2 years ago, on July 8, I signed Lily's bill of sale for $1. Charles gave me the $1 so he could officially say that he bought me a horse for my birthday. :)
On July 8 of this year, we didn't do much because I worked all day. After work, Lily received a trim from moi, which I'm still fine-tuning. I rode her in the Alta Escuela, and I don't know if it was the trim, the saddle or a combination, but she gave me the best ride yet. We're down to 2 mls of ace.
Yesterday dawned ugly, overcast, muggy as hell, and drizzling. By the afternoon, it had cleared up, so I went to the barn and started out riding Lily in the outdoor. It was less buggy than it's been, so after one turn of the outdoor, I took her out into the big field.
We did it! We did our entire session in the big field. It started to get buggy again towards the end, but we were able to do 25 minutes of walking and our two 2-minute trot sets out in the field. It was nice to get out there because the field slopes gently, so in theory, Miss Mare got a light hill workout at the same time. We did more downhill during the trot sets than uphill, for which I did sitting trot and she just jogged down the slopes. She was calm, almost bored. I had to tap the dressage whip against my leg a couple of times to wake her up. She's perfect about the whip again-even let me mount up with it in my hand without any flinching.
We did our final 5 minutes on the buckle in the outdoor arena.
These photos are not edited; the light really did come out that way.
On Wednesday, we rode again. It was earlier in the day than usual (this was the day I clipped Paris), and thus hotter, so I used only 2.3 mls of ace.
Lily still looked like this:
We rode in the indoor because it would have been way too hot in the sun. I discovered that if you want to clear out an arena, just make sure beforehand that everyone knows your horse is on stall rest. :/ I felt bad. People don't believe me even when I reassure them that Lily is fine with other horses in the arena, whether she is sedated or not.
The big highlight of the day was the whip rack. I've been sidling her up to it so I can grab a whip without having to dismount. Being able to do this with her is a huge deal.
It took a couple of attempts to get her lined up close enough so that I could reach the rack. During one of the attempts she managed to walk head-first into the wall! Totally bonked her head. Poor girl! NOT the kind of thing she would have done EVER had she been sober. *sigh* She was fine, though. She put her ears to the side, like "Whatever. Totally did that on purpose."
Just so you guys can see how this in a pretty tight corner.
To grab a whip, I have to make her sidle up to the wall with a baby leg yield. Can you tell she was annoyed? Lol Those are her annoyed ears. "Tell me again WHY we're supposed to do this?" So you can be a good trail horse, Lily. So we can open gates and get into and out of really tight corners without you losing your shit.
She was great for the entire ride. Good enough that I asked Charles if he could come out again Friday (today) to get some video.
A friend of mine introduced me to Simon's Cat yesterday. I wanted to share this video with you guys, as this is what is usually going on while I'm writing on the blog!
Astarte has this particular quirk that I have seen no other cat do, where she comes up to my arm, bares her teeth, and without opening her mouth, presses her incisors hard against my elbow. (I am at her level because I am currently sitting on the floor with the computer propped up on boxes-yup, we have not made it to Ikea yet...) My looking at her in annoyance always brings about the expected loud "GAOW!" (She also clearly pronounces the "G" at the beginning-not your typical "meow"). Her and Aengus take turns trying to climb up on the keyboard, walking in front of the monitor, and crawling up behind it.
If you don't believe me, here's proof! At the table of the Alexandria apartment.
I have an adapter for the camera memory cards. The adapter has 2 lids-one to conceal the hole where you place the card, and the other to protect the USB thingamabob. I had the lids in front of me, between my arms and the keyboard. I'm still not sure how he did it, but next thing I knew, I hear Aengus playing with something plasticky...it was the lids! I had to get up and retrieve them. I found one; I still don't know where he put the other one. This is the cat that likes to pick up things in his mouth and run away with them, like a freaking Labrador (he especially likes to do this with small important pieces of paper)...I think he was a dog in his past life. Oh, and feeding them makes no difference. It's just the fact that I'm not paying attention to THEM...*lol* I love dogs, but I'm crazy about cats. Each one is very much an individual, like a little person. Behaviorists have tried to lump their body signals into different meanings, but while some generalization is true, it is also true that each cat has their own very particular way of communicating. Example: cats twitch their tails when annoyed. Well, yes, they DO twitch their tail when annoyed. However, Astarte, who is the happiest cat I know, is ALWAYS twitching her tail. I call it her mental metronome. As long as she is awake and thinking about something, the tip of her tail is ticking slowly back and forth. It only stops when she is sleeping. The more focused she is, the more pronounced the movement. Aengus LOVES playing with her tail because of this...
The other day the computer actually did shut down halfway through writing, and I had the same confused expression on my face as the guy in the video...*lol* However, that time it wasn't the cats-it was a power outage in our area!
Astarte purring away in my lap as I type right now!
So, on my mare's awesomeness.
Yesterday, I went to the barn around noon, as I had to leave early to go to a meeting at work. However, I went with plenty of time, as I wanted to do more groundwork before riding...IF we rode, as it was super extra windy outside after the storm on Wednesday night.
All of the horses were in the bottom part of the field again, and Lily was hanging out by the water trough with her friends. She saw me coming up from the barn and stood there staring at me. She started to walk away when I entered the field, and I started walking parallel to her as she followed the fence line, about 300 feet from her, not looking at her, pretending I was crossing the field with a lead rope in my hand just for funsies, NOT because I was coming to get her. I'm not sure if it worked, or if she was really glad to see me, because she surprised me by continuing to walk forwards in a diagonal line that brought her to me, coming to a stop right in front of me on her own. Good girl!! She got treats for that one!
I brought her in, removed her blankets, gave her a good grooming, and inspected her feet. She threw a shoe on Monday, so the trimmer had come and removed her other shoe almost a week early (the casting material used to secure the glued-on Eponas to her feet had worn through-this is why she kept throwing shoes a week early throughout this experiment). Her soles do indeed look much more solid!
I'm happy that the angles in her hinds have corrected (she used to be at a negative palmar angle in both hinds, meaning her coffin bone was tilted slightly upwards! BAD!) so that's another positive thing. I'm hoping that with future trims the fronts start to get better-I have seen the barefoot work of this trimmer on other horses in the barn, and really like her work.
I didn't get pics this time, but I will for the next post so you guys can see.
After she was all scrubbed up and as clean as I could make her (she still has dust from the Monday mud covering...), I put her rope halter on and walked her to the outdoor.
What I did next was based on this awesome video that Dom posted. WATCH IT! Yes, it's 30 minutes long. But she is spectacular at explaining what she is doing, and you can see how Wink responds. Very, very cool.
So I picked up the lunge whip and decided to really ingrain in Lily that when I bow, she is to come to neutral. We were fairly good at this before, but recently she has not been responding to this as snappily as I'd like her to. With the wind and the horses playing in the field next door, she was all for charging around on the lunge, so it was especially awesome when she started coming to a bounding stop each time I bowed. (Yes, a bounding stop-she'd be galloping around like a madwoman, I'd bow, and she'd do a big hop and turn in midair to face me, coming to a halt!). She did this once or twice. I should have stopped there. But she was still somewhat distracted, and she wasn't consistent in doing it in both directions (she was better to the right than the left), so I kept working on getting her to do it going to the left. Well, her response started slowing down, despite shortening the lunge a la Dom to make the galloping in a circle around me harder for her. I got her to stop, and decided to switch to something else-I tried to see if she would let me rub her body with the whip. I worked hard back in FL to make sure this ceased to be a problem (in attempting to link back to it, I just realized I never really wrote about our extensive whip desensitizing!), but we are truly back to square one when it comes to whips. Plus, with the brief wave of warmth, all of the mares have come in to heat, so my goofy girl was being EXTRA sensitive. She was NOT having it today-rearing (!!) and trying to charge away from me every time the whip came close to her. It took some yanking to get her to come to a stop, but I started asking her to stand by bowing, and this really worked. She finally stood, trembling like a leaf, while I flipped the whip up and down rhythmically 6 feet from her, bringing it way up in the air, then letting it come back down to earth with a loud tap. I did this on both sides, and as she slowly relaxed, I incrementally brought the flipping whip closer to her body. Eventually she was standing still, quiet, with the whip tapping the ground a foot from her hooves. I then tapped the whip on both sides, tapping it on the floor to her left, bringing it up in a big arc above her head, and tapping it on the ground to her right. No reaction. She sighed, licked and chewed. At this point, she allowed me to rub the whip all over her. Her ears were tense, but she stood still and didn't tremble.
I stopped, let her relax and take a break, just standing for a couple of minutes. I then sent her out onto the lunge at a trot, and she was soooo much calmer than before. Focused, too-her inside ear was cocked towards me, and she was paying the horses in the field no mind. I bowed, and she stopped and turned to face me. Pause, let her rest as a reward, and then I asked her to change direction by asking her to disengage her shoulders (it is so cool to show her little pieces and then bring it all together, and have her understand!) and she trotted off in the opposite direction. I bowed, and she stopped and turned to face me. Good girl!!! We left it at that.
I groomed her again in the barn (her neck is especially itchy with her winter coat) and tacked up, placing the rope halter on over her bridle and bringing the lunge line along. Just in case. Of course, the minute I lined her up with the mounting block, a huge gust of wind tore through the trees above us, whipping the tall grasses by the arena gate. Lily tensed and tucked her tail between her legs, but stood still. I remained on the mounting block until the wind had stopped again, and then got on.
Lily was tense and looky as we walked off, so we worked on some circles and shoulder-in at the walk to get her attention back to me. I was wondering if I'd dare to canter today as I squeezed her into a trot. She surged forward in the trot, and we did some lovely stuff. She feels absolutely wonderful barefoot again-I still think she moves best without any shoes on. We didn't do lateral work, just lots of circles, changes of direction and diagonal lines. She was almost as in front of my leg as the other night, and she stayed there as I asked her to collect and extend. We had probably been riding for about 20 minutes total, when I asked her to canter from the trot. She popped right into it, and gave me this terrific little canter-very uphill, very easy to sit to, but VERY collected. I had her circle around one of the jumps in this little canter, and asked for the transition back to trot. She streeetched forward into the trot and came down into the contact. REALLY nice!! So we did this in both directions-3 circles at the trot, then 1 circle at the canter. She was nailing her transitions INSTANTLY-no speeding up at the trot to go into the canter, no quick on-the-forehand trot coming out of the canter. She was super-responsive in this tiny canter, and able to do small circles. In a moment of inspiration, I took her into the back portion of the arena, and we did figure 8s at the canter-circle twice one way in a 15m circle, simple lead change at the trot across the diagonal of the 8, then pick up the opposite lead canter and circle twice again. Repeat. We did this a couple of times and she was SO FANTASTIC that I finally brought her to a halt from the canter in the center of the 8, gave her a pat, and dismounted. The ultimate reward: you get off! Lily gave a big sigh, and I loosened her girth to the very last hole on her billets, then walked her out on foot for the next 10 minutes.
This was huge. Lily's canter has slowly been improving over our last year and a half together. I used to hate cantering her with a vengeance. It was very uncomfortable and downhill, and she tended to get really flat, long and on the forehand. Our steering initially was very iffy-we could only do ginormous 40m circles at the canter-any smaller, and she just felt unbalanced. It didn't help that, since retiring from jumping, the canter had become my worst gait, especially with the dressage seat-it used to be really, really hard for me to sit up and plant my butt in the saddle at the canter after almost 2 decades of riding the canter in a half seat. A lot of cantering would wipe me out, and my abs would hurt the next day from the effort of having to sit back with my little girl's bumpy gait. Both of us have gotten much better, to where she doesn't look strung out anymore and I'm able to sit up straighter and deeper with a lot less effort. But this day was our very bestest so far-I was up, in the saddle and centered, and she was up and centered as well, which is what allowed us to remain collected and to do all of these little circles.
I walked around with her, and once the sweat on her neck had dried (she didn't sweat much, and she wasn't even blowing when I had dismounted), took her into the barn to untack. Of course she was still sweaty under her saddle, so on a whim, I decided to take her out for a walk on the trail to finish drying out...and to see if she'd still cross those ditches.
I clipped her lunge line to her rope halter and off we went. I noticed she was 100% sound on the lumpy gravel by the driveway! The trail was very muddy, and this is when I realized that the trail is partially created by how water runs off when it rains-you could see where the water had flowed down the trail and pushed debris aside during the storms the previous day.
We arrived at the first ditch, and realized that it was full of flowing water! Lily came to an abrupt halt and flared her nostrils at it, ears pricked forwards. "Oh noes-there's WATER in there!" she said. I laughed at her as she stood staring at the water nervously, then turned to face her shoulder and started uncoiling the lunge line. She knows this means I'm going to send her. She looked at me once, "And you're going to make me CROSS IT??" "Yup, I sure am." I said, "And you're going first, cuz it's also quite muddy and we're not repeating our last stream incident!" Lily took a step forward, glanced at me, stared at the water again, and then I saw this really cute look of nervous determination cross her face "Ok...I'm going to do it!" She slid a little going down the bank, leaped across, and cantered 3 strides up the other way! *lol* She almost yanked the lunge line out of my hands in the process. "WHOA! Eeeaaasy!" I called to her, and she stopped. For a second there I was afraid she'd continue galloping down the trail. Of course the lunge line had somehow ended up on the opposite side of her neck. I was still far away from her as I crossed the little ditch stream and scrambled up the opposite bank to her. I saw the uncertainty in her ears at feeling the lunge line across her neck, so I continued talking quietly to her as I coiled up the lunge line, then I pulled gently on the line...and she stepped and twirled (see??? It DID prove useful after all!) She was still some 20 feet away, so I bowed...and she came! I rubbed her neck and told her what a good girl she is, and let her take a break. "Ok, this means the next ditch is going to be even scarier!" I told her, as we made our way down the path. Indeed it was.
It looks so much more treacherous in this photo than it did in person! And the water was flowing-both ditches turn into little streams when it rains.
She wouldn't go when I tried to send her across. It was very slippery going down, and she kept trying to cut in front of me to my other side, as if we were lunging, which was incredibly dangerous with the slant of the hill, the trees, branches in the way, and mud. I was afraid we'd both fall if she kept doing this, so I calmed her down, had her stand at the top of the hill, asked her to stay, and crossed first. Once I was safely at the top on the other side, I asked her to come with a gentle tug on the lunge line. It took her a minute to figure it out, but she finally came, leaping across the river and scrambling up to me. Again, tons of petting and good girls. And then it was time to go back.
This time, she went when I sent her. Again the lunge line ended up on the wrong side of her neck, and again I asked her to step and twirl, this time while I was still on the opposite bank, and she responded. I asked her to stay and wait, then once I was on the same side, I asked her to come by bowing again. And she did!
WHAT A GOOD GIRL!!!!!! Like I said: my mare is AWESOME!
We returned to the barn (the other ditch was a nonevent going back) and Lily got treats while I groomed her again (all of the sweat had dried off) and scrubbed the mud off of her hooves. I don't give treats often, but she had more than earned them! Her cooler and sheet went back on her, and out she went with her buddies again.
That's her in the middle, with her muddy sheet. I need a backup sheet so I can take this one home and wash it already!
And this, my friends, is my 100th post. A milestone post about a milestone day!
We did get to ride on Friday after all. It was sunny all day long; Diana swung by my house to pick me up at 3:30pm and we went to the barn. We did all of our chores first and fed the horses their early dinner a little after 4:00pm so we could head to the trails at a reasonable time. Lily was ignoring her early dinner hay and pouting for her beet pulp/grain mix, but I wanted to feed it after we were back. I went into her stall to give her attention, and she became super curious about me, sniffing my face, my neck, my arms, by body all the way down to my toes, and back up again. It took me a minute, but then I remembered I had used a different body lotion that day-it smelled really sweet and fruity. I guess she liked it? She repeated this a couple of times and the look on her face made me laugh. She was pressing her lips together tight in concentration, like "Hmmmmm...This looks like you but it certainly doesn't smell like you."
I took her out of the stall and checked her feet. Her energy was "up", not her usual super calm, laid-back self, and I figured it would be a good idea to lunge her before riding. However, her frogs on both hind feet looked somewhat bruised today-the farrier took off too much frog on her left hind as well! I applied Durasole to her frogs and soles, allowed it to dry, then I took her out to the arena while Diana waited for the other grooming station-Bob's owner was giving him a bath right then. I wanted to do a little groundwork, and then I was planning on letting her work at liberty around the perimeter of the dressage arena. The track around the arena is currently overgrown with weeds and grass from the rain and lack of use, so it's a soft cushy surface for sore feet.
I took the lunge whip with me this time instead of my dressage whip. The last time I worked her with the dressage whip free in the arena, she totally laughed at me and did whatever she wanted. I was also really tired that day, and I know this was also coming into play that time-without the right energy, it is nearly impossible to work a horse properly at liberty, either at close quarters (like in a round pen or the square picadero) or from afar. It is utterly AMAZING what you can do with a sensitive horse from one end of the arena, if you are able to project the right energy. It never ceases to astound me.
On this Friday, I felt that we had graduated to a level of trust where Lily would not run herself into the ground anymore at the sight of a lunge whip in my hand. I was right.
We walked quietly into the center of the arena, to a spot where the footing was softer, and I had her lunge a couple of times in each direction-I just wanted to watch her move, and also to control her warmup. She was definetely sore-she was not tracking up at the trot on her own, so I didn't push her. When I asked her to canter, she leaped into it and did her bycicles in the air (I love when she does this-her front end comes up, her head goes down, and she kicks her front legs forward, doing circles in the air. It reminds me more of a puppy playing than a horse!) which always makes me laugh, and tells me she's in a happy mood. She didn't hold the canter for long, and I didn't ask her to-only a few strides in each direction and that was it. We practiced a couple of changes of direction, where I changed the whip hand and lowered my upper body, and she was keyed into me so that she changed directions without barely missing a beat, without slowing down to a walk like she used to. Very cool. This was probably all a grand total of 5 minutes. I then took off running backwards in a straight line, with still 20m of lunge line between us, and she followed at a jog. I stopped, and she continued to jog, closing the distance and coming to a stop at a respectful 4 feet from me. I let her rest for a minute, patting her, and then practiced some turns on the forehand with her. I had read about this in the 101 Dressage Exercises book. She did it perfectly to the right (with me on her left, gently vibrating the lunge whip towards her hind legs), not so much to the left (with me standing on her right). One of the big things I discovered with Lily's groundwork is that she is decidedly one-sided-it is VERY obvious that in her early training they neglected to work her evenly from both sides, and when she is nervous or confused, she will actually GUARD her right side to keep you from stepping over to that side to ask her to do things. This sometimes makes me wonder if maybe she didn't happen to get beaten from the right side later when the cowboy handled her.
I then removed the lunge line from her halter and stepped back. Lily looked at me for a second, alert, and I pointed towards the arena fence, and she obliged, trotting off towards the wall.
She worked beautifully. I always let her run as much as she wants to, initially, because these are the only times when she can gallop and pick up speed, since our turnouts are small. This is also why I always like to warm her up properly before setting her free-otherwise, I would not have lunged her with sore feet on this day.
Happy canter around the arena.
After galloping and then cantering around, she slowed to a trot, and I asked for changes of direction and transitions from walk to trot to canter and back down again. She was a lot more comfortable on the outside track of the arena, on the grass. During the last few months, she has developed LOVELY transition from walk to trot at liberty, where her back and withers come up as she pushes off into a big snappy trot, and she'll look like a mini upper-level dressage warmblood for a minute, before settling into a long, sweeping trot. She didn't do this today because it involved her pushing with her sore back feet, but she still gave me a nice long trot.
Standardbred trot around the arena
Her natural self-carriage has improved a lot in the last few months, I think
Should I come or should I stay?
I asked her to stop by standing still-as long as she is moving, I'm walking in a smaller circle in the center of the arena. This time, however, she wouldn't come to me-she'd just stand and stare at me. So I'd send her away to work, and try again. She would stop when I did, but still wouldn't come. We tried this a few times, and I must've been doing something different with my body language, because she would not come, even when I tried dropping the whip on the ground before standing still myself. So eventually I just had her stand still for a minute, and then walked over to her, put her regular lead rope on her halter, and we did an old Parelli exercise where I pass the lead rope behind her neck, opposite the side I'm standing on, and move lengthwise towards her rear end. The end result is that she must move forwards and come back to face me-the pressure on the lead rope will bring her back in a half-circle in the opposite direction from me. She used to freak out so much with this exercise, but we have this down to almost a dance-she knows to come back even before feeling the pressure of the lead rope on her halter. It's the best gauge of her mental state: if she is able to do it quietly, without even flinching (sometimes she still does if she's on edge, so we'll have to do it a couple of times to remind her that I'm not going to hurt her), I know she's in a very relaxed state of mind. On this day, she was 100% relaxed.
At that point I stood with her for a minute, and then led her back indoors. I hosed her off-we'd only been out in the arena for about 15 minutes, but there was that pre-storm heat and she had broken a sweat. I sweat-scraped her and tacked her up, still wet, knowing this would keep her more comfortable during the ride.
Dark clouds started to roll in as we made our way down the road to the park. Lily again looked at the clumps of dry, cut grass on the side of the path leading to the park entrance, and leaped over a palm leaf lying on the ground. I took her back to it and made her walk around it until she finally stood with both feet on it and relaxed, while Diana and Bali waited for us patiently. Silly mare.
Scary clumps of dry grass!
Once inside the park, we turned right and took the skinny trails, alternating between walking and trotting. Both Lily and Bali behaved well, despite the wind beginning to pick up and rustling through the treetops.
Bali and Diana take the lead at a trot.
We took turns leading, until we were out by the powerlines again. We crossed the street by the powerlines and headed into the main trails, which were unusually dark from the impending storm. We trotted and even cantered a bit, and took the mares through the handicapped rider's trails, with all of their little obstacles. Lily looked at some of the obstacles more than usual, but did not spook nor startle.
We came out of the main trails with the intention of crossing over the hills by the park pastures before heading home, but a flash of nearby lightning quickly made us change our minds. Instead, we turned back towards the powerlines and walked the rest of the way home. The wind was really picking up then. Thankfully, the two mares remained calm despite all the swirling vegetation around them.
Storm rolling in
The wind whipping through the tall grass by the powerlines
Diana and Bali :)
As we were reaching the end of the powerlines, I saw something dark jumping through the tall grass, and realized it was a loose dog. I have issues with dogs being off-leash around horses, and it is not allowed at the park. A couple of weeks ago, a couple of loose dogs almost caused a massive accident, spooking a group of riders on a guided trail ride on the park horses. Luckily nobody was hurt. This time, the dog belonged to a couple who had both of their dogs off-leash. I cursed out loud and it must've carried in the wind, because they immediately picked up their other dog, a beagle, and started looking for the black dog that had escaped. They made it all the way to the end of the powerlines with us, and they still hadn't found their second dog. That's what happens when you let your dog off leash, people.
Back in Puerto Rico people were not very good about keeping their dogs inside their houses or even confined to their yards. Loose dogs were a problem-they would chase cars, people, and horses. Thankfully, Lucero, my Paso Fino, was very brave, and I trained him to swing around and chase any dog that came up on our heels. He eventually learned to do it on his own, without a signal from me, and we were always lucky that the dogs never stood their ground.
Lily does like to chase things when I ask her to so far, but I don't know if she'd be willing to chase after an aggressive, barking dog.
The rest of the ride back home was uneventful. Back at the barn, we rode into the arena to dismount as more lightning flashed in the distance. At that instant, Oreo came tearing out of the barn in a mad dash towards the far wall of the arena, with one of the brown tabbies in close pursuit. I don't like that tabby-she bullies Oreo constantly, and she used to pick fights with Smiles, Judy's barn kitty before Oreo.
Oreo leaped on the wall about 8 feet away from Lily and me, and the other cat stopped in her tracks when she saw Lily. I kicked Lily into a canter from a standstill and we took off after the tabby, chasing her out of the arena, away from Oreo. Lily received a big pat from me, and I hopped off.
We didn't hose the mares off, as they had barely broken a sweat. Instead, we untacked them and turned them out in the arena with little Willy to graze while we picked their stalls. The storm was holding and the lightning sirens had not sounded from the park, so it was still far away. The horses got to graze for about an hour before we brought them back in.
The first rain bands from Isaac were supposed to start coming that night, so we left all the horses inside for the night.
