More Than I Bargained For

So this post was supposed to be happy and exciting because I have a surprise to share! But I wanted to warn you ahead of time that it is going to be more of a rant instead...

First off, meet Queenie. My new project!

She is Tux and Katy's mom (see "The Herd" tab if you don't know who they are), an 11 year old, 16.2hh Clydesdale PMU mare.

So here's the deal: she's had 60 days under saddle with a professional trainer according to my aunt. He didn't have the time to help sell her and show her to people interested so my aunt asked me if I'd be willing and I said yes, as long as she can pay for board. She agreed and brought Queenie down yesterday. I get two months to try and sell Queenie. Not a hard thing to do right? I mean after all, she's already started undersaddle and that's half the work right there!

Wrong.

We all know that anyone can call themselves a trainer and charge for their "training" when the truth is that they know nothing about training a horse. Well, I'm pissed because this "trainer" is exactly that - he put hardly any training on this horse in the 60 days she was with him and charged my aunt for it.

I expect a horse that's been under saddle that long to know how to walk, trot, canter in both directions and maintain gait without being nagged. I expect her to stand still for mounting, to halt and back in a relatively straight line willingly. I would expect them to bend, soften to the bit, and move off the leg to some degree. I would expect them to yield the hindquarter and forehand when asked and be relatively well exposed to things like whips, flapping straps and normal noises that they might here.

Queenie is basically none of those things. If I hadn't seen a picture of her being ridden by this so-called trainer, then I wouldn't imagine she had any training.

I put her in cross ties and she stood very well, which I was surprised. She was started by a "cowboy" type of guy so I wouldn't have expected her to be in any sort of cross ties, but she didn't seem to be bothered by them one bit.

I got her all groomed up - she's got a little bit of rain rot along her back, not bad but not unexpected given that she's got a little valley going down her back because of how chunky she is. I banged her tail, braided her mane and forelock up, then broke out the clippers to shave off her beard and whiskers. She had never seen clippers before and was a little scared of them (I unclipped the cross ties so we wouldn't have any "accidents"). But with some treats she quickly accepted them.

I saddled her up without any problems though she was a little jumpy about me cinching her up. She accepted the bit rather well. I lunged her and she seems like she's done it before perhaps, though very badly, plus she was quite afraid of the lunge whip. She walked and trotted but had no "brakes" that I could find. Once I got her stopped I asked her to go the other direction, to the right and it took her several minutes to figure out to go forward. Cantering takes quite a bit of convincing and at this point her toes are so long I'm afraid she's going to trip and fall on her face.

She does yield her hindquarters but she does so very fearfully. Some people don't seem to understand that your horse can be responsive and respectful without being afraid. After finishing with lunging and seeing that she didn't look like she was going to buck I asked her to bend to either side which she had also apparently never done and was very stiff and heavy.

I got on and almost immediately regretted it. She spooked and danced around and I thought she was going to take off with me; she was very reactive. I talked to her and patted her and after a couple minutes she calmed down. I let her walk off and she was ok. The posters on the wall are terrifying, she spooks at every noise that the other horses make. She doesn't steer very well, she doesn't listen to any leg cues very well, trotting involves a lot of kicking (from me, not her) and she doesn't maintain her gaits. When you ask her to stop she does so very suddenly and bracing-ly, then dances in place like I'm going to do something to her or ask her for something. She doesn't appreciate backing and roots the reins out of your hands and cannot go in a straight line to save her life. She kind of sort of goes on the bit at the walk, but not at the trot. She's got a short, easy to sit stride so I don't think she'll be making a dressage horse at all, but I was hoping to make her into a trail horse/husband horse.

My aunt told me that she is "green broke" but I don't even consider her that. By definition broke = trained and green broke should mean "trained but inexperienced". She's most certainly not trained. If I compared her to the horses that I've trained then her training is about the equivalent of being a week under saddle and having maybe 5 rides on her. Just makes me upset that this guy is calling himself a trainer - he's at least twice my age, therefore he should have twice my experience, especially if he considers himself a professional trainer. I may be young and not have a lot of experience training horses to the upper levels of any discipline, but I sure can start a horse a million times better than this guy.

Anyways, rant over - just had to get that out somewhere! It's not that I mind doing the training on her, I love training horses, it's just that I didn't expect to have to. Now of course I'm concerned that I won't be able to get Queenie trained and sold in two months, especially for how much my aunt wants. I could probably have her trained by the end, but I don't feel comfortable marketing her until she has a basic skill set down. Definitely more than I bargained for right now...

But isn't she cute?! Her face reminds me a lot of Tux and I think she'll be similar to train personality wise.

It's not her fault no one ever taught her anything...

Just What I Needed

Just what I needed - a great, distracting weekend to keep my mind occupied!

It's still really rough thinking about Grady. I knew it would be hard having him gone, but it's random things that make me upset, like opening my ebay watch list and finding a blanket I was thinking of getting him, or finding a to do list with "Groom Grady" on it. And the pasture is so empty... I keep expecting him to walk into his stall or whinny at me. I created a page at the top of this blog for him, just in case you're interested. I still have a few pics I want to find and scan to add to that page.

My friend AR and I made plans to go ride at the beach since the weather was supposed to be nice and boy was it gorgeous! It was a lot of fun, I really needed that.

We have a cool shadow :)

Jetta behaved pretty much exactly like I expected her to. Her attitude as we started out was pretty much, "heck no, I didn't sign up for this!". She spooked at everything. She spooked at the grass, she spooked at the puddles, she spooked at the different colored sand, she spooked at the hikers, she spooked at the driftwood, she spooked at the waves. Geez horse. But she's this way in the spring every year since she's shut inside pretty much all winter. And after some impressive maneuvers in wave avoidance (her technique - frog leap the waves so that your legs go in five different directions at once, nearly unseating your rider, or if that isn't satisfactory, spin and bolt), eventually she got over it and we had a really great ride.

Having a good gallop is a cure for everything!

The Hardest Thing

The hardest thing to do is to let someone you love go.

I haven't had to deal with that a whole lot in my life, so having to put down a horse is just so devastating.

Grady has always been my best friend, the best horse a little girl could ask for and my first love.

This morning I got a text from my dad while I was in class saying there was an emergency and I needed to call him. Knowing my dad, it's really important if he calls it an emergency. I stepped out of class to talk to him and as soon as he spoke I knew something was wrong. Grady wasn't doing well and they had the vet out. My heart just broke right then. I gathered up my things from class and left, already crying (poor teacher, he looked kind of speechless when I told him I had to go).

It was the longest hour of my life trying to get home as quickly as possible. I was so worried that they'd put him down without me being there. That's something I've always worried about, especially when I'm traveling. When I got there the vet had sedated him - given him a ton of morphine and banamine. He colicked this morning and twisted his gut badly. He ended up getting his back feet stuck in the fencing when he rolled too close.

I'm so lucky to have such an amazing community. The neighbors called my parents when they saw him rolling then three other neighbors stopped to get him out of the fence. One person pulled the fence post out of the ground, another cut the wire away while my neighbor LC sent my brother to the barn to get a halter and calmed Grady. I'm so glad they all stopped to help.

The vet said there pretty much wasn't anything he could do. He had tubed Grady a couple hours before but there pretty much were no gut sounds still. He palpated him rectally but could hardly get his hand up very far because of the twist. Grady was feeling a little better when I got there from the morphine, he nickered and nuzzled my face when I got there. But he had a hard time standing, his muscles were shaking and he was obviously still uncomfortable.

Hardest decision of my life. I spent over an hour with him, just petting him and loving on him. It was a beautiful day out today, not a bad day to die I guess, all things considered. The vet finally came back an hour and a half later and I decided it was time to put him down. The longer I waited the harder it would get and I didn't want him to hurt any more.

He would have been 27 this year. I always thought he would live until he was 30 years old. It was something my trainer who helped me buy and retrain him always said: that he's the kind of horse that I'll be riding until he was 30. I had so many things I was looking forward to with him. He was just starting to shed out and I always get excited when that happens - he goes from fuzzy teddy bear to sleek stallion. I was going to have a professional photographer come take some pictures of us together this summer since I don't have too many of me and him together. My parents were planning on turning the old vineyard area into his new pasture and had just planted some orchardgrass. I always thought he'd be around when I finally got around to breeding Jetta, that he'd be the foal's buddy when it was time for weaning, that he'd help me start my next project horse this summer, he was always the best horse to use for ponying.

I'm just going to miss him so much. Even just today, walking down to the barn to get a saddle I expected to see him pop his head over the fence. He was my baby, my handsome old man.

My favorite pair of ears

Last time I saw him and he was so spunky!

Amazing, Awesome Field Trip

I've mentioned it before, but I'm taking Equine Reproduction and really enjoying it. I've taken the precurser classes, Domestic Animal Reproduction and Applied Reproduction and loved them. I'm thinking it might be something that I want to continue to pursue as a vet. I didn't think I'd like it this much, but I find it fascinating and if everything goes well you get a cute foal (or other baby animal) at the end!

What really made this class great was this field trip. I was kind of dreading it because it meant our class spent the whole day in a van, from 9am to 6pm. Not my ideal way to spend a Saturday, but by the time we got to the second barn, I was happy!

We stopped at three barns that run a breeding operation. I didn't know what to expect, but these were all very high quality barns. The first barn bred miniature horses. It was really interesting because you found out the differences between minis and full sized horses. For instance, minis don't do AI very well and you have a high rate of dystocia. For full sized horses I think that statistic we got is something like 90% of full sized horses have "normal" births without needing assistance, while minis have a 40-50% dystocia rate where they need help having their foal. Crazy.

This farm was super cute because everything was customized for the minis - they had little stalls, little round pen, little trailer. They bred world champion minis and their sitting room was full to the brim with their ribbons and trophies. Since they don't do AI, they tend to sell their minis instead of breeding to outside mares, since they like to control the quality of mares they breed to. We got to see the marketing material that they use since that's where their sales come from, they make a yearly video and flyers.

Miniature sized foaling stalls. Really nice set up for everything here.

So that was interesting and the owners were both very down to earth and I liked hearing about minis since I've never owned one.

The next barn was AWESOME. A Thoroughbred breeding barn ran by a vet. He had a very "whatever" attitude which was amusing and had a ton of stuff for us to do. He had a mare that was due so he induced her with oxytocin before we got there. Basically we showed up and he was like "Oh good, go watch that mare have her foal." I got to watch a baby being born!!

Newly born colt

If you ever run across a foal named OSUFOURTHIRTYTWO... we were there for it's birth, lol. They said they're going to name it after our class, but I kinda hope not. That's a bit of a sucky name. Anyways, we got to clear the amniotic sac away once he was born, gave him a vitamin E/selenium shot, then when his umbilical cord broke we dipped it in antiseptic. The mare passed her placenta without a problem and we checked to make sure it was whole and had no pieces left behind.

Taking his first steps

We moved on to drawing blood from the foals that were a couple days old, I drew blood for an IgG snap test to make sure the foals had gotten enough colostrum and didn't need any plasma transfusions.

"My" foal was a superstar for his blood draw but it obviously tired him out!

The vet collected semen from their Triple Crown winning stallion and we examined it under the microscope, then froze it. It's interesting seeing the "behind the scenes" - you'd think that handling semen would be such a sterile, exact science, but it's not really. Sure you calculate the correct volume and amount of extender needed based on the sperm motility and concentration, and everything is kept clean, but the way that you get the semen into the 0.5 ml straw? Suck on the other end of the straw... It's plugged with a bit of cotton so no liquid can get through, but still. Once it was frozen we examined it again to see if it had survived the freezing/thawing process and there were still some sperm alive, but this stallion was a good example of one that didn't freeze well, at least with the extender that they were using.

Triple Crown Winner! Looking pretty awesome for being almost 20.

After that he brought out his "easier to handle" stallion and one of the other girls from the class got to collect from him. He also sedated a mare that had a uterine infection and we got to palpate her, do an ultrasound and uterine swab, then give her an infusion to counter the infection. So basically, it was awesome and he said we could come back any time to help. Definitely planning on taking him up on that offer.

Student getting ready to collect this stallion

We rushed off to the last barn on our tour. I know of the vet that runs this one, she did an embryo transfer on two of my friends' mares. Her barn was absolutely pristine. My roommate who is also in this class, ML, commented that the barn was cleaner than our house, and we have an OCD roommate, lol. She is a USDA approved facility though, so everything has to be perfect. She said she had just gotten in three stallions from Ireland in her quarantine barn. She gave us a short powerpoint on what she does. Basically she's the one to go to when your mare isn't getting pregnant or you have a stallion you want to ship semen for overseas. She does more of the specialty stuff too, like the embryo transfers - I want her job. She said that she found it was really rewarding and always interesting because research is always finding out new things that apply to reproduction. I found out she offers internships and has one available this summer so I'm planning on applying for it.


So basically I was super happy that we did this tour. It was really neat to get to see all of the behind the scenes type of stuff and actually get to do stuff at the second barn.

Tidbits Tuesday

Sorry for the lack of posting! It's coming up on the end of the term so of course all the last minute mid-terms (yes "MID"-terms) are happening, final projects and preparing for finals is happening.

I do have a very long post in the works about an AWESOME field trip that I took as part of my equine reproduction class that I want to share, but it might take me a while to get it all written out. In the mean time...

Jetta has been pretty good lately! It's been very mild weather-wise so she's been getting turned out again. Though she's started shedding, thankfully she hasn't started cycling again and there's been no pissy-ness in the saddle in recent memory (ok, recent memory for us is like two weeks, but it's a good thing!)

Nomming in the sunshine (and mud)

She has been super unsteady in contact recently, but I think that's more a symptom of us working on getting her to carry herself and she usually settles down by the end of our ride, especially once she gets to canter.

We've been working over cavalettis a lot, both on the lungeline and undersaddle. I really want to strengthen that weaker hip of hers so I think this will help and possibly I can already see a difference! I'll have to take a picture to check for sure, but her hips may no longer be 2" uneven.

Yesterday I jacked up the "cavaletti" and we actually jumped. My goal is to jump once a week but usually I'm too lazy or in a hurry to haul out the jumps, so I need to work on that. We worked on getting our leads over a small (2' to 2'3" ish) jump. That's something I really want to work on this year is getting her to land on the correct lead and working on flying changes. She started out landing on the incorrect lead about 75% of the time, but by the end she had the correct lead almost 100% of the time. Then, just for funsies, I raised the jump up. I didn't have my measuring tape but I think it was between 2'9" and 3'. Anyways, it looked HUGE to me which is sad because I'd hoped that by now this would be our "normal" sized fences that we were working on.

Um, we're jumping this?

But huge or not, Jetta jumped it quite well, save for refusing it the first time (you want me to jump that?!). My release was good, I felt that I sat back enough before the jump, the only problem now to focus on is my leg. I just can't keep it on and in place at the girth! Unfortunately I'll have to wait until next month for a jumping lesson with KO.

There was a small, local tack sale on Sunday. I almost managed to convince myself that I didn't need to go, but my tack whoring side won out. But I managed to purchase only a small amount - a new turnout sheet for Jetta, a purple plaid Pessoa for $30 in great condition. It matches her medium weight turnout which is also a purple plaid and we actually needed this because her other turnout sheet is very poor quality and has been ripped, no waterproofing left and is actually starting to fray.

All purpled out.

Then some Nunn Finer back xc boots that actually fit Jetta.

Aaaaand I got another saddle pad :( I swear I'm addicted to saddle pads. I do not need another one, but this one was really cute - black with hot pink piping and gray binding that for $5 I couldn't pass it up. Someone please convince me that I have enough saddle pads - dressage pads: four white ones and one navy one, all purpose pads: hot pink, light pink, bright blue, black, white, shaped white fleece, xc shaped black, and now a black with pink and gray piping/binding. And recently I was eyeing a gray and turquoise dressage pad in the new Dover catalog. Halp.

Flashback

I recently found these photos on my friend's Facebook page. I had completely forgotten about them! I started this horse when I was 15 years old, my second horse that I started under saddle and first horse I worked with for anyone else. He is a little Paso Fino gelding named Zapateado or Zapa for short.

I vaguely remember starting him. He was pretty easy, though I don't have any experience with gaited horses, his owner had me do a little bit of work on his gaits, but for the most part I just established his w/t/c and did trail work with him. I completely forgot that I showed him at all!

Posing after showing him in a trail competition

Riding outside for the first time

Spring is Coming

This week has been busy! I made it out to the barn two out of five days this week which was unfortunate, for some reason my teachers don't understand that midterms are supposed to be in the middle of the term and not at the end...

First ride of this week was interesting. The trainer I rode with a while back, JB, and had an awful lesson with was there working with the BO's horse and so she watched the first few minutes of a ride and commented on it a bit, which was kind of awkward. I like her, just her training methods didn't click for us and of course Jetta was being bad at first since I hadn't ridden her in two days. She was a little "uppity".

Today I got out to ride and she was good. She was SUCH A MUDDY HORSE. Holy cow, mare. It was b-e-a-utiful out today and sunny so she got turned out with her new best buddy, Tiki, the old (slightly crazy) gaming mare and they were just filthy. It is still super sloppy out.

Mud up to her elbows and to her stifle, her face was covered too. I think a bath is in her near future!

But Jetta's started shedding and you know what that means! Spring is coming!!

For reals