Trotting and Fighting

Now we are beginning to express ourselves more freely. Today is a very warm windy wet day. We walked down the road to Snagwood Road, her mincing carefully for fear of slipping. Once on Snagwood we practiced trot out walk back. Repeatedly, over a short distance. She got more and more annoyed about both halves and I was almost unseated. I have been bingeing on George Morris videos so I was chanting "Leg to Hand" all the way out, somewhat less so on the way back. I am not so sure how to do that when she wants to run home and her head is high. When I bring my hands up and add contact and leg, she gets frustrated and wants to rear. I had to ride her as tactfully as I knew how today. I did not let her push us home, but I could not use the crop other than to lay it on her in a reminding kind of way. She would have loved an excuse to pop. We did fairly well, I can't say we got to relaxed head down walking or trotting, but definitely improved from beginning to end. At the end I just worked in the 40 feet at the beginning of the road, back and forth for very short distances, and that way she got to be very good. If I had done that at the beginning, we could have stretched out from there. We did get to walk home on contact, which we have never really done, and we played around with contact and head position in a fairly relaxed way. That was pretty successful. I looked at her ankle when I fed her this morning, it was nearly flat. Then I looked at it when I finished saddling her up, it was a little more filled and tight. After the ride it was not much different to before the ride. I wonder if blood pressure somehow has an effect?

Riding!

Today was our fourth or possibly fifth ride. We started out carefully with 10 minutes, after which I would hop off and we would walk down the road, and people going by would think I had fallen off my horse. Especially when we went past a scary place and she reared up and I made us go by it over and over with not as great success as I would have liked. One person kindly asked if I was okay, for which I am grateful but I said I was just fine as heartily as I possibly could. Now we have had lots of snow and cold and the road is slippery, so we have gone out on the path in the woods two or three times. We go back and forth, and practice going by the turn to the barn without having an argument, stopping and starting in both directions, coming back toward the barn at a relaxed walk. Today we worked on stopping straight, which we have never really worked on, and we actually did pretty well on. Also backing up straight both towards and away from the barn. However, I was horrified when we got back to the barn to discover she had been walking on ice balls on her hind feet, the size of tangerines. I had brushed oil in her hind feet but apparently that has no effect.

Ranch work and 2 years of catch up

The Catch Up My dedication to this blog is remarkable, no? Snort. In no particular order: yesterday we scoped Angel, I think for the 5th time. She was the best she has ever been, except for one patch in one area. She has been on sucralfate 40mg/day and ranitidine 10 pills (?mg) day. We are going to quit the raniditine immediately on the theory that it has not had any effect, and wind down the sucralfate over the next week, as there are very few craters for it to attach to, just one little spot, really. We are going to go back to Ulcerguard, starting at 3 days of a full tube, followed by 4 days of 3/4 tube, 7 days of 1/2 tube, then forever or until next evaluation of 1/4 tube. She had also pulled a tendon about two months ago, so I can no longer really say she has never been lame, and the puffiness around her RH ankle is way down, practically not noticeable, and on the ultrasound you can see a little fraying about 2 inches above the ankle bone bump. Just a little. So I am to get her over 35 minutes' walk as many days a week as possible to keep the tendon improving, then in about 2 weeks I can ride for all of 10 minutes at the walk! I am so excited and high! The Ranch Work We have had to do lots of hand walking, not something I have spent a lot of time doing, and the first time I went out in the paths behind Kevin's place, she was a doll going out, and a fire blowing, rearing, bouncing maniac on the way back. So it was made clear to me that I had an opportunity to straighten out our groundwork. But the challenge is that I couldn't do it by making her work in circles or anything that would stress her RH leg. We started on the road in scary places, working with a long stick, practicing backing, moving away from the stick, doing a full 12-point turn going away from me, matching my pace, zagging left and right matching me and my stick, and that helped her to concentrate going past scary stuff. We made a lot of improvement although there are still some places we get rattled going by: the woods (S) of E. Killingly Rd. next to some houses and next to the white board fence of the Maple Glen Inn. So anyway, this morning we needed to get our 35 minutes in, despite the bitter cold and the fact that it was snowing and the driveways were too icy to cross. So we went in the woods, and gathered kindling. The virtue of this is that I frequently had to stop, back up, move myself or her, or ask her to stand in the path while I moved off to the side to grab a piece. It was clear to her what I was doing and I think it helped both of us to stay calm and focussed. It was a ripping good exercise, performed cheerfully and calmly without a hitch.

more bareback

I tried again riding bareback for a short time. The snow is still ridiculously deep, and there is a crust in some places that makes it very unpleasant, and the road is hemmed in by high snowdrifts and she is wearing studs, so there aren't many places to go. We went up and down the driveway with great success and then I thought we would go in the woods, and she thought we wouldn't, but then when we did, I saw why she didn't want to. The footing was totally unpredictable and unpleasant, so we walked out in the deeper nicer snow behind the paddocks and then the driveway again. We tried trotting, which is the hardest gait for me bareback, and I sat it much better than usual, but found I had no leverage to slow her down if she didn't want to. If I actually pulled on the reins, it just slid me forward.

I let FB take all my posts for over a year

but I think I am wearing out the FB people.

So here are some things we did recently:

There was a big snowstorm a few weeks ago with 2 feet of snow, and we went out with another horse and rider into a big field and trotted and cantered around. Angel was in her element, and could not conceive of stopping. She had big high gaits, elastic and long. It felt like what a dressage horse would feel like, I was told. She also did a remarkable piaffe, apparently also for fun, with suspension to die for. We have never done that before. Cantering/galloping was more of a bounding thing. I felt totally confident in her after the first few steps, she had that focused feeling that is her at her best.

Then last night I was doing barn chores, and she was stir crazy because of all the snow that has fallen, and the footing is no longer good, so we have not ridden in a week and a half. She was squeaking, bucking, rearing, kicking, pacing, just all wrought up. For some reason, I decided this was a good time to see how she would behave if I tried getting on her bareback and taking her out in her paddock. So I got on with a bridle in the aisle, and after persuading her that we were not going out the back door, she walked me out into the paddock as carefully as if she were carrying a baby. We did a little loop in the snow and came back in. I was so proud of her.

Angel Naps Hard

 

Angel takes her naps pretty seriously.

Subtle Aids

I really like the idea of subtle aids. Angel can be pretty oblivious, no doubt because of my floppy seat and spastic legs. But I keep trying. I began to wonder if she noticed weight shifts at all. The other day I tried extreme weight shifts. I leaned way out to the left of the saddle, in danger of toppling on to the ground, and she came left with me! Toppling toward the right brought her right. It would cause palpitations in a dressage ring, but we wove our way down the road triumphantly, like a pair of drunken sailors. My plan is to reduce my lean and work toward the subtlety we are surely capable of.