When it Rains it Pours

Of course, everything always has to happen at once. As soon as I signed up for a show, Jetta started being AWFUL. Like, we hadn't had that bad of rides for many years. We completely lost all semblance of a half-halt and she literally couldn't do anything.

"How does one horse?" At least she's looking good!

After blundering around for 3 days, I realized that our half-halt was the main reason we were being a complete train-wreck in every aspect, so we reinstalled that. You'd think she'd have a solid half-halt after 8 years of being under saddle, but apparently not...

We're still working on it, but at least we're not completely awful anymore. Just slightly awful. So maybe we won't be a complete embarrassment at the show this weekend? Just a little embarrassing probably.

I tried to have a stirrup-less ride before it all went downhill. Do not recommend

At least our matching is on point!

We finally got our new vienna reins (more on that in another post) so we've been doing a fair bit of lunging. Even on the lunge line she just wants to go go go, so we're working on slowing down and stretching, hoping that will translate to under saddle.

Love this place

The most stretching we're getting right now

I'm bummed that of course this happened once I sent several non-refundable checks for the show and clinic, especially since I am SO EXCITED about them, but oh well.

Horses. So frustrating, it seems like we're always taking two steps forward then three steps back!


And then of course Maisie had to make sure she got enough attention too. She got her vaccine boosted on Sunday and then Tuesday night I tried to feed her grain and she wasn't interested. She's the pickiest, least food-motivated horse I've ever interacted with, but usually she tries to eat a little grain, plus she just looked out of it. So I took her temperature and found it to be a whopping 104F. Just peachy. I talked to one of the doctors at school and came to the conclusion that it was probably a vaccine reaction and gave her some banamine. An hour later she was still uncomfortable, but her temp was dropping, so that made me feel better.

She is now back to normal termperature, but still not interested in food, so I'm not sure what's with that. We did just recently switch grain to something better suited for a growing baby (per my recent nutrition class, which was AWESOME! I may need to do a post about it), so I'm not sure if she just doesn't like the grain or if there are lingering GI effects. She got a dose of probiotics, so we'll see how it goes from here.

And to top it all off, my BF and I decided to drive 8 hours to get a puppy last weekend. I fell in love with an Akita a few years ago and found a litter up for adoption. I loved one of the girls and they agreed to put her on hold and now we have little baby Kaida. So of course, who needs sleep around here?

She slept and cuddled the whole ride home

Loves rolling in the gras

Champion at walks

Puppy + sick baby horse + awful acting adult horse + majorly awful midterm + life in general = no sleep, lots of stress.

Living the Baby Horse Life

Baby horse has mostly been living the life, just hanging out in the pasture. But we've been working on some basic life skills on occasion.

Tying champion

Whenever I clean the barn she gets to be tied and learn about standing. We have worked a little bit on cross tying, which she definitely was not sure about. I haven't actually tied her yet, just run the lead ropes through her halter/the cross tie rings to get her used to use to how it looked/felt. She was quite unsure and kept eyeballing the lead ropes, but we ended on a good note with her snoozing, though I wasn't able to walk away quite yet.

Not really sure what's going on

She also has gotten her vaccinations (complete with booster) and is up to date on her worming. She was initially pretty offended about getting poked with a needle, but didn't give me too much trouble. She's a champion about being dewormed which I really appreciate!

SO FLUFFY

Other than that, I'm hoping to haul her to the barn that Jetta's at one evening for a field trip. I was going to do it last week, being spring break and all, but when I hooked up my truck and trailer, the truck started leaking a large amount of antifreeze so the BF worked on it this weekend and hopefully it'll be as good as new soon!

Trying on her big girl halter... she's too big for yearling size, but still too small for horse size!

Maisie hasn't hauled alone yet, but we've practiced loading and she doesn't hesitate. She is not a fan of me tying her and threw a bit of a tantrum, but we worked through it and she ended up being (sullenly) ok in the trailer. Hopefully she'll be quiet to haul!

And lastly, she got her first acupuncture session on Friday. My friend PR just got certified so she came out and tried a few points. No results yet (in terms of cribbing) though I have definitely never seen Maisie that relaxed! Her lower lip was droopy and she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. But maybe we'll try a couple more sessions and see how it goes.

Model status

Most excitingly... She jumped an almost 5 foot fence about a week ago. This is the second time in her 8 months of life that she has jumped a large pasture fence. I am not amused. She better grow up to be a great jumper! I think what happened is that she was turned out with Kestrel, my roommate's 3 year old Appy mare. Kestrel is very submissive towards the roommate's other horse, hence why we turned her out with Maisie. Unfortunately, Kestrel quickly figured out how easy Maisie is to boss around, resulting in Kestrel chasing, cornering and trying to double barrel Maisie. So they lost their turn out privileges together which is a huge bummer. Luckily Maisie only ended up with a small scrape on her right knee and stifle which I cleaned and examined. I was worried she had a puncture wound, but it's really just a scratch on her knee.

Naughty babies

So that is the exciting life of a baby horse! I can't wait to take her on her field trip next week, so I will keep you updated on what happens!

Derpy run

Show Ready?

We are getting to just over 2 weeks out from our first show in forever and it's... going ok.

Jetta has some really great moments and some really terrible ones. I'm almost 100% sure that the terrible moments are just because she's not physically fit enough to carry herself the way I'm asking, but it's still a little frustrating.

"What do you mean I'm frustrating? NEVER"

Our last ride, Jetta warmed up BEAUTIFULLY. We were doing shoulders-in and haunches-in, leg-yields, 10 meter circles, etc. at the trot. It felt great.

And then we cantered and it was all downhill from there. Jetta feels very on her forehand in the canter and combined with the fact that she is fast and near unresponsive to my half-halts, it's close to being out of control. I tried working through it in a variety of ways - just getting into a half-seat and letting her just do her thing, asking for shoulder-in at the canter (BAD IDEA apparently), and finally just half-halting her until she responded and not care about where her head was at (basically in my lap).  Unfortunately she's such a hot, sensitive, anticipatory horse that we can't just school the canter over and over again until she gets over it because it would make it worse, not better.

Only good thing about my day - outfit on point

It was a rough ride and left me feeling a bit discouraged and unsure if I should attempt to show her. Is two weeks enough time to school the canter and get it to a manageable gait?

We've got quite a bit to work on, so just for my sanity, I thought I'd make a list of what we need right now.

Training Level
Canter - reasonable speed, not on forehand, on the bit
Canter-trot transition
Stretchy trot circle

First Level
Fine-tune our leg yield
Lengthened trot and canter

Second Level - obviously this is farther down the road, not in our immediate future!

Travers
Canter-walk transition
Canter loop/counter canter

This is a bit of a downer post, so I'll focus on what is good. Her shoulder-in at the trot is fantastic right now! Her leg yield is also really pretty good, we just need to work on a little more straightness and I need to not block her forward motion. Our trot work is going really well, she's getting a lot better about maintaining speed and not pulling on me. Our trot-halt and trot-walk transitions are really good right now too. Our 10 meter circles (both full circles and the two half-circles) are feeling phenomenal, as are our 15 meter canter circles (when we're not careening around like a baby racehorse).

Random picture from doing morning barn chores

I feel like we're definitely on the right track, but the going has been slow. This is usual for Jetta, she takes a long time to get back to where we were after a break, and I feel like I've approached the "retraining" well. I have a tendency to want to school the "fun" stuff that we've done before, even though she's not necessary ready and it usually results in having to unteach her that move until we're ready for it, since she'll use it as an evasion for what I actually want her to do. Example: if we work on lengthened trot, when we try to go across the diagonal and I don't ask for the lengthened trot, she charges into it, then gets upset when I half-halt her to get her back to a working trot.

We'll keep chugging along, and luckily I still have 12 days to decide on the show. I really want to go, but we'll see if we are actually ready in time!

In other news, I finally replaced her super worn out show bridle

Notice her creeper neighbor

And I got to put this browband on that's been waiting for a bridle!

The C Word

A bad equestrian word - cribbing.

Maisie has been cribbing for a couple weeks now. I catch her at it in the morning when I go down to feed. This started before she was weaned. I have no idea why she started - she's had no stress in her life, she lives in a big paddock with a good sized pasture. Gets fed lots of quality food and rarely has an empty stomach. She's never been around horses that crib.

I couldn't find much about foals cribbing on the internet, but there's some discussions on the COTH forum about foals cribbing due to ulcers or just being genetically predisposed. We are currently a little over halfway through a course of omeprazole (byeeee money!) but so far nothing has changed. I went ahead and just treated for ulcers because if she has them, foal ulcers like to perforate which is terrifying. Foals also tend to get ulcers very easily for no particular reason.

She's not interested in toys. She has a goat and sheep as companions and horses in the paddocks next to her. She was doing this even when she was with her mom. In the morning, I'll see her outside grazing and by the time I head down to feed her I often find her cribbing on the fence inside her paddock.

It's not the end of the world. I've had a horse that cribs before. My first horse Grady was a relentless cribber. He was never stalled because he got very upset, so he lived in a three acre pasture. He'd stop grazing just to go crib on the fence. We never found a cribbing collar that worked on him and it didn't really bother me so we just let him go for it. It didn't seem to negatively affect him - his teeth were fine, he never colicked, the only thing we attributed to his cribbing was his inability to hold weight in the winter.

I was pretty upset the first time I found her cribbing. While I do plan on keeping her, if my plans ever change, people don't want to buy a cribber and some barns are reluctant to board cribbers. It's just a huge bummer. I'm hoping the omeprazole will make her feel better - the idea being that her tummy doesn't feel good so she's trying to relieve the discomfort through cribbing.

Trying to eat my face

She's just too cute

Anyone have any advice or insight?

In other news, she's almost grown out of her foal blanket! The largest size is a 60" so I need to decide what size to buy her to last her through the rest of winter hopefully! She's also gotten a lot more friendly as she's gotten older. She comes over to greet people and wants to be scratched. She also likes to give kisses! Pretty adorable. I installed a tie ring in her stall so that's the next fun thing that she gets to learn. Baby is growing up!

Let the baby training begin!

Roller Coaster Ride

The horses are sure keeping me on my toes! It's been a roller coaster ride over here. I'm so, so, so busy right now in school and it's been insane so I think the horses think that they're not getting enough attention!

Jetta decided to colic last week and that same day, Maisie somehow got out of the pasture and the only way she could have done that is by jumping. There are no gaps, open gates, or anything. I guess she was bred to be a jumper?

I think Jetta was just eating too many apples and not drinking enough water with the temperature swing. My parents had the vet out and she tubed Jetta and gave her some fluids. She had decreased gut sounds which is always worrying. Maisie wasn't too much worse for the wear though she scraped up her legs jumping the fence. No idea why she did it, but luckily all the scrapes were superficial.

Maisie's cut leg from a week or so ago is trying it's best to granulate to the extreme so we've resorted to pressure wraps and cortisone cream to try to keep it down. Fingers crossed! She's become a pro at bandage changes though, I don't even have to halter her!

Trying on her new rope halter!

Naughty baby

Cute baby

She's so big she has to contort her neck to reach the udder lol

  

Size comparison:

Birth (top) and just over one month old (bottom)

Almost 3 months old!

Trask has been by alternating days, amazing or awful. Some days we have fantastic rides where I can barely believe he's only 4 years old and other days I get off and am ready to give him back. I think part of it is due to the weather change - cold air is good for being spunky! But he's also just a growing baby and you have to test the boundaries every so often. Our canter is coming along for the most part (except when it isn't) and our shoulder-fore has progressed to some real shoulder-in and we even had a pretty good start to haunches-in the other day!

He's developing so nicely!

He has also been trying his hardest to destroy all the blankets. I put a cooler on him the other day after a bath - it has chest, belly and leg straps so I've left it on Jetta many times - and he SHREDDED it. Completely gone, he bit at it and tore it to pieces. I got him a turnout sheet since KP only has a medium-weight blanket for him and it's not quite cold enough for it yet and he has since bitten two holes in the chest of it. We'll see how long it lasts... little stinker.

Trask - 2, Blankets- 0

Little Jumping Bean

Trask and I went to another derby this past weekend. Spoiler alert... this one didn't go as well as the last one.

I jumped him the day before the show and he was AWESOME. A little bit strong maybe, but he didn't hesitate at any of the jumps. I brought out some new jumps - a little fake liverpool and a panel fence. And he wasn't bothered in the slightest. I bumped the jumps up to the highest we've done thus far and I don't think he even noticed.

Biggest little fence so far!

I ended up hauling in the day of the show since we didn't do our dressage until 11:43am. We got there plenty early so I let Trask graze in the field for a bit since I wanted him to be relaxed and I also didn't want to repeat our trailer tying/halter breaking episode from a while back...

When I finally tacked him up and started warming up in the indoor arena... I knew it was going to go poorly for us. He was SO SPOOKY. About everything. The walls, the mirrors, the windows, the birds, the stall cleaners, etc. It was ridiculous. One thing I loved about this show was how absolutely nice everyone was. It was awesome!

Attempting to eat plastic flowers

Another person warming up noticed our difficulty with the mirrors (aka Trask stopping dead and staring at himself, then trying to run away from his reflection) and she offered to lead us up to the mirror which helped quite a bit, though Trask was still on edge. We did our best with the warm-up but I knew it wasn't going to happen for us.

We got to walk around the outdoor show arena briefly and Trask wasn't scared of anything surprisingly. They had some jumps and barrels stashed along the edge of the arena but he didn't care. Nor did he seem bothered by the large black water tanks or the hose reel outside the railing. We started our test and it wasn't too bad until we did our first circle. All of the sudden we were traveling sideways instead of in a nice circle, towards C. I managed to keep him kind of on track and then we went to canter. He didn't want to. With a very ugly transition, I finally got him into a canter but when we circled the same thing happened and he veered off towards C. We came back down to the trot and then the walk for our free walk across the diagonal and I was confident that this was something he could nail. Nope. He kept popping his head up to look around. We went for our next trot circle and the same thing happened, drifting off towards C. At this point I'd had enough and this was a schooling show anyways so I gave him a big kick with my outside leg, earning us a nice few steps of canter (ugh) and we finished our circle. We got to the corner almost to C and he tried to jump out of the arena. I ended up having to circle him in the corner so we could get our canter transition while he continued to try and jump out of the arena.

At least he looked nice part of the time?

Finally got a very, very ugly canter transition, did our circle, trotted to X and did our (very crooked) salute. And walked out of the arena very disappointed.

I'm not quite sure what happened but it was definitely a big baby moment. That test was so incredibly ugly, I was so embarrassed. We went back to the indoor and schooled our canter transitions for a while, during which we had a discussion about spooking at things unnecessarily. Ended on a better note, but I was still pretty frustrated.

We had a bit to rest before jumping and I didn't even attempt to pick up my test. While walking to the jump field I had my bf grab it and then realized I didn't have my number since I had left it on my dressage bridle. The person manning the table quickly offered to make me a new one so I wouldn't have to walk all the way back to the trailer. Like I said, so nice!

I got on Trask up at the warm-up area for jumping. Of course as soon as I got on my eventing vest's zipper split which was fantastic. I tried to fix it while the bf held Trask but I couldn't get it. A very nice bystander came up and offered to help, so she ended up holding Trask while I held the edges of the vest together and my bf tried to get the zipper down. With all that teamwork we finally got it back to normal.

Trask warmed up well. They had a pretty large log for warm-up and while he initially refused it, after a good sniff he hopped right over. I felt good about our warm-up but I knew the course would be a struggle for us.

And it was a struggle right off the bat. The first fence, a stadium fence, was right next to fence 8 which was a small log next to the water. Since this was Intro level, the water was optional so you could go over the small log instead. Even though we had been trotting and cantering through the water a mere couple weeks ago, he thought the whole area - water, log and first fence was HORRIFYING. It took me forever and a half to get him to walk through the start flags. Again, pretty embarrassing. Finally walked him through the start flags, marched him up to the first jump so he could sniff it and then we came back around and trotted it. It was so nice that people clapped for us every time he jumped something that he initially refused. It made me feel a lot better that it seemed that people knew he was a baby and we were really struggling, so that was nice.

He's so cute though!

He popped over and we headed to the second fence, a large mossy log. He stopped at it, sniffed it, then popped over. We cantered up to the third fence, a moderate sized log. He seemed game so I let him keep his canter and he popped over it without hesitation. We crossed the bridge and cantered up the hill to fence four, another log. He jumped this one without hesitation too. We approached the fifth fence, a stadium fence but he would not pay attention and was spooking at the fences in the tree line so he almost missed the stadium fence but I made him do an awkward walk/trot hop over it, resulting in a pulled rail but no refusal. We trotted down the hill to a small coop, which he refused. At this point my legs were absolutely dead and I could barely even give him a squeeze so I just clucked at him and hoped he'd go over it. He did and we cantered to the next coop, this one he hesitated at but didn't refuse and hopped over.

Generously clearing the tiny coop - I chopped my face off cause I looked ridiculous

Then we got to the dreaded fence 8. I knew I wasn't going to try and get him in the water, I just wanted to hop the tiny log then go to fence 9 (a stadium fence) and be done and go home. He refused the log so I thanked the timers and left.

I was pretty bummed since I knew before the show we'd likely get DQ'd for refusals, but my goal was 1) stay in the dressage arena (barely achieved), 2) no rearing (mostly achieved, there were a couple tiny rear's that my bf called "expressive turns"), 3) jump all the jumps even if we had a lot of refusals (fail) and 4) no falling off (yay I really did achieve this one!!)

Babies are so good at humbling you. I really thought we were ready for this show since he was schooling so well at home and we had schooled at this facility recently. Oh well. Packing up to go, the super nice lady parked next to me (her daughter had the CUTEST pony) complimented me on my patience on the jump course and wished me well in vet school (she noticed the sticker on my truck).

I love how nice everyone was at this event! It made it so much better even with a disappointing outcome.

Takeaways for me were - work more with the dressage whip so I can carry and use it at a show without him getting offended. Continue our work on canter transitions and getting him to pay attention to my outside leg. Work on getting him to jump unfamiliar jumps the first time without having to sniff them (thus earning us a refusal). Get him in more water!

Baby Firecracker

<3

My little gold nugget is one month old already! Where has time gone already?? She is still the cutest thing ever and I love her. But man, is she a little firecracker! She is gonna be a fun one.

She's starting to shed her baby coat!

We've been working lately on a few simple things, but she wants no part in anything but scritches. And maybe nomming on whatever it is you have handy (wheelbarrow, pitchfork, your arm, etc.) Her current favorite itchy spot is her along her back.

She's got two little teeth on top and bottom with two more making their way in. And does she like to bite! She's always liked to bite, but now it's actually an issue because she can leave a mark! I think my bruise total is up to five now... one bitten arm, two stomped feet, one fat lip, and one kicked shin lol. It's so hard to get after her for biting cause it's kind of adorable... she pins her giant ears back, then a couple seconds later she'll wrinkle her little nose, and then she chomps.

Angry mule baby

We've been working on touching her muzzle, haltering, giving to pressure with the halter, and picking up feet. All are absolutely awful baby torture. Haltering and touching her muzzle is going much better than anything else. She has never liked her muzzle being touched even though she is fine with being touched everywhere else. She's getting much better about it, which helps with the halter. She no longer books it out the door when I bring out the halter. She doesn't quite stand still yet to have it put on, but at least she's not violently flinging her head every which way while I do it.

Never too young to practice our picture posing!

I think picking up her feet has been the most fun. I put down new bedding pellets in the stall the other day which in case you didn't know are SUPER slick. I was working with Maisie on her feet, she's fine with you touching them but doesn't like picking them up... basically I was skiing across the floor with my arms around a bolting baby horse. That was interesting. Her front feet are going well and we can now pick up both fronts and hold them for a second as if I was going to pick them out. Next on the menu is to work on back feet, then to work on both backs and fronts to bring feet forward as if the farrier was going to work on them.

And lastly, I put a lead rope on the halter for the first time and she absolutely hated it. She caught on quickly about giving to pressure and turning her head side-to-side when I asked, so we quit there. But there were quite a few antics leading up to that... bolting and rearing and striking, etc.

This is gonna be a fun ride guys...

Happy, hungry mama

 

Mama found the apples!

Selfies after our halter training - I'm absolutely drenched in sweat!