A wonderful character trait to possess, when dealing with horses, is flexibility. Without flexibility you'll find failure a lot more than success. Two examples: the day's lesson and the weather....you didn't see the weather coming, did you?
Now if you're lucky, you'll have a horse that will be flexible with you. Dino and I have differing opinions on this, he thinks not so much when it comes to flexibility. Just yesterday we had such a disagreement. The footing had dried enough, or at least in one spot, that I could work on a 15-meter circle. My plan: walk-trot just to get him moving and loosen him up. The reality: as soon as we walked into the pasture it started sprinkling. Are_you_kidding_me? I looked up to the sky and saw the storm clouds were moving Northwest. Pssst it'll pass, no biggie I thought. I was wrong, so very wrong. In the end, I didn't care. Dino did.
At the first sign of bad weather, Dino is of the school of thought: stop and seek shelter. I'm of the school of thought: suck it up and get it done. My other two horses, Angel and Sancho, would say, "Okay, if we must." "Yes, you must," I say. With Dino it goes more like this:
Dino: "No."
Me: "Yes."
Dino: "I don't want to..."
Me: "I don't really care what you want, I say yes."
Dino: "Funny you should say that, because I don't really care what you want. I say no."
Me: "I can and will make this difficult for you."
Dino: "Yeah, like I can't do the same to you."
Me: "YES!!"
Dino: "NO!!!"
An hour later, and thoroughly soaked, I was desperate to find a good stopping point. Dino was tired and nothing good was coming from our work, so as soon as I found a minuscule of good, we were done. Walking and cooling out was pointless, the flies were nasty and chased us back to the barn. Dino got a bath and then I spent close to an hour hand grazing him.
I am quite proud of Dino, we were able to work through this while a year ago this would have resulted in a full out temper tantrum. Dino would have acted up and turned nasty, I would have grown upset and overwhelmed. No, I'm not just proud of Dino, I'm proud of us together as a team.
I should point out that if your horse is acting reluctant to work, make sure there is not a reason behind it; something physically wrong with the horse or improper tack fitting. You can't ignore the signs your horse is giving you, every moment you are with your horse, s/he is telling you something and you are teaching it something. Ignoring the signs can lead to a lot of problems down the road. I knew why Dino was acting up, he doesn't like his ears wet. Silly, I know, but it's true. Whenever it rains and I insist on keep going, he does this and he also does this when it comes time to bathe him. He's fine if I'm on his body or his face, but creep up his neck to his ears and watch out!
Don't tell Dino, but the day he doesn't even act up when it rains, is the day I won't even make him work. It's all about flexibility and we can't control the weather, just how we react to it.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Rain, rain GO AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the words of Scarlett O'Hara, "As God is my witness, my next place WILL have an indoor arena!!"
So the blog has once again gone dormant. Really I am so sick of rain. A friend of mine told me the farmers around here have to get corn in before Memorial Day or they can forget it. One things for sure, they'll have a real nice wheat crop this year!
I'm at the point now, that when the weather is good Dino must work. As of this writing, we have just over 4-weeks until our first show. I was really hoping to go Training Level, so that we can canter, but our canter needs a ton of work. I don't know, I guess if I really want to show we'll have to do Intro. Not like there aren't other shows happening this summer, pretty much every weekend until early October there's a show somewhere. What's so important here, this show is being held where my trainer is based. Its familiar territory and I believe a good experience for Dino.
All in all, Dino is good. Great in fact. His grouchiness has faded for the most part and he's a fairly agreeably fellow. I'm really not sure what the deal is...I have added a bit of alfalfa to his diet, so maybe that helps with his tummy. I have noticed when he's in work, his stall walking is not as bad and he doesn't touch his manure. Hopefully when this bit of rain passes, we'll have good enough weather again to start back to work.
A sad bit of news, as my last entry had to do with her, I had the vet out last week to pull a coggins on Dino and check Angel. What is typical in a lot of older horses, they sometimes don't handle winter very well, especially the hard keepers. Unfortunately for us, we had an unusually long and hard winter. It was very cold and we got a ton of snow. Back in October, I changed Angel's grain to a grain with a low starch and sugar concentrate, foolishly thinking her metabolism had slowed down enough that she could maintain weight and receive enough nutrients on hay and this grain alone. I was feeding her the recommended amount and supplementing it with oats, she started to loose weight. Then she started to go off her hay, she would eat what she wanted and scatter the rest in her stall. We got to the point of letting Angel go through the hay and whatever bale she started eating was the one we'd feed her. We had a 80% success rate. So then we called my old hay guy who deals strictly with alfalfa hay and got a few bales. She ate and ate all of it! When we mixed in the alfalfa with the timothy, she not so neatly sorted it and ate the alfalfa, so clearly there was something about the old hay she didn't like. But she still wasn't gaining weight, so I switched her back to her old grain and added a fat supplement to her feed. She started to gain weight, but not enough and seemed to hit a plateau.
This has been going on long enough and I needed some answers, but I didn't want the answer I was about to get.
Dino and Angel, September 14, 2010.
So the blog has once again gone dormant. Really I am so sick of rain. A friend of mine told me the farmers around here have to get corn in before Memorial Day or they can forget it. One things for sure, they'll have a real nice wheat crop this year!
I'm at the point now, that when the weather is good Dino must work. As of this writing, we have just over 4-weeks until our first show. I was really hoping to go Training Level, so that we can canter, but our canter needs a ton of work. I don't know, I guess if I really want to show we'll have to do Intro. Not like there aren't other shows happening this summer, pretty much every weekend until early October there's a show somewhere. What's so important here, this show is being held where my trainer is based. Its familiar territory and I believe a good experience for Dino.
All in all, Dino is good. Great in fact. His grouchiness has faded for the most part and he's a fairly agreeably fellow. I'm really not sure what the deal is...I have added a bit of alfalfa to his diet, so maybe that helps with his tummy. I have noticed when he's in work, his stall walking is not as bad and he doesn't touch his manure. Hopefully when this bit of rain passes, we'll have good enough weather again to start back to work.
A sad bit of news, as my last entry had to do with her, I had the vet out last week to pull a coggins on Dino and check Angel. What is typical in a lot of older horses, they sometimes don't handle winter very well, especially the hard keepers. Unfortunately for us, we had an unusually long and hard winter. It was very cold and we got a ton of snow. Back in October, I changed Angel's grain to a grain with a low starch and sugar concentrate, foolishly thinking her metabolism had slowed down enough that she could maintain weight and receive enough nutrients on hay and this grain alone. I was feeding her the recommended amount and supplementing it with oats, she started to loose weight. Then she started to go off her hay, she would eat what she wanted and scatter the rest in her stall. We got to the point of letting Angel go through the hay and whatever bale she started eating was the one we'd feed her. We had a 80% success rate. So then we called my old hay guy who deals strictly with alfalfa hay and got a few bales. She ate and ate all of it! When we mixed in the alfalfa with the timothy, she not so neatly sorted it and ate the alfalfa, so clearly there was something about the old hay she didn't like. But she still wasn't gaining weight, so I switched her back to her old grain and added a fat supplement to her feed. She started to gain weight, but not enough and seemed to hit a plateau.
This has been going on long enough and I needed some answers, but I didn't want the answer I was about to get.
Dino and Angel, September 14, 2010.Monday, May 2, 2011
Rain? What rain??
We've had dry weather now for a few days, so I took my chances and worked Dino this morning. Nothing fancy, just freestyle lunging. It was really a spur of the moment ordeal. When I got home from work this morning, I peeked out the back and saw the pasture had dried sufficiently enough that I thought I could turn horses out while I cleaned stalls. But then I got distracted with the news, so I turned horses out and went back into the house to watch the coverage. That's when it started raining. Again. Actually, I'd been in the house for atleast an hour by that point. Or was it two hours?
It was just a little sprinkle, but I ran down to the barn and let Angel out on the grass while I started stalls. After I got Sancho's and Angel's done, I put the remainder of their breakfast in theirs, moved the manure cart to Dino's stall and brought those two in.
I'm standing there, in the rain, watching Dino who's watching me. I knew I had a window of opportunity and I had to take it, so I grabbed my lunge whip and entered the pasture to freestyle lunge Dino. My trainer doesn't like freestyle lunging and I can see her point; you don't have any control over the horse and you really don't accomplish anything with it, except the horse running itself ragged. Other people will say they don't like lunging in the traditional sense; surcingle, side-reins, cavesson, lunge line and whip. Really it has to do with pulling on the horse's head, which subsequently pulls on their neck and back, causing them pain. I can understand that, and it is just like anything else with horses: Everyone has a different opinion and what works for one person/horse, may not work for another. I can go either way.
Back when I first got Dino, lunging was an important part of our everyday training. For one, I wanted to get Dino conditioned and two, I needed to install a "WHOA" before I ever put my foot in the stirrup. To me, that is the most important step for anyone getting an OTTB or mounting any new horse for the first time, and it sounds silly, but I seriously want to know, "Will they stop when I ask them to?" Stop walking. Stop trotting. Stop cantering. Stop galloping. Stop before we run into the wall/fence/tree. I've had these experiences, go with me on this and let me tell you, that horse will manage to come to dead stop before you will. Personally, I think that's how Newton came up with his Laws of Motion, he was riding a horse without a WHOA.
Funny story time. When I was a junior I was riding this lovely American Hanoverian mare named Lila. I loved Lila, she was just so beautiful this big bay mare. We were so close that I could walk down the aisle and call out her name, "Liiillllaaaaa", and she'd nicker. Not just any nicker, that deep throaty nicker that horses reserve for their closest herd-mates. Lila was way out of my price range, so I was just happy to keep her ridden, but she was my first experience with WHOA. It was my first time jumping her and she had picked up speed coming down a line, so I, obviously, said "WHOA". I'm sure you know what happened, she came to a dead stop and I did not. You would have thought, lesson learned. Nope. It took several more identical experiences for me learn that lesson. Moral of the story: WHOA is to stop and EASY is to slow down. Lila. Nice horse. Smart horse. Not so smart rider.
Which leads me back to today. Going to the left, Dino was king. He walked when I asked him, trotted when asked, and cantered. He even changed directions when I simply switched my lunge whip from my right hand to my left. I was so happy that Dino was remembering his lessons. He was even staying on a 20-meter circle around me. Such a good boy that Dino! But then we changed directions and all of a sudden I was still dealing with Dino but I was suddenly speaking a foreign language. Serenity. Serenity now.
Well two can play this game. You don't want to walk, well then you get to canter. A few trips around me, "Trot...good boy". A few more trips around me, "Walk...WHOA....walk....CANTER". This went on for several minutes. Or was it several hours? At first, I think Dino was kind of amused at my frustration because he kept turning his head towards me and hanging his tongue out. But then that went away and while he continued to turn his head towards me, his ears were flat back.
Then Dino got really tired and hot, and when he's really tired and hot both sides of his brain make a complete connection. So when I say, "Walk" he walks. And when he walks, he gets to stop and go back into the barn. As I'm putting his halter on, I rub his forelock and ask, "Was it really that hard, to do what I asked?"
Apparently so. And I still haven't learned WHOA = stop, Easy = slow down.
It was just a little sprinkle, but I ran down to the barn and let Angel out on the grass while I started stalls. After I got Sancho's and Angel's done, I put the remainder of their breakfast in theirs, moved the manure cart to Dino's stall and brought those two in.
I'm standing there, in the rain, watching Dino who's watching me. I knew I had a window of opportunity and I had to take it, so I grabbed my lunge whip and entered the pasture to freestyle lunge Dino. My trainer doesn't like freestyle lunging and I can see her point; you don't have any control over the horse and you really don't accomplish anything with it, except the horse running itself ragged. Other people will say they don't like lunging in the traditional sense; surcingle, side-reins, cavesson, lunge line and whip. Really it has to do with pulling on the horse's head, which subsequently pulls on their neck and back, causing them pain. I can understand that, and it is just like anything else with horses: Everyone has a different opinion and what works for one person/horse, may not work for another. I can go either way.
Back when I first got Dino, lunging was an important part of our everyday training. For one, I wanted to get Dino conditioned and two, I needed to install a "WHOA" before I ever put my foot in the stirrup. To me, that is the most important step for anyone getting an OTTB or mounting any new horse for the first time, and it sounds silly, but I seriously want to know, "Will they stop when I ask them to?" Stop walking. Stop trotting. Stop cantering. Stop galloping. Stop before we run into the wall/fence/tree. I've had these experiences, go with me on this and let me tell you, that horse will manage to come to dead stop before you will. Personally, I think that's how Newton came up with his Laws of Motion, he was riding a horse without a WHOA.
Funny story time. When I was a junior I was riding this lovely American Hanoverian mare named Lila. I loved Lila, she was just so beautiful this big bay mare. We were so close that I could walk down the aisle and call out her name, "Liiillllaaaaa", and she'd nicker. Not just any nicker, that deep throaty nicker that horses reserve for their closest herd-mates. Lila was way out of my price range, so I was just happy to keep her ridden, but she was my first experience with WHOA. It was my first time jumping her and she had picked up speed coming down a line, so I, obviously, said "WHOA". I'm sure you know what happened, she came to a dead stop and I did not. You would have thought, lesson learned. Nope. It took several more identical experiences for me learn that lesson. Moral of the story: WHOA is to stop and EASY is to slow down. Lila. Nice horse. Smart horse. Not so smart rider.
Which leads me back to today. Going to the left, Dino was king. He walked when I asked him, trotted when asked, and cantered. He even changed directions when I simply switched my lunge whip from my right hand to my left. I was so happy that Dino was remembering his lessons. He was even staying on a 20-meter circle around me. Such a good boy that Dino! But then we changed directions and all of a sudden I was still dealing with Dino but I was suddenly speaking a foreign language. Serenity. Serenity now.
Well two can play this game. You don't want to walk, well then you get to canter. A few trips around me, "Trot...good boy". A few more trips around me, "Walk...WHOA....walk....CANTER". This went on for several minutes. Or was it several hours? At first, I think Dino was kind of amused at my frustration because he kept turning his head towards me and hanging his tongue out. But then that went away and while he continued to turn his head towards me, his ears were flat back.
Then Dino got really tired and hot, and when he's really tired and hot both sides of his brain make a complete connection. So when I say, "Walk" he walks. And when he walks, he gets to stop and go back into the barn. As I'm putting his halter on, I rub his forelock and ask, "Was it really that hard, to do what I asked?"
Apparently so. And I still haven't learned WHOA = stop, Easy = slow down.
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