Monday, March 11, 2024

February Wrap Up

Almost to the point where it seems silly to write a wrap up. But here we are. The first week of March was A WEEK. Neither one of them did enough work to make a chart make sense. Ben worked five times, Goggles eight. Hardly a program for either one. But such is life. 

Such a vivid rainbow

Ben: kiddo worked roughly once a week and was a bit bored. He caused a lot of chaos in turnout, but, knock on wood, kept his shoes on for it. We started once weekly acupuncture for ulcers. My friend shared the points with me, and we're giving it a go. 

He loves his needles

In exciting news for his boredom, a friend is coming out to ride him this week. Hopefully it will become a consistent thing. 

Looking pretty handsome in spite of the lack of work

Goggles: He had a bit of a busier month, but still only worked 8 times.

We did get our zen back though

Following a slightly frustrating lesson that turned into a training ride and getting to watch Peter Gray teach Amanda and Hillary, I changed up my approach at the end of the month. As Peter Gray put it, short bursts of quality work. I started riding with a metronome in my pocket and being very exacting about his response to my leg and rein aids, mostly the ones that say get off your inside shoulder. Bend and tempo are the MOST IMPORTANT things. Lots of breaks and lots of praise, but he knows what is being asked, so 10% and then nothing more is no longer good enough. What do you know, this makes him much better overall and stops his squirreling around in the canter. 

He was a super good boy for his solo Majestic trip! 

There's a nice horse in there! 

I am so proud of how casual he is about ditches. What a good boy. 

My goal for March with both of them is to get back into more consistent work. Three times per week minimum ideally. And I'd like to take both of them out XC at least once each. Hopefully the rest of life will cooperate!

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Unsupervised

Goggles and I headed back to Majestic this week. As hard as I tried to line up a trailer buddy for him, horses gonna horse and friend's horse had an unexpected allergic reaction that set his skin on fire. So solo with half a tube of GG it was. Goggles loaded in about ten minutes and then started munching hay. I loaded my tack and then closed the escape doors. His face had a very certain look about how he felt about the fact that this wasn't one of those practice sessions where he got on, munched some hay, and got off again. 

He rode quietly though and unloaded mostly politely. Someone was weed eating in the distance but he mostly refrained from standing on me while trying to watch. It was a great test to school solo TBH. Hillary was awesome and volunteered to be our ground person in case of emergency. She also caught some video which was very much appreciated. 

Whatta grown up kid walking on a loose rein

Fancy prancy

Wheeee!!!

He was very, very focused on where the other horses were on the large property when we were walking, but once we started trotting and cantering he mostly focused on his feet. He wouldn't focus enough to look at the starter fences I tried to walk him up to though, so when we trotted at it, he was surprised. 

Oh no! I am surprised! 

????

Oooh now I understand

We popped a variety of starter fences and only had to straight line halt after one when he was downright rude. Otherwise we focused on the finesse between forward and taking over. He generally is very game which is a very good thing, but he still has to be rideable. Other than a glance at a natural log that is SUPER spooky, he was brave to everything.




He hopped the baby ditches down in the far field and the actual big kid ditches at the top of the hill like they were NBD. 

Baby ditch

Big kid ditch

It took him a second, but he went into the water without a lead horse for the first time ever. Once his feet touched he had a bit of a baby moment, but he didn't dump me in the water, so all was well. We splashed around in there and did the up bank out as well. 





We finished up on the banks. Down he was nice and casual, but up we had to do a few times until he popped up without a party after. We finished on two nice soft trips up and called it good there. 


Didn't quite go with him enough here


Feeling him out there was awesome. He picked up where we left off pre ulcers, and he was fantastic. He functioned completely on his own and got more and more rideable as we jumped things. 

It's really interesting heading out without a coach. JT has given me so many tools to work with, it's a useful skill to practice applying them without her perfect timing. Also since that's what happens out on course at shows, its good to log a few miles of practice that way. I have to think for myself about things and occasionally I think sometimes it makes my reaction times a bit better because I'm not waiting and listening for the direction from her. This was especially true when managing him on the back side of fences. The flip side is that I'm positive I let him take a few more trips over one specific fence speeding up the last two strides and then taking a long spot than I should have. But it forced me to analyze what was happening and what tools I had to fix it. We came around once more and did a few walk trot transitions on the way to the fence and then I half halted two strides out and thought about landing and circling. And wouldn't you know it, he waited and jumped it really well. 

"Ride him like he's trained"



Thursday, February 22, 2024

Softer

After Goggles' acupuncture appointment we were assigned some homework - some manual therapy I could use to help supplement between appointments. The first step to let him know good things are coming, loosening up a few fascial connections, and getting him used to touch, is skin rolling. 

Almost like a neck twitch, but a looser pinch, and continually moving

This is done starting close to the poll and going all the way down to the shoulder on a few different planes. He quite likes it at this point and starts licking and chewing when I start doing this. He is most sensitive up near the poll which makes sense. 

Then we move on to the muscle releases. He is getting sooooo much better about letting me do these. He's really, really smart. At first I had to just kinda do it softly and stay back out of the way of his mouth. He never really tried to nail me, but definitely wanted to turn and nip when it was a little uncomfortable. I don't know if it is more and more comfortable or if he is learning the release is coming, but he barely turns towards me now. 



Usually those two get some big sighs and releases. He got a great review at his second acupuncture appointment - she scanned him all over and only got a few areas to focus on. At the first appointment he was so uncomfortable she couldn't scan him at all. His poll also felt much better, which is definitely good news. She worked on his hindquarters a bit more and got some good stuff done there. 

Each time I start his manual therapy, he is much softer than the last. His brachiocephalicus is now loose from the get go rather than needing some time to soften and relax. Overall quite encouraging that we're on the right track. 

As we've gone back to a routine this week, we've been starting each day with the cowboy homework. This means patience on my part. We're hanging out for somewhere between 20 - 60 minutes, just hanging. 

Which is mostly him eating


And me standing, using the dried poo pile as my marker to make sure I'm not migrating as he does

But then at some point he comes and checks in with me. 

And then takes a little nap

We did our first ride back yesterday after starting his ulcer treatment. He was great. A car drove by and he noticed it, but quickly returned to focusing on me. We kept it low key with lots of stretching and walk-trot and walk-halt transitions. We didn't canter yet, I wanted to just let him succeed at everything we did. 

Friday, February 16, 2024

Hold me, I'm hurt

Alternate titles: There's our step back OR "My mom is an a**hole" - Goggles

Goggles started out the year doing SO WELL, I joked that our one step back was coming soon. And oh boy did it ever, sort of like a fall off the landing, not just a step back. It started one day when we worked in hand at the front of the property. He started out grazing, but his eye wasn't quiet. And then, then, he basically exploded. It was actually less than in the spring when we had our sessions with the cowboy, in that I didn't struggle holding onto the line, but instead he threw in some straight up hi ho silver moves. While he wasn't rearing AT me, when I was holding the line on a LARGE horse who is standing straight up, it still kinda felt like he was rearing AT me. Eventually though, he found some quietness and tried to creep into my  space to be consoled. I tic-tocked him out of my space again and eventually got a settled(ish) horse. But we basically had to start all over again as we walked back to the barn. 

A few days later, we went down to JT's. My schedule didn't line up with my friend's, so he was solo on the trailer. He is getting SO MUCH better with trailering, I figured it was about time to trial run. AND he did great! But by the time we got to the lesson? He was plumb out of spoons. 


So we got a hot, reactive baby horse. He managed walk and trot, but was launching and bucking at the canter. Woooo boy. I did still get some good tidbits, a refined half halt, and a lecture on not pulling back any more the second they have halted (::hangs head:: that I needed that, but my adrenaline was high).  But we quit before we even made it near a jump. 

Two days later, I plunked him back on the trailer, and we headed to the GY's to get his feet done. I was firm, but patient and kind with my half-halts and we did a lot of walk-halt-walk. He was actually REALLY good. Then we moved on to trot and I again was insistent that he focus on me, not the other horses, and we got some nice bendy work. Then we moved to canter. He started out with a smaller version of what he'd done at JT's, but I kicked him forward and then half-halted softly and he moved past it. We did several canter transitions each way and he was super. I popped off and told him what a good boy he was.

Ben Ben wanting some attention

Post hi ho silver rears, I had discussed with his barn owner, and she shared that he had struck at her husband while turning in one afternoon. I immediately called and scheduled a cowboy lesson at a time she could hang out and watch ASAP. 

The anxiety is high

But a few days before the scheduled lesson and a few days after his trip to the GY's, he stopped eating breakfast. He still picked at hay, but he was essentially shouting at me "MY BELLY HURTS!!!" He had no way left to say it since I had ignored all of his other behavioral cues or chalked them up to herd bound anxiety that we needed to work through. This one was like a smack in the face though. I brought out gastrogard that morning, and he ate dinner like a champ. By turnout the next morning, post second dose, he wasn't doing the anxious mouth chomping that had crept in the past 1-2 weeks. 

And now we're back to this while we're grooming

We still did the cowboy lesson, but both the barn owner and I agreed that his behavior was already 1000% better than what it had been. She is amazing and started wracking her brain thinking of the first subtle cues she had seen. She had actually noticed him holding up a hind leg while eating a week or two prior. Not full on kicking at his belly, but holding it slightly up in the air. 

So we're getting gastrogard and life is good. I have my happy, relaxed baby horse back. We aren't doing any ridden work this week, we're just hanging out and working on our ground work homework from the cowboy. One thing he said stuck with me more than everything else "Why wouldn't they be focused on their buddies? Most people show up for an hour or two a day and spend the whole time telling them exactly how to behave." So we're hanging. With the boundaries established by the cowboy, not pulling at the end of the line, not coming in to my space, but learning to relax together. When he first stopped grazing today, he oriented pointing the herd in the pasture. But then he ate some more and oriented pointing me and took a nap. And that felt better than any trip around a jump course. 

I'm grateful he is continuing to put his trust in me even though I failed him miserably. Even when his stomach felt the worst, he was still walking up to me in the pasture, happy to see me. And since he isn't much for pressed treats, and I don't always remember to grab carrots from the house, I know it isn't just about food. 

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

One year with Sense a Giant

Today marks one whole year of my first ever baby horse. He has been an incredibly rewarding partner, and we have both learned so much in the past year. 

Adoption picture in PA 

Arrival day - now that I know him I can see his eye wasn't just tired, but he wasn't feeling well from the travel either

THAT'S a happy eye 

And a whole hunk of a horse 

We have had quite a few adventures in the past year - his first XC school was WAYYYY more chaotic than I thought it would be, including body slamming his friend in the water. But his second school, he managed to eat a little bit of grass and function far away from Ms. GY's horse. And by the third time out he knew his business was eating grass and JOMPING. 



He also went out and did poles and cross rails at his first show with JT. This was relatively quickly followed by his first show with me. There, he exceeded absolutely all my expectations and was brave and rideable to our tiny cross rails and also functioned like a grown up horse in the warm up and at the show in general. 


After some bouncing back and forth between the GY's and JT's this year, he's settled at a farm all of his own in January. 


His softness has been a work in progress this whole year. We're on the right track with his neck and getting him softer and bending through his neck and body, but his first reaction is still tension and bracing. On the other hand, he is BRAVE and wants so badly to do the job. 

I am learning SO MUCH on our journey together. I have never shaped a horse in this way before, and it is the coolest thing to work my hardest to provide him positive experiences to help him develop into a horse who loves his job and is confident about it. 

Here's to 2024 with Sense a Giant, I can't wait to see what adventures we go on this year!! 

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

January Wrap Up


This month I took a bit of a break from really trying to keep two horses progressing forward and focused mostly on Goggles. Ben chilled out some and mostly hung with his friends/caused chaos by harassing his friends. 

 

Ben

Goggles

Training rides

1

0

Lessons

2

1 jump, 1 dressage

Hacks

3 – 1 ponied

1

Ground work, lunge, long line

1 lunge

0

Flat rides

4

9

Conditioning rides

1- 20 min trot, 3x2 min canter

0

XC school

1

1

Shows

0

HJ – warm up day and 3 x crossrail courses


Goggles: 
January started with Goggles moving up to his new farm, much closer to me. This also made all of his rides my responsibility. I think we managed okay. We've spent the month working on decreasing his tether to the other horses by gradually venturing further and further from home on a cool down hack at the end of our rides. He's doing great with this, but still frets when they're far away in the field. He's also made huge strides with trailering with the help of my husband. We're not self-loading or totally relaxed still, but we are SO MUCH BETTER. 


And he had his first acupuncture appointment and got a GREAT review of how his neck was feeling from our favorite chiro vet. He's got another acupuncture session on Thursday. 

He also got out to our first under saddle show together and exceeded all my expectations by behaving like such a grown up horse. He was great in the ring too and showed just how brave he is by jumping cross rails with funky standards. 

We also had a cross country school and worked on softening his back over jumps by "riding him like he is trained". This was mentally hard for me, but we got there eventually. 

Ben: Not too much to report here, as said above, he's enjoying a bit of down time while I sort out finding my joy in horses and NOT having them feel like full time job number two. 

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Relationship Problems

A while back, I shared the fact that Ben couldn't seem to keep from getting ingested by the GY's horses and consequently was unhappy in solo turnout. We've come up with the magic solution for that now- he goes out solo, next to friends, at night and seems pretty content, and then is with her horses for the day. Eliminating the morning in gate hang out pre breakfast means that he gets a nip mayyybe once a month. Totally tolerable and he is extremely happy with this set up. 

Now, now friends, Goggles is the problem. And he's the opposite problem. On the one hand he's never looked this relaxed:



But on the other hand, he's also dropped weight in the past month since moving. His barn owner, who worked with Seminole to come up with a feeding plan for him before he even moved there, is ON IT. And she felt terrible when I pointed it out and compared her own pictures and came up with a whole plan. The plan involves more expense because it involves more food, completely makes sense. 

But we think part of his weight is also the fact that he paces his pasture fence during the day. He's next to her four horses, but that isn't good enough for him. With full disclosure of his prior behavior, she turned her mini mare out with him. Well. He promptly turned around to aim both shod hooves at her and then started chasing. WTF dude. You cannot pine for friends and then try to kill your friend. 

We're starting him on a calming supplement, but I'm at a loss. He does not care about food. Where Ben or Yoshi could be tempted to chill with a nice pile of alfalfa, Goggles gives no shits. In fact, orchard is his favorite, but even that has little draw if his friends go to the far side of their field (always within his view). 

A friend has very generously offered a pony mare who she says 1. Probably won't let him kick her and 2. She doesn't care if he does. But then I'd be paying his extra expensive board and paying board for a third house. All fun activities would go out the window because that would be 100% of my horse budget. Plus I don't want him to actually hurt something. 

I'm working on making his tether longer in other ways: we explore further and further down the road off property after each ride and he's constantly going places on the trailer. He's getting better at both these things. When he's in his stall he doesn't care that much about where the rest of the horses are. But he cannot consistently settle in the pasture. There are definitely times where I come out and he is eating in the back, but there are plenty where he's right at the fence staring and/or pacing. 

Anyone got brilliant ideas that don't involve me boarding 3 horses? 

His current set up is in at night with an attached paddock and out during the day. His pasture is maybe an acre and and shares a fence with a two acre pasture that her four horses share. They can never go out of sight, the pastures are both just flat grass with no trees, but they can go to the far side of the field and that seems to be when he's most upset. 

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

I hope that in the year to come you make mistakes

...Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something." -Neil Gaiman

Goggles and I had a dressage lesson with NDT last Wednesday. I wasn't sure if he was ready for a full lesson, but I figured what they hey, he is 5 now, she gives nice long walk breaks, and I could always stop early if he was done or overwhelmed. He loaded the best he ever has and we were on our way over to the GY's. NDT was a bit funny, I get the idea most of the folks she coaches are a bit more precious about their surroundings than I was. There was some screwing around with the sprinkler at the start of our ride and there were horses in paddocks on both sides. She protected us in the part of the ring away from the sprinkler until they were done messing with it. Meh. But the flip side was she was watching for his tension to go away. Now, I'm pretty sure the tension wasn't from the sprinkler, but it was an interesting metric to have. We walked until his walk was relaxed and swinging. Then we trotted and we trotted until his eye softened and he focused on me, not the surrounding horses. I don't think this approach would have worked even two months ago, he would have still needed his million walk-trot transitions because the tension would have manifested in quickness. But he actually wasn't running away with me at the trot, but he was tense through his back and neck. 

She had me counter bend him a little bit on the part of the circle where he wanted to fall out. She said bending interferes with turning. This helped keep me from pulling on my inside rein and letting him fall through his outside shoulder, which was pretty neat. When he reached down she actually had me lengthen my reins to him some. The alternative I had developed was leaning, so this was safer in case he tripped/did other unexpected things. Then shorten them right back up. When he popped up out of the contact, hands wide to keep an even contact. 

We did a little bit of canter, mostly her just watching us at this point, then we took a walk break. We added in some one loop serpentines and changes of rein with circles thrown in as well. He was still verrrrryyy focused on what was happening with horses around him (which in his defense wasn't just standing still, Mr. GY took his gelding into the pasture and was going for a hand gallop at this point). She said that was fine in the beginning, but he needed to focus on his job. I thought back to the show where he was actually incredibly focused on me. Hm. So the jumps gave him something to think about. So we need to make dressage enough of a something to think about that he stops sight seeing. She and I both thought that was an interesting. Her immediate suggestion was ground poles scattered around to keep him engaged, but said she'd think on it more. 

During our ring figures, we focused on big bends through his neck and body to get him to release the base of his neck. She said in 6 months my goal can be those three loop serpentines that we worked on with Ben with true bend through the first two, then left bend through two, then right bend through two, then counter bend through two. I was tempted to give up to the right before I got him truly bending and allowing me to ride his left shoulder at the same time, but she kept me honest and held me to it. 

Goggles and one of his FOUR mares he shares a fenceline with and LOVES

We then worked a bit more on the canter. He realllly wanted to throw his left shoulder out on part of the circle. NDT was confused until I let her in on the secret that that was the side of the circle we used to spin out on and exit the arena when I was trying to do right lead canter back in the spring. Then he was diving in on the next part. She again held us to the strong outside aids on the falling out part, but then wanted me to immediately shift and lift with the right rein, boot with the inside leg, and if he was still ignoring that, shove the right seat bone to the outside. She said that aid was "a bit rude" but he was being "a bit rude" in ignoring my lighter aids. We were pretty much out of Goggles at that point, so we didn't play too much with it, but I'm excited to work on that at home. 

She summarized our lesson by saying he was a lot of fun and extremely athletic, we just needed to channel his attention. Not bad feedback to hear! He spent about two minutes in one of Ms. GY's stalls and managed to knock a fan off the wall in that time. He backed away from it snorting, but returned about 0.2 seconds later to nose the other one. He definitely has a bit of that chaotic tendency in him. 

He loaded up SO WELL to go home. Ms. GY led him on and he just paused once and then walked smoothly on and let me close the butt bar. GOOD BOY! 

Monday we went adventuring again, this time to Majestic Oaks. His adventure pal was in the trailer already when he got on, and he loaded right up. 

Both boys enjoying their preferred hay- alfalfa for his seasoned traveling companion and orchard for Goggles

He mostly stood like an adult horse to get tacked up, and then warmed up politely too. He wanted to porpoise a bit when we cantered, but came back to earth pretty easily. 

We started jumping some of the entry fences after sniffing the particularly spooky logs between bushes. I was dismayed to find that the goal posts have shifted again. No longer is over/under/through the marker for a 100% grade. Now he needs to keep his back soft over the jumps (he was jumping so stiff legged behind that he scraped some bark off a natural tree jump), and he is not allowed to drag down and play afterwards. And because it isn't fair to let him play for ten strides and THEN tell him to cut it out, I must do it the stride he starts. Oh boy. No one ever said baby horses are easy though, so we worked on putting it all together. I said "I can't" to JT enough that even I was getting sick of hearing myself whining, but eventually we got there. 

It really helped when JT said "ride him like he is trained". Oh. Well then. If I ride him that way, he responds. Over the past year, we have created a horse that actually does understand leg and seat and voice and hand and behaves like he is trained (mostly). Huh. Set an expectation and he rises to meet it.



He was a star at the banks. He went quietly down the bank like it was just a tiny step down, which it was. We did the slightly bigger one too and he casually stepped off that. Good boy! Ditches were NBD too. Water he stopped at a bit, but his fellow baby horse had gone ahead and then said absofuckinglutely NOT, so it might have been better if we'd just walked up to it ourselves. But he didn't jump into his trailer buddy who was the brave leader when he did enter, so that's major progress from just a few months ago when the water moving around his legs was shocking. 


Overall two very successful outings. Even though he spent a lot of time staring into the distance at majestic, he also moseyed around on the buckle and didn't spook at anything. Well that's not actually 100% true, he spooked at something when I had just taken his bridle off and he very nearly ran me over. So that was fun. But fortunately I was being a good pony clubber and had his reins around his neck still, so he didn't get free for a frolic. Other than that though... He's just so much braver and more rideable each time we go, it makes me so delighted to think about even as I struggle with feeling like I can't actually ride him.