Dancing Shoes

I arrived at the barn early today to get a short ride on Lily before the farrier came. I didn't want her to get hot, as I wouldn't be able to hose her down well before the farrier-this would've made her feet soft and mushy.

On the way to the barn, I saw the 3 lady peacocks. These gals come all the way from the park, cross the street, and make their way through each of the barns, stopping at ours. It's pretty funny. We've found them hanging out on the feed room roof, in Lily's walkout, and checking out the view from the arena wall. I got a picture of them as I was driving past.

The 3 lady peacocks. Pardon the crappy picture-I took it with my phone; forgot the camera today.

She sometimes shakes her head when we ride in the park or the field-sometimes because of flies and sometimes because her forelock blowing back in the wind tickles her ears! The other day I was at our local tack shop with Judy, and they had just brought in the cutest ear bonnets, with the microfiber ears and double piping. Judy found a black one with gray and white piping that matched Lily's black saddle pad perfectly! I finally remembered to bring it to the barn today, and tried it on her. Despite being "full" size, it fit her as if it had been custom-made for her. Very cute. :)

Another crappy phone pic, but you can see how she looks like a jumper with her ear bonnet on!

Borrowing an idea from Stacy from when she was training Klein to jump and my copy of 101 Jumping Exercises, I set up this with the cavaletti:

The cavaletti are set in a star pattern for working on circles. I used a lunge line to measure the circle-each cavaletto's outer x was set to be even with the far end of the lunge line. This ended up being very, very useful today!

We warmed up as usual w/t/c, and she was as bendy and soft as she's been for the last 2 weeks going to the right. She's starting to carry herself more and more in a frame in this direction. We changed directions and went to the left. Again that stiffness. I decided that today we would work through it, we would figure it out. Shoulder-fore was met with resistance, so I pushed her into a canter. She was lovely at the canter, and we went a couple of times around the arena to get her to loosen up. Then back to the trot, and I brought out the bag of tricks to see what would help her get that bend. Shoulder-fore after canter? Nope. Counter-bend on a circle? Nope. Half-halts with the inside rein on a circle? This helped. We did large circles, and she started to drop her head and lift her back a couple of strides at a time. Judy always wants me to pat her with the inside hand but when I do this, she loses the bend. I do turn her body with a firm inside leg at the girth and pushing her body around my inside leg with the outside calf, but she is just learning and still needs that inside rein to maintain the circle. So I rewarded her the natural horsemanship way-I released the pressure on the inside rein each time she dropped her head. This worked really well!! We were circling around the cavaletti star at this point, so I asked her to spiral in to the cavaletti so we were going over the poles. She had to drop her head to look at them the first time around, and then she understood-it was a lot easier for her overall to engage her hind end and lift her back while going over the poles. We circled over them several times, then spiraled out to circle around them again. She maintained the bend, and continued to engage for several strides with half halts and release. We had been working for 25 minutes at this point, and we stopped. Lily had done an excellent job, and I wasn't going to drill her; we ended on a very good note! I sprayed down her shoulders and rump, and took her out for a walk in the field.

We looked at scary things in the field. This is one of the old cross country jumps someone had set up and never maintained. Note the deep hoof prints in the sand before and after this "jump"-they almost look like burrows, they are so deep! I, personally, wouldn't be jumping any horse over this with footing like that. Lily used to be terrified of this one (I guess it looked like a panther crouching in the grass) but today she didn't even look at it; you can tell by the angle of her neck in the photo.

Back at the barn, it was still about half an hour early for the farrier. I got to work on Lily's ears. She won't let me clip, trim or shave them, though she will let me touch them without a problem. So we worked on this, using one of those little mini horse shavers. At first, Lily was extremely reactive, and I couldn't figure out if it was towards the sound of the shaver as it took off her ear hair, the sensation, or both. I took out an old pair of horsey ear plugs I own, and inserted them in her ears (she was fine with me doing this). Back to shaving. Still reactive, but she settled down quickly, and ended up pressing her head to my chest while I finished shaving the inside of her left ear. :) The right ear was a little harder, but I persisted until she relaxed and let me finish. She received a lot of treats to help embed the idea that ear trimming is not a bad thing. Afterwards, I cleaned out her ears with baby wipes. They were very dirty, and it was evident without the hair. I don't think anyone had ever done this before. She was fine with this too. The ear plugs were removed after everything was done.

Around this time, the farrier arrived. After looking at her feet, he determined that the "little foot" is actually the correct foot, and the flared foot is the one that is cause for concern. (I had been concerned about that flare for awhile now, too). Shoes would be the best way to keep this from getting worse given the footing and weather of Florida-it is hard for them to have consistently solid feet when it rains buckets every day 7 months out of the year. She has been 3 months barefoot, and though she is not tender-footed anymore, she is still wearing her feet down to nubs despite daily applications of Venice turpentine to her soles. He evened out her feet considerably and placed front shoes only. Just walking Lily back to her stall I could already tell that she feels more comfortable.

Almost even! My farrier does a beautiful job. Dianne said Lily now has her dancing shoes on.

Afterwards, I locked her out in her walkout while I finished picking her stall. She has a nice big walkout but will still urinate inside the stall as soon as I put her back in. I have seen her go straight outside to the walkout, then turn around and come indoors to pee! (I guess this is better than urinating on the crossties...Christa loves to do that...) So I put her out and kept her out until she urinated outside. I let her in as soon as I saw the puddle behind her back feet. She was so cute, though-she stood at the stall chain, staring in, looking all confused.

"Can I come in already?"

I love her!