There's Always Room for Improvement

Well, I have a show tomorrow. Even though it's on Sunday.
 I rode Santana and gave him a bath.
That sounds like he did perfect... no, he was a pain. So instead of picturing him standing still and enjoying a bath, picture him trying to avoid the water by going in circles around me.

Before that I rode Ana. Well, Aleythia rode Ana, but she thought something was wrong with Ana, because when we cinched her up she layed her ears back and threw her head up, and when Aleythia was moving around in the saddle she also layed her ears back and threw her head up. She was also being a general pain. So, I got on her and got her to walk, and then checked out her trot. I didn't find any problems there except she pinned her ears back when I asked for the trot

We decided that Ana just doesn't have respect for Aleythia so she tries to get away with all these little things.

Guess what I did yesterday?

I rode Ana bareback!
This actually isn't anything new, but it was a lot of fun. This last winter I figured out how to sit her trot, so it is actually fun riding bareback. I figured out that if I leaned forward in the slightest I couldn't stay on, but if I sat on my jean pockets and made sure to not lean forward, just go with the motion and not tense up, I could ride the fastest trot she had. Oh, and we are in the process of teaching her how to  side pass. Surprisingly she can do it quite well. She can't side pass the length of the paddock but she can do it for a couple steps. She gets the concept. I also taught her how to flex at the poll. Now when we are walking or trotting whenever her head is too high and she's going too fast I can get her to flex at the poll, and it calms her down a little bit. Ana has gotten a lot better with how responsive she is and how hyper. I have a photo of her from maybe three or four years ago and Aleythia is riding her. So, you have this little kid trying to get this really hyper horse to slow down and the kid isn't relaxed at all. I'll have to put it up here one of these days. I have a few progress photos of Ana. The one just described, one taken maybe last year, and one of the pictures above. There is a distinct improvement. The reason it has taken us so long to get her to calm down is in part because that's just her character (she's one quarter arabian and three quarters saddlebred for goodness sake!) and also because we really didn't know what to do about it before this year. 

Training Horses... Classify it anyway you want

Today we took three of the horses to the chiropractor. Santana, Strudder, and Blacky. We were gunna take them to the chiropractor yesterday, but we got on the highway and barley a mile out the back left tire on the trailer lost some of its rubber. So, we limped back home, dropped the horses off and went to an auto repair shop. Terry bought four new tires for the trailer and rescheduled the appointment with the chiropractor. Santana and Strudder both had ulcers and out of place ribs. Did you know ulcers are caused by stress. A lot of the times it comes from the pecking order of horses. The Dr. said that when there is more than two horses in a heard there starts to be some competition for leader or being the lowest. Both can cause stress. Santana's neck was out of place. The Dr. also poked their hind feet with a needle. I don't remember what that was for except for a release of pain. He also told us to spend 30 seconds backing them up at the beginning of each ride. The reason for this was to strengthen their hindquarters and they will learn that they have a back end and start using it. When they use their front end it will eventually cause pain. The Dr. explained it like their front legs were like the suspensions on car wheels. They are connected to the rest of the skeleton by muscle and they are supposed to go up and down but when they use their front legs to go forward it causes their front legs to go horizontally witch in turn causes some of their ribs to  shift down and pushes on the nerves and causes pain. They also tend to cheat with their back feet by almost dragging them along. This causes their muscle by the socket to shift over which also causes them pain. He told us also that we will not be able to get them to back up for 30 seconds right away, and that we need to make sure it's thirty seconds, so we have to watch the clock because they will be fighting us the whole while. So, this is the medical reason to teach your horse collection.



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Another thing the Dr. talked about was cushing's disease. I don't really know what it is, but you can tell if your horse has it by a bump on the crest of your horse's neck that looks like the mane is pulling it over. He said Santana might have it. He said to watch for a drastic increase in weight. I'll try to remember to get a picture of the bump.



We also took the fillies over to Terry's brother's place. Which we call the Rosen Farm. We took them over there because Coffie had figured out that she can get under the fence, and keeping them in the back pen and barn wasn't very good because they had a limited space to move about in, and without any grazing to fill them up they were eating a bale and a half a day. This works much better. They have more room to run and they can graze all day and night without us worrying that they will escape. It's only a mile from Terry's as the crow flies and a little over a mile from my place. Also, Flicka is at the Rosen Farm too. I'll explain who she is later. Sadly I forgot to take pictures of her.

feeding time!

do you have more grain?

look at this adorable kitten

desensitizing the horses to the kitten

it was very entertaining 

ain't it adorable!

The fillies will be at the Rosen Farm until winter hits which is about two months from now. When that happens we will take them back to Terry's because they can't graze anyway. And it will be more convenient for Aleythia and me because then we'd have to walk a mile to the Rosen Farm to work with the fillies and then another mile to Terry's to work with the other horses. All this in temperatures in the 10 degree range. How fun! (insert sarcasm)

Review Progress

Okay I want to look over what the fillies know so far. They will let us walk up to them and pet them and they are relatively easy to catch. They have become extremely friendly too. They all know how to move their hindquarters, move their shoulders, back up, the idea of flexing, picking up feet, tying, and the beginnings of ground tying. They have been desensitized to the lead rope, a plastic bag, a whip slapping against the ground, and a frisbee. The frisbee can fly past their heads, over their backs, between their ears, maybe clip the tips of their ears or slide off their back, and even hit them and fall next to their head, and they won't do a thing. We can jump down off the fence next to them and put our feet on them while sitting on the fence.

And on another horse, Santana is doing quite well. He is being more sane about running poles, and also about starting the run. But I can't get him to canter in jumping figure eight.

 Look at how long his tail is!

Fair Week is Almost Here

I am looking forward to the fair. I love the smell of the fair, the most prominent being the smell of onion rings. I love watching all the shows. The show with all these draft horses pulling wagons and the mule shows. I love to help out for a day at my grade school's food stand, and how busy it gets when all the people who set up the rides come in for supper. And I love showing. It is a lot of fun. The fair is less than two weeks away, and I'm still getting the kinks out of my horse.

First off, is that he gets way too hyper running those games, so that when I turn him towards the poles or barrels he takes off. I don't want that. I want him to go when I tell him to not like someone lit his tail on fire. He is now pretty good at waiting for my cue to go. What I did was every time he took off I would turn him and make him go back to the start. It takes a while, but he eventually gets it. I also would turn him and make him disengage his hindquarters then go back to the start. He also likes to take short cuts. So, when where running the poles he cuts as close as he possibly can and my knee ends up knocking it over, and I can't turn him away because he is a hot head and doesn't want to be uninterrupted while he's running. But, I am working on it. Every time he tries to turn the pole on his own accord I would turn him away from it. Where he wants to go I go the opposite. It's a work in progress.

Today with the fillies while I was riding Santana Aleythia worked with Coffie and Dash. She told me that they are just not getting the point of flexing. She also worked on picking up their feet. When I was done with Santana, she rode Ana and I worked with Toffy and Frosty. They get flexing down pretty good. I found that the longer I rewarded them with rubbing them, the longer it took them to consistently turn their head towards me. The release of the pressure of the halter is the reward so you don't have to spend five minutes rubbing them. It seems that the longer I waited they seemed to forget what I was rewarding them for. I also worked on ground tying.

Yesterday

Coffie, Frosty, Toffy

Coffie, Toffy

Coffie, Toffy

Coffie, Toffy

Toffy

Toffy, Coffie, Dash

Dash

Dash

Coffie

When I was desensitizing them to the plastic bag, both of the horses I worked with had problems with it being around their back feet. They would kick and start running. I got them to be fine with it though.

Teaching People and Horses

Last Saturday, I was able to show off the fillies to my oldest sister, Emily. Well, I wasn't just gunna let her sit there and watch me work with the foals, and being that Aleythia had left that morning for a camp in Colorado, some help would be nice. So, I gave Emily a lead rope and we caught two of the foals, and I taught her how to teach a horse. It was quite fun. At one point I was commenting that Emily was being really careful around the filly she had. So, I explained to her that the more you act like your horse is going to explode the more he will explode. So, I demonstrated with the filly I had, I slapped my hand on her head and rubbed her head, repeating it till she didn't react to my hand being put abruptly on her head, and ranted and raved about how I was gunna set a firework off by her head and it would be soo much fun, and making a general fool out of myself! Emily was laughing at me.

Later she told me that that was fun. She explained to me that horses aren't quite her thing, but she enjoyed being able too see my knowledge about horses, and how I had grown. She said that I had become a leader... 

All I want to say is that when someone tells you that you have been doing a good job or something along that line, it means a lot. If you have someone who looks up to you and values your opinion, I would encourage you to tell them they are doing a good job, or something else you can compliment them on.

Over the last couple days I have been working with the fillies on moving their hindquarters, backing up,  leading, moving their shoulders, tying, lunging (walk or trot), and desensitizing. I have trouble leading a few of them, but I have discovered the more pressure you use when you want them to take a step, the harder they brace against it, it works much better to have light pressure, and let them find the answer. Today, we gave Frosty a bath. That's Frosty in the picture above. Taken maybe two weeks ago. Well, when we gave her a bath, we started with her feet, and she did.... nothing. We took the water away maybe every eight seconds as a reward, but she didn't react to it at all. When we got to her neck she was a little reactive, but all she did was lift her head a bit higher. For her head, we just put a thumb over the hose, and pointed it towards the sky, so that it would be like rain was falling on her head. She tried to avoid it, but was generally pretty good. (When I say we, I mean Carter and me)

I rode Santana yesterday too. It has been decided that I will ride Santana in the fair instead of Carter. Carter's excuse was that he had not been riding him enough. I told him that I haven't either, and he replied that I knew how to control him. I actually don't blame him for not wanting to ride Santana in the fair. Santana is generally calm, but you run him through those barrels or poles, and he becomes a horror to ride. To me it's kind fun, but to a kid who hasn't ridden anything but a calm pony, it's scary. And what I mean as fun, is it's fun getting him to calm down. Not fun, where I let him do it.

Santana

This is of me riding Santana last year at the fair in barrels. I think our time was about 16.9 seconds. The video below is of us coming in. He was so hyper Terry had to lead him in, and I had to get him into the corner. The first time I was in jumping figure eight, and Terry let him go, and he shot forward, and I was so not ready. When  I feel out of control in the saddle I turn my horse in a circle. Well, the only problem with that was that he crossed the timer line, so we were disqualified. He did that two more times in separate classes, but in the class he didn't cross the time line was barrels, and we won first place. And I just thought I would say that the first day showing him, he did everything perfect.

Look Who Escaped

I rode my bike up the driveway and saw Terry. He was getting ready to go to the vet. I asked if I could come and he said I could, so I went down to the barn to put my bike by the barn. When I got around the bend in the driveway and the pine trees weren't in my way I saw Blacky calmly eating grass on my side of the fence. So, I yelled up the drive, "Terry, is there a reason Blacky's out?" Carter was there too, and he yelled back, "Out, what do you mean 'out?" So he came down the drive and walked up to her took her head in his hands and led her to the gate. We shooed the horses away, and opened the gate and Blacky ran through. They then explained to me that Blacky had been with the fillies. Since there isn't an actually fence, just a long strip of plastic, that didn't have an electrical current running through it because it was turned off. They told me that she was probably able to get under the fence because she's so small. All she has to do is drop her head, and the plastic goes right over her head, up her neck, and across her back, and she's free!

After we got Blacky into the paddock, we herded the fillies into the barn because we didn't want them to escape when we weren't there. I went to close the gate behind them, and Terry was walking into the barn, and he asks me, "Are those big horses in there?" Sure enough all of our other horses had gotten in with the fillies in the barn. Terry and I were like that is not good. We were both thinking that there would soon come an explosion of flying hooves and teeth... Nothing... They all stood in the barn and then calmly walked into the back pen. So then came the task of separating them. We found the little red gate that leads from the paddock into that pen open. We summarized that when it was latched it must not have been in tight enough, so the horses just pushed on it a little and it opened. So, we were able to chase Misstack, Ana, Strudder, and Blacky out, but Coffie had gotten past too. Well, we left her and tried to get Santana separated from the fillies. Well we got him a little bit separate, and we shooed him out the gate, and he charged out. Carter went out to try and catch Coffie, but she escaped into the pasture with Blacky. Then all the other horses charged out of the paddock, and were galloping around the pasture with Coffie. The other three fillies called to Coffie, and all the horses ran to the large gate connecting the pasture and the back pen. Well, all the other horses ran off again except Strudder with Coffie. We were able to get strudder away and Coffie was thinking about going after him, but decided to stay with her buddies. So, I was trying to get the gate open, but I couldn't untie the twine string, so I just took my pocket knife out and cut it. We herded Coffie in and all the horses were were they were supposed to be, and we got in Terry's truck to go to the vet. Then I asked Terry if Stretch was supposed to be in the barn, so we had to go back and let Stretch out. Terry had just fed him. Now we were truly on our way to the vet.

And just so you know, none of the horses needed medical attention. Terry just wanted to get some vaccination stuff from the vet.