What do you like most about horses?

I was reading Mona’s blog Panic and the Pony and she was talking about her struggle to find out where she wants to go and what she wants to do with her riding – ie, sell the horse, keep the horse, move barns, stay, have lessons, don’t have lessons…   All the sorts of questions I ask myself on a semi-regular basis!

Then she wrote in her post that her husband asked her this question “What is it that you love most about horses?”

I realized that this is a question I’m not sure I know the answer too.  Like most equestrians, the list of things I like about horses and riding is probably long and varied, but I do want to answer this question specifically.  I think it will help me know where I am going from here.

What is the most important thing about horses to me?  I love hanging out with them, I love getting out in the fresh air and exploring, I love hanging out with horsey people, I love learning more about horses, I LOVE teaching others about horses because I love horses so much I want everyone else to love them too!

But those things are not the most important thing about horses to me… 

I do know that over my years of riding, I have gravitated towards training horses, and then I have moved into dressage as an extension of flatwork training. I know I love puzzling out the best training methods and figuring out new ways to help individual horses understand what I am asking them to do.

I also love a good challenge and the thrill of getting through it!

I think, however, that at the root of all of that – the best experiences I have ever had around horses or on horse back is when we have understood each other.

Like that time my Appaloosa mare Nikkieta and I did a perfect round of jumps.  We just hanging out in the jump paddock – I plotted a course and we did every one perfectly!  She felt like she had rocket boosters for legs!  It was amazing….  Or my last ride on her before her owner gave her away and she just did everything as I thought about it.

Or when Irish Moss and I jumped 80cm bareback – no training, no warm up with little jumps.  We just did it.  Or when we won the paddock D grade jumping competition – we were in our own little world, locked on the jumps and sailing over them!

I can’t forget that dressage test on Buttercup, one of the school horses at the riding school I taught at.  She and I didn’t know each other very well, but when we did that Novice 2A test and scored 62.8% (my first Novice test ever!).  I just remember everything flowing.  She was focused, I was focused, and it felt like we were just skimming through each movement. 

And that time when Joey and I finally clicked.  We weren’t doing anything special, just riding around.  But he finally stopped and listened to me for the first time and I just rode around with tears in my eyes and the dopiest grin on my face.  

It doesn’t matter what discipline; whether it’s ground work or riding.  When I make a connection with my horse, that is everything to me.  When we reach that point of perfect understanding. 

And I think that’s why I love training and dressage so much.  It’s about working together – partnership.  That is the most important thing about horses to me. 

So.  Moving forwards – what does that mean for me? 

I’m not really sure to be honest.  The Hubsband would like me to take a break from owning a horse and go with once-a-week lessons and perhaps riding someone else’s horse if I can find one. 

I’m really not keen on that idea.  I feel like I can’t work on a special partnership if I don’t have a partner!  Yes, I can work on my riding skills, but it’s so much more than that to me, and I’m not convinced that half an hour of riding a week is going to cut it. 

Still, my elbow has to heal yet, and I haven’t sold Joey or Copper either, so time will tell whether I buy another one after the boys sell or whether I will be *gasp* horseless for the first time in over 10 years! 

Even though I might be horseless, I’ll never be without horses.

See ya,

bonita

No big surprise.

 

And we’re back to this again.  I’m going to sell Joey.  For real this time. 

Previously when I have talked about making this move, my reasons have revolved around doubts of my ability to train him and work out our issues.  This time however, my reason for selling is a little more than that – I now have no doubts that, in time, I could train him.  Sure, I might need advice from professionals every once in a while – I might even have to pay for that advice (sending him to a trainer or something) – but I could do it.

The million dollar question is: how long is that going to take?

I guess it’s really hit home to me that Joey is a lot further away from being the horse I want than what I originally thought he was.  He’s been semi-reliable in the arena, but any thing more than that; and I do mean anything – add another horse for example – and I just don’t know what I am going to get from him.

I just don’t have time to work all of that out with him.  And frankly, at this point in my life, I don’t want to either.  I do really enjoy the challenges of training horses, and it’s been a fantastic learning experience training my first young horse.

But when I get to ride one, two – maybe three times a week if I’m lucky, you can bet your shorts that I want every ride to be a good one (within reason of course!).  I don’t want to have to wonder what I’m going to get, I just want to get on. and. ride.  

No drama, no fuss, no hassle.

And that’s definitely not Joey’s descriptor at the moment!  So our journey together comes to an end, and I’m looking forwards to my elbow healing so that I can move onto the next chapter. 

See ya,

bonita

Spoke too soon!

Ya'll know that whole "Joey's going really well thing"?  Welp, I spoke too soon.

He bucked me off on Saturday and I ate dirt.  Hard.

One evening and a whole day in hospital later and I have a cast on my left arm from my fingers to my shoulder.  I have fractured all three bones in my elbow - the radius, ulna and humorous, have a random floating bone chip, plus some contusion of the ligaments at the back of the elbow.  Thanks Joey...

The long story short (as I can't type very well) is that he was being a brat and didn't want to continue on our canter circle past the other horses, so spun and bucked at the same time and tossed me off.

We've hit the next level of resistance, and it's just too bad that he managed to ditch me at this point.  I don't know quite how we are going to address this, but ground work will be a big must as he is not listening.  I could theorise as to the reasons why, but when it comes down to it, he is a horse that doesn't want to work.

It's not because he's in pain - his tack fits, and his feet and teeth are done regularly.  It could be because of his past experiences, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that he is very intelligent and is extremely fond of getting his own way, and as I mentioned previously, he doesn't like hard work.    How to change his attitude there is the part I am totally stuck on.  I'm not sure where to go from here, but I will ponder and come back to that later.  For now, I am looking at potentially 6 weeks+ before I can ride again, *le sigh* so for now -

See ya!
b.

In which I am boring…

In case anyone cares, I thought I’d better explain the lack of updates.  Basically, Joey is being well behaved at the moment, even with the 1-2 rides a week he is getting. 

I know – that’s nothing! He is handling it very well however, and we are working on forward, forward, forward.

And it’s boring.  Because I hop on, walk, trot, canter around the arena, and then I walk him out down around our jumping field and hop off again. 

That’s pretty much all we do at the moment, although I am pondering starting up some cavaletti training.  We have progressed a lot with the trust issues, but I’m not convinced that we still wouldn’t have big battles over the painted poles as he was just so consistently banged in the mouth whenever he did pole work with his previous owner.

Interestingly enough, he doesn’t seem to have any problems with logs or branches.  He does the green horse looky-loo, but will walk over them happily enough.  So maybe I should start there?  I don’t know. 

What I do know is that I really want to start lessons again.  I think I’m slowly feeling my way forward with Joey’s frame at the moment, but I don’t want to get these basic levels of the “Dressage Pyramid” wrong.  They are the foundations to everything and as I don’t know much about what is beyond the basics, I don’t really know where we are heading.  So that’s a problem if I don’t get some guidance stat.

Forward is a good start, but I really want to engage his hind end, as the more I do that, the better (obviously!) he will work.  He needs to soften and give in his whithers/base of his neck and I’m not sure how to go about teaching him how to do that correctly.

Circles aren’t really cutting it for us at the moment because as soon as I start circling him, pretty much all of the forward dries up.  I have been trying to ride a ‘diamond’ shape instead, and that seems to have positive results. 

But the bending isn’t there, as the softness needed for a correct bend isn’t there.  So suppleness is an issue.  I think once I get forward working properly I can start concentrating on suppleness. 

Huh.  I guess I have more to say than I realized!

See ya,

bonita

Training Tip: Riding bareback

So Joey’s being doing really well with the spotty and completely infrequent riding schedule we have at the moment.  It’s great because I wasn’t really sure that he had the temperament for that kind of riding, but he does. 

Of course, we don’t really get any where fast and he gets totally lazy, but we are improving a little bit at a time I think.

I have even ridden him bareback for the first time!  I wasn’t sure that he’d be ok with bareback riding, but he was really good.

It took a bit of time and patience to get him standing along side the fence long enough for me to hop on, but he is a quick learner and the next day when I did it again, it was much faster. 

I trained him to stand up for mounting by leading him in close to the fence and getting him to stand right next to it.  I would be on his right side as I  maneuvered him into the right position, then after I halted him, I would go around to his left and slowly hop up on the fence. 

I rubbed his back, and croup (the point over his hips between his back and his quarters) reach over and rub his opposite side.  If he was happy with that, I leant over his back a little bit and when I thought he was ready I’d put my leg over.  If the fence isn’t high enough to do that, I’d jump and lean over his back on my stomach, then swing my leg up and over.

If Joey moved forwards before I hopped on, I’d back him up and then take him around and line him up again.  If he’d swing his hind quarters away, I’d push them over again, and then take him around and line him up again. 

Putting him back in the place I wanted him to be is an important step before lining him up alongside the fence again because I want him to realize that moving forwards or sidewise isn’t going to get him away from the spot I want him to stand.  I also do this if he tries to move away while saddling or bridling him, and it’s a great training tool under saddle if he won’t stand still.

He is a bit nervous when I’m riding him bareback, but he listens to me – for the most part!  He did decided to see if he could try it out and refuse to walk on and away from all his mates in the paddock, but I soon squashed that idea.  Thankfully where I’ve been doing the bareback riding really is an ideal area to try it out in.

Basically the herd is in a big paddock up the back of another paddock that is next to two other big paddocks.  There is a narrow laneway that runs down the middle – it has a paddock on either side.  This laneway allows you to get access to the paddocks up the back. 

It’s a five to ten minute walk to get down there, so it’s a nice stretch of enclosed area that has lots of soft, squishy grass for emergency dismounts! I walk down, fetch Joey out of the paddock (I bridle him rather than riding in a halter – I don’t want to lose all control thankyouverymuch!) and ride him back down the laneway.

Oh, and I definitely wear my helmet! 

I am really happy though, because I think that we are making progress and building trust by experiencing different situations and scenarios together - like bareback riding.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ll be able to take him out on solo trail rides soon, which is a huge step from where we were when I first got him!

Next up: taking him out in the trail and getting him used to competition atmosphere. 

See ya,

bonita

My First Ride Back After Having A Baby

  

And it was great!

For all those new mothers who might be wondering about how/when to get back into horse riding; you can skip down to the end of the post where I put in the TMI details about my *ahem* condition when I went riding…  For the rest of you that might be squicked out by that kind of thing, feel free to skip those paragraphs!

Back to my ride: I ended up lunging Joey before I rode him as he seemed a little fresh when I pulled him out of the paddock, but it wasn’t long before I was up on his back.  Yay!

He felt pretty good – like I thought, a bit fresh and forward, but not stupid so that was actually ok.  

I warmed up at a walk and we did some outside track work (not a single spook – we’ve beaten that boogey side!  Double YAY!) and some serpentines, then we went to trot work because he kept asking to go forwards!

I was really excited by his trot because he was lifting up through his whither/shoulders, and I could feel his hind end rocking back.  He was actually off the forehand, and starting to move uphill!  I am sure that this is a result of keeping steady, consistent, and elastic contact with his mouth.  It’s allowed him to start working through his back, rather than jamming up his head and locking his neck and shoulders.

By lifting up through his shoulders he can work from his hind end, and activate the power there to eventually begin collection. Of course, at the moment his frame is still very open, and he still doesn’t like circles, so we have a long way to go as of yet. 

I am going to devise a new training routine for him though as I have bought a couple of books on the beginning stages of training for dressage.  I am itching to see how we get on from here and will definitely keep you updated as to how he goes!

See ya,

bonita

- Personal details below for postnatal women who want to know when to get back to riding after child birth -

I rode Joey at four weeks and two days after giving birth vaginally to my daughter.  I had had 2nd degree tearing of my perineum that was almost third degree, and as a result had a lot of stitches!  I think I had 7-8 stitches or more down there… 

It had taken about two weeks before the bruising and the swelling went down, but I didn’t have a long 3rd stage (pushing) in my labor, so it may take longer for that to subside if the 3rd stage is long.  Also, I didn’t end up with any hemorrhoids which are quite a common if you have a long 3rd stage.

Physically I still felt a little stiff and tender, so I definitely took it easy.  I think I only rode for 20-30 minutes.  Emotionally and mentally, I was fine – although tired, and that’s something to consider as well.  Particularly because if you are all over the place mentally, there’s an extremely good chance your horse is going to pick up on that.  It’ll only be a matter of your horse’s personality as to whether your emotional state will affect him a lot or not at all. 

In the end I just think you really have to listen to your body and follow your instincts.  Also, don’t let yourself get carried away.  I loved riding again, and it’s easy to get caught up in that, but I had to remember that it’s not just my downstairs that has to heal, but my abs as well. 

The abdominal muscles separate during the pregnancy, and now have to get back to together, as well as regain their strength and fitness! That means I just don’t have the core power that I need to ride, and yes, I was sore afterwards/the next day.

My pelvic floor and abs felt that 20-30 minute easy ride, I can tell you!  Keeping it short and sweet helped minimize the next day fall out.  This is also pertinent if you are not sure how well behaved your horse may be.

I would keep any long/difficult riding for a much later date – your body needs time to heal. 

Oh, and one last note – whether you are breastfeeding or not, make sure you wear a really good, supportive bra!  Wear two if you have too, but make sure those puppies don’t bounce around because that’s going to hurt…  ; )

If anyone has any further questions, feel free to email me/comment – I would love to help any new moms get back into the saddle!  : D

Wise Words for Bad Behaviour

“Offering a horse productive guidance before or during times when a horse becomes distracted (or worried) can be a fairly easy way to not only get a troubled situation under control, but also build trust and confidence in both horse and rider. It is a matter of the rider staying focused on what they would like to achieve and helping the horse get there, instead of focusing on the horse's worried or distracted behavior and trying to stop it.”

Mark Rashid ~ Considering the Horse via Panic and The Pony

See ya,

bonita