It was a ridiculous 23 degrees today but that wasn't keeping me from riding in the snow. I am a wannabe chionophile mmkay?
Because SNOW.
Lily came up to the barn with Queenie when she heard me helping Zoe in the barn and let me catch her. Gracie had lingered behind but she also let me catch her. I brought both girls out to the barnyard and set them up with some hay and Gracie also received her grain dinner so she continues to think I'm awesome because she gets fed when she lets me catch her.
I tacked up Lily and rode her in the paddock for 30 minutes. Our warm-up was inspired by Karen. We walked a lap in each direction then did some trotting. Lily was in a cranky mood, which always cracks me up: the mare trusts me enough these days to have an opinion about what I'm asking her to do. We did some lateral work at sitting trot but after some angry tail swishing I asked her to canter up the long sides of the paddock, halt, do a half turn on the haunches to change direction, then canter off again. It was kind of challenging with the slight incline of the paddock's footing but the snow gave Lily excellent traction. She had no problem executing the canters from a standstill nor the sudden halts. Sometimes she would halt crookedly so I would ask her to reinback until she was straight before asking for the half turn. She gets annoyed if we do anything for too long so I asked her to move on out into the trot again, where we did 10 meter circles in shoulder-in and haunches-in, followed by figure 8s across the paddock and back again. I then asked her to walk forward and realized that she was so tuned into me after our warm-up that I could get her to walk forwards, backwards, sidestep left or right or turn on the haunches without pause from one movement to the next with just the slightest of aids from my seat alone. It was awesome: it felt like we were a centaur!
Afterwards I let her walk around on a loose rein before dismounting. Zoe had stayed inside Kathy's while I finished riding so I wouldn't be riding completely alone (thank you again Zoe!) and she walked out of the house as I was removing Lily's bridle. I hung Lily's bridle on the fence and walked over to Zoe to say good-bye.
Lily walked around the barnyard and when I returned to fetch her, I caught her doing this:
She had walked over to Gracie's feeder and was licking it clean...
...and Gracie, who is usually quite food aggressive, was completely allowing it!
Lily startled when she realized I was standing there. She hesitated for a second, acting like I'd caught her doing something naughty, but I told her, "It's okay," and she stuck her nose back in the feeder, allowing me to snag the photos above! Gracie was like, "Whatevs. She asked nicely." I may have been a little flabbergasted...
I finally had Lily come to me so I could halter her, remove the saddle, blanket her and give her her dinner. I unblanketed Gracie and put the Bungee Straightjacket on her. I really, really wanted to ride her bareback but there was no one at the barn and I wanted to work her in the rig first to see how she would move in the snow.
She was SUCH A GOOD GIRL. Very calm, no dragon snorting episodes at all despite the frigid weather. I let her warm up in the paddock at the trot in both directions with the rig on its loosest setting (with side reins clipped directly onto bit, no doubling back). I asked for a canter but Gracie would not pick it up so I did not insist: while I want my horses to obey, I also want them to tell me when they don't trust the footing. Gracie did not trust the footing today so I didn't push the matter.
We then moved out into the back field, where I clipped the rig on the higher setting to work Gracie on the hill.
This setting.
Gracie did really well on the hill. There were two instances where she got upset about something she thought she saw in the woods (I didn't see anything) and instead of proceeding to tear around me with her tail flagged, she simply...stopped. She stopped at the end of the longe line and turned to face me, waiting for direction. I let her stand for a few seconds then asked her to continue working in the same direction as before. Each time she obeyed.
It was really awesome. It was awesome to have her tell me she was feeling insecure by stopping instead of just trying to rip the longe line out of my hands.
I continued longing her across the field until we were at the flatter top section. I was still entertaining the idea of riding her bareback afterwards but she had a couple of nasty slips in the snow and I eventually ditched the notion of riding her at all. She was fully aware of her hind end and each time she adjusted her pace to accommodate the footing, but the slipping told me that she isn't used to moving at speed in the snow. She has gotten the hang of moist clay but not snow yet. She told me she was frustrated by stopping...and trying to go back to the barn. Here I did correct her sternly and asked her to continue trotting in the requested direction. She obeyed without getting upset about it, so I had her ease down into a walk. Good girl!
I then asked her to halt, unclipped the rig side reins from the bit, and walked her back to the barn, where she was untacked, blanketed and received a handful of hay.
She likes having her forehead rubbed and kisses between her ears.
I turned them both out for the night. They both stopped to drink water from the troughs by the gate: Gracie from the one with the de-icer, Lily from the trough without the de-icer. I was kind of stunned when I saw my Floridian TB mare methodically break the ice in the second trough so she could drink the frigid water underneath. I had no idea she knew how to do that!
We were going to try for the first ride of the year yesterday but it did not work out because it was 34 degrees with a windchill of 21 and 25 mph winds. Seriously what is UP with all of this wind this winter???
A far-away storm rolling in on the horizon.
It was Three King's Eve and Charles and I both worked today so we decided to do one special thing yesterday: we had to go up to Frederick to pick up horse feed so we decided to go have breakfast at the Cuban place on Patrick Street, Sabor de Cuba.
One of the few things I miss about South Florida is the food. You could go anywhere and grab Cuban food, which is the closest thing to Puerto Rican food. Puerto Ricans are more creative with plantains than Cubans, and Dominicans have even more plantain dishes than our people, but the seasonings, the way meats, chicken, rice and beans are cooked are all very similar: our food is very savory, often tilting on the salty side. (VERY different from traditional Mexican, which is much spicier. Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican food is not spicy.) While in South FL we missed some of the more Puerto Rican fare like mofongo al pilon and pasteles, but we had enough of all of the other foods, like ropa vieja, that we didn't really have a chance to miss the foods that we couldn't eat.
This is mofongo al pilon. The "bowl" is the mofongo, and it is made from smushed plantain. The center is hollow and is filled with anything you can think of: pork, ground beef, shredded beef, shrimp, crab meat, chicken.
Pasteles are kind of like tamales in appearance but quite different in flavor. In fact, once you've had pasteles, you'll never want tamales again! Pasteles are made out of yucca or plantain, stuffed with crab, stewed pork, chicken or ground beef with red peppers (not spicy) and olives, and wrapped in banana leaves. They are not easy to make, but when you live on the island you can usually find someone who knows someone that will make spectacular pasteles. They are seasonal: a typical Christmas dish. My mom usually sends us a couple of dozen around the holidays which last us a couple of months! They are prepared by the cook and frozen, so they have to be shipped Next Day Air or 2-Day Air. To make them at home after they arrive, I throw the frozen pasteles in a pot with boiling water and a pinch of salt for 30 minutes and voila: island food in Maryland! :)
Ropa vieja literally means "old clothes"! It is basically a sort of slow-cooked stew made with shredded flank steak, olives, peppers, and onions in a tomato-based broth. It is amazing!
And then you had places like Pollo Tropical, which was a fast food chain that served only Cuban food! I really miss Pollo Tropical.
Tropichops! This was my favorite menu item. I could get 2 meals out of this. For $3.
Are you guys drooling yet? ;)
So the catch with this Cuban restaurant? It is closed on Mondays. :( I snarled in frustration, figuring there went our plan because authentic Cuban restaurants that don't charge an arm and a leg are pretty much nonexistent in our area. (There is a Puerto Rican restaurant in DC named Mio, but they charge $25 for something I could get for $5 anywhere on the island! I know we'll check it out one day because Puerto Rican food, but still...that's like you going to, I don't know, Switzerland and getting charged $20 for frou-frou French fries.)
As luck would have it, there actually IS another place in Frederick: That Cuban Place. And it was open on Mondays. And it opened for breakfast.
So off we went yesterday morning to check it out.
It's a little hole-in-the-wall place away from the busier downtown Frederick streets that we probably would have never noticed if we hadn't been looking for it.
We were the first customers in there. The restaurant owner was there and we must look Hispanic enough because he greeted us in Spanish, with a definite Miami Cuban accent. We sat down at a booth and started looking over the menu, which we had already checked out online. I originally was set on breakfast food and was trying to make up my mind on what to choose, when the restaurant owner said that it would be about a 30 minute wait for rice and beans, but he could make us cubano sandwiches right away. Charles and I decided to go for the cubano sandwiches. We were offered coffee, which we both accepted. It was Cuban-style coffee made with steamed milk and the sugar already added and it was absolutely amazeballs.
Charles and I were grinning like little kids at this point and the food hadn't even arrived yet!
The sandwiches came out...they were served on fresh-baked bread, filled with slow-roasted pork, ham and melted Swiss cheese.
I did my Bachelor's at the University of Puerto Rico's Rio Piedras campus (here is the Wikipedia link in case anyone is interested since the UPR's website is in Spanish). It is one of the oldest and largest universities on the island, founded in 1900. It is a beautiful campus with a ton of history. But I'm digressing: the point of this story is that there was a little cafeteria across the street from the southern entrance of the university. A group of friends and I took to having lunch there a couple of times a week during my second semester, and they made one of the best cubano sandwiches I had ever had up until then.
So I bit into this sandwich yesterday and I was transported. Charles and I grinned across the table at one another and felt more at home than we had in a long time on this freezing cold day in January.
The restaurant owner, Alfredo, heard us talking (Charles and I talk to one another in Spanish because it's our first language; I'm mentioning it because for whatever reason some people are surprised that we speak in Spanish at home) and he asked us what part of Puerto Rico were we from. We laughed and told him. As it turns out, Alfredo has several Puerto Rican friends and he recognized the accent. The restaurant owner is Cuban raised in Miami. He made us each a second mug of coffee, and switched the Cuban salsa music to Puerto Rican merengue. We took our time eating and finally Charles asked for the check. Alfredo said, "You can't go yet! I'm saving a pastel de queso y guayaba for you!"
Charles and I gasped. "Okay, bring it!"
So this type of pastel is a dessert item, breakfast or snack. It is made out of flaky puff pastry and filled with guava (guayaba), guava and cream cheese (queso y guayaba), cheddar cheese, or ground beef. Queso y guayaba is my favorite but is one of the less popular flavors on the island.
The restaurant owner brought the pastry out. It was freshly baked right out of the oven and incredible. I almost died. I hadn't had anything that amazing in...forever.
You can't taste a photo, and even if you could, this photo doesn't do it justice!
We found a little piece of the island in that little restaurant with the warm orange walls, and we have every intention of going back. The cold was somehow less cold when we stepped back outside to go to our car.
Thank you, That Cuban Place, for making us feel at home.
We stopped by the feed store and headed towards the barn.
Even out in Frederick a good 40 miles from the barn, the wind was blowing at a constant 17 mph. At the barn it was something fierce. We pulled Lily and Gracie from the field and tied them to the fence so they could snack on hay while we set up their grain for the week.
Each of the mares spooked 3 or 4 times over the course of the next 30 minutes, bad enough to warrant me going outside to untie them and/or calm them down each time. Lily barely ate, she was so worked up. The barn trash can was blown over and the lid went flying, getting stuck on the fence on Gracie's other side. Gracie almost had a heart attack and she's the one who's rarely spooky. I had offered Lily her grain in an attempt to get her to eat something but she managed to spill all of her grain on the grass. I knelt down to scoop it up and Lily started to shoot backwards away from me...I had done nothing threatening at all. I untied the quick release knot before she could hit the end of the rope and told Charles, "We're not riding today." Riding in the front field meant riding in the full force of the arctic winds, riding in the back field meant riding right next to the swaying trees of the forest, and the mares had already spooked a couple of times just looking in the direction of the woods so riding on the trails was out of the question too. It wasn't worth the risk to both of us when both of the horses were so nervous. So I decided to longe them both, and for this I employed Charles's new skills: he got to longe Gracie all by himself. In her regular flat halter, sans Bungee Straightjacket. It's the best I've seen her move on the longe:
I continue to be surprised by his natural feel for horses.
I longed Lily in the back field for about 20 minutes while keeping an eye on Charles and Gracie. I let him play around with Lily on the longe without giving him the clues to managing her from the ground and he actually got the hang of working with her after about 5 minutes. He was surprised by how different they are. Literally opposite. Lily was really good for him, looking over at me questioningly then cocking an ear at Charles and trying her best to do what he wanted. If I corrected something from where I was standing watching, she'd obey too. Good mare, listening to two people giving her orders!
Twinkle toes. She was only wearing the surcingle and breeching; nothing attached to the bridle.
Afterwards they got blanketed and set up for the night with haynets in their run-in:
And we went home.
I woke up this morning before dawn to snow coming down, the first real snow of the winter. On Three King's Day. I walked outside grumbling about having to wake up 10 minutes early to remove the snow from the car and still be on time to work...and then I saw the light from one of the street lights hit it, turning it into a fine sparkly glitter falling from the sky, making the snow already on the ground glitter too. It was like inches of the finest glitter covering the ground. It was so beautiful, and I felt that surge of giddiness that I get when I first see fresh snow.
Glitter! The snow looked like this.
And I grinned like a little kid as I swept 2" of powdery snow off of my car, thinking, "The Three Kings brought me snow!"
It set the tone for the rest of the day. We were short-staffed in the morning at work because everyone was having a hard time just getting there with the insane traffic on the roads (because people in MD/VA/DC think it's the damned apocalypse if there's a couple of inches of snow on the ground and are absolutely clueless about driving in it...it took some people two hours to drive what usually are 30 minute drives on I-270) so I went down to the Intermediate Care Ward to help them get caught up with treatments. I assigned myself the cats (we have a separate ward for them so they don't have to listen to barking dogs all day while they're hospitalized/boarding) and started doing their treatments. One of the kitties was being monitored closely for not urinating appropriately (volume out wasn't matching the volume he was getting in fluids), but he urinated after I figured out his litter box preference. I told Dr. J, who was in charge of him, and there was a sort of small celebration. It always feels good when you can make a difference for a patient, however small that difference might seem.
Snow days are usually fairly quiet at work: only people with real emergencies will brave the snow to bring their pets to us. This works out for us because usually some employees won't be able to make it in. This means that those of us that do show up to work end up pitching together to help one another. It's an awesome thing, and something that I've come to look forward to throughout the year. We had a 200 lb Saint Bernard come in with seizures that required four technicians to get out of the client's SUV. For the occasion we had one ER tech (me), one neurology tech, one surgery tech, and one receptionist. Plus the dog's owner, a burly middle-aged man.
There were no deaths and no disasters today, and I had a couple of opportunities to just go look out a window at the whiteness.
And imagine myself riding in it. Soon!
There are several new followers, so if you missed last year's Three King's post, it is here. I explain what the date means to us PR expats and specifically me.
It doesn't sound like it was much, but it was. Both yesterday and today there was that edge of magic that always seems to accompany these dates. It seems like being one of a handful of people in the area who knows about the date and celebrates it just makes it all that more special. :)
I hope the magic of the Three Kings was with you today too!
I got to the barn late yesterday and honestly, now that I have the choice, I didn't feel like riding. Part of it was that I knew I wouldn't have enough time to get in both a productive ride on Lily and a productive longe session on Gracie before dark. So I decided to longe both of them. This isn't a very exciting post but something happened that I want to write about for me to remember later. I apologize in advance for the lack of photos: again my phone crapped out in the cold. -_-
I set Lily up with a pile of hay and her grain by the fence and let Gracie have her dinner while tacking her up with the Bungee Straightjacket. Once she was done eating took her out into the paddock that we use as an arena. I had the system rigged with the "side reins" attached directly to G-Mare's bit (not doubled back to the surcingle) for warming up and the longe line attached to her rope halter. I indicated to her in which direction I wanted her to go by pointing with the hand in which I was holding the rope and she strode off at her gait. She usually trots on the longe, but will sometimes gait when she's especially calm.
She moved out at the trot and after a few minutes I asked her to halt and then change directions. Once she was warmed up, I rigged the system by threading the "side reins" through the clips on the bit rings and back to the rings on the sides of the girth. This is for a lower headset. Because of the bungee, she can still lift her head as much as she wants to but the end result of this setup was her working in a round frame with her poll level with her neck. I made soft kissing sound when I wanted her to track up more and adjusted my own posture in the center of the circle to encourage her to work the way I wanted. I don't know if Klaus Hempfling's techniques will work with every horse, but my first breakthroughs with Lily on the ground were thanks to studying his work (traditional natural horsemanship methods like Parelli were too much for her in the beginning), and so I used some of what I had learned then with Gracie on this day.
I was surprised that, as she continued to move out on the circle around me, she never had her "dragon moment", where she flags her tail, blows loudly and bounces around at a lofty trot or crazy canter for several minutes. She usually does this at some point during the first 15 minutes of longing and when she does she gets hard to control as she pulls against the end of the line in ever-widening circles. Correcting her in any way when she's doing this will often make her very nervous. It will take a while for her to calm down when she gets like that, and I used to think she did this in play but recently I haven't been so sure. It was good to have her not do it for once.
After 5 minutes working with the rig in the setup described, I asked her to halt, attached the snaps to the girth ring between Gracie's front legs, and asked her to move again. She chose to walk and so I let her, because she rarely wants to walk on the longe.
This setting had her stretching doooown, but she was lifting her withers and tracking up. I asked her to trot and she obliged.
And then Kathy walked out of the house and asked if I had my keys. I stopped and turned around to answer as Gracie continued trotting around in the circle. When I turned back to look at G-Mare, I realized that the second I had taken my attention away from her, she had come to a halt at the end of the longe line and turned to face me while still staying at the end of the longe. This slow grin spread across my face. Usually if I'm not 100% focused on her while working her from the ground, she'll try to run around and be a goofball. The fact that she had simply stopped and waited at attention when I stopped focusing on her was simply...huge.
"Good girl!" I told her. Both ears flicked forward. I asked her to continue trotting and she did.
For our last 5-minute set, I asked her to work with the rig in its higher setting:
She stayed calm and happy. I was very pleased with the horse I had before me: it was 30 degrees and she hadn't been worked since Wednesday but she was still very relaxed. I was thinking about how horses are so sensitive to our energy and became aware that my position had changed when Gracie suddenly came down to a walk without any verbal command. As an experiment, I let my breath out. And she halted.
So you know how you can do that from the saddle? You can totally do that from the ground too, and you can do it with the horse working at liberty several hundred feet away from you if the horse is paying attention. I learned it from Hempfling and it never ceases to amaze me. This was the first time that Gracie was synced in enough to what I was doing at the end of the rope to respond to such subtle cues. Horses are so freaking cool.
Hempfling working an Andalusian stallion at liberty
So basically this is the entire reason for writing this post, because I want to remember she did that. Because she might not do it again next time I work with her: this is just the stage that we are at in her training. But I want to remember that she is capable of this. I asked her to walk a little longer in both directions, then unclipped the rig from her bit and walked her out. She had not broken a sweat at all, so I went ahead and blanketed her but left her tied to the fence while I worked with Lily. We've all been making a point of getting G-Mare to wait patiently. She gets tied in the run-in for her meals and Kathy has been leaving her there for 20-30 minutes after she's done eating while Kathy gets other things done around the barn. Result? Now any time that Gracie gets tied up, she'll immediately cock a foot and take a nap. (Granted if it's dinner time, she'll wiggle and dance around until she's fed. Then she falls asleep.)
I put the rig on Lily, but only the surcingle with the breeching; I removed all of the other cords. I had tried it on her before and she had tucked her tail when she felt the breeching behind her butt. I very slowly slid it into place, talking to her all the time. Lily's head went up and she rolled her eyes at me, "What on earth..?" I told her I promised it was not going to hurt her, it just felt funny. I put the rope halter and snaffle bridle on her and clipped the longe line to the halter. I asked her to w/t/c in both directions with the breeching and she was, surprisingly, 100% fine with it.
I then added the "side reins", clipping them directly to the bit without doubling back to the surcingle so that they were at their very loosest setting (which means complete slack in the lines; she could totally put her nose to the ground if she wanted to with no restriction at all). Lily did w/t/c with them just fine too, which shows, again, how far she has come: any little string hanging from tack, flicking against her sides, would have made her very nervous in the past. She was a little worried about these new things but she worked willingly and obeyed my voice commands.
Once I could see that she had stopped paying attention to the lines, I set up the Bungee Straightjacket in the higher head setting, like what I showed in the photo of the bay horse above, but using the haystring extensions I added the first time I used this setting on Gracie.
Why was I using the Bungee Straitjacket with Lily on this day?
For two reasons:
1. It's more desensitizing. I had put the rig on Lily last week to take photos of it for Liz and when Lily flinched at the breeching, I thought, "We need to revisit this, if only for desensitization purposes." As most of my long-term readers know, Lily is an incredibly sensitive horse. The fact that she can now keep walking on the trail calmly despite having a branch stuck to her tail that she's dragging behind her is kind of epic: she's the kind of horse that previously would have lost her mind over something like that. I think the last time that happened was at Fort Valley and Liz pointed it out. And I was like, "It'll come off eventually." Lily kept right on trucking. So anytime I discover something new that bothers her, I try to work with her on it in a calm setting so she realizes that it won't hurt her. She's a funny horse in that you really have to find the right moment to expose her to things: if she's truly upset about something, there is no convincing her that it won't hurt her. You can't force things on her because she'll just become more fearful about those things. Horse-eating monsters must be introduced in an off-handed and roundabout sort of way, at a time when she is calm and I'm in a playful mood: if I'm able to laugh about the situation, she is a million times more willing to accept that this thing won't harm her.
2. I've tried all sorts of gadgets on her throughout the years in an effort to get her to reach for the contact on the longe. She is the reason why I currently own one of everything: side reins, a chambon, a neck stretcher. The truth of the matter is that Lily really only ever reaches for the contact when it's my hands holding the reins. Anything else and she would either brace against the contact, inverting herself, or curl behind the bit. The thing that has worked best for her is side reins set on the higher rings of the surcingle, which imitate the position the reins would be in if they were being held by a rider. There must be slack in the reins too or she'll just curl. I eventually stopped using even side reins when I realized that the underside of her neck was becoming more developed (this is incorrect and it's a result of bracing against the contact, even subtly), and then we just worked at liberty, which was the best way to get her to use herself properly. She is ewe-necked regardless, but her neck became more even once I stopped working her in any kind of longing contraption. On this day, I was wondering if maybe the Balance Training System, with its infinite settings and stretchy bungees, would somehow encourage her to reach into the contact.
Initially she shortened her neck. I asked her to trot out and canter and she elevated her poll and brought her forehead in line with the vertical, but she was still tense through her neck. She was doing this:
when in fact what you want is this in a more elevated carriage:
Also from Sustainable Dressage Not a "frame" that you would normally work a horse in on the longe, but I'm referencing it because Lily was offering the incorrect version of this.
With some moments like this, especially if the horse is working on the longe:
She moved out in tiny mincing trot steps so I asked her to canter and she relaxed into something more like the second picture in this series of illustrations, elevating her withers and tucking her haunches in a truly collected canter. She then stopped and turned to face me, asking to come into the circle. She was frustrated and wanted to be comforted. I let her come into the circle, rubbed her neck and told her she is a good girl, and threaded the longe line through the inside bit ring and clipped it to the top ring of the surcingle. Why? Not for more control, but to ask her for an inside bend: it was a way to show her that the bungees would give and also to ask her to relax at the poll at the trot. I then sent her out into the trot again, asking her to step out more, and moving with her towards the back of the paddock where it is flatter. With the longe line I asked for that inside bend and asked her to step to the outside with her haunches by altering where I was standing inside the circle (it is awesome to be able to communicate with her on such a subtle level. It took years to get to this point with her.) She started chewing on the bit in response and she relaxed. We did this in both directions then called it a day. It sounds like we worked for a long time, but I timed it: we worked for a grand total of 15 minutes. I wasn't looking to do fitness work with her; I just wanted to see her response to the Balance system in general and hopefully work her muscles a bit in a different way. It's funny to me how different the two mares are: Gracie is completely unconcerned with contact and will play with it until she finds the spot where she's most comfortable with while wearing this setup. I'm glad I followed my vet's recommendation to use it with her. Lily, while not afraid of contact when I'm riding, is afraid of it in general when it comes from any other source, be it another rider or any sort of longing contraption. I might put the rig on her occasionally in the future to have her work differently and see if she figures it out, but I don't have any real plans of working her consistently in it. She does great with contact US and I have no real need for her to learn to accept contact on the longe at this point in time. It's just something different to work with.
I asked for her to halt. She took a step forward then stopped, remembering she is supposed to wait for me to give her permission. I grinned at her and told her, "Ven aca." ("Come here.") She pricked her ears and came. I unclipped the bungees from the bit and stood next to her, scratching her neck. She went to stretch down twice, then stopped, thinking the rig was still attached. I laughed at her; "It's not attached anymore, silly. And you can do that even with it attached!" I moved my hands to remove the bridle and she started to take a step forward, away from me. "Ven aca," I said, and she immediately stopped and moved her head towards my hands. I grinned, revelling in the fact that she understands so much now, and removed the bridle. She immediately lowered her nose to the ground, then rubbed her muzzle against a front leg. I laughed at her, scratching her withers, and then we walked out of the paddock. She got blanketed and loved on, and I told her she had been a very good girl, putting up with my experiments. I put her out into the field first. She usually stops to drink water for a long time. During this entire time Gracie had been patiently waiting where she was tied at the fence, but had turned around to keep me in her sight. I went over to her and rubbed her forehead, which is her Favorite Thing, and moved her over to Lily's leftover hay to munch on while I finished putting stuff away: I didn't want to interrupt Lily's drinking by turning Gracie out.
Lily finished drinking but hovered by the gate, waiting for me to put Gracie out. Lily likes to know her whole herd is with her and will wait for every horse to be out. She's like a mom in her herd leader role, and it is really sweet to see. So I put Gracie out and they both walked away into the darkness. I turned off the lights, closed up the barn, and went home, really happy with the way things had gone with both girls.
Oh boy, I just know this post is going to have some "interesting" traffic...
"Bungee Straightjacket" is Karen's AWESOME term for the Balance Training System that she lent me to use with Gracie after hearing that my vet had recommended using a Pessoa-type system for working on her coordination and hind-end strengthening. The longing system from Karen arrived this week and I'm really liking it. Instead of cotton rope, it has bungee cord, making the whole thing so much more stretchy and forgiving. Her system is this one. The uniqueness of Karen's system comes from the fact that it has Last Unicorn hair on it: Ashke's! It made me smile when I opened the package.
Yesterday I rigged Gracie up in it for the first time. I clipped the "side rein" portion of the system directly to the bit on the loosest setting and let her trot around in both directions to get a feel for it. NBD. I then adjusted it to a snugger setting, but still with some slack in the "side reins." It took Gracie awhile to figure it out. She did a few initial small bucks then settled into this super collected canter that made her look like an upper level dressage Andalusian. I was working her in the small paddock that we use as an arena, but it was quite slippery. I longed her around in both directions across the paddock until we returned to the front of the paddock where it was flatter. Here she finally settled into a really nice, forward, swinging trot.
Initially she braced against the system some. I was happy to see her fairly relaxed though. Note the soft eye and inside ear pointed towards me.
She gave me some lovely halts when I had her whoa. She would actually come to a sliding stop, turn to face me and stand still at the end of the longe line. I didn't teach her that; she's just started doing that of her own accord recently. I LOVE that she does NOT try to come to me anymore. I would praise her and let her take a break for a minute, me staying in my territorial bubble and letting her stay in her bubble. For changes of direction I would then point where I wanted her to go and she would turn and obediently trot off in the desired direction. She was really, really good. She still slipped a couple of times, but she caught herself...and then gave a huge annoyed buck each time. I burst out laughing so loud that Kathy and Zoe, who'd been in the barn, came out to see what was going on. I'd never seen Gracie do that before and it thrilled me: not only is she AWARE of a misstep, she is ANNOYED by it. Lily is the one that has always bucked in frustration when she slips/trips at liberty or on the longe.
After about 10-15 minutes of work, Gracie started doing some nice stretching down into the contact and her whole topline softened.
On the forehand but softening.
A very relaxed mare working in a nice, balanced frame. Note the slack in the bungee cord. And the spring in her step!
I realized that I've been projecting way too much energy at Gracie when longing her. I was really quiet with my body language and energy this time, and she responded really well to it. Lily is such a sensitive creature that I literally have to put any emotional or mental turmoil into an imaginary box and set it aside before I even try to approach her. I realized this weekend that I need to do the same with Gracie. She is a lot like Lily used to be when I first started working with her on the longe.
Afterwards, I unclipped the "side reins" and hand-walked G-mare around the paddock to cool down, taking the opportunity to also practice halting and backing while being led. She did really well. She seemed a little tense initially but relaxed significantly whenever I stroked her neck or forehead as a reward.
It was a really good session with her. Afterwards I tied her to the fence, threw on her cooler and sheet, and gave her her dinner.
I was also able to trim Lily, which was a huge surprise. Gracie also needs to be trimmed but Lily is just SO GOOD about everything that I knew she would watch out for me if I had any sort of trouble with dizziness. As it was, there was no dizziness to be had while trimming. Her feet looked long from the outside but looked really beautiful and balanced from underneath: some concavity even on her notoriously flatter RF. So all I did was roll her toes a bit. The entire trim took maybe 15 minutes. Afterwards I brushed the little bits of mud off of her legs (Kathy's fields are set on a downhill which is wonderful for preventing water/snow melt pooling; it's just that ALL of MD is slippery in the winter because of the mainly clay footing in this region + overnight freezing/daytime melting) and the motion of bending over to brush Lily's legs DID cause dizziness. Go figure. See what I mean about the same motions causing dizziness sometimes but not others?
Today we gave the Bungee Straightjacket another whirl. I set it up in this fashion:
I had to add some baling twine extensions to make it a little looser than what you see in the photo. The system can also be rigged like this:
Ashke. This is how Karen was instructed to use it.
I will definitely be experimenting with the different settings to work Gracie's body in different ways and figure out what works best for her.
I took no pictures today because iPhone + cold = fail. Gracie started out trotting easily, initially bracing against the system by going above the contact like she did yesterday. She settled into the contact much quicker though and there were no bucks of protest whatsoever. I worked her in the same paddock as yesterday but this time moved her towards the flatter section at the back of the paddock. I then asked for a canter. She kind of took off in a panicky sort of canter, to my surprise: she had been working so well initially. She did slip a couple of times but always caught herself. I just asked her to stay at a trot after that.
Two things I've noticed: she thinks "Good girl!" means she should stop or slow down. Hmmm...someone taught her that. She also thinks "Easy" means "Stop" as well. So she HAS been longed prior to me coming into the picture. She just wasn't taught correctly from the looks of it.
I'd been carrying my dressage whip in one hand while longing and using it to point at body parts I wanted her to move or to get her to step up underneath herself more. Today I simply put it down halfway through the session and she did very, very well even without the addition of the dressage whip. For changes of direction I did as we had yesterday: I requested a halt, she stopped and turned to face me, I let her think for a minute, then pointed with my hand in the direction I wanted her to go. She did great.
We worked for 20 minutes. I then cooled her off by hand-walking her and doing the same as the previous day: practiced walking forward, halting and backing up as I did. I then had her do a turn on the forehand in both directions. She used to have a really hard time with this but she did excellent with crossing her hind legs in both directions whenever I pointed the dressage whip at her hindquarters. She received lots and lots of praise. I rubbed her forehead each time and she'd lower her head and lean into it. This mare loves attention so much that rewarding her with a kind touch is on par with giving her a treat. Once she was cool I tied her to the fence with a haynet while I set about grooming and blanketing her.
Afterwards I turned her back out with Lily, Deja and Queenie. Lily had been supervising from the other side of the fence while I was working with Gracie, but had moved off to graze while Gracie had her hay and I puttered around the barn cleaning up.
Before leaving I walked out into the back field to say good-bye to Lily. She was down by the gate that leads into the park with Deja. I walked down towards her. Deja took off at a trot and I thought Lily would trot off after her. But she didn't. She pricked her ears when I called her name and came strolling up towards me. It always makes my heart get all warm and fuzzy when she does that.
We stood together in the darkening dusk, me scratching Lily's neck while she slowly sniffed me up and down. It's something that she's always done with me and a few other people that she really likes. It's like with certain people she enjoys sniffing out the story of where you've been and what you've been up to all day. She'll start at my feet then slowly work her way up, stopping at my hands and my face. She'll usually then rest her muzzle or her chin against my shoulder. Today it was her muzzle. She touched it against my cheek and just left it there for a minute while I scratched her chest. She then dropped her head again, took a bite from the grass next to my boot, then started all over again with the sniffing. This time she blew softly into my face and I blew back into her nostril. She rested her chin against my shoulder.
A long time ago, I used to be leery of her when she did this. Until I saw her doing it with other horses she really liked. Lily is a touchy-feely kind of horse, which is what sometimes annoys other horses. She's kind of clingy, but only with people and horses that she truly trusts. I let her do this because I know it's her way of letting me know I'm special to her. It's very, very sweet and it means a lot when she does it. A fox barked in the distance and a flock of geese flew overhead as the remaining light of the setting sun disappeared from the horizon. I looked at the sky and Lily turned her head and looked too, and we just stood there together, staring off in the same direction, nothing to hold us together. Just standing there next to one another because that's where we both wanted to be.
It was a really beautiful moment. And then I was ready to go and when I formulated that thought, Lily turned and walked away into the darkness. I smiled and went home.
On Friday I returned to the barn to actually start work with Gracie and see how she did on the longe with some of the agility exercises my vet recommended.
I'm finally feeling well enough to do ground work with the girls. I get transient dizziness with certain positions or changes in position while moving around in my day-to-day stuff, which is now completely inconsistent: kneeling can cause dizziness in one instant but not on another, for example. I find that natural vs artificial light can make a difference in that too, but it is also inconsistent. I was finally able to run up to the front desk to attend critical emergencies at work this week (and not a moment too soon, as we had an insanely busy week with a lot of really sick animals). I tried going to the gym for a light workout (30 minutes on the elliptical) on Saturday AND working Lily on the longe in the afternoon...and it was too much. It didn't make me 24/7 dizzy again, which is what would happen in the beginning if I exhausted myself, but I had a migraine that night and woke up on Sunday feeling like I'd been hit with a ton of bricks. Go figure. Concussions are so weird, man. But it's nice to finally be on the other side of this. I'm hoping to be able to ride again in another two weeks, based on progress lately. And Calm, Forward, Straight: I took your advice and bought vitamin E for myself and I swear it made a big difference in my progress! It could be placebo effect or maybe the improvements were just going to happen anyway, but there was a marked reduction of symptoms after I started taking it. THANK YOU!
On Friday Gracie was VERY "up" when I went to get her from the field: I ended up having her move in a circle around me as we walked all the way from the big front field to the barn, like a satellite around a planet as said planet orbits across the solar system. I was wearing my helmet (since I can finally wear one without the gash at the back of my head hurting: the sutures finally came out) and had my dressage whip with me. Gracie isn't afraid of whips but she is appropriately responsive and respectful of them. Given her attitude, I was glad for both the helmet and the whip: she never tried to get in my space, but if I felt the least threatened all I had to do was carefully point the whip at her shoulder or her hip to get her to move away from me accordingly. I just stayed calm and centered. I honestly wasn't surprised about her reaction: she had not been properly worked with in a month. She was very much like this the first time I ever worked with her.
I tacked her up with a rope halter, bridle with D-ring French link snaffle and the surcingle with side reins not attached.
The back field of the barn, the one with the hill, had not been used as a pasture until recently because there was some barbed wire reinforcing the wooden fencing that Kathy wanted to get fixed before letting the mares out there. However, it was the one other pasture other than the front field that still had long grass in it. Her and Zoe put up some temporary black plastic fencing to cover both the wood and barbed wire so the pasture could be used, with the goal of doing proper repairs on the fencing in the spring. The mares have been going out there at night for the past week so they've gotten to see the black fencing plenty of times.
Gracie apparently forgot this. She was a snorting, whirling mess when I took her out into the back field to longe and she kept looking over at the fence in concern while doing her dragon snorts.
Kathy's farm drains beautifully as the entire property is set on an incline. But with the freeze-thaw cycle that is an everyday part of winter in this area + the straight 7 days of rain we had last week, even on the best-draining property the ground is going to be deceptively slick for ponies going faster than a trot.
Normally when Gracie is this "up" she'll tear around me at a mad gallop and slip and slide all over the place, and even fall because she is too busy being an idiot to pay attention to where her feet are going or the footing underneath them. Which is why we hadn't properly longed in a long time, concussion aside.
Well, she totally surprised me. She trotted around with tail flagged doing her dragon snorts every time her feet touched the ground, tried to accelerate into a canter...and then slowed back down to a trot when she realized the ground was slick.
Zoomy trot
Huh. Okay then.
I gradually moved her over to the far corner of the field behind the run-in shed where the ground is flattest. She was doing an all-out extended trot. I asked her to canter to see what she would do. In the past, she would take off into the canter and blast off into a gallop, again with complete disregard to footing.
She flagged her tail excitedly and picked up a canter. She was going to the left, the direction in which she had always fallen when running around at liberty prior to getting her worked up by the vet.
At the third canter stride, she gave a whopping slip with her left hind. A big one. The kind that would have caused her to fall previously. Except she did not fall: she caught herself. And instead of continuing to canter like an idiot, she broke down to a trot. Just like a normal horse with survival instincts and a brain would do.
I gave her a TON of praise and let her trot on, basically focusing on just getting her to relax more on the longe. I asked for short canters a few times in both directions to make sure that the caution I'd seen was not a fluke. It wasn't. She'd pick up the canter to oblige, then break to a trot in the spots where the footing was iffy.
Nice soft eye on the previously spazzy mare.
Tracking up nicely.
Maybe my vet was onto something when she mentioned that Gracie's original frequent falling was just her adapting to being able to just move at speed in a larger area. She hadn't had that in over a year.
It took about 20 minutes altogether before she settled into the nice trot you can see in the photos above. At that point I asked her to halt and clipped the side reins on loosely. This is the third time she's worn side reins ever, as far as I know, and she was a little resistant initially.
"I shall go above the bit!"
After a few turns in both directions she relaxed into her usual head carriage.
A little better.
I had set up a line of 4 cavaletti next to the paddock fence. I unclipped the side reins and had her work through them a few times in both directions at the trot and then we called it a day. She did good: she actually likes ground pole and cavaletti work and will lock onto the poles with an enthusiasm that Lily lacks! Who would have thought the gaited horse would enjoy the kind of work that the TB is supposed to enjoy...
I walked her out to cool down as she had gotten quite sweaty. Even when in full work, one of the surprising things about Gracie is how quickly she will lose condition. She's not the kind of horse that can have a two-week break from working and pick up where she left off fitness-wise. I wonder if that is going to change now that she is at Kathy's and moving around more.
I left this setup with the ground poles before leaving for the day:
The next day, Saturday, was Lily's turn. I was originally going to work both mares but I was surprisingly tired after the piddly workout on the elliptical that morning and decided to just work with the easier one of the two.
Lily has been a little herd bound the last few times we've been to the barn. She even got away from Charles last weekend and ran right back down to the big field before he could get her all the way to the barn! On Saturday however she was focused and goofy.
Like Gracie, she decided that she had never seen the black fence in the back field before and had a case of the zoomies. Though she also tends to get the zoomies initially anyway when working on the longe for the first time in a while. I have to let her canter around before she's ready to settle down into the trot, ground poles, intervals or whatever plans I have for her for the day's session.
You can see the offending black fence in this photo.
Lily goes ZOOM!
I've mentioned before how Lily is a perfectionist and gets frustrated if she slips or trips. Charles actually caught it on film! She was being very silly about cantering on the downhill part of the circle and she finally gave a little slip with her right hind. She immediately bucked in frustration. It always cracks me up when she does this.
More settled but not quite ready to pay attention. She was cantering the uphill and trotting the downhill.
I then had her work over the cavaletti. Lily knows what she's supposed to do with them but she always has some anxiety about them. She literally only does them because I ask her to. I had deliberately made the striding uneven which meant that when she did the grid to the left, she had to shorten her stride more and more inbetween each set of cavaletti. She found this VERY frustrating:
She trots in then decides to break into a canter, doing the last set of cavaletti as a bounce the first two times through. Note the head toss after she does the bounce! She was annoyed. The third time through she did a short canter stride and was happy with herself. I later spread the cavaletti out so that they were all even. She was very pleased about this and cantered through very nicely. Silly mare.
She was a little more anxious about the grid to the right, taking ALL of the cavaletti as bounces!
Bounce! -_-
She kept rushing the grid to the right no matter what I did with my energy so I clipped on the side reins with them set on the last (loosest) hole. This had the desired effect: she didn't try to bolt through the grid anymore; she simply did a more relaxed canter through it, then listened when I requested the trot. I then unclipped the side reins and raised the cavaletti so they were about 18" and had her canter through them in both directions again a few times. She did a stellar job.
We then did about 10 more minutes of w/t/c on the flat with the side reins on. Charles took some stunning photos.
And then we called it a day!
I was really happy with Lily. She was paying attention to me and trying her hardest to do what I wanted. She's lost some condition and muscle over the last few weeks, which I was bummed to discover. I can't wait to be able to ride again!
On Sunday it was Gracie's turn again. I was surprised to have Tornado Mare on my hands once more. So she got tied to the fence for a bit and I walked away to adjust the grid for her and thus give her time to settle down and think about things.
She was rigged in one of my vet's recommendations: a standing wrap running loosely behind her legs. The idea was for it to encourage her to step underneath herself more in response to the alien feeling of the wrap around her legs. She honestly didn't care: it didn't seem to make a difference. But it was worth a shot.
The second I put her to work, she started freaking out about the black fence again. *Sigh* So I clipped the side reins on and we worked closer and closer to the black fence until she settled down into a trot. Have some zoomy pictures of G-Mare on the longe:
ZOOM!!!
I will note that yet again she did not set a foot wrong.
FINALLY trotting around me...
Gracie in all of her nervous tail-flagging glory.
I ultimately started asking her to yield the hindquarters while she trotted around and that brought her attention 100% back to me. She then gave me this lovely halt at my request:
I will also note that she will now wait at the end of the line when I request a halt. She doesn't immediately come barging into my space like she used to. It's great to see her remember and apply previous lessons: after returning from Fort Valley, I'd been working on her halt and backing out of my space while Lily was on her 2-week vacation since I had extra time to work on the G-Mare's manners. I guess she got the message?
Once she was paying attention, I worked her with the inside side rein shorter than the outside rein to encourage bend and flexion. This didn't really have the desired result: she simply braced against the inside rein. So I did something that I did a lot with Lily back when I was rehabbing her from her tendon injury: I threaded the longe line through the inside bit ring and clipped it to surcingle. I was honestly expecting Gracie to be an idiot about this but she actually responded really well. I sent her out in a circle around me and when she seemed tense, I'd gently request an inside flexion by putting pressure on the longe line. The second she gave, I released the pressure...and she stretched down! Praise. We practiced this a few more times in each direction.
She was still a bit zoomy and not responding well to the request to halt at the end, but you can see her stretch down for a few strides at a time. The side reins needed to be longer so she could stretch out as well; I fixed that later.
We reviewed the proper halt again when I had her go over the cavaletti.
I unclipped the side reins and had her go through the grid a few times at the lowest setting, but with the longe line still threaded through the inside bit ring and clipped to the surcingle. She trotted through nice and even in both directions. The cavaletti were then raised to 18" and she snapped up her knees and hocks as she trotted through.
We reviewed simple halting and backing up at the end and finished the session on a good note. She had many fire-breathing dragon anxious/"up" moments throughout the session again, but I'm hoping with more work she settles down. I used to think she was just being sassy, and while there sometimes is sass, sometimes there's quite a bit of anxiety too. She has always been prone to getting worked up on the longe, and I'm not sure if it's because that's how she was trained way, way back when? I'm talking before being re-started by Trainer Bob, by whomever first started her under saddle.
I was talking to Kathy afterwards. She watched several of Bob's training rides with Gracie but she never actually saw him work her on the longe. This doesn't mean it never happened, but maybe she never got to associate enough positive experiences with longing? Honestly, she reminds me a lot of Lily when I very first started working with her: Lily was terrified of being worked on the longe. It took a long, long time for her to come to trust me enough to work like this:
Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm hoping Gracie gets better and more relaxed as she realizes that nothing bad is going to happen to her on the longe. It was SO great to see her paying attention to the footing though! Not a single slip, trip or stumble during this entire session, even with all of the running around she did in the beginning.
They both get the next few days off from work; we'll revisit this on Friday.
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