Fixed It

I think I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to fix with Trask is his trailer loading. He is normally fairly good about following you into the trailer, but oftentimes (especially at shows) he likes to put his front feet in and then refuse to budge. Super fun when you just want to go home.

I think self-loading is a really important skill for all horses so I wanted Trask to learn too. It's a lot safer and just a generally good life skill. I've been putting off teaching him this for no reason, though it's more difficult now that the days are so short and I can't exactly practice it in the dark.

Since he goes home soon, I sucked it up and finally put in the work on getting him to self load. I'm really proud of him for figuring it out, especially since half way through working with him I thought it was going to be a bust and I had failed.

Trask is a funny horse. He's very smart and not generally a spooky or reactive horse. But, when he doesn't understand or doesn't like something, he tends to freak out and his brain just stops working and he panics for no reason. He understands pressure, both from the halter and from tapping with a whip. He just can't process it when he's freaking out.

After trying to send him into the trailer multiple times, we kept getting hung up on putting the front feet in the trailer, but he wouldn't put his back feet in. Tapping his butt resulted in him kicking out at the whip, then rearing and rocketing out of the trailer backwards. Obviously not the smartest thing to do, and it resulted in him scraping a good amount of hair off his face when he reared and backed out at the same time (he's very talented).

I was sure we were done at that point. His poor head hurt (luckily didn't need stitches), he wasn't listening to me, just trying to run me over and rear. I was pretty sure I wasn't making any positive progress, so we changed tactics.

Trask is very food motivated. I use this to my advantage since he's a panicky horse, the treats help him refocus and have a positive association. I don't use treats with all horses and I don't use them all the time with Trask.

Now, I led him into the trailer. He stopped again with his front feet in and I tapped him on the shoulder with the whip. Eventually he stepped in the trailer and I gave him a handful of treats, lots of praise, and we just hung out for a while and got lots of pets.

Then I led him in again and repeated the treats and praise. One more time and he seemed to start to understand. The next time I went to lead him in and as he got his front feet in, I stopped and let himself get all the way in. Treats and repeat.

This was the end result:


We did it a few more times, sometimes with treats, sometimes without. He also learned to wait until I asked him to turn around. We will do this again to make sure it's cemented in his little pea brain, but he's a self loading horse now!

Work in Progress

Trask is definitely still a work in progress but I definitely see a lot of improvement. It's easy to get caught up in all the things we still can't do or those occasional times that he misbehaves, but overall he really has gotten a ton better.

• He puts his head down to be bridled and I no longer have to pry his mouth open to get the bit in
• I can clip his face, including his muzzle now
• He no longer gets claustrophobic when I half-halt him
• He's getting much better at picking up his leads
• I can carry a whip and (most of the time) use it without him freaking out

We went on a trail ride last weekend by ourselves and it was far above and beyond better than the last time we went by ourselves. He wanted to spook at stuff for sure, but he held it together and did as I asked without having a tantrum or me having to get off. We walked passed scary trashcans, the giant metal rooster, the enormous neighbor's bull, crossed the spooky yellow lines on the street, etc. We trotted a bunch and even cantered on the trails. The only time I had to get off is when we approached the pond. He was not having any of it and didn't even want to get within 20 feet, so I hopped off and led him up to the edge and he was fine.

It was really nice to feel that improvement! Unfortunately school has started and is already insane, especially with the start of our small animal surgery labs so I haven't been able to ride as much as I would like. Trask was feeling VERY fresh today and we had some impressive spooks and leaps due to a horse being ridden outside the arena, which Trask was sure was NOT ALLOWED.

Little froggy friend

We worked through it and had some good moments and by the end, I could tell he wanted to spook but he refrained. Instead he'd take a big, tense stride or two, but it was so much better than his little bolts (not really real bolts, because as soon as you half half him he stops). He'll get there someday, I think once he grows up a bit and gets more miles he's gonna be a great horse.

Definitely not afraid of the whip *as he waves it around*

Picture Day

I can't even remember which day it was now with how crazy life has been but a week or two ago, KP and I took Trask and KP's filly to get some pictures done just for fun.

It was pretty hectic - KP had to work night shift and we hauled Trask, momma horse, and baby all together, meaning that I had to drive separate so KP could take my car to work while I took all the horses home.

Trask's one fault is that he's a little bit herd-bound. Of course he fell in love with momma and baby during the trailer ride and as soon as we separated them he got very freaked out. After they were done taking the baby's pictures, it was my turn to try to wrangle Trask. He was not very in to standing still... at all. Finally we ditched all the on the ground photos and I lunged him before getting on. KP wanted me to ride outside but I was pretty sure no good pictures were going to be had since the mom and baby were turned outside and all he wanted to do was look at them with his head in the air like a llama.

Once I was on though, he was very good. I think we had one of the better rides to date. He was pretty hyper still, but it made his canter so uphill and wonderful. We did have a little bit of bucking, but he's not very good at it so it was more like leaping across the arena. Overall, I was super happy with him, he listened to my aids and acted almost like a grown-up horse! (Ignore me, I look absolutely awful, I really just need someone to yell at me all the time to put my shoulders back and look up!)

Hopefully I can have this same photographer out to do pictures of Jetta, Maisie and I this fall, I really like how she did them!

The pictures turned out lovely, these will eventually be used for his sale ad. Most of them are unedited, so if we end up using them I'll probably edit them, but the photographer did edit a couple, which turned out stunning (namely this black background one!):

My favorite

My second favorite

Lucky He's Cute

I ended up taking Trask to our first show together yesterday! It was... interesting to say the least.

I was pretty sure that it was going to be an interesting show with my lack of preparation. I've had Trask for a month and had maybe 10-12 rides on him with school and being gone so I was kind of on the edge about whether or not it was a good idea to go to the show or not.

Pre-show lunge

We just did Intro A and B since our canter is still pretty iffy. My one goal was to stay on!

Of course the best show prep is to not ride for two days beforehand, right? I gave Trask a bath on Saturday night and loaded up the trailer, but didn't have time to clean any tack or anything. Sunday morning dawned wayyy too early, though it helped that I didn't really sleep the whole night before. Horse shows on 4 hours of sleep are super fun!

I braided Trask as soon as I got to the barn - at least we were going to look good even if we did awfully!

I was pretty happy with my 10 minute rubber band braids

Once we got to the show I tied Trask to the trailer with his hay bag and then went into the tack room to start getting my tack. A piece of paper blew out of the tack room and spooked him, he set back and broke both his halter AND his lead rope before going for a nice jaunt around the property. That was such a fun way to start a show - 20 minutes of chasing a horse around the giant field and getting myself a very large blister in the process. I was not pleased.

We had nearly no warm-up after I caught Trask. Luckily I had an extra halter and a lunge line in the trailer to replace all our broken tack... We had 15 minutes to tack up, get on, and memorize our test. We had a quick walk-trot in the warm-up arena (after convincing Trask that the large blue flappy-tarp building was not going to eat him).

Our test went about in the same vein... the judges booth was absolutely terrifying (after all, they have all those horse eating papers in front of them!) and I didn't have enough time to convince him otherwise. Our test was tense and while mostly obedient (save the judges both), we were not accurate in the least.

We had just a couple minutes before our next ride so I quickly memorized the next test and again only had a couple minutes to trot around warm-up and convince Trask that some sort of softness would be nice. Our next test was much nicer. Still tense, with some nice giraffe moments of looking through the arena windows and whinnying at the other horses, but overall much better and there was only one little spook at the judges booth in one direction.

After our test we had a nice real ride in the outdoor, complete with cantering. It was nice to get Trask around other horses since we tend to only ride alone. Plus he came to terms with the scary blue tarp building so it wasn't all bad.

Overall, it was an interesting show. Not great, but it could have been worse. We got some nice comments from the judge, even managing to get a 63% in our second class which is respectable. Now we have more stuff to work on (can you say desensitizing to paper?!) and someone is now the proud new owner of a rope halter for practicing standing tied.

Hopefully we'll get a chance to redeem ourselves next month, schooling dressage shows are few and far between right now, but we are going to find some sort of show to make it to again!

Only "real" photo of us we had since I failed to sign up for pictures. He's so lucky he's cute!!

Still Alive

Wow, it's been busy around here. And it's been forever since I posted!

Last I wrote, I was heading into finals week. I successfully passed everything, even earning myself a place on the Dean's List! That was a goal for this year, to get on it at least once. I never really thought about it in undergrad because I was always on it without even trying. But vet school is WAY harder and I kinda thought I'd never do well enough to get there. So I was super excited to get the letter!

I am now officially one half of a vet. I think that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm not sure yet. Third year is going to be fun and terrifying all at the same time as we actually get to do surgery.

In my last post, I wrote how excited I was to leave my old barn. Not even close to how happy I was on Sunday when I bailed Jetta out of there after the barn owner went full psycho sleeze-ball on me. I tried to write up a post about it but it made me so mad, so hopefully I can calm down a bit to write about what happened. It was a complete fiasco.

Home and happy. Jetta very rarely rolls!

I am so glad Jetta is happily at my parent's house where she has a big 12x20' stall complete with deep bedding, attached run and large paddock. She always has clean water, nice orchard grass hay and we recently started feeding her alfalfa which she thinks is the BOMB. She absolutely loves the alfalfa, even preferring it to her grain. She's never been fed it before so it's going to be a rude shock to her when I take her off of the alfalfa after baby is weaned! AND THERE'S LESS THAN 27 DAYS LEFT!!!

That pregnancy glow

I have seriously been having nightmares about this baby. I had one the other night that it was still born which was depressing. And I had another last night where the wrong semen was used and we got a buckskin welsh pony... not exactly what I ordered lol.

And Trask has been doing great. He's a good baby, still with some baby moments, but he's so mature for a four year old most of the time. I didn't ride him for over a week and when I got back it was like I never left.



I had the best ride on him today. He's an interesting horse, not in a bad way, but he's still really figuring things out. When I saw him being ridden a year ago, he really liked to be behind the vertical and I was worried he might be afraid of contact. Luckily, this is not the case, but he still really wants to go BTV but he's just trying to figure out what you want out of him, you just need to push him forward and he'll come back up to vertical. He's happy to take contact and he doesn't get heavy on the bit. I think part of the problem is that the person riding him was afraid to push him forward and did a lot of holding instead. My first ride on him KP told me that I couldn't put my leg on and hold him with my hands because he'd get really claustrophobic and freak out.
 

We even rode outside!

And while that was initially true, I think we're working through that. He's not a hot horse in the slightest - really he's in that ideal middle range of being forward but not hot but not lazy either - so I have no problem letting him go forward and now that he knows that, I can even use a strong half-halt to get him paying attention when he's thinking about spoooking and we can resume business as normal without him getting claustrophobic.

Our canter is still not very strong, I can't blame him too much because his haunches are a good 3 inches taller than his withers right now! I really need to measure him, I hope he'll finish out around 16 hands! I figured out that posting on the inside (wrong) diagonal really helps him get the correct lead so it's a work in progress.

The main thing I need to do is gain his trust. He's not really sure that humans are trust worthy, though he doesn't dislike people, he's a bit afraid he's gonna get in trouble and KP thinks that the trainer was mean to him so he just needs someone to be nice to him. He's a sweet horse with a good work ethic but I think getting him to trust me will get him so much farther.

Today's fun trust lesson was clippers. KP has only drugged him to be clipped since he's afraid of them and offered to do the same for me. I'd rather not use chemical restraint as a training tool, though I know many people who do and it works for them which is just fine, but I've always been able to teach my horses to be clipped head to toe with no restraints whatsoever, so there's no excuse that a baby can't learn the same thing.

These two are TROUBLE - both 4 year old geldings and two peas in a pod

 

They literally do everything together

I make a point not to tie horses when introducing potentially scary things so we stood in the barn aisle while I rubbed the clippers all over him. That was fine, so I held the clippers a good couple feet away from him and turned them on. I've never gotten such a big reaction! He shot backwards about 10 feet and stood wide-eyed and snorting. I got him to step forward within reach and petted him with my free hand. I turned the clippers off, rubbed them over his face, held them away and turned them on again. No spooking this time but he was adamant that they not get near his face. We repeated this process for a while until I was able to rub his neck with the clippers turned on. Then I got to the point where I could rub his face with the hand holding the clippers so there was some vibration but not as much as just the clippers touching his face. Finally I was able to easily trim his bridle path with no complaints on his part. I could rub his cheek and jaw line with the clippers on but they are still absolutely terrifying if they touch his chin, so we'll just keep working at it a couple times a week. But I was quite pleased with how much I was able to do in one session! And now he has a nice bridle path :)

My tack locker is getting closer to being functional

Spread Thin

This last week has been so busy and I have some fun stuff to share!

Trask is now officially my lease horse and we moved to a new barn! I'm so, so excited to be at this place, it's AMAZING. When Alanna moved Emi home, I stole her place at NDF. I've boarded at the last barn (we'll call it SS) for over three years and it was time to move on. While I'm excited to have Trask at NDF I cannot wait to move Jetta here. She's gonna love it!

It is so beautiful here

I'm still spread pretty thin though. Jetta is still at the old barn until I'm done with finals (exactly one week until I'm 1/2 of a vet!) then I am moving her home to my parent's barn to foal. She'll have a nice big 12x30' stall with an attached run and a big paddock to hang out in. Once baby is born we can turn them out in the big 3 acre pasture where there's lots of room and hills for baby to roam.



I'm still riding Vante a bit just cause I enjoy it, not that I really have the time for it with finals approaching, but oh well.

Things I'm not gonna miss about the old barn:

• Struggling to get the hay in the loft, especially since the hay elevator is permanently broken
• Having to buy hay because I don't want my horse to eat straw
• Parking my trailer in a swamp underneath an awful tree where birds nest and poop on my truck and the beetles breed and infest my truck and trailer. And I have to use 4-wheel drive to park and pull my trailer out of the swamp

Swamp after a couple days of "drying out". Mud up to my ankles... Vs. my new parking spot!

• A wash rack with no warm water
• The slickly lined poop mountain (aka manure pile)
• A stall that I pay to get cleaned daily that often looks like it hasn't been cleaned in 3 days

• Not being told my horse is out of her supplement
• An open tack room where all of my tack is covered in a thick layer of dust and my things regularly walk away
• An arena where it is deemed a miracle when the ground gets worked
• Passive-agressive text messages from the barn owner
• When my horse gets turned out in 80+ degree weather with a blanket on and no shade
• Not being allowed at the barn before 9am or after 9pm
• Not being able to see a dang thing when it's dark out because the barn lights are so dim... you know it's bad when the farrier has to use a headlamp and you basically never really get to see your horse in the light for months at a time during winter 
• Tiny grass-less "turnout" paddocks
• Not a single pitchfork is missing less than 2 tines

Things I'm going to miss about the old barn:

• Outdoor arena (though new barn has a big pasture we can ride in and set jumps in once hay is cut!!)
• Round pen
• Absolutely nothing else 

I can't decide what I'm most excited about at the new barn... the fact that I can ride before class some days or get to the barn late when I have a busy day? How absolutely beautiful and well-kept everything is? The fact that I get to park my trailer on actual gravel? That I can access trails right off the property?

Trask learning to pose

We get individual tack lockers at NDF so I'm still figuring out how to organize mine. I pulled out an old saddle blanket rack I have for saddle pads, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep it. It only has one saddle rack, but I have a free-standing saddle rack that will hopefully fit. I got some awesome aqua-colored plastic bins at Target that I'm going to use to store boots/polos and other random things. Plus I have my plastic drawer thing and a bin of sheets that I think will fit. I still have a ton of stuff to move from the old barn, but the new barn has a storage room where I can stash my bin of winter blankets and other odds-and-ends.

Current configuration of my tack locker... still need to cram a bunch of stuff in!

I cannot convey how perfect this new barn is and how excited I am to be there! I was reaching my breaking point at the old barn so this was amazing timing.

Happy boy

Baby Boys

I've got two young boys in my life these past couple weeks and I'm having so much fun!  I love riding babies.

Matchy matchy game is strong

Cute speckly ears

I rode Vante the first time in a week yesterday and he was great. Last week I introduced the vienna reins to him. I really think they'll help him learn to stretch down since he still has a really hard time grasping that concept. His neck is coming along but he still has upside-down muscling going on, so it'll help with that, and I think it'll help him grasp that he can maintain contact for more than a handful of strides before becoming a giraffe again! We're not going to use it too often, but already that one time made a lot of difference!




After I lunged him in it last week and hopped on, he was so much softer and accepting of contact. We just had a short ride since he really was so good. I was putting him away and his owner came out and told me how she rode him the day before after not riding him in over a week. She said he was really good and that whatever I'm doing with him has made him be a perfect gentleman under saddle for her! I was so happy he was good for her and that she noticed a difference.

Today I put out some ground poles and after a quick lunge I got on. He was again, really good. He's obviously used to ground poles so he trotted politely over them, except for when he stepped on each and every one. Dork. We worked a lot on the canter because it wants to be four beats and he needs to build up the muscle to hold it together. His trot-canter transitions are much better and I only had to get after him once today, the rest of the times he transitioned softly just with my leg and maybe a light tap of the whip. He did break a lot to the right, but he just needs time to get fit. The left is a lot more difficult for him, he has a really hard time maintaining an inside bend, not falling in, and not being a giraffe. Multi-tasking is tough guys! But he's getting it. He's already so much more maneuverable. I can ask him to move his shoulders and his around much more easily.

Sweaty boy

He got a bath and this is 5 seconds before he rolled... right before his owner showed up

The highlight of our ride as when he maintained a nice forward working trot (he wants to do a little western trot a lot of the time) and maintained contact without chewing on the bit excessively and he was coming over his back and using the correct muscles in his neck. He's really good at faking contact using the muscles on the underside of his neck. It felt amazing and he held it for all the ways down one long side and one short side of the arena before I asked him to walk and gave him the reins. He learns so quickly! I've been riding him only occasionally and he's starting to really get the concepts I'm trying to teach him. Even on the lunge line he doesn't go around like a big gray giraffe as often any more.

He tries to eat EVERYTHING - he's got my whip here

So more about the new man in my life:

Trask is an almost 4 year old registered Swedish Warmblood gelding. I believe he's half Trakehner and half Thoroughbred. He's small, probably 15.2hh at the moment. He's actually the first horse that I've ever castrated (don't tell him that, he doesn't remember me luckily!). He's owned by my friend/roommate/vet KP. The plan is to lease him until Jetta's baby is weaned. He's had almost a year of dressage training supposedly but is still really lacking in some areas. We're going to try and fill those holes in, start him over fences and turn him into a well rounded individual with lots of trail riding and such!



I'm really excited. I've ridden him a grand total of 3 times and he's a total sweetheart. He's gonna be so much fun! I really do love riding babies. If this whole vet thing doesn't work out, I'll just go start horses for people...

He really didn't want to get out of bed on Monday

"Make me"

I rode him on Sunday and Monday and he's going to be a lot of fun. I love how he's built, super compact and I think he's going to be a fun jumper. We did our first little crossrail the other day and after walking over awkwardly a couple times, he trotted right over it and cantered away like it was nothing. Now if he could just not whinny every 5 seconds when horses are getting turned out...

We jumped!

He moves to the new barn (more on that exciting news soon!) on Sunday. I'm so excited to have a horse that's a little more "mine" for the summer.

 And lest everyone forget who the real star of this show is...  Jetta is now officially past her 9 month mark! She got a nice bath the other day (which she did not appreciate, as per usual). Her belly has gotten so big!

Shiny girl, who also rolled in 5 seconds

 Also, don't forget to enter our baby contest I wrote about in my last post!