Listen to the voices in your head
Last night, I went out and saddled up a gnat horse with the attention span of a gnat Ro.
We proceeded to… well, I was on her back, and she was in the arena, and we were going in a direction that was, well, a direction. At one point, she was cantering on four separate tracks and doing her best giraffe imitation. It was impressive. Less try-that-at-home impressive and more what-not-to-do impressive, but still, impressive.
And because I worry when my horse goes around traveling with her body in multiple zip codes, I immediately started trying to figure out the issue. Rider is riding like a monkey with ADD, true, and Rider’s body… let’s not discuss Rider’s body. Horse was mentally looking for every excuse to check out, true, but there didn’t seem to be a physical reason for it. Well, besides the excusable response to poorly-applied aids. But the aids were not THAT poor. Not multiple-zip-codes poor.
It nagged at me all night—Ro doesn’t do stuff like this without a reason, and being distracted is not sufficient reason. The voices in my head kept coming back to something physical. Since I was at the barn this morning, I repalpated her back and lunged her quickly to see how she was moving. She was fine.
Unhappily, I told my doubts to stuff it. Apparently, it was all crappy riding. I was glad she wasn’t in pain—of course I was—but I hate the thought that I was riding that badly.
This evening, I was back at the barn and brought her in clean her up a little—trim her bridlepath and such. Then I turned her back out. To get to her turnout paddock, we have to go through the gelding paddock. This is fine; we’re all used to it.
One of the geldings was hanging around by the gate to the mare paddock, but he retreated a polite distance. I unhooked the gate and started to lead Ro in, but she balked. I looked back to see why—surely, standing still for two whole seconds hadn’t turned her feet to lead?
She took advantage of those two seconds to spread her legs and proposition the gelding. Who looked very confused.
I tossed her in the mare paddock and even though her new BFF had come down to the gate, Ro was miserable. Girl just can’t get a break—no one ever lets her have a good time.
So—coming into raging heat last night. This explains a lot.
But she got today off from riding (planned in advance, the timing was just good) and hopefully in the next couple days she’ll stop thinking with her ovaries and we can go back to our regularly scheduled program. I think this was still an improvement over her spring transitional heats, but clearly she and I need to sit down and sort out our schedules so that only one of us is having an off day at a time.
And my instinct was right after all. There was a physical issue.** I should trust myself more.
** Ro would like everyone to know that there wouldn’t be a physical issue if the two legged creatures would stop interfering and just let her get on with finding a suitable mate, TYVM.
What’s in a pedigree?
I toy off and on with breeding Ro and for a long time had been resigned to the fact that any foals could hope, at best for a COP from the stallion’s warmblood registry. However, recently I found out that ISR/Oldenburg will allow mares with 75% blood (TB or Arab) into the Main Mare Book. And this caught my attention, because Ro is 50% Arab and has a fair bit of TB behind the QH/Paint.
The million dollar question was how much TB?
I’ve done rough estimates before and ended up around 16-18%. I decided to do a little more thorough research, and this time ended up around 21%. I doubt I could find another 4% in there—I was going pretty far back into the pedigree already.
However, going pretty far back into the pedigree brings up some interesting TB bloodlines.
For example, the direct sire line goes back to Chimney Sweep, whose direct sire line continues back to Whalebone/Waxy/Pot8os/Eclipse—and so back to the Darley Arabian. Also thanks to Eclipse: Regulus and the Goldolphin Arabian. Also through Waxy: Cade (by the Goldolphin Arabian out of Roxana). Also through Pot8os, Oroonoko and so back to the Byerley Turk.
From Whalebone’s dam line, Matchem (by Cade). And Highflyer/Herod, thus Flying Childers. Also Snap (so Flying Childers again and also Bay Bolton).
Other TBs via Chimney Sweep, in one way or another: Woodpecker, Australian/West Australian/Melbourne. Lexington/Boston/Timoleon/Sir Archy. Galopin (The Flying Dutchman, Bay Middleton, Blacklock). Voltigeur. Hanover (Hindoo, Glencoe, Birdcatcher). King Tom (Pochahontas).
She also has Three Bars in her, who traces back to a lot of the names already mentioned and also Don John, Faugh-a-Ballagh, Stockwell, St Simon, Rataplan, Isonomy, Bend Or, and Sir Peter Teazle.
I’m not being very systematic here—this is just skimming through the bloodlines of the two most obvious TBs and picking out names I recognize and that are ringing bells as being influential in some way.
Obviously I’m more familiar with sires than dams.
I think that once you get back to the 17/1800s, the pedigrees tend to become pretty standard, with the same names showing up all the time. Still—those are some impressive names.
And it amuses me no end that Pot8os is in her pedigree as much as he is. I love that horse. Actually, I just love his name. Always have.
Pot00000000!
Those moments when you feel like you can ride
When I went out to the barn last night, it was spitting rain—you know, that sort of rain that can’t decide if it actually wants to be a sustained rain or taper off into a drizzle, so it just spits on all your plans either way.
Since there was no lightening, I tacked Ro up and we rode anyway.
You can guess how happy she was about that.
Coming out of the barn, she spooked at some steps she has walked past dozens of times, doing the snorty ‘Make one move, buster, and I’ll kick your head in” thing.
You go, girl, Make those wooden stairs shake right down to their cold, concrete foundation hearts!
After a discussion about standing at the mounting block (yes, we can), I started off with our normal walk warmup. Usually, even when she comes out bouncing off the walls, she settles after ten minutes of walking or so. And I use those ten minutes to shake off work and adjust mentally to riding. Also physically, as I shift from slouching slob to less slouching hunter rider to, eventually, something approximating a dressage rider. Or so I like to tell myself.
Ro never did settle at the walk, so I decided to just go to work and settle her through work.
And work.
And work.
About the time she came to the party, someone shut a car door and she thought about spooking.
So more work.
And work.
She came to the party again, so I figured we would finish up with some canter work now that she was doing less Pepe Le Pew trot and more… wait, is that really the only cartoon character I can think of? A skunk? What a sad state of affairs for me. Anyway, she was moving more like a real horse and had let go of a lot of tension and was staying fairly straight most of the time. If we wait until everything is absolutely perfect to canter, we’ll never canter. But cantering from a Pepe Le Pew trot gets me a pogo stick canter. And while pogo sticks are fun and all, they aren’t that fun.
Anyway. So there we were, trotting a circle while I debated how to ask her for the canter. Our transitions suck, so we need a plan.
Finally, I settled on leg yielding in to the quarter line, canter, 15 meter circle.
I thought I ought to test the leg yield first, and for that I like an exercise introduced to me earlier this year—if you are going left, for example, leg yield from the corner to X, circle right 10 meters, ending back at X, circle left ten meters, ending back at X, then leg yield back to the rail. Basically, you’re just adding a figure eight to a standard leg yield in to X/back to the rail exercise, but it tells you a lot about your horse’s straightness and whether they are really on your aids (if they aren’t, the circles are uggggly—ask me how I know).
Ro started blowing through the bend in the circles, as she does, so I decided to forget the canter and focus on fixing that. She’s so out of shape right now that I knew we couldn’t do both.
After a couple run throughs we were seeing some improvement—at least she wasn’t free-wheeling around the circles like a skateboarder on crack.
Then the right leg yield/circle were ok, but not great, the left circle was almost there, and the left leg yield—spot on. Straight, even, and powerful. One of our best leg yields, ever.
So we did it again, with the same result.
I hopped off immediately and called it a day. She gave me a look to see if this was for real or if I was hopping back on (I do, sometimes), then rubbed her muddy green foamy mouth all over my shoulder.
Note to self: no more molasses-based treats while tacking up.
But other than that, a good end to the ride.
Photo Updates
All is well in Ro’s world—she’s settled in to the new barn, where she’s actually on 24/7 turnout and loving it. We’re getting back into a work routine and things are going well.
The couple pictures I took of her at the new barn made her look like a mutant, so here’s one from the show we went to this spring:
You should see the close-up of my face: I look like I’m headed to face a firing squad or something. Ah, show nerves. They are awesome.
But Ro is cute enough for both of us.
And here is Dexter, after getting a bath today:
Normally he has his head shoved in the round bale, but he was busy checking to see if any of the other horses had left grain by their buckets (fat chance, but he’s an optimist). By the time I left the barn, he was back to inhaling hay like there is no tomorrow.
Dexter Finds His Brain
And it’s a pony brain.
Sunday morning, I’m at home playing Minesweeper planning out all the things I need to get done when I get a text: Dexter is having a ball!
That’s great, I think. Then I wonder… Ro went to her new barn on Saturday, and Dexter is turned out alone in his paddock until we get him rotated back in with the barn owner’s horses. He’s a social little critter. I have a hard time seeing him tearing it up in his paddock all alone. So maybe someone put him out on the grass with the barn manager’s horses? That would be kind of cool.
I text back to find out.
A minute later, my phone rings. He’s out with the barn manager’s horses. They thought I put him out there, although they did think it was kind of weird that I’ve leave him out there all night.
Ah. I see.
Dexter is an escape artist.
There’s a weak spot in his paddock fence, and while he hasn’t challenged it before, apparently being turned out alone while his buddies were out on the grass was too much for him. I’m assuming he wiggled out through the weak spot.
They put him back in his paddock and tossed him some hay to keep him entertained, since he was galloping all over and distracting lesson people. When I went out later in the morning, he looked very pleased with himself. He’s a little scraped up, and his fly mask was in another horse’s paddock for reasons I don’t even want to know, but he had obviously been having fun and felt it was horribly unfair that he’d been tossed back in solitary.
He was going back into the group turnout last night, so hopefully that will keep him entertained enough not to try escaping again.
I should have known from the first time he went out in the group turnout, when the mares put him in his place and he retreated to a back corner… but was obviously plotting his next moves and not wallowing in remorse for overstepping the boundaries.
He’s cute. With a pony brain.
Lord help me. I’m going to need it.