Christmas and Horses

Rockley Farm posted this for a Christmas greeting and it is so great I wanted to share it.  You can find their blog on my blogroll in the right hand column.

Happy Christmas! from Nic Barker on Vimeo.

I'm excited

I really needed this.  It has been a long time coming.  Nina is finally to the point where I can get back to taking lessons, improving my own riding and bring her along with goals and help.  I love taking lessons, but it's like just setting your money on fire to try to take lessons on a horse that will not cooperate one little bit.  And there is no point in getting so far ahead of yourself when the realistic goals for the horse are walk without a fight, trot without a fight, stop without bolting.
Nina is finally consistent enough about the very basics, move off the leg, keep moving, stop arguing about every little thing, no spooking when the rider pats you etc etc.
I am looking forward to getting some sort of regular lessons with Amy, setting some goals and working toward them.  It keeps me motivated.  The new year is just around the corner.... it's going to be a good one.

A lesson with Amy

I finally got a lesson on this horse, my first lesson in over 3 years.  This is my previous jump instructor, Amy. I have talked to her about Nina but she had never seen her.   Her barn is in Longmont, over 40 miles away but she has agreed to come down a few times a month, as the weather permits, because I think Nina is ready to be pushed a bit and as you can see from the videos, I look like crap and need to get back to regular lessons.  The results of riding on my own all this time.
Amy took my spurs off, she said that I had always had a good leg and trying so hard not to touch Nina with the spur was making me stiff through my legs.  She suggested that if I need the spurs on any given day, go get them and use them, but they are ruining my leg.  We mostly just did some walk trot and talked a lot about this horse and how her progress has been going and where to go from here.  It's a start.  I like this instructor, I always enjoyed my lessons on Scotty with her and made progress and she knows me which will help in figuring out what the horse is causing and what the rider is causing.

EDITED 12/25
I was looking at the videos again, specifically looking at Nina's movement. Amy commented several times that she thought Nina looked kind of locked up in the rear, not anywhere specific, just not quite right. We talked about the fact that she was overdue for a chiropractic visit and I said I would try to get that done before our next lesson, which I will. But I was looking at the videos and she is certainly mincing along on her rear, not striding out like she has been. It occurred to me that she has been barefoot in the rear for almost a month. Her feet look in good shape, but I wonder if she is footsore. It can take a several weeks for their feet to get used to not having shoes. My farrier will be back out in two weeks, we will have to take a good look and make sure she is not sore anywhere before I decide to leave the shoes off.

Winter portraits

A friend wanted to take some pics of me and Nina, not a good time of year, but what the heck.  This was on Sunday and it was COLD.
I asked Nina to do three things....1. stand still ...2. don't kill anyone ...3. put your ears up.  She said I could have two out of three.  So here we are, me wearing approximately 10 layers of clothes and Nina wearing 2 inches of hair, standing straight up.

Happy Solstice!

two great rides and I violated the 40 degree rule...

I had a good ride yesterday and survived riding in the cold.  It was 36 degrees, but the sun was out in full force - that makes such a difference especially at this altitude - AND I put some foot heaters in my boots.  I am so miserable when my feet get cold.  Warm feet and I can handle the colder temps. 
I tried the snaffle on Nina, overall she was very good and I liked the way she was carrying herself better in it.  There were a couple of minutes where she grabbed it and started to take off, leaving me thinking 'oh...this is not a good idea'  but she was fine.  I think this bit will be a step up for her.  She did throw a bit of a temper tantrum before I got on, her ground manners seem to be optional when it is cold, have to work on that.

Today it was nice and warm which meant chaos in the arena so I put the gag back on her and had a great ride.  When I get frustrated because progress seems so slow I have to remember that this horse did not want to WALK a year ago and today she was doing halt to trot transitions with no head flinging, moving strongly off of her rear for a big first stride and happy to do it.   We also worked a little on whoa.  She has a nasty habit of grabbing the bit as she stops and rooting hard, trying to pull you loose.  I have been trying several different things to work on this, the main one being that I remember to use my body and not my hands to halt.  I got several nice balanced stops from a trot with no rooting and decided that was well done and called it a day.  I am very happy with her.  And my timing in getting off was good because about 10 minutes later a horse being led by a very small child (don't ask, I will sidetrack into a full blown screaming rant) got loose and went tearing around the arena, scattering the other horses like chickens.   Happy not to be in there too.

rethinking history

I am going to ramble a bit here (ok, a lot) and hope by putting things down in writing that I can sort them out for myself. Bear with me.... or just skip this one.

The little bit of history I have gathered about Nina is, to state in mildly, incomplete and I always assumed not totally accurate. When I picked her up I figured the chances of having a riding horse or putting her down were 50/50. I was just drawn to her and couldn't leave her in the conditions were I found her. But now I am looking back over the last two years and re-evaluating what is going on.

1. She was presented as just difficult. Bolted when ridden, reared when pushed, nasty on the ground etc etc. And I certainly experienced that myself, but I found that she came around pretty darn quickly and I just figured she had been owned by people who agreed to fight with her, which is always a loser.

2. She had a deep infected cut on one hock which I was told was from a kick. Odd that a kick that hard didn't break bone, but one thing I have learned with horses is never say never. When this healed she was very weak on this leg, which seemed like muscle or ligament weakness. This leg is now almost normal, not quite.

3. She had a huge swollen area along her spine on the neck and another smaller one near the poll, very hard, not painful. Both vet and chiropractor said they would not touch either without lots of x-rays but they appeared to be scar tissue from an old injury. Spending a thousand dollars on my $200 horse who might not be with us long seemed like a non-starter so I never got around to that. Massage, Rolfing and Reiki have reduced these two spots to one very small and kind of soft area.

4. Her rearing problem was solved in ONE session where when she threatened to rear, I threatened to pull her over backward. End of rearing. Come ON, really? One confrontation?

5. Her owner rode her in a big honking western bit with a bit port and long shanks and tied her head down with a training fork, which is a running martingale adjusted about 10 inches too short. When I put a metal snaffle in her mouth she was fine with it until I moved it around and then I got a BIG pain reaction. Vet found the same thing and said it might be nerve damage to the bars of her mouth which would be permanent. A rubber bit did not cause problems so we have worked in a rubber bit.... more on this in a minute.

6. Her first chiropractic treatment indicated that she was all out of whack, not unexpected since she moved like a board. She was especially touchy in her withers and poll. Perhaps like a horse that has gone over backward?

7. And along that theme, I have never seen a horse so body sore and stiff. Much worse even than racehorses just off the track who have been racing too hard. Stiff, painful to even turn around, head carried almost to the ground with a hunched look. Again, massage, rolfing and Reiki loosened things up over a few months.

8. No matter how nasty she can get over something when ridden, I have always felt that the underlying cause was fear.

So where is this going? I have been mulling this over a lot the last few days. It started with the bit. I have been riding her in a rubber gag, which a lot of ex racehorse like as the cues feel different and they are less likely to lean on the bit. I have also ridden her in a rubber pelham, which I am not fond of because I am thinking ahead and jumping with two sets of reins is a PITA, I know people do it all the time, but I hate it. What I found with both bits is that she would either grab the bit and pull, trying to pull me loose, or she would go behind the bit, which I think she was trained to do. Both of these bits can encourage this as they are poll pressure bits. They work best with bold, forward horses who do NOT have a tendency to curl up. I have ruled out a plain metal snaffle because of all the above but yesterday I decided to try it anyway. I dug through my bits and found an eggbutt three piece snaffle with a big fat bean in the middle. This is a mild bit without a lot of movement. I stuck it on her and lunged her in it with sidereins adjusted to all sorts of different lengths. It not only did not bother her, but when I adjusted the reins long she stretched forward to find the contact herself. She did pull down a little but not too much.

3 piece eggbutt snaffle

So....how has nerve damage in her mouth healed? How has scar tissue disappeared? How has a stiff, restricted horse become supple and athletic without the amount of riding that this normally takes? How did she give up chronic rearing so quickly?

While I still don't know how long she has been a problem to handle and ride, I have come to the conclusion, ok a guess, that she was in a serious train wreck shortly before I bought her.  Perhaps she was pulled over or threw herself over backwards.  I have seen horses ridden with their heads tied down to their chest do this when they have either just had enough or they panic.   Maybe on very hard ground or maybe she landed in a fence or equipment or something that she got tangled in.   Or maybe she bolted and ended up in a wreck. What I have assumed were chronic problems that I would have to deal with forever were actually traumatic injuries, never addressed and they are healing, getting close to being completely healed.

This helps a little with changing my attitude and giving me more hope that I will have a horse to compete with in the spring and that I am not wasting my time, which is a thought that creeps in often.

This assumes that we don't have such a cold winter that my 40 degree rule doesn't ground us both for months.

This is just too funny. I picked it up on Equine Ink.

40 degree rule

I like my new 40 degree rule.  It was 38F when I got to the barn, little breezy.  Not too bad but the little breeze was creating some wind chill because the little dusting of snow at the barn, in full sunlight was not melting. 
Nina got turned out and practiced bucking for quite a while.  Got some good ones in.

temps dropping...fast...

I was teaching a lesson today and the temperature just dropped like a rock.  It was 52 when I left work, 50 when I got to the barn and 37 when I got back in my car about two hours later and 34 when I got home half an hour later.  Whew, really feels cold when it does that. 
It was also spitting rain by the time I was finished with the lesson so Nina got fed, blanketed and patted on the head.  fini
She has been very good this week, hopefully I will get to ride tomorrow.