Do you *have* to be brave to event?
While hacking around the property today, we came across a ditch.
I asked Ro to cross, and she wasn’t so into that. We tried a different location, and I felt like she was considering just jumping the thing.
Suddenly, instead of asking her to go forward, my body was telling her: Hey, go forward, but not, like, too forward. In fact, if you want to stop with your toes on the edge of the ditch, that’s cool. We can stand here and contemplate the alligators hiding in the ditch. We both know they’re there, so, you know, no need to rush here. Maybe staring into the ditch is enough for today. Want to go get a latte?
Then I realized that was silly, we went back to the original crossing point, and rode across like sensible people and ponies.
However, I get the feeling this doesn’t bode well for our future wanna-be-eventing career.
One of us should be brave, right?
Or is this something we can get over with more experience for both of us? I admit I’ve been an arena flower all my riding life, but the new barn boarders a great trail system—we can get out and about very easily and get experience for both of us. Maybe we can get brave together, as long as we don’t actually see alligators. Nah, we won’t run into alligators. Snakes, maybe.
Um… let’s not think about that. Let’s think about all the ditches we can find and cross. We shall build character. Lots and lots of character.
And maybe some bridges.
Getting Back Into a Routine
Ro is doing well.
The vet was back out Monday and we changed treatments; the shots we had been giving her to help with the allergies just weren’t doing anything. He wanted to go the drill-and-drain route, which we’ve talked about before, but we going to try one more thing first.
I moved her to the new barn Monday night. Since it has grass instead of dirt paddocks, it is much less dusty than the old barn. I want to see what a change of environment plus a strong course of antibiotics does—I’m hoping it’ll clear her up and keep her clear. If this doesn’t work, we can drill and drain.
Of course, that means I’m having to resist the temptation to put a paper bag over her head every time I take her out of her stall: Snotty horse? What snotty horse? I don’t see a snotty nose, do you? I did put a sign on her stall explaining that she has a sinus infection and it’s not contagious. Although I’ve gotten a look or two from other boarders, I haven’t seen a lynch mob yet.
She’s settling in better than I expected. While she’s pacing in her stall and calling out a lot, she is not trying to tear the barn down. I consider this progress. I put her right into work; I know some people give them a couple weeks go adjust, but I want her to learn she can go new places and cope with a new environment while she focuses on the job at hand. She is a lot more distracted here than she has been when going to my trainer’s, but I think that has to do with her buddies being on the property. She’s going to have to get over that; it’s likely we’ll take these guys to a show together, and they have to learn to deal with new environments, being near each other but separated, focusing on work, etc. We might as well use this opportunity to work on that.
All in all, I’m much happier today than I was on Friday, or even on Monday. The antibiotics are working, she’s settling in much better than I had hoped, and we’ll soon be back in a real routine. She is thrilled with the larger paddocks and the grass—so much so that she and her buddies didn’t want to be caught this morning. Never fear: I remembered the magic carrot sticks. They worked just as well this time as they did before.
April Fool’s!
This has been my life.
On Saturday, I trailered Ro out for a lesson. We ran through Training 1, 2, and 3 just to see. I wasn’t sure what we were going to see, but that was kind of the point.
Each ride got better.
We really ought to practice stringing movements together more often. Or even just once in a while. Any number bigger than “never” would be good, actually.
We need to ride in a real arena more often, where we can ride accurate figures at recognized sizes.
The dressage arena at that barn is set up within a larger arena using cones. It’s not unlike what you would see at a show. Ro and I managed to eliminate ourselves about 6,000 times per test by running outside, over, or through various cones. I secretly suspect she has a cone killing instinct. Or that she thinks the object of this goofy riding is to knock down as many cones as you can, as quickly as you can.
Everyone ignored our inability to ride inside the cones. This is not a show; it’s a lesson. And once we start working on stringing things together more often and riding accurate figures once in a while, we’ll fix the riding inside the cones thing naturally. Unless Ro really does have a deep-seated killer instinct when it comes to cones. I’m not sure what we’ll do then.
We return home.
Monday, she’s a bit snotty. I have been waiting for this shoe to drop ever since her last sinus infection. It’s hard to say what caused it - trailering? The pollen that was sheeting off the trees so heavily on Sunday that it looked like alien green rain?
I call the vet because 1) after our last round of sinus infection fun, I want to nip this in the bud. Before he starts talking about putting a drainage hole in her sinus. And 2) Ro and I are supposed to move barns on Saturday. While I know and my vet knows that this is allergies or a sinus infection and not contagious, walking into a new barn with an obviously snotty horse is not the way to make friends.
The vet comes out and proposes a treatment that does not involve drainage holes, so we proceed. He draws bloodwork so I can reassure my new barn manager that we’re reasonably healthy. Don’t mind the snot; look at the white blood cell count!
Wednesday we do round 2 of the treatment. She is still perky and healthy, no signs of upper respiratory or any other illness. We continue to think allergies.
Wednesday night, I have her checked by the chiropractor. No adjustment needed. Sweet.
Thursday, I get a heads-up text that she’s a bit off her feed. I make it out to the barn and she looks like something the cat drug in. Which is kind of impressive, given the size ratio of Ro to the barn cats.
I lunge her to get her moving, and she perks up a little. She’s got a small temp for the first time all week. Her nose is not quite the Niagra Falls of snot, but it’s thinking about it. I give her Banamine and put her up for the night. I’ll reevaluate in the morning and discuss with the vet then.
The next morning, she looks good as gold and eats her breakfast with relish. And by the next morning, I mean today. Friday. April Fool’s.
Because I am good at being paranoid, I leave a note for the morning feeder to call me. She does a visual check of her condition for me, and I’m reassured. Maybe Thursday was an anomaly? My paranoia wins out. I ask my friend to take her temp at lunch.
103.
My friend can’t believe it and retakes it. 102.8. I suppose that’s better, right?
I call the vet. I hope I get to see the new truck I’m buying him some day.
He puts me last on the list for the day, mostly because my boss, while understanding, would like me to pretend to work sometime this week.
When I make it out to the barn, I go check on Ro. I’m expecting a repeat of Thursday.
She nickers at me, ears pricked, bright eyed, snot-less. I give her the stink eye and pull out my thermometer.
Temp down to near normal range.
I give her the stink eye again. The vet’s coming out to see a horse with a 103 temp, and I am going to show him a horse who looks better than she has all week.
I am convinced this whole thing, and today’s temperature spike in particular, was Ro’s idea of a great April Fool’s joke.
The vet arrives and we discuss. There is nothing to see here. We decide to ride it out and see what happens over the weekend; if she spikes again or goes off her feed again, we’ll reevaluate at that time. Otherwise, he’ll be back for the final treatment on Monday and she will hopefully be good to go by then.
Of course, “by then” is already past the date I’m supposed to be moving out of Barn A and into Barn B.
Fortunately, I’m on good terms with my current barn owner, so we can stay as long as we need. We’re not unhappy with this barn—I’ll bring Ro back if she can’t adjust to the new barn—but the new barn has large grass paddocks and a covered ring. Ro covets the paddocks, although she doesn’t know it yet, and I covet the ring. We’re going to try it out and see how it works. Well, we’ll try it out as soon as I can bring her over without having to sneak her in during the dead of night and hide her from other boarders.
The vet heads off. Ro and I head off to lunge—she needs to move and keep things draining.
Thursday she lunged like a dying freight train. Today, she floats along, showing off just how much reach she can have in her stride when she wants to. She’s impeccably obedient. I’m not sure if I should strangle her or hug her.
My current barn manager thinks Ro is trying to tell me that she doesn’t want to change barns. She could be right. But those grass paddocks…
So, we’ll see. If she continues to improve, we may move as soon as Monday.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t post all this as it was happening, the answer is… in addition to all of this going on… on Monday my internet died. Of course, since I had no internet, I did not know the number to call for support. Whoops.
Fortunately, I have a “self help” tool on my computer. I am not very impressed with my self help tool, since it tells me daily that it can’t update its files. If it can’t keep itself running, how is it supposed to help my internet problems?
But somewhere in the self-help tool there must be a phone number. I wrangle with it for thirty minutes until it decides it can’t call home on its own and I might have to do it instead. Reluctantly, it gives me a phone number.
I call. I get a robot who wants to repeat all the tests the self-help tool made me do. The robot refuses to let me speak to an operator.
Half an hour later, the robot decides it can’t talk to my modem. It advises me to find the diagram that shows how to hook up my cables, hook them up, and call it back.
That’s right, folks: an hour of automated support from AT&T, and I’m told to check a diagram for how to hook up my cables. It doesn’t even give me the diagram, it just vaguely references it as one that came with the modem.
I considered briefly that the robot could be right. Maybe Onyx rewired the modem while I was browsing the web, and that’s why everything died on me without warning. I kind of doubt it, though, and start tossing words at the robot to see if it recognizes any of them. It appears that most of them were outside its vocabulary, but eventually it says (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Oh, you want to speak to a real person? Why didn’t you say so?”
I hate the robot.
When I finally have a tech on the line, he starts repeating the tests the self-help tool and the robot tried. I let him. The poor guy has a script he has to run through, and it’s not his fault. He concludes that I need to set up an appointment with a technician.
Now, remember, this is on Monday, after the vet has been out to see Ro, and he’s proposed a series of treatments. I know I have to take time off on Wednesday for the vet, and I may be taking time off on Friday (at the time, we weren’t sure if the last treatment would be Friday or Monday). As I said: my boss is understanding, but I have to show up sometimes if I want a paycheck. Work is also tricky right now. I defer scheduling the appointment until I can talk to my boss.
Ultimately, the appointment gets scheduled for next Tuesday.
Technically I don’t have internet right now, but I borrowed a wireless thingy to get some work done tonight. And then some catch up.
Consider yourself caught up. If you feel exhausted, you aren’t the only one.
Let’s hope the weekend is better.
Carrot Sticks—They Really Are Magic
I try to live and let live as far as natural horsemanship is concerned.
Over time, I’ve come to realize that it’s just another discipline, at this point, and like most disciplines it has its valid points and it has its points that makes outsiders wonder WTF is wrong with the people who ride in it.
You can say WTF about the Horsenality Charts. You can say WTF about rolkur in dressage. You can say WTF about hunters and over lunging. Or the peanut rolling in western pleasure. And on and on and on. Every discipline has crazy lemmings. Every single one of them.
So I live and let live. I can’t even begrudge the big NH names their brand-name equipment, because Anky has a line of saddles, Pessoa has a line of everything, etc etc etc.
I do roll my eyes at the “carrot stick,” but hey… I’ve also seen hunter people arguing passionately about types of lunge lines and how they are very different. So what do I know, anyway?
Well, today Ro demonstrated the power of the carrot stick. I now believe in it thoroughly.
I’d turned her out on the grass to graze for a bit. It’s nice spring grass. She resents being brought in from the nice spring grass, so when she sees me coming, she’s started to walk away. I’ve been working on this; I walk out to her several times and just pat her, then let her go back to grazing.
Today, I happened to have carrots with me. Ro never gets carrots, because I am a mean owner who never remembers to bring them from home, assuming I even have them in the house.
So when I had to go out to my truck to get something, I grabbed a carrot. I’d feed it to her and let her go back to grazing. People approaching = good things happening. Maybe I’d be able to catch her later.
She walked away half-heartedly, but I caught up and gave her the carrot. It was a big carrot.
Then I walked over to my truck. She followed me.
I grabbed what I needed and walked into the barn.
She followed me.
I stopped by her stall, where I had the other carrots stashed. She walked in her stall, turned around, and pricked her ears at me.
I showed her a carrot and headed out to her paddock.
She followed me.
They were all awfully big carrots. Not those baby carrots, but real carrots. Stick-like carrots, you could say.
And their magic is such that a pony will leave spring grass and follow me around the barn, just in case I have more on me.
I will never doubt the power of carrot sticks again.
Video: Ro, Feb 2011
These are recent videos, taken on a day when we were both a little tired and stiff, working on really staying straight between the aids, which had both of us a little tense. So—by no means the best example of anything. As always, you’re welcome to comment; you won’t hurt my feelings and the odds are, I’ll agree with what you have to say.
I could wait until we had perfect video to post an update, but I decided to go ahead with these because even though [excuses, excuses, excuses], I can still see just how far we’ve come and how much some things have improved. And that makes me super, super happy.