Self Exploration

Phew! I have some catching up to do. I have another post to follow about my birthday, but I better catch upon this one first!


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Little Miss Tre left for her new home this past weekend! After this experience I can safely say I am NEVER EVER EVER doing the buying and selling thing ever again, EVER. It was a horrible, frustrating, money-bleeding experience, and I never want to take part in it ever again. She went to a great place, but not for what I wanted and not within the time frame that I wanted. It was a learning experience for me, but mostly all that I learned is that while it seemed like a great endeavor, it was not, and I am not made of the stuff that horse sellers are made out of. I am never. Ever. Doing. That. Again.

EVER.

Doing this also gave me some good insight into my own workings though, and for that I am grateful. I realized at some point that I am really just a one-horse kind of person. I really like just have one single one to spoil and dote on. It's very hard for me to have two that are both in work at the same time (having one retired one or one youngster plus a working one is a different story, that is doable). I don't know, I'm just sort of... horsey monogamous, I suppose. Only having one means that the one that I have doesn't have to want for anything. Only having one means that I can take as long as I feel like every day, because there isn't a time constraint. 

From here on out, it will just be O, and of course Pmare when she comes home. Obviously, at some point in the (way distant) future, that will change in some way or another (I get rich, somebody dies, something unexpected happens, etc), but not now. Now is a time for conservation instead of excess. Now is a time to focus on building up the things I have instead of trying to reach for outside things. 2014 looks like another huge year for personal and professional growth, and not surprisingly I am feeling a little wiser with every passing day. My 29th birthday was yesterday.... hard to believe I am approaching the end of my 20's. What I know today is certainly far more than I knew at this time last year, or the year before, or especially five years ago, or ESPECIALLY ten years ago. Ten years ago at this exact time, I was waiting for my brand new horse Metro to arrive from Canada, while doting on my old man Quincy. Five years ago at this time, I had just recently moved to Connecticut, and was prepping young Gogo for her Novice debut in Area 1. Two years ago, I had just moved into a house with Future Hubs and was wondering how in the heck I had survived a year already in Texas. Last year, I was about to get struck in the ankle with a rock and have everything in my life completely change for the better. At the end of my 20's, I am seeing that everyone was right - your 20's is a RIDICULOUSLY dynamic period in your life. It is a time for growth, a time for huge decisions, a time for successes, and a time for mind boggling mistakes. A time to really figure out who the heck you are, and where you want to be going with your life. I know that I will change every year - that's just life - but I know a lot more about my older, wiser self now than I did my younger, more irrational self. I am also old and wise enough to know that I am neither old nor wise in reality, and that I don't know nearly as much as I used to think I did. 

Anyway, I digress. 

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The past two weeks has been absolutely insane. I was sick for a week and a half, which threw off all of my appointments, and then the weather tanked which didn't help any of the complexity. I then ran myself ragged trying to catch up with everyone, and finally everything is back to normal. In the interim, I only had time to lunge a few times and go for a quick hack, but hey, at least it was something! This week things have finally gotten back to the normal level of crazy, so I've been happily back in the saddle. 

O doesn't like to do the same thing every day. If she lunges two days in a row, she'll be much worse on the second day. Same thing with flatwork, or conditioning - some combo of being bored and using the same muscle groups makes her much less pliable on the second day. She seems to do quite well if you space out her more intense workouts with either a day off or some very differing kind of work. After our dressage ride on the 1st (a Saturday), she had a day off on that Sunday (when the weather tanked), and then on that Monday we went for a 5 mile hack. We checked on all the new baby cows (so far there are 14 new little squeezy cute beef tips!), trotted over some raised poles, patterned on the barrels for a little while, and then called it a day.

It was REALLY COLD, and I had to practically peel my frozen self out of the saddle. Is winter over yet!?


The rest of the week passed in a whirlwind of business. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, she had off, and Wednesday and Friday she lunged in the Faux-ssoa. Putting a day off in between the two of those sessions was very helpful, although I did think that on the second day she was a bit less cooperative than she had been on the first. We worked on our usual stretching out, trotting and cantering over raised poles, and relaxation.

(If you couldn't tell from the change in background weather/scenery, those were taken on two different days.)

On Sunday (the 9th), I decided to try a little experiment. I had the idea long ago (meaning, a month or two ago) that I should try a pelham on O for some flatwork. This pelham has a short shank and the same Happy Mouth mouthpiece as the snaffle I ride her in. My idea was that I could ride off the snaffle, and then would have an extra bit of "excuse me whoa there wild animal" with the curb if I needed it. And that was a good idea, of course, but in reality it seems as though O has recently really connected with the idea of a half-halt. She stretched out and took a nice contact, moved off my leg, took half halts from my seat perfectly well, and was in general just fantastic. I ended up tying up the curb rein and just riding off the snaffle anyway, because I had a horse who was listening to my body and just taking a nice relaxed contact with the snaffle. I was also surprised to find that we have leg yields in both directions, really nice ones! I didn't know we had them... we certainly didn't have them before. Not sure when she picked that up, but she did!
She was great. Back to the regular snaffle, because all good dressage-y things come from a simple snaffle and that's how it should be!

She sure did look cute though!


We had another lunge, which looked quite a lot like this (although this was taken a few days earlier):



Awwww good mare.

We also had a fun day of desensitizing with a rope and playing on the barrels. She has started cantering the barrel pattern and is REALLY pretty good at it all things considered. I tried to get a video of that, but unfortunately all I ended up shooting was a long video of the sky. But, at least I got a short clip of playing around with the rope!




Caveat: do not be this lax with your own personal safety unless you really know the horse. I'm being very sloppy about safety in this video because I know this horse and I knew she wasn't going to do anything. Still, that doesn't mean that something unexpected could have happened - practice safety!

You can see that she's not particularly keen about it flying around near her head, but it won't take long for her to get used to that. I am a total goob with rope handling, so I won't be swinging around off of her anytime soon, but this is a good place to start. Not surprisingly, she didn't care about it much. You also get to see some very poor leading skills on my part... I suppose I've been letting her be too lazy with the leading as of late. I will get back on that now that I have noticed her trying to drag along behind me.

Phew, I think I caught up with all of the riding stuff!

How To Get Your Horse Really, Really Broke

Before I moved to Texas and was surrounded by western folks all the time, the concept of "getting a horse broke" sounded a bit like something only those heathen cowboy-types did. Having spent a lot of time down here around "English" horses versus "Western" horses, I have firmly decided that there is clearly something to  "getting a horse real broke." (Bad grammar included.) At the rehab farm, I HATED the English horses (eventers, dressage horses, jumpers, etc) - they couldn't hard tie, some couldn't even crosstie, they didn't stand still, they didn't lead well, they dragged their handlers around, they were a general nightmare. (The racehorses were no better... they sort of fell into the "English" category.) Cutting horses, reiners, barrel horses... they all varied a bit. But rope horses? Man, rope horses were BROKE. 

I LOVED the rope and ranch horses whenever they'd come in. They'd seen it all and never, ever complained about anything. Nothing surprised them. They stood like rocks. They tied to anything. They were quiet. They were interested but not concerned about ANYTHING. They ALL were like that. They were SO BROKE. Some folks are very nice to their rope horses, and some are very mean, so I'm not condoning rope training... it varies by the individual. What rope and ranch horses consistently have in common is that they've all been there done that and seen it all, and you can throw everything and the kitchen sink at them and won't phase them if they've been properly exposed. 

THAT is what I want in my own horses. I want them to be able to go anywhere and do anything with the same quiet attitude that they have at home. I want them to step up to new challenges with cool confidence, and let them figure out how to navigate the world with relaxation and the ability to calmly reason with new obstacles. If they come across something, I want them to learn about it, figure it out, and move on. I want them to be able to stand quietly tied or crosstied anywhere, and let me do anything I like to them (clippers, grooming, trimming, etc) with relaxation. I want them to be able to see things they've never dealt with before and think these new challenges through without losing their cool. I want them well-adjusted and exposed to EVERYTHING that I can think of, so that when we get to a show somewhere and there is something scary and new, they're not concerned about it. To sum it up, in the Texas sense: I want them "broker'n hell." 

(Where I deviate from the western sense of broke is that I don't really apply it to actual training - there's hardly such a thing as a "broke" dressage horse, because there is always more to learn and refine and finesse with the dressage horse. A broke rope horse knows his job and runs out there and does it exactly the same, every time. It's not quite the same with a dressage horse!)

O, as far as I can tell, didn't have a ton of 'worldly' exposure when I got her. Our first few rides on the trail were a bit terrifying - she bounced along with springs in her feet, jumping and starting at everything that moved, moments away from total explosion the entire time. The first time we trailered her to an arena, she zoomed around at warp speed on the end of the lunge, cutting corners the entire way and snorting her head off. There was a pen full of roping steers next to the arena that she WOULD NOT go near - she was TERRIFIED of them! (I don't know if she had ever really seen cows before, much less ever gotten close to them! Lucky for her, Texas has about ten gazillion cows in it, so she has since had to deal with cows every day of her life. There is even a herd of cows that lives in the pasture next to hers... talk about learning by immersion!) 

Well, I thought, as I hung on for dear life on those first few rides.... it's time to get this mare BROKE.

If you've been following her journey you'll have seen her successfully navigate a plethora of things, from miles and miles of crazy trails to swimming in the lake, and the more places we go, the more exposure she gets. We go into situations like this with a low-key attitude, so she has the time to see, process, and accept all the weird things that I keep exposing her to, without the pressure of being asked to perform. When she goes to shows where she WILL have to perform, all the exciting external stimuli that takes place in a show atmosphere will be an increasing non-event. The more things she sees, the quieter she gets, and the faster she processes. This mare, who I had a death grip on two months ago whenever I rode anywhere outside of the roundpen, much less anywhere exciting, is becoming a sturdy ATV that will literally go anywhere that I point her and not care about anything going on around her. It's AWESOME.

Last night's adventure took us to a local arena where they were holding team roping practice for the night. I had planned on giving O the entire week off, but I couldn't give up that opportunity! It was almost 110 out, and I was feeling particularly lazy - who wants to lug tack around in that kind of heat? I decided that instead of dragging all my tack over to the trailer, I'd just sit in some of S's western tack. O hadn't ever been in a western saddle before, much less one with a back girth, but ehhhh... why not?

Lucky for me, she didn't care at all. She loaded and unloaded like a pro, took a nap while we drank some wine, and wandered around like a perfect lady once I mounted up.

She was VERY interested in the cows, in a playful way... way more than ever before! 

Actually, she looks pretty darn cute in that tack.... mule ears and all!

She stood immobile at the far end of the arena for awhile watching the ropers practicing, interested but not excited. Every time they ran a steer through without roping, we trotted after it until it reached the strip chute. She caught onto that game immediately, and was quick to turn after each one to chase them down. Maybe she wants to do some team penning for fun? (On the aside, I bet you this mare would make a KILLER barrel horse.... she can turn on a dime and run like hellfire!)

We trotted around for awhile and she threw her head like a maniac for most of the time. She was not amused with the particular snaffle I had picked for the night, and was sick and tired of all the little cattle flies flying up into her face. We did manage to have a few decent moments:

Check out her total nonchalance that a random steer is running around in the arena with her... I know a lot of horses that would TOTALLY melt down if they saw that!!

A little unorthodox.... a LOT of fun!