Monday, January 16, 2023

Green Numbers????

First, ulcer (treatment) updates: 
  • Since it is freakishly cold in FL right now, Ben is actually hanging out with the whole herd more often than not because he is protected by his blanket. He is the only one with hind shoes and when he was with them in the summer, it was just bites. So far he hasn't been bit on his exposed neck and he is DELIGHTED to be with the whole herd. He had an entire party the first time I let him out with everyone. Everyone else kept eating hay while he carried on behind them trying to get SOMEONE to play with him. It was adorable. 
  • I started him on ReSolvin EQ. At the price of $214 for 32 days, I figured it would come with some kind of dispensing system. NOPE! It's fine, I am drawing it up into 60cc syringes that the GY's are top dressing on his food daily. But as fish oil, it does need to be protected from light and heat. So the bottle stays at my house in my closet and then I dose out a few syringes at a time. Not sure how this will work when it is hot again. The feed room is air conditioned, but not always to 70 degrees. He also was a bit displeased by it the first few days. He isn't that much of a picky eater to be honest, he ate his powdered Chinese herbs that they warned horses might not eat. Soooo for very picky horses, probably not the right thing. Looking back at their study though, they did use it for treatment, which makes the price more palatable if you compare it to the month of GG we're doing. My current idea is to keep him on this through the end of the GG then consider overlapping it with a cheaper, easier to deal with supplement. 
  • He is still getting alfalfa cubes soaked. But he's getting worse about eating them. I have found this with several other horses over the years too. At first they're super eager, but then they get bored or something?? So he gets a bit of grain mixed in with them, which may kind of defeat the purpose, but then again he gets lunch so it is lunch buffered with alfalfa cubes. 
Moving on... we went to Magnolia Sands again on Friday. And we jumped modified and prelim combos! Holy crap! Nothing of prelim height, but if you'd told me last June that I'd be pointing this horse at skinny wedges as the second part of combos and he'd be going "Got it!" I would've called BS. 

We warmed up over an entry mulch table that prompted a "WHA?!?!? We're jumping things???" Okay sir, get it together. From there he was all business though. We even managed NON-derp jumps over what JT called my favorite sharks tooth. It's not the jump itself, its just that it is off in a busy, spooky corner, so every time we've jumped it in the past he is too busy spooking at everything else then sort of derps over it. 

Picture/narration follows, but if you just prefer to watch the video: 


After the warmup and our sharks tooth, we looped over a coop uphill - uphill jumps are still a bit of a mystery to me... I kind of hold the reins and go forward and Ben always jumps them BEAUTIFULLY. I was scarred by a jump a long time ago at Pony Club camp on my appy. It was uphill and I thought it was HUGE and we never did get over it... 

Uphill!

Right hand turn back down the hill, he was right in being this close, the long spot would've been a flyer. We headed down the hill to a coop after the house.

Then did a log 

And headed back down into the depression to do this wedge

Then JT pointed us at a combo with an M on the side of it. It was a BN bench in, to a modified wedge. I think my eyes bugging out of my head was unnecessary, pretty sure the wedge out was not at all modified height, but was skinny. 

We were tight to this

And so did 4 strides instead of 3 to the out

Got a much better spot the second time

And I didn't fling myself up his neck 

The up bank combo to wedge we kinda sorta screwed up, but not in a terrible way, and we got the strides right the second time. 

Too quiet up

Aannnd very tight to the wedge, but he did it like a GOOD BOY

A bit more power up this go round

For a much prettier jump out

The coffin... the first time through we did a log, bending line to ditch two strides to the house. He stared hard at the ditch, so I probably should have done that same line one more time, but instead I put the whole straight combo together. He proceeded to stare HARD at all of it again, put a hind leg in the ditch. Then I flung myself up his neck at the out jump. He was a very good boy and jumped the out which was very kind because I was 100% not helping and would've ended up on the jump if he stopped. 

Why on earth am I riding like that??? 


Much better

And the other direction



We did get it together though, and that was the only real OOPS of the day. I called it a day there and let him drink some in the water complex before walking back to the trailer. He is cleared to go back to full work by his vet, but it still kinda feels freaky that two weeks ago he was standing on three legs, so I'm being conservative. I realize that going out XC schooling at all is not conservative, but if he is getting tired and doing things like slipping in the ditch because of that, then that is the time to call it a day once we sort that specific question out. 

Begging for cookies after we got back, of course he got some


2 comments:

  1. eeee so exciting -- he looks so good! i'm so jealous of your good ground too haha. we actually maybe have good enough ground for a little galloping out on the grass right now, but ugh my horse is still nursing that bruised hoof womp. for now i'll just vicariously live thru you guys!

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    1. We did get rain the night before this so the ground was delightful, basically perfect. I need to remember these FL perks when I'm slogging through next May to September lol.

      That freaking pebble! Fingers crossed that is healed up soon.

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