A new direction

The past year and a half has been eventful, but I haven't really been clear on how to write about it. Training a young horse from the ground up seems so prosaic. I have a whole lot of opinions, but somehow have thought that I lacked the educational background to express them.

I've changed my mind. In the last year or so two "trainers" have come and gone from my barn. People who get paid to train horses, and supposedly have years of experience. Neither was any older than me, and while they may have had more formal experience, I wasn't impressed with either.

One used mechanical aids to force her horse into a position that superficially appeared to be correct -- but was in reality completely wrong. Mechanical aids such as draw-reins, martingales and tight side reins serve only to teach the horse bad habits. Being forced to hold his head at some angle does nothing to teach them to use their bodies (abdominal, butt and back muscles) correctly.  I suspect that it probably can lead to atrophy of the proper muscles as well.  Not a lot different from me using a corset to hold myself upright, the muscles would quit doing the work.

The other "trainer" was downright abusive. She also used mechanical aids, this time to tie the horses head around to teach him to "give" to the bit. He's not "giving" at all and in fact could be seriously injured if left with his head tied around for very long or if he spooked in such a position. Her horses also all had severe sores on their mouths from her method of teaching them to "give". If you have to sore his mouth to make him listen you need to try something else.

I believed my experience to be far less, and in terms of the number of horses trained, it is. But, I retrained Ketah, who was horribly abused and turned her into a horse that is not only gorgeous under saddle (I once got an offer to buy her for dressage), but regularly gets petted at the barn and told how sweet she is by those who didn't know what a hellion she was! I helped to train her son from birth on, and he's a really great horse too (and a big goofball). Sati has been a whole different experience. But I've worked her from the ground up and I get complimented on her now too.

While I don't think I'll be offering training services any time soon (I rather enjoy my day job) I will quit second-guessing myself from lack of education.  I have a whole shelf of training books and a good stock of common sense that seems to be doing allright.

Once upon a time Ketah really was a hellion.  Plenty of "cowboys"
were scared of her.  Now she's the barn pet.  Of course the other
is so clearly a "crazy Arab".  Quick, someone wake them both up!

Going bare

I'm about to try this blogging thing again. After having several months off due to the injury I will be doing several things at once (yes I know, take it easy girl...). Ketah will be out of shape, she is now 24. I will be out of shape, and Sati will still be green. Until then I found some posts I never posted (no idea why). Maybe I will throw some other stuff in as well. We shall see.

More than two years ago I had my shoer take Ketah's steel shoes off. We had been riding trails and her feet were tender. So tender in fact that the final straw was that she stepped on a small rock and cut the back of her frog. This led to an abscess throughout the frog.

This had just been the tail end of 4 years of stone bruises and hoof abscesses. If your horse has never had one let me tell you that you think something truly awful has happened. They suddenly are three legged! The first time Ketah had one I was sure she had broken her leg!! Anyhow, after this final incident (about two years ago) I went out and got a set of Easy Boot Epic's. Suddenly she was willing to walk over rocks again, and by the way I don't mean big huge rocks. Mostly this is gravel. Then I started learning a bit more about having a barefoot horse. I honestly used to think this was a silly, hippy sort of thing to do. After all, we've used horseshoes for...well a few hundred years. I assumed that adding my weight to the weight of the horse somehow required thin steel bits nailed to their feet.

Examine that assumption for a moment and it suddenly sounds pretty damn silly.  Certainly not every horse can go barefoot.  We have been breeding them for thousands of years now, and as with every other domesticated animal we have created unintended phenotypes while breeding for that perfect head, butt or color.  Some just have weaker feet and need the extra support.

Ketah and Sati are not among those however.  Ketah's feet had always been tough back in Colorado.  Sure, years wearing shoes can't be erased in one trimming but I wasn't going to ride her without the boots.  Clearly that just won't work for her in the northwest climate.  Sati had never had shoes, she had also never had a good trimming though.  She has the classic "clubfoot" confirmation and her lower foot was well along the way into running the heels all the way out.  This explained a lot of her resistance to moving in a particular direction.  Most horses are right/left sided just like people, and she greatly overused one side.

Two things are required to fix this sort of issue, training and proper foot care.  So I found a barefoot trimmer.  She willingly explained every angle that should be there and why she rolled the toe and rasped the quarters.  I'm in no way ready to do it myself, but I know a lot more now.

Ketah's foot after first trim.  Note that the quarters are not
flat and the toe has been rolled to allow for better breakover.
You can't see it in this picture, but she also leaves more heel
than Ketah used to have with shoes. 

I've been using this new trimmer for nearly a year now, and there are definite results.  Ketah used to be sore walking over any hard surface or in the arena without her boots for up to two weeks after getting her feet done.  These days (well, before I couldn't ride due to injuries) she barely flinches.  This is not to say I can stop using the boots.  I think due to the wet causing her soles to be soft I will always use them with her, but anything that helps her to be more comfortable is worth trying.  Sati doesn't care much, it is helping her to move a bit more balanced.  But she was rarely sore on rocks so I haven't noticed a change there.  The big thing is that her two front feet look a lot more similar than they did.

I think I will need to learn to do this myself eventually, but right now I'm quite happy with the results.

Beginning again

I haven't been able to do anything with the horses aside from visit over the fence or a little bit of brushing with a lot of help from Shane since the beginning of August.  Lately I had been starting to feel like maybe I just wouldn't get back on them again.  There's a lot going on in my life and a lot of new opportunities opening up, somehow I thought maybe I could do it without horses.  After all, grad school is going to take a lot of time and energy.

Well, yesterday (with Shane's help) I removed blankets, brushed, picked feet and handwalked them both outside their pasture for a bit.  Just that little bit of independence made me want to saddle up and take off badly.  I think better or more clearly I suppose, when I'm riding and I felt just a bit of that while playing with them.  I'll figure out how this grad school thing will work, and maybe it will mean I have to leave them for a couple years.  But obviously horses will continue to be part of my life.

I'm looking forward getting back to training Sati again.  We have miles and miles to explore!

Catch up

I'm about to try this blogging thing again. After having several months off due to the injury I will be doing several things at once (yes I know, take it easy girl...). Ketah will be out of shape, she is now 24. I will be out of shape, and Sati will still be green. Until then I found some posts I never posted (no idea why). Maybe I will throw some other stuff in as well. We shall see.


We had a gorgeous summer (in other words...dry) so I spent a lot of time on horseback. Poor boyfriend got left alone nearly every weekend for most of my waking hours. Good thing he knew this was coming.

Ketah

Ketah and I explored a bunch of new trails using my favorite navigation method: get lost. Seriously, that's what I do. I can pretty much count on Ketah to tell me which way is home (and mostly I know). But in the northwest you can't always get through the thick underbrush. More than once we started to follow a deer trail that petered out in a tangle of bushes and trees that we couldn't push through.

This leaves many nice, long, bloody, scratches as everything that seems to grow around here has thorns (or stings...damn nettles).

In this process however, we found a number of nice new trails including a gorgeous long ride into some old growth groves with a waterfall! This one will even be accessible through the winter as the trails didn't seem to have any deep muddy areas.

I'm also learning more about how to take care of her feet. I've added pads to the inside of her EasyBoots to help her entire foot get used (gently) and she quite likes them! And while I'm sure you don't mind listening (reading?) to me go on and on about Ketah, the real question is...

How is Sati doing?

She's great! I have ridden her once or twice a week since we got back from our trip to Glacier. In return she has been rapidly improving her balance and response to me. So rapidly in fact that we've run into a bit of trouble.

See, as much as I love Ketah, her early abuse and our years of learning and relearning together has left her somewhat insensitive to my mistakes. Or perhaps she knows me so well that she does what I want even if I'm not asking 100% correctly. I'd like to think the latter, it says nice things about our level of communication after all.

But either way, this presents me with a small problem. Sati is VERY sensitive. I'm trying very hard to be aware of this. Maybe I'm trying too hard actually...What this means though, is that some things I ask for she does immediately. Some things...not so much. And it's not her, it's me. Somehow I'm asking wrong and she's getting confused.

Insomnia Musings

I doubt anyone actually likes insomnia, but insomnia when you cannot change your position to get more comfortable, get a book to read, a glass of milk or anything else is hell. It's now nearly 7am, and I think I managed to sleep about two hours. So I've given up. Apparently I am now at the point in my healing where my body is not yet ready to dance (I have months yet) but is also not using up enough energy to let me sleep. Instead I listen to the dog snore weighted down by sleeping cats and envy Shane.

With nothing else to occupy me I've been worrying about two things: grad school and Sati. I had planned to take the GRE this month so I could apply to some US graduate schools in December. In my current condition there's no way I can sit through a four hour test. I can barely sit at all for more than fifteen minutes, never mind trying to do math when I can't look down at a page. Oh well I suppose. This is where I have to repeat my mantra...I lived, I'll ride again... Next year, unless I can get into a school outside the US.

Sati is the bigger issue now. I haven't written about our training over this year. We've done amazingly well. From round pen and ground work to ground driving to work under saddle she has been stellar! I broke down and bought a very expensive saddle that would fit her as I couldn't find anything else. A properly fitted saddle completely changed her movement and willingness. I even took her out for a short trail ride once with Shane & Ketah's help.

But there are problems that have nothing to do with her willingness or my training.

A little over a year ago when my vet first saw her he told me that she hyperflexes her fetlocks and that it was a risk factor for Degenerative Suspensory Ligament Demitis (DSLD). At the time he didn't seem majorly concerned and what I read suggested that if she would develop it, chances were that she'd be in her teens. So I bought sport boots to help support her ligaments and continued with her training, most trainers would consider her training load light. At best I was able to work her twice a week.

Sadly, over the last year and especially in the past few months that hyperflexion has gotten worse. She had an episode of upward patellar fixation, which isn't uncommon at her age, but I now think is related to her flexion issues. I have also seen her fetlock seem to pop in and out of joint as she tries to stop in response to my cues on the ground. Where she used to try and stop on her hind (correctly) she's increasingly relying on her front.

The hard thing is that there is no treatment and no cure for DSLD. She will go more and more lame and at some point I will have to euthanize her. I had thought we'd have years together. But now I wonder if I'm being fair to her at all. Her fetlocks are already flexing so badly that they pick up mud and dirt and while it will be months until I can ride again, I'm not sure I should ride her at all. I visited her and Ketah this weekend (over the fence!) and while Ketah treated me as I would expect (she's mad at me) Sati who is usually extremely friendly seemed somewhat grumpy.

I really have no choice now but to wait and see how she looks when I am able to do ground work again (months from now). But I think I may have to choose sooner than later and I don't much like the choice.

I wish I could sleep...

The Ride Nearly Ended

There is nothing that I love more than to ride horses. I have half jokingly said for years that everything else I do is to support that passion. There are other interests in my life of course, and more than a few are risky. I have owned a motorcycle, driven in fast cars on mountain roads, jumped out of a plane. The biggest risk was getting involved with Ketah when I was too young and too inexperienced to know how to handle an abused, intelligent and somewhat crazy young mare. She nearly killed me more than once in the first few years. I learned to jump off her back at a dead run as the only sure method of stopping her, I learned to take a fall and not let go, and I learned to deal with 900 pounds of scared, strong animal in many dangerous situations.

She's 24 now and a sweet horse that everyone else now trusts to chaperon young horses on their first trail rides. I never saw that for her.

I also never saw the position I'm in now. I have wanted to fly in a small plane for years. I'm a risk-taker, though I try to manage them intelligently. I missed a chance with my best friend many years ago and have always regretted it. Three weeks ago I got another one, and I jumped at it. Statistics caught up with me though. I had always assumed the fall I would take where I would end up injured would be from a horse. I've had dozens of falls with a few concussions (I wear a helmet) and bruises. I've attributed my lack of injury to judo, knowing how to fall helped.

Well, this time I took a fall but not from a horse. I got into a little plane, nervous but not overly so. I could feel the pilot fighting the plane as we lifted off and I knew we weren't going to make it when we brushed the first tree. The second one dropped us like the proverbial rock. I don't know how far we fell, probably not more than 70 feet. But I do know we were lucky to live through it.

It will be months before my back heals. Months in which I can't even touch my horses. It will be months after that before I will get on them again too, and it will be with some fear I suspect. Though at least it won't be fear of them. I will have to learn all over again, how to fall. It's inevitable after all. Next time though, it will be from a horse.

Summer goes so fast

It's November already and I've completely failed to keep up on my blogging. This is what happens when riding is more fun than blogging about riding. But now that the weather has forced me to spend more time playing and less time riding I will blog more.

I just picked up a book...