever worked with her, and I wrote her off as a bit of a nut. This time, she was better behaved, but still tossed her head and fussed a bit when I took scissors to her. Pulling at this point is OUT of the question. We'll get there eventually... but she doesn't even like to have her mane brushed, let alone tidied in any way, so this is a long way off!



I guess it doesn't look too bad.

And best of all.... she didn't roll afterwards! ;) Just settled in to eat her alfalfa and dinner grain. Good girl.


As for now, it's onto the New Year.... and with that will come some new goals! Stay tuned, be safe tonight, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!