Good Days

The weather was something between lovely and awful today--nice temperature, but lots of clouds and wind. Yet again, I'm so thankful that Izzy doesn't really care. She's not dumb about wind and trees, and only occasionally about weather changes.

We started with lunging again, and she did well, so I got right on and rode.

This lasted about ten minutes.

She was fairly soft, she was listening, and she was reaching for contact. As I'd promised her before the ride, I immediately got off. All I wanted was a repeat of yesterday, and when I had that, she was done. We did use the spiral in/out a little, and she seemed to do well with it. I'll try it again tomorrow and do a longer ride.

Any other ideas for what to do to keep a horse engaged and interested? We're starting to do some lateral stuff, but she's pretty green, so we can't really do extreme movements.

Another Step

Today was a perfect day to ride. Not too hot, not too cold, and no huge gusts of wind. I'm not a wind person.

I decided to lunge Izzy today because I want to see her work on both sides and make sure she's going forward before I get on her. I used to lunge pretty much all horses as a matter of course, but this year I've realized that there was no particular reason to do that, so I'm using lunging now as a tool that can be picked up and put down at will. I'm really glad that I did so much lunge with with Izzy when we started though, because she lunges quite nicely off of voice commands. We haven't really mastered the trot-halt, but I'd rather she learn to go forward than stop quickly at this point.

Anyways, today was good. I kept Izzy going forward, and we did several trot/canter/trot transitions to the left. She does them just fine on her own, so hopefully we'll get to start working on them under saddle in the next week or so.

As for the actual riding, it was interesting. It took nearly two full circuits of the arena to get her to trot without throwing a fuss or shoving her way through one shoulder or another. I decided to keep things low key today, so we just did figure eights on a 20 meter circle, walking the change of bend in the middle. It took about two circles before Izzy relaxed, reached for the bit, and really started using herself.

I was thrilled. I haven't had this kind of softness in weeks. We didn't even try to canter. After a few more circles, I took her out around the arena once, and then let her be done after a nice, fairly square halt.

I wonder what this says... she liked the routine of the figure eights. Her transitions were softer, her body was relaxed. I'm thinking that she's like her mother enough that she gets bored with just going around. She needs something to think about. If that's true, we should probably do more lateral type work to get her thinking as she goes around. Maybe if we start with figure eights, then move off a circle? I don't know. It's something more to file away, I guess.

Things I Like About My Horse

1) She's really pretty.

She's my first horse, and she's absolutely gorgeous. Need I say more? I love seeing her out in the pasture and thinking, "Wow, that's my girl."

2) She's not spooky

I'm not saying that she's spook-free, but I can ride her on cold windy days like today and she doesn't get all hot and bothered. So she's opinionated, but she's sensible about it.

3) She has a princess complex

As well as adding character to her already complex personality, this ensures that my constant striving to be better and nitpicking at what I know actually does help. Despite my frustration, I actually do like rising to the challenge of figuring out what's going on. I'm getting a little tired of saddle problems, but I think it's finally worked out.

4) She's Cassie's daughter.

It's fun to have the daughter of a horse that meant (and means) so much to me. She's not just the one I happened to end up with, she's something special.

5) I dunno, she's just plain cute?

____

We made more progress on going forward today. I used the new padding arrangement, and she seemed quite happy. I still haven't attempted to ask her for the left lead (a tough one for us right now), but she's more willing about the right lead and her trot has definitely improved.

Forget You Ever Knew That

Due to being stuck in a long boring class last night, I spent about an hour doodling horses. Then I moved on to drawing specific diagrams of Izzy's back and how the saddle sat on it, what pads I was using, and why I was using them. I remembered that she again (sigh) had funny sweat marks yesterday after another frustrating ride. I should probably scan those drawings, if only for amusement's sake.

Anyways, the sweat mark made me think that it must be a saddle problem. She is exhibiting similar behavior to the last time we had saddle trouble. When I drew the diagram, I realized that the funny marks appeared the be under the stirrup bars, and I remembered reading in a tack book that treeless saddles had trouble in pressure reading with pressure in that area. It's a good thing that I didn't have Jean's phone number handy, because I wanted to call someone who knew what I was talking about and ask if that was the problem. (It was 9 here, so probably almost midnight there.)

I didn't have time to go to the tack store this morning, but one of my other diagrams made me think it might be a padding problem. A couple days ago I screwed around with different pads without actually tightening the girth, so I had a pretty good idea of what was available and how it fit Izzy. This morning, then, I pulled out a new pad. I had been using a wedge pad to lift the pommel up off her withers. Today, I tried just a simple foam pad that was even all the way through. It's completely counter intuitive, because we all know that if a treed saddle camps on a horse's wither, it's like the bad news bears moved in to your house and threw a party.

The new pad obviously didn't lift the front as much, so the saddle looked a little different. I was concerned because it gave her back VERY little clearance over the spine, and I thought that once we'd been riding a while, it would sit on her and make her hurt. And of course, you know her reaction to hurt is rear. That's not really my favorite thing about her. I lunged her before I rode (she was wearing blue polos with a matching blue lunge line. So cute!) and she was kind of looky, but really good.

Our ride started out kind of bumpy. She fussed, she didn't want to go forward, and then... she did. I like the new pad better because due to the nature of treeless saddle, I could feel that I was sitting on the wedge, and it interfered with actually feeling Izzy underneath me. The new pad didn't cause that at all. It was almost like riding the gulletless Classic again. I could feel Izzy's back again and she was much better.

Progress is good. She was much happier, and we were back to having the problems we had before she decided not to be happy again. I think we took a couple training steps backwards this past week, but we're ready to go forward again. Of course, now she has a couple days off while I go out of town.

Plan to Move Forward

First off, I finally have some Izzy pictures. I'm sorry it's been so long without them. It's just hard to take pictures of oneself while riding and she's hard to photograph because she won't just stand still and let me walk away. She wants to be in the middle of what's going on.

See? She's so darn cute. Also, what would you call the marking on her face? It's not in any horse book I own. It's too long to be a star, too short to be a stripe... You can't see it, but she has a tiny snip on her upper lip, too.

Here's another picture from the same day:
This was as close as she would come to posing. In this picture, she's wearing a collegiate plain raised snaffle bridle with a full cheek single jointed bit. That's an Ansur KonKlusion saddle with a random girth I borrowed, and a neckstrap in case I feel insecure. She is such a good looking horse.

Here's today. (The previous shots were from a couple weeks ago.) I successfully put on wraps without making her legs look like potatoes, so I left them on. I had just been putting them on and taking them off the past few weeks to get the hang of it. I'm not a fan of nontradition colors in general for dressage/jumping, but my dad got me these years ago as a Christmas present. I figured I should at least learn how to put wraps on properly before I branch out and get some in a more conservative color.

As you can see, I obviously needed conservatively colored wraps for all the formal work we had to do today. Yes, it was bareback day #2. Day #1 was yesterday. It's rained so much that the arena is a total mess. I like to use weather like this to just muck around and work on little things.

And here's Klasi Renee', Izzy's mother and my beloved old OTTB. She's 17, had three gorgeous babies, won just about everything there is to win, and still going strong. She doesn't like having her mane pulled, and at her age, I don't mess with it. She's done enough.
Izzy was Cassie's (her barn name) first baby, then Tristan's Fortune, the gorgeous holsteiner gelding whose video I posted her a month or so ago was the second. Her latest was by an awesome Friesian stallion, a little filly named Natasya. I'll have to take more pictures of all the babies while they're still around.

As for the rest of our problems... I think I'm going to rearrange how I address them. The U Gard that someone (Kate?) recommended is the least expensive, so I figure I'll buy that and give see how it goes. Worst case senario, I'm out $25. I will continue to play with padding once we start riding with a saddle again... probably next week, since I'll be out of town again this weekend visitng my inlaws. The chiro is going to have to wait until next time, which will be much easier on my bank account. Hopefully, it will be more fully recovered from the saddle purchase by then. Still, winter's coming on quickly if the weather's any gauge, so we may be done with any serious riding until spring anyways.

Major Issues?

I just typed out an excellent (in my mind) post on possible causes of Izzy's issues. Then my browser somehow magically closed out the tab and ate it. I'll summarize what I said.

There are 6 possible categories of problems that could be causes our complete lack of forward problem, listed in the order that they occurred to me.

1. Saddle fit.

I absolutely cannot afford a new saddle again. I'd love to see how she'd go in one of the new ansur models, particularly the new konklusion. Alas, I don't know anyone who has one, and it's so far beyond my price range that I can't even see it. I can play around with creative padding options. The advantage to being at a boarding barn is there's lots of stuff around that people are fairly willing to lend to me to try. (Yes, I'm one of those who always asks first.) Ansur also makes a special pad that might help for about $80 and skito pads (which I have no experience with) run $110-$170 for what I want. I'll probably inquire of treeless people on this option. Ideas, Jean? I'll query the ansur group, too.

2) Chiropractic Issues

Another expensive but important option. Thanks to Nina for her updates on Sam's progress in this area. It would be easier for me to swallow if I knew Izzy had done something, tweaked something, or, you know, if she just came out and said, "I need to see a chiropractor." Cuz if she said that, she can have all the fancy crap she wants. You know how much money I'd make, exploiting a talking horse? Mooooove over Pat Parelli. Haha! Alas, her vocabulary is currently limited to horse, which makes this difficult. We'll give it a go and hope for improvement. A very expensive go. $120 for an adjustment. Oh well... Car gets an oil change, Izzy gets chiropractor, and I'll wear dog chewed shoes for another month or so. At least I bought my husband's birthday present a month ago.

3) Ulcers

Kate has some experience with ulcers in her own horses, so she's presented this as an option. We have a couple boss mares with ulcers. I don't really think this is it, but of course, it's possible. It's certainly something to keep in mind. If saddle and chiro work don't change anything, we'll try this next. I just don't want to do everything at once and then not know what worked. It's a bad research model. ;-) That's my inner nerd coming out. In the mean time, I'll do a little more research and see what I come up with for pasture-kept princesses with attitude.

4) Mental/issue or boredom

This is possible. I don't know about the likeliness. If this was it, Izzy would show improvement after going out on the trail, and since I haven't been able to ride, I haven't been able to evaluate this. I guess it's possible, but I don't think it's likely. Izzy not a hard keeper or hard to please. She's pretty happy doing what she does, until she's not, and then she lets you know in a big way.

5) Training problem

Again, this may be it. I don't want to rule it out, but I want to look at physical issues first. The rearing under saddle wasn't a training problem per se, it was her telling me that her saddle hurt and she was absolutely not going to work like that anymore. She hasn't even thought about rearing since we switched saddles. On the other hand, the rearing on the lune line was absolutely a training problem. We have worked through it and I doubt it will come up again, as she doesn't like to work that hard if it's not going to get her anything. So... this is a mixed bag. Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell.

6) Soundness/soreness problem

The problem pony is sound. She's been sound. Her feet are beautiful, or at least as beautiful as a warmblood's feet can be. She moves well on her own and on the lunge. Her back certainly isn't sore--her favorite thing in the world is a good back rub. I don't think this is an issue with us, although it would certainly explain a lack of forward, especially in a mare with a princess complex.

Any other ideas? Let me know. I'll certainly keep you updated on our progress.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

No riding today or yesterday. It started raining, and it's just not nice to take poor Izzy's blanket off and get her all wet. She's very happily wandering around the pasture. I got her out and groomed her yesterday, but I was just really cold and wet after cleaning pens today, so I gave her a good wither scratch and let her be.

The chiropractor will be out sometime next week. I'll have to see if I can muster up the money to get her on his list. I think it's $120 for him, but she's also getting her feet done and my car needs an oil change. Oh, and the beagle ate my shoes (that were already like 3 years old), so I need those. It's getting a mite chilly to wear flip flops everywhere that riding boots aren't supposed to go.

Oh well. I need to rule out physical issues, and this is one angle I haven't attacked yet, I guess. At least the problem pony is still sound. Here's a picture of her being cute from earlier this year.

A Glimmer of Hope

The vaunted trail ride was today. Izzy was wonderful. We went with Star, a cute paint who wouldn't be fazed if a train came out of no where and was headed straight for him. He'd just calmly step out of the way. Also along was Iree, a darling little Haflinger pony who apparently doesn't mind when mares bounce off his rear end. Needless to say, their respective riders accompanied us.

I was pretty happy with how Izzy did. She had never seen the foothills before to my knowledge, but while she was a little looky, she didn't get too worried. She was a bit strong (more on this later), but never bucked or spooked or did anything untoward. Because she's never lived in the mountains, her technique was kind of lacking. She thought it was just of good of an idea to trot down a steep hill as to sit back and walk. Fortunately, I just stuck her nose in Iree's tail, and we'd bounce off him all the way down. If I ever become a full time trail rider, I'm totally getting a bombproof gelding like the two boys we went with.

She was perhaps not surprisingly much more forward than she had been in the past few days. In one flat sandy spot, we all cantered. Izzy was trailing a little bit at that point, so she kicked her speed up a notch and we almost blew through the calm boys. That reassures me as to her ability to one day do cross country. I certainly didn't want to have to force every stride around a course, and today she showed that there is a forward gear. Good.

So... I don't know where that leaves us. She was forward today. I've at least temporarily ruled out ulcers because she doesn't get too upset about anything (feeding time or otherwise) and she hasn't really exhibited behavior change in anything other than not wanting to go forward under saddle. She also lives out 24.7 with a friend, so I think she's ok. She does go forward nicely on a lunge line and, obviously, on trails. There could be a chiropractic type problem that I aggravate by riding her. She could be cranky about the weather, since it's been dramatically colder the past few days. She was good today and she had her blanket on last night. Are the two related? I don't know.

Any other ideas?

I'm thinking she'll get tomorrow off, since the trail was pretty hilly and she's not used to that sort of exercise. Besides, I'm teaching a lesson and letting someone else try my saddle. It will be a full day.

Who are you and what did you do with my pony?

In an ironic twist of fate, the weather went from mid nineties and sunny to mid fifties and blustery in the matter of a day. When lesson time rolled around yesterday, I wasn't even sure I wanted to ride because it was blowing so hard. Izzy seemed ok, though, so I went ahead and got ready. As far as spookiness goes, she was a superstar. She had one stumble/spook thing, but that was our only mishap. She wasn't even worried about the rest of it.

Unfortunately, nothing else about the lesson was superstar like. I was prepared to hear a lot about my position and how I needed to change to best help her. Unfortunately, she decided she absolutely could not under any circumstances go forward. So, instead of actually working on something that could help us out in general, we spent pretty much the entire lesson just getting her to trot either direction. When we wanted to canter, Cathy had to chase us around with a lunge whip for like three laps, just to get her started. It was frustrating.

I figured that she was probably tired, since I'd turned her loose in the arena to test the waters as far as spookiness, and then I'd lunged her after that to make sure the spectacular airshow she'd put on wasn't going to be repeated. Cathy mentioned that it might also be her reaction to the temperature change and wind; instead of being spooky, she just kind of locked up. I guess the lesson was moderately useful, but definitely not what I was looking for.

So today I go get her out... WE HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM. It's so frustrating. It's still cool, but no longer windy. I even got Cassie out first and lunged and groomed her, to make sure it was plenty warm when I got Izzy out. Still nothing. I got off, held the inside rein in one hand and my whip in the other hand. We practiced going forward when I cluck, even without the whip. When she seemed to understand, I got back on. Still nothing. I got off again, put the lunge line on, and repeated the lesson. What little trot I had gotten out of her before had been short and choppy, so I tried to keep her calm, and ask her to go forward. There's no sense in getting her tense, because then she won't understand what I want.

After lunging both ways with an emphasis on her going forward when I ask for it, I got back on for the third time. This seemed to go better. We didn't get stuck anywhere, but she still didn't want to go forward. I just pushed her through it, and made her trot and canter both ways. As soon as we finished our left lead canter, I got off, loosened the girth, and lead her out of the arena.

Why is this so hard?

We're going on a trail ride tomorrow with some calm horses. Maybe the change of scenery will do her good. I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't get me bucked off.

Return of the Sticky Spot

After a pretty crappy day for me yesterday (which Izzy had off), we went back to work today. I'm trying to keep that freely forward that we developed while "hacking", but ask her to work again.

So far, I've had mixed success. She's doing really well to the right--walk, trot, canter--and I'm happy with that. The left is another story. She'll walk/trot ok, but if I ask for the canter, she gets very tense and just goes out whichever shoulder is more convenient at the moment. I'm thinking that it's more a psychological issue than a physical issue for her. I also think that it doesn't help that my left side is weaker and so I don't use my left leg as effectively.

So... I'm unsure as to whether I need to just not even try to canter on that side for a while and try to develop her (and my) muscling, or if I should just keep the reins loose and ride her forward to a messy-but-there canter. Fortunately, our lesson is tomorrow, so I should have a new opinion there. Then again, our lessons are so infrequent that we rarely get all the way to what I'm currently working on. There's always something that I glossed over that needs work instead. Thankfully, everything seems to be related, so it works out.

Anyways. Once again, as soon as she felt the pressure, Izzy returned to her "sticky spot" mentality. She didn't actually stop there today, but she sure wanted to. I found that I could ride her best through that area if I just clucked to her but didn't push with my seat or legs or anything. Throw in a random assortment of lessoners and boarders and a cold, windy day, and I'm pretty pleased overall with how things went.

Now I want to go home and make cookies. Stupid school, getting in the way of my dreams. ;-)

Did I mention that I lunged her this morning and she was a total doll who paid perfect attention to my voice commends? I love this pony.