Ask Me How My Lesson Was

FABULOUS!!

Yeah, that good. At one point, Cathy asked us to canter and Izzy and I rolled into a forward, fun, balanced canter that probably looked a lot more like a hand gallop than anything. When Cathy mentioned concepts like "half halt" and "bring her back", I said, "But we're both feeling good!", though I did follow her directions. (I mean, that's the point of lessons, right? Getting an outside perspective and allowing them to direct your training.)

It felt so good. The whole thing. I've ridden Izzy the past three days, but I hadn't really asked her to do anything. I was just getting reacquainted with my sound, sane horse. Now I was asking her to step underneath herself, balance, turn, go straight, all those fun things. We even finished the lesson jumping. Izzy leaped over a crossrail. Ever since her feet have felt better, she's been trying to pull me toward the jumps again and my oh my does she feel better.

When we were finally working harmoniously, we headed to about a 2' vertical. Cathy had me really focus on waiting for the jumping while keeping Izzy steady underneath me. Basically, I need to sit still and do nothing. It's hard. When we landed, I would then leg yield Izzy off my left leg, since she likes to kind of dive that way. One time I did take advantage of her dive to see how fast of a jumper turn we could do. Answer: pretty fast. :-D

Then we headed for the previously-scary barrel jump. I put my leg on, sat a bit behind the motion, and just let Izzy go to it. Cathy has coached me on just sitting there and saying with my posture "You can go. You can not go. You just have to make a nice approach." It's a low stress way to approach the jump and it works well for most horses. Well... Miss Izzy is no longer worried by the barrels. She leaped over it every time I pointed her at it. (Cathy told me we were clearing it with about a foot to spare.) I have a sneaking suspicion that her earlier objections to the barrel jump were because her tummy hurt and her feet were sore and so jumping wasn't super fun. Now that we've resolved that, she's amazing.

Some pictures:
Izzy's fancy new wraps. Still loving them.
Izzy's babysitting face. Cathy was riding a fancy young horse who was having a cow about some other horse leaving. Hence, we came in to look after him.
Izzy looking sound, balanced, and happy.
Cathy riding the fancy young horse. That's his walk. For serious. He's amazing.

Fun Times Are Here Again

Here's to two days and two good rides. We haven't done anything harder than caner over a ground pole (focusing on straightness, relaxation, and of course, not stepping on the pole), but it's been amazing. I have my horse back. She's quiet, forward, silly, and fun. I'm finally enjoying riding again.

Maybe I'll even take pictures to share. ;-)

I'm really enjoying the Exkadron Climatex bandages I picked up. I like putting something on Izzy's legs, especially with her new shoes on because she's not always the most graceful thing and I want some protection. However, we do live in a hot climate and I don't want to overheat her legs and cause tissue damage. I do try to take precautions; I ride early in the morning or late in the evening when it's cooler, I don't ride for too long, and I always hose Izzy off when we're done (and then scrape her off, etc).

So. Climatex. As I mentioned, I got a pair on a really good sale. I tried them on Izzy last night for the first time. It took me a couple tries to get the hang of wrapping them and making them look even, since I'm kind of a nut about that. I rode somewhat lightly, got off, and her legs were dry. Not damp. Dry. I used them again this morning. We rode quite a bit harder, since it was cooler. This time, her legs were slightly damp, but still nothing compared to conventional polos and boots. I'm hooked. I bought a second pair to play with. My next experiment will be to use one conventional polo and one climatex to compare results. It will be funny looking, though. My conventional polos are royal blue and white. My new ones are black. :-)

Sigh of Relief

Izzy got her new shoes on yesterday. I would have taken a picture for you all, but it was about 100f and I was really hot and sunburned. Still, all went well. I was really pleased with the farrier. He was intelligent, experienced, gentle, and really inexpensive. I mean, he didn't have to trim or anything, but he just charged me $25 to put from shoes on. And he used nice shoes.

Color me impressed.

I trotted Izzy (loose) around the round pen after she got her shoes on and she was totally sound. It was beautiful to see.

This morning, my legs were way too sunburned to ride comfortably (or at all), so I turned Izzy loose in the arena. It was so fun to watch her. She started out trotting tentatively, then she started to canter a little, then she seemed to realize that it wasn't going to hurt, and she rocketed down the arena fence. It felt so good to see her really push forward and run isntead of holding herself back to spare her ouchie feet.

Here's hoping for a ride tomorrow. :-)

Here's a picture of Izzy modeling her new Eskadron duds.

Where I've Been

None of the people in those pictures are me. Just so we're clear. I spent the weekend at an event derby in Bellvue Idaho, which was so very fun. I was the groom for the halfie pictured and let me just say, he is one fun little horse. (If you want to see more, check out my facebook album here.)

It was a fabulous way to spend the fourth of July, especially since it lacked the sappy horribleness of most celebrations and there were no fireworks.

TODAY is what I want to talk about. I didn't get to have a lesson because my now-medicated pony is lame in both front feet. It's actually good news, because I was thinking coffin bone fracture when I thought she was just lame in one. Don't ask why I immediately jump to a worst case scenario. I have no idea. I also have no idea why I can assume a run-of-the-mill lameness is a fracture, but I am incapable of believing that there are two fractures. ;-)

Oh well. At least the craziness stops somewhere, right?

Since I didn't get to ride today, I went to the tack store for several very specific items: vet wrap, a helmet, bell boots. I even knew brands and sizes (tipperary large, black vetwrap, XL pro choice no turns). Guess what I came home with? Yeah, none of those items.

Instead, I meandered back to the consignment department and found a water proof saddle cover for $15. I knew they cost about $30 in the dover catalog, which I read religiously, so I snatched it up. I'm planning on banging Izzy's tail and putting it up, so I grabbed some Eqyss detangler to do the job. I've used it before and loved it. Then I found myself in the helmet department. I tried on the Tipperary that I thought I Wanted and HATED how it fit. Weird. I've had a Tipperary for a really long time (like way longer than sane people keep helmets) and I love it.

I went and found a sales person who helped me fit helmets. She commented that the Tipperaries don't fit her head at all, especially the newer models and recommended an Ovation helmet, which I had passed on mentally because I just assumed they were the cheapie crap Dover brand. Wow. I tried it on and it fit like the Tipperary I already have. Score!! It also has an adjustable dial at the back which is unobtrusive but excellent for if my head swells when Izzy wins a class or (more likely) someone wants to come ride with me.

Also in the consignment section, I found a tempting pair of Veredus Event-tec front boots for $50. Yeah. 50. I was tempted, but I really really don't need more boots for Izzy (especially not after another amazing deal I scored last weekend). I did call Irie's mom, who needs eventing boots, and she was thrilled to have me pick them up for her. Such nice boots. I'm a tiny bit jealous, but I love my Nunn Finers.

Then I moseyed down the english stuff aisle, oogled some nice brushes, and started looking for bell boots. I found an XXXL model of the pro choice boots, but that's too big, even for Izzy. That's when it caught my eye. Eskadron Climatex Bandages. I've oogled them before, but at $70 a pair, it's a lot for me to stomach. However, the local store had them on special and I got a black pair for $32.

Uh huh.

It was such a good deal that I totally forgot the vet wrap and had to stop somewhere else on the way home to pick it up.

Speaking of good deals, at a used tack sale at the derby last weekend, I got a set of baby blue Eskadron jumping boots (open fronts and hinds) for $10. And a matching Eskadron pad, also $10.

It is the week for deal shopping, I tell you. Anyone else scoring out there?

PS Izzy is going to get her first ever set of shoes soon. Very exciting.

Follow Up

Thanks for your comments, everyone. I'll look in to them as soon as I get a chance. I did get out yesterday and turned Izzy out to play in the arena, which she enjoyed. I couldn't turn her out today because someone was riding, but I did lunge her, and she was so quiet that I hopped on bareback. I didn't have my whip, so she was super lazy, but it was nice just to kind of hang out with her and walk around.

Can I just re-emphasize how nice it is to have my amazing, sane, and beautiful horse back? I missed her.

PS Am I crazy for looking at hunter bridles for my prospective EVENT horse? I don't know what it is about the hunters that keeps calling my name. I blame Marissa and Tucker just a little bit.

Life With One Opposable Thumb

Izzy has gotten dramatically better under saddle, which I'm crediting to the gastroshield we're giving her. She still lacks turnout, but we're working on that.

This morning, I groomed her, put her boots on, and started leading her to the arena to turn her out to play for a while. All was well until she saw something scary, barged into me, and bent my thumb backwards. It hurt so bad I almost cried. (Ok, I did later.) Despite my injured thumb, I still had to get my obnoxious stupid horse out into the arena with all her dancing and barging an everything. It was excruciatingly painful, but we made it. I turned her loose and off she went.

I turned one of our OTTBs out with her to give her someone to play with. That gave me enough time to realize that my thumb wasn't broken, but it still hurt like crazy. It also allowed me to handle a total gentleman of a gelding who is fabulously athletic. Let me tell you, if his owner ever offered to trade, I would take her up on it RIGHT NOW and I don't even like geldings.

Anyways. We have an obvious problem. I am a stickler for good ground manners, and I have worked with Izzy on them since day 1. I use a rope halter with her, though she is also respectful of a flat halter usually. She is good about walking behind me, stopping when I stop, and going when I go. She backs up pretty well and I can do pretty much all of this in a round pen with no halter at all.

That said, when she decides she wants to pay attention to something else, she's just gone. That's when she barges into me, rears up, acts crazy, whatever. What do I do? Today I wanted to beat the snot out of her, but since that would just give her psychological problems on top of what I'm already dealing with (and my thumb hurt a lot), I abstained. I don't know where to go from here. Most of my experience is with sensitive horses who may spook and act stupid but would NEVER run in to something (why I love TBs so very, very much).

So. My options are A) continue what I'm doing and get killed B) invest in a stud chain C) keep doing what I'm doing and hope the problem goes away before I get killed D) ?

Any ideas?

I Have My Horse Back!

The past 4 rides have been lovely. It looks like we were dealing with an ulcer issue and it's cleared up. Yay!

Here's to Improvement!

I did get Izzy turned out to play with another mare this morning. Cathy was turning the other horse out, so I grabbed Izzy and scooted in there, too. I hope that helped... anyways, after letting them run a while, I took Izzy back to her breakfast and finished up my work. (Yay working off board!)

By the time we tacked up to ride, Izzy and I were the only ones there. I like that. I really enjoy riding by myself and just worrying about Izzy and I without having to make sure I'm staying out of other people's way. I lunged Izzy and really just let her do her thing. I didn't ask her to focus and do transitions or anything. She was fine and pretty quiet.

She was reasonable about mounting, and off we went... I'm really trying to mentally relax. Maybe I should take up yoga or something. ;-) Basically, I read an excellent article in Practical Horseman yesterday about using the forward energy of a "naughty" horse and just going with it. So I did. We walked, trotted and cantered. We did lots of transitions. In the canter especially, I worked on doing a small, semi-collected circle, then letting her go forward on a much larger circle, then bringing her back again.

I think that one of our biggest problems is that I really like to ride sensitive horses and Izzy is only just so-so on the sensitive scale. I'm used to just shifting my weight to get a response instead of actually making a move and if something goes wrong, I'm used to just waiting for the horse to come back to me mentally rather than proactively forcing the horse to focus. Since Izzy needs the proactive ride, that's where I'm working on improving.

At least for today, it worked. We had out first good ride since last weekend. Was it the calm atmosphere? My fabulous riding? The ulcer medication? The heat of the day? I have no idea. Probably all of the above, except the fabulousness. It was an ok ride.

Day 2

That's right. Izzy got her second dose of gastro shield today. It's not a product I'm familiar with yet, but the other two horses at the barn who deal with ulcer issues are on it and doing very well. I'm going to do some more research and evaluate it later, but it's at least a stop gap for now. I feel woefully behind. I've barely been online and I'm not riding much. My grandma is not doing very well (she's still on hospice care), so my priorities have been away from the barn.

I did ride Izzy briefly today. We only had time for a half hour lesson, which was about enough for the both of us. She didn't repeat any of her antics from Sunday, but she was far from calm. We just did some walk, trot, canter each way and then called it good. She was quiet(ish), and relatively willing, so I let good enough be good enough and hopped off. I did turn her loose in the arena for a few minutes to let her run when we were done and I won't be able to get out to see her tomorrow.

I do lunge her every time I get her out. At the old place, I only lunged if I felt like I needed it, but I haven't gained that level of confidence with her here yet. Besides, we do not currently have turn out and I think it's vital for her brain to have some exercise that isn't strictly controlled. I'm trying to turn her out in the arena more often, but that's hard to do when other people are riding, obviously.

For feed, Izzy was getting about 3 big meaty flakes of grass alfalfa mix morning and evening, which meant she pretty much had food all the time. She got about 2 cups of grain (mixed corn and something) with a small scoop of vitamins in the morning. We've changed that (starting tomorrow) to a small amount of senior with vitamins, two scoops of gastro shield, and a small scoop of vitamins. I'm thinking the senior might be easier on her stomach than the grain... here's to hope.

Back to the Beginning

So, after a stunning day yesterday, Izzy put in an equally impressive performance today.

Unfortunately, it was impressive in the opposite manner. She spooked. She bolted. She reared. She spun circles. She was awful. Sigh.

At least I stayed on, right? If I had money and ambition, I might look in to getting a western saddle that would make it easier to ride through all this garbage. At least, I keep thinking that. The truth is, I haven't even sat in a western saddle in years, so who even knows if it would be easier?

U gard, here we come.