Saddlebred in the Making

Lesson 11: An Equal and Opposite Reaction

2012-01-30T19:02:00.000-06:00

Sorry I am late in posting about my lesson last week. But here it goes.

You know Newton's law of motion that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. . . well our lesson was kind of like that. Louie has been trying to figure out lots and lots of ways to get out of being round and staying on the bit. His two favorites are: "hey look! That crack of light coming from the corner of the door is going to eat us both!" above the bit, and "I am so frustrated with you Mom!" behind the bit.

We've worked on remedying these problems in the past, but we really focused on this, and Julie said something that really made sense to me. She basically said, that I need to be ready with a response or a "fix" for each time Louie does something besides being round (while he's on my time, gosh darn it!), and in addition, I need to look for opportunities to give. So that basically means that I need to be thinking and know the answers and what to do each time Louie decides he wants to go above or behind the bit- have a solution ready to use for each problem I might encounter. Then in addition to that, I need to pay attention to the "feel" and if I feel that Louie is ready to sink his neck deeper, I need to be prepared to let him do that when I feel him giving me those signs (ie filling up the bridle or taking more hold of the bit).

So the fixes. . . when he wants to go above the bit, I need more bend, more sideways, bending him away from and pushing him towards the scary monster. Shoulder in works great for this. When I take my inside hand off of his neck and back to my knee, I need to still hold with my outside rein (think pulley rein) to get the neck to come down and in into the contact vs just over-bending.

When Louie wants to go behind the bit. . . now this is a really tough one as it evolves some with time. . . but for the time being, what works is to add leg and say "whoa" with my seat/tummy so that he doesn't run off. Even from a standstill, adding legs causes him to reach his nose out some. The key is not to pull with my hands to cause him to back off of the bit. I need to give some to make it a happier experience. The other key, which I think has really helped us, is that when he does duck back behind the bit, I can't throw my reins away. This is where that looking for opportunity to give comes in to play. . . I need to then shorten my reins and keep the same contact that I want, using my legs to push him into it (and stomach to control the speed, grunting if need be LOL). After going around like this, BTV while still maintaining contact and getting a big forward message from my legs, eventually he gives in to it and starts to become heavier and heavier in the bridle. As I notice him increasing the downward pressure on the reins, then is my opportunity to give, and let him lengthen the neck.

I really think that this behind the bit treatment has helped as we worked on it a fair amount at our lesson on Thursday, and in the three rides I've had since then (I know, a lot of riding I got done this week!) I've hardly felt him go behind the bit at all in the past few rides.

The other thing that I think really helps is lunging him a little bit to warm him up- both directions, both ends of the arena. That way we get some of the "monsters" and freshness dealt with and out of the way so that we don't spend our entire ride trying to deal with being above the bit and running away from scary monsters. I have done that the past two rides and my it sure seemed to help us have a more productive ride.

So Much for Riding This Week!

2012-01-23T22:04:00.000-06:00

Well I didn't ride at all this week, and most likely won't ride before my next lesson on Thursday. . .

I stuck to my plan and drove Louie yesterday. He was a little wound up, but we didn't have any trouble working through it. . . . until I asked him for an extension along a straight away. I tapped him with the whip a few times and he crow hopped, felt the crupper, then started kicking out badly, up over my head, I was scared for my life. I tried to work him through it, but he caught one of my reins with his hind leg so it was wrapped under his leg. He was speeding around a corner, still bucking and running and I had no control. Feeling that it was wiser for me to bail out and save being kicked in the face since I had no control with my rein lost, I rolled myself back out of the cart and Louie kept going. . .

He only ran less than a lap around before he stopped and stood while one of my barn mates caught him. I unhooked him right away and checked us all over. There didn't seem to be any damage to me, Louie, or the cart, so I started off long lining Louie in some circles at a trot to settle us down, knowing that I would have to hook him again to preserve our driving abilities and avoid building fear.

After a little while of long lining he seemed to have settled down, so I re-hooked him and drove for about 5 minutes, both ways, some circles at the walk and trot, and other than being timid with the whip, we didn't have any issues.

Today, I needed to regain some ground, and while it was too stormy/windy to drive today, I put the harness on (with my kicking strap that will now become a permanent fixture on the harness), hooked some side reins and a lunge line and set out to work out some issues. I knew that he would be likely to buck/kick on the lunge line when fresh and stormy, so this was a perfect opportunity.

After a little while, I asked Louie to canter on the lunge (which nearly always produces some sort of buck/kick/jump), and when he set out to canter and let out a little buck stride, I growled at him, pulled on the lunge line, used the whip at the same time. Well whatever I did sure got his attention. He did the same thing once or twice more, and I did my best to show that that sort of behavior is NOT acceptable. By the end of the lunge lesson (which by the way did cause Louie to work up a pretty good sweat), he was making decent trot-canter transitions both ways on the lunge line, with no funny business.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming, and I'm hopeful we'll be able to drive again soon to cement to skills that we worked on today, with the kicking strap as my safety net. I was just thankful nobody got hurt!

Lesson 10: Practice Perfection

2012-01-19T21:59:00.000-06:00

First off a side note from earlier this week. Louie had a massage from Julie's son on Tuesday, which I'm sure has uncovered part of our issues with our rides this week- Louie's back is sore. Well, nothing is really new there, as his back is often sore, but we think at this point that this is something that needs to be worked through, as he probably is either sore in his back because he needs to use his hind end more and lift his back more, or because he is sore in his hind legs. Anyhow, he's not lame and not severely sore, but I'm going to probably cut back my riding just a bit as a prophylactic measure and get rid of the front riser so that the saddle fits a little more uniformly. I think Louie will also benefit from a few more massages. I'm going to try to drive him a little bit more too as we've only driven once since coming to the new stable, as we've been focusing so much on making riding progress.

Anyhow, tonight was a very very cold lesson. It was about -2 degrees outside (actual temperature) when we rode. I usually don't ride when it's this cold, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to reschedule my lesson, and Julie still works her horses and teaches when it's this cold, so I figured it would probably be alright. Wow did my joints ache after that!

We worked on essentially the same things this week as we worked on last week, except Julie wants me to work a little bit more on promptness and having our riding be quality and transition ready all the time, "practice as you play" type of thing. No slacking off. And as great as we can get a nice relaxed trot, we've got to be able to get that quickly and transition in and out of it smoothly. It can't take a minute to build up enough energy to make a decent transition from a relaxed gait.

So, specifically, we worked a LOT on half halts, and in those I need to use more whip and abs, and just plant my hands on Louie's neck and get his back end to speed up and his front end to slow down. We worked on our walk-trot transitions, which need to be more prompt as Julie noticed that I am begging for the transition. Well, honestly, I'm not totally sure that Louie understands the cue of moving my seat forward yet, through he's getting better with it. He'll do it when I get his engine really revved up, but he's just looking for the easier answer (which, is trotting rather than walking with impulsion). I think the other thing I notice is that when I move my seat forward to ask for the trot, I give up my legs, which I should keep on through the transition.

The other thing that we worked on was Louie's gawking and going above the bit. When he does this, I need to take him into more of a bend and push him toward whatever monster he is scared of, moving sideways. I can't let him be a tourist and look at the scenery, I need to drive and have control while he's on my time. I need to do whatever I need to do to get him round, which, typically involves bending, planting my hands on his neck so I'm not too busy with them, and pushing with my legs and whip and maintaining the tempo and speed with my seat/core.

He also likes to go behind the bit and curl his neck when he gets frustrated. For this, we think, bend less and go more forward. When he ducks behind the bit, I need to use some fairly strong forward aids, and my abs strongly to keep him from plowing ahead too quickly. I need to keep my hands quiet and planted on his neck. Slowing the tempo or speeding up also tends to help him come out of it.

We worked a lot on gait changes, half halting, changes of rein (from one circle to another and across the diagonal as well as a half circle change of rein), etc and having them all be prompt, round, and without falling apart and having Louie throw his neck in the air. This is challenging, partly because I'm obsessed with changing my whip and in the 20 seconds I fumble with it, Louie completely falls apart. So I'll either have to not change it and just keep it in my right hand, or ride with two whips like most people there.

Finally we worked a little bit more on our trot-canter in two point transitions, which is actually pretty decent (other than the fact that Louie was really wound up with the cold and bucked into the canter a few times).

My homework for the next week is more of the same, another week of short stirrup work (did I mention that she moved my stirrups up 6 notches? ouch! it hurts!) and working on getting better engagement and roundness, more prompt and light transitions (within and between gaits), half halts, and a little bit of two point cantering, focusing on getting my butt back and out of the saddle and not breaking my body in half in the middle.

Explosive Energy

2012-01-15T20:30:00.000-06:00

Today Louie was all wound up for some reason. I attempted to ride, but he was really nervous, gawking at everything, wouldn't listen, and when I asked him to go sideways because he was being stupid looking at something, he ground his teeth and acted even more wound up. He pooped 4 times in about 10 minutes of walk-trot work. We got some decent walking in, but every time as soon as we tried to trot, he fell apart and was back to his nervous behavior.

So I thought, I'm not going to fight this battle today. I hopped off, hooked up some side reins, and lunged him for about 20-30 minutes.

He started off at a racetrack trot. Shortly after taking off at a trot, he started bucking, kicking, and just working out some of the extra energy that was apparently built up inside of him. I was worried he was going to kick one of the walls, but thankfully he didn't. He continued this fast trot- buck/kick routine, then cantered, bucked a bunch of times, and thought he was pretty hot stuff. So we just kept going. . . I was glad I wasn't riding.

Eventually he settled down and actually relaxed. I was able to ask him to lower his neck by wiggling my lunge line and praising him. He picks up on that type of thing pretty easily. By the end I had a very nice training level trot that was relaxed, round, and active. I also had a very sweaty horse. . . we'll try again tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have a cooperative animal!

Lesson 9: Quieting the Hands and Seat and Adding Impulsion

2012-01-12T22:31:00.069-06:00

Tonight we worked on a little bit of everything. We started out with a little bit of lateral work with shoulder in and renvers along the straight away. Julie wants me to "think" renvers when I do my corners, to help me get deeper into them at the walk.

We worked a lot at first on medium walk to free walk, and Julie reminded us that when a test calls for free walk, the horse has got to do it "now!" or you'll lose points if they take half of the distance to lower the neck. We're getting the hang of this pretty well, but we can always use some improvement in transitions.

We then worked a little bit on our half-halts and the beginnings of extension. Basically what she wants me to do is to half halt for several strides, then "Go!" by changing the "attitude" of my body and thinking extension from my belly button. Not add leg, give the reins, or anything like that, more releasing the impulsion created in the half halt into forward movement. I think I have yet to figure out exactly what the attitude change I'm looking for is, but I think for now Louie's probably going to feel it as a different speed and height of posting. We got a little bit of some decent extension, but it's inconsistent yet.

We then worked on a little bit of sitting trot with no stirrups and Julie was kind of laughing as I sat the best when I was fumbling around looking for my stirrups. That is part of my homework, to slowly start to introduce some sitting trot, in short bursts, starting with just more frequent changes of my posting diagonal, then sitting 3 strides, 4 strides, 5 strides, etc until Louie doesn't really seem to notice or care whether I'm sitting or posting, as right now, he seems to think it's a really big deal if I change from one to another.

After a little bit Julie had had enough of me bending my wrists so she put on some old wrist braces that she had and made me ride in those. They immobilize the wrist joint so you have to use your shoulder more. I do think it helped, as I know that I use my wrists a lot in an effort at subtlety, but in using my reins so much, I am killing Louie's confidence and teaching him to back off of the bit. So far the wrist braces actually really seem like they're going to help with that. I have to wear them for at least the next week. Julie says Bill Woods (a clinician who is actually coming for a clinic later this spring) thinks of the arm like a hollow tube from the fingers to the elbow, and the rein goes through that tube and attaches at the elbow. I can see how this will help, I just need to make it a habit, which means I could be wearing the wrist braces for many months.

We then worked out some issues we were having with Louie wanting to curl back and duck behind the bit once in a while. Julie hopped on for a few seconds and basically so far what we're going to try to do is basically "grunt it out" with strong abs. So, for example, in the trot, if he ducks back behind the bit, I need to keep my reins the same length, add my calves, make sure my back is not arched, and use my stomach strongly to keep him from going too fast. So I'm using my stomach (as strongly as needed) for breaks instead of my reins, and hopefully he will reach out into the contact. Another technique that often helps is to either slow down or speed up within the gait, make a gait change, or add more bend/lateral work. Julie stressed the importance of getting him to reach down into the bit and really establish a solid training level frame before proceeding to the higher levels, as if we don't get him reaching down, he'll just drop his back instead of doing the work properly.

Lastly, she hiked my stirrups up 6 notches and I rode the canter in 2 point "jockey style" trying to maintain my head and torso in a constant position with the horse moving under me. She says doing this for a while should help me to eventually sit the canter without breaking my body in the middle as I so often do in the canter. She said we had a very nice jumping position, so that is good as this is something we work on outside of lessons on occasion too (just not with this short of stirrups). This is part of my homework, as well as wearing the wrist braces and working on a little more sitting trot. I'm also going to really try to work on my half halts more, though Julie did agree that I really like homework as we do some pretty decent discovery and make progress between lessons. I am super excited to start working on more extension! But for now, we've got other things to fix, so I've got to be patient, but of course I'll try it out from time to time.

It was cold, a high of about 14 degrees today, and despite my apron clip that Louie got, he still managed to work up a pretty solid sweat, as did I! So, we may have to think about extending his clip. . .

Lesson 8: Gas and Brakes in Every Step

2012-01-05T21:08:00.000-06:00

Today we warmed up with some half-passing across the diagonal, then halting at X and doing a 360 turn on the forehand, then continuing the half pass along the diagonal. We did this several times rather well at the walk, though we could use a little bit more bend in the direction of the movement (hey- it's renvers at an angle!) and a relaxed, lower neck.

After this, we worked extensively on half halts. We started with halting from the walk after just a few steps (using leg and seat only). We then progressed to eventually walking one step, then halt, then take one step then halt. This required a TON of ab strength to keep him from walking further than one step. What Julie says is that we need to have gas and brakes in each step- you need to be engaged and able to go faster and slow down with instant responsiveness at all times. Once we got this single-step gas-brakes-gas-brakes (feels like being in a traffic jam) down pretty well, we walked along continuously, but it was noticeable how much each step was purposeful and individual after doing this exercise.

Then we tried it at the trot. Our halt was not as good through the trot as Julie doesn't want me to sit for the transition as Louie drops his back when I do that. We needed to learn the "pulley rope" and how to really stop with using the legs. Using the legs to ask the horse to stop is really counter intuitive- until you understand that the rider's legs are asking the horse's hind legs to go forward, and the rider's seat/core is asking the horse's front legs to stop, which, if done properly, should result in a horse who stops with his legs up under his body.

Well, horses aren't born (or in Louie's case, aren't initially trained) to stop when they feel the legs being applied. So, we use the "pulley rope" to teach it. The legs are applied while the seat says "whoa," and the inside hand acts as an anchor for the rein, planted on the neck while the outside hand gently (read: as lightly as possible) pulls the rein back/up through the pulley (ie the bit) until the horse slows or stops. I was surprised using this method, that he actually did stop, and didn't need a ton of rein for this. Our plan is to only use the pulley rein concept as needed until Louie understands the concept of stopping/half halting off of the leg and seat alone (well, pretty much alone- but the point is to not crank on his face), as this does cause his neck to shrink up instead of lowering so nicely like we've been seeing lately.

At the end we worked on trotting down the center line and halting at X, using the legs, the seat (stilling the seat, almost staying in 2 point until we were stopped), and the pulley rein to halt.

By the end of the lesson, we had a pretty decent half halt, which is pretty much exactly what we worked on throughout the lesson. Though sometimes it was actual halting, many times we used it to almost transition from the trot to the walk, then keep trotting. Stopping with my legs and the pulley rein, and working on our half halting is my homework for the week.

Lesson 7: Renvers Revisited

2011-12-29T21:41:00.001-06:00

Well, renvers is still really hard. Louie doesn't much care for it, as he really has to work, and he's a bit on the lazy side. Not only that but counter-bending and renvers is counter intuitive. Tonight we worked on counter-bending and then renvers. We didn't make much progress in our single ride since our last lesson (since it was over Christmas), but we did improve the canter depart by maybe a tiny little smidgen.

We started out working just like always, round, bent, forward, on the bit, etc. We then fairly quickly jumped into counter bending on a circle. Julie had us spiral in on the circle, keeping an outside bend while making our circle smaller and smaller, then on the way back out again (circle getting larger), take the correct bend and allow Louie to stretch out and down.

After a few drills like this we transitioned into working on our renvers at the walk and trot (including the transitions). Louie didn't much care for this and while we had moments of somewhat decent renvers, it overall just looked like an uphappy horse with a dumb jockey who didn't know what she was doing, so Julie hopped on to see if she could figure out what our issues were. She discovered a few things: Louie is pretty patient and tolerant of everything we put him through, renvers is very hard for him, and lastly, he is dull to my aids to transition upward. Okay, so let me get this out on the table, I'm supposed to be transitioning upward simply by sliding my seat slightly forward (just my inside seat bone for the canter) and just keeping my legs in position, but not using them. Louie has never transitioned like this, especially into the canter, so before my next lesson, I've got to work on teaching him that his new cue is in my seat bones.

I got back on and we worked a little bit more on renvers, then changing the bend and cantering. We had one or two decent transitions tonight, so I felt happy about that. We also had a few little buck/hops that I can't blame Louie for in the least. This stuff is really hard.

Lucky for me, Lisa is great with the video camera so she got a nice video of our lesson. I have a feeling I'll watch this a few times to try to pick out the differences between the way Julie rode and I rode.

I think in the next week I'm going to go back a bit to our usual "pre-renvers" riding and try to work on the transitions and get that nice low neck and forward round trot back again. When we work on renvers this week, I'm going to try it along a straight-away, and I'm only going to ask him for a few strides at a time, as I think I'll be able to teach him better in shorter intervals where we take a break to praise him for his hard work. I don't think we've back tracked, in fact, I think we're super advanced from where we were at our first lesson, but this lesson unfortunately mostly only shows the frustrated, high-headed pissed off Louie, not the beautiful floaty round Louie that I've become accustomed to seeing in the mirrors. . . I guess that means we'll have to have another video!

Lesson 6: Renvers (Is Hard!)

2011-12-22T20:27:00.000-06:00

Our lesson tonight started with continued work on shoulder in, which, it turns out, needs more bend than I was using. According to Julie, if I have his body too straight, then he's leg yielding, so I need to keep a nice bend to the inside while asking for the shoulders to come in a few inches from the rail. We started to really do well with this, once I understood the concept of keeping a bend. During the shoulder in maneuver, I need to continue to sit to the inside, use an inside leg at the girth (inside leg should be ahead of outside leg at all times to be correct), a little wiggle to make sure my outside leg is still there and giving some forward encouragement and catching him if the hindquarters shift too far out, placed back behind the girth. My inside hand needs to be off of the neck and toward the inside, just wiggling and releasing on occasion to keep a nice bend with very little contact on the inside rein, and the outside hand with light contact, releasing gently once in a while to ask Louie to stretch his neck down deeper, and giving (the important part!) when he does reach down to it.

Then after Julie was satisfied with our shoulder in (which wasn't new to us thanks to our lessons last winter with Marlene), she had us trot over a few cavelleti (which was SO much better than the first few times we did them!), then learn something completely new- Renvers.

So renvers is haunches out. It is very similar to shoulder in, except the bend is opposite. Well if we have shoulder in down pretty well, renvers should be no big deal then, right? Wrong! The hard thing about renvers (besides the fact that it is nearly impossible to keep correct in my brain!) is that the horse has to be really, really responsive to the legs. It's a true test to find out if your horse moves away from your legs well, as unlike shoulder in, it takes a LOT of inside leg to keep both the haunches and the head out. Think of a parachute or a gently curved semi-circle. It is a lot easier for that semi-circle to travel in the convex direction, with the center of that line leading and the two ends of the semi-circle trailing behind. This is like shoulder in. You push the middle of the horse sideways and the head and tail follow. Renvers means pushing that semi-circle in the opposite direction, in the concave direction, which, to a parachute creates a lot of resistance, and hence slows it down. So we have to push two ends of the arc forward instead of just pushing the middle and having the rest follow. So naturally it is challenging, and it's a bit unnatural!

This is a view from above of a horse in renvers. You can see the rail at the bottom left of the photo.

We worked on this mostly at the trot. Julie loves renvers because it forces a horse to use both of their hind legs, rather than just the inside leg. Well, Louie doesn't love to work, so he resisted, but eventually we had some decently okay looking renvers on a 20 m circle in posting trot. For the renvers movement, my weight needs to be to the outside, my legs need to switch (inside leg back, outside leg forward), and both of my hands need to come somewhat to the inside. You use a TON of inside leg (but intermittent, with help from the whip or you'll be a hurting unit) to keep those haunches out, but some outside leg at the girth to keep the bend to the outside and to help control the direction of travel. Then the outside rein has to work fairly hard here to ask for the bend, as it's not natural for what we've taught the horse nor ourselves 'til now, and the inside (inside of the circle) rein needs contact to receive the horse's movement from the outside leg and not let the horse drift out of the circle.

Well, it wasn't pretty but we got a little bit of decent renvers, and then we used it as a set up for the canter depart. Julie had me doing a sitting or posting trot in renvers, then switch my bend (and my legs) and ask for the canter with little to no leg. My inside seat bone sliding forward (with my legs already in position with the outside leg back) should be the cue for the canter. After three or four tries, we couldn't pick up the right lead (well, think about this, three months ago, I had to use spurs, seat, lean forward, and kiss in order to get it, now we can do it with just a little leg and seat, but we'll have to shake up the coke bottle a bit more so he is more sensitive to just the inside seat bone sliding forward with the legs in the position of canter (outside leg back, inside leg at the girth). So that is our homework for the week.

I figure we'll do a lot of work on renvers and probably also on our trot-canter transitions in the next ride or two that we get in before our next lesson. I'm hopeful that it will get easier! Hopefully we'll get more than one ride in with Christmas this weekend!

Time to Think About a Body Clip

2011-12-18T21:07:00.000-06:00

While the weather has been unseasonably warm lately, Louie's worked up a pretty decent sweat the past four times I've worked him. His neck, chest, girth area, belly, thighs, and flanks get pretty sweaty and I've had to use a hair dryer on him in addition to walking him in a cooler to help dry him before putting him back outside again.

Well that whole procedure is a bit of a pain in the butt (and time consuming!), and while Louie does great and actually loves the warm dryer, I'm thinking I may need to give him a little bit of a body clip to help him cool out quicker. He's got one of the thickest coats on the farm and several of his pasturemates have at least a partial clip.

I'm thinking if I do it, we'll start with a very conservative clip like a neck and chest clip (mostly just chest though as Louie doesn't have a hood for his blanket), and if needed, we'll do a low trace clip. I found a great website with lots of clip patterns: http://www.peasridge.co.uk/clipper-advice/clippers-clipping-advice-horses-types-of-horse-clips.shtml

Anyone have any thoughts, tips or tricks to body clipping?

Lesson 5: Taming the Saddle Bronc

2011-12-15T21:12:00.001-06:00

40 mph winds always make for an interesting horse experience. Tonight during my lesson there was an added element of horse conflict happening right outside the arena door. Louie was riding along pretty nicely, warming up and doing well when all of a sudden a horse started squealing and kicking (from what I could hear) in the neighboring paddock, and Louie got a little bit upset/excited over it. I tried to continue asking him to relax and stretch on his nice 20 meter circle, but the stars aligned (too little work, cold windy day, plus horse conflict event) and Louie set off in bronco style. He only did one little jump/buck thing, but succeeded in un-seating me, though luckily I stayed on. Needless to say he was a little fresh and we spent a lot of the lesson getting him to pay attention to me and not the ongoings of the weather and scenery. Everyone could see the Saddlebred come out of him today!

The first thing we worked on was a lot of bending. Over-bending for a while, to get him to listen and work harder- it worked. Then we worked on some 10 meter walk figure 8's. I tend to use a neck rein in addition to my direct/leading rein, which is a really bad habit, so Julie had me plant my inside hand on my knee, and when leaving the circle to change directions, have two inside hands (2 hands wide and on the knees) for a stride or two until I change the bend start the second circle of the figure-8. After a few times this clicked. And, don't forget to shift the entire seat to the inside!

We carried the exaggerated inside bend along the straight away, and transitioned it into a shoulder in. We worked on this at the trot and it was probably the first time Louie had really done shoulder in at the trot. It wasn't beautiful, but using my whip really helped. Also she pointed out that I'm not to post side to side, but always up/down/front/back.

Then we worked on a drill, in which we walk along one of the long walls, then half halt (stop with my seat) and if Louie doesn't stop, I turn him into the wall. Then I ask for a turn on the forehand, 180 degrees, and continue on walking. We then transitioned this into a leg yield along the wall, haunches in. I believe we only did this at the walk, but I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure Louie thought I was asking him to canter when I asked him to shift his haunches. This will be something we'll have to keep straight.

We then worked on shifting the haunches out on a 20 meter trot circle. Shift the haunches out, then once he's moving away nicely sideways, let him relax and stretch down. He was pretty sure he was supposed to be cantering with this drill too. And the whip came in handy with this exercise as well.

As you can imagine, there were several times during our lesson today in which Louie, being excited but restricted, resorted to his usual Saddlebred neck curl. We actually found several ways to get him out of it. If he is going slow, speed up and ask for more bend. If he is going fast, slow the gait down (slow down our posting) and much to my surprise, I was met with an improvement in contact after a short time. This is part of our homework, to work on encouraging contact and always asking him to relax his neck deeper and lower, before he even anticipates to raise up. We've had pretty good luck thus far getting him to lower his neck by bending him, applying a little leg (calves), and gently wiggling my inside rein, softening/lengthening the outside arm as he reaches down for the bit, to "give" a little, all while encouraging him to "fill up the bridle" by pushing him from the back and catching him with my hands. By the way, a little side note, and that is that I only get to use my hands if I use my legs, to catch him or control his rate/bend if needed.

Finally we actually did work on the canter, and she wanted us to work on keeping that same fullness in the bridle (contact). Julie wanted us to slow our canter down and choose whether I was going to sit or two point, as I was "posting" in the canter (haha!). Louie was going a bit fast, which can be hard to sit, so I was doing sort of a half seat. Julie said, "we all know he can canter slower than that!," but of course being lazy, he broke into a trot when I asked him to slow down. Eventually we got a very nice relaxed canter in two point. She said I'm to work on the same way of getting him to relax his neck down in the canter as I do in the trot. I did notice him doing a little bit more relaxing than he usually does in the canter, probably because by this time, he was pooped!

One last little note, is that we've struggled a bit with the downward transition from canter to trot, probably because my seat contact is limited in the canter. But, basically the transition aids should be adding both calves (lightly, and progressively, as it's not intuitive and isn't going to be natural at first until we master it at the slower gaits first), and moving the outside hip bone forward and holding both hip bones forward. Naturally in the canter, the inside hip bone sits more forward, so stilling the seat (lower abs!) and bringing the seat straight is essentially the cue.

Our homework is to basically to work on most of the stuff that we worked on today, especially getting him to seek contact, and encouraging him to lower his neck. Julie did comment that my feet looked a lot better (I pretended like I was riding without stirrups, and my knees more flexed), and she hardly picked on my legs at all today. So, our 5-10 minutes of no stirrup work that we did on Monday probably paid off.

For the second time this week I had to walk Louie in a cooler for 10-20 minutes and use the hair dryer on Louie to cool him out and dry all his wet sweaty fur. He doesn't mind the blow dryer, in fact I think he loves it. So relaxing and warm. :) But, we might have to think about a trace clip if we continue to work up a sweat!

Lesson 4: The Bane of Stirrups

2011-12-08T19:45:00.001-06:00

Tonight was our 4th lesson with Julie. We worked on the usual type of stuff and I asked Julie to help us clarify our cues for a downward or upward transition (as they're pretty similar all in all). I'm not sure I got a clear answer on the difference, but I think throughout our lesson tonight I figured out enough of what I need to understand for now.

We did a little bit of work with the cavaletti, which Louie once again panicked when he started into them. This time it was only 3 of them in a row on a circle. He trotted the first one, then jumped the second two. LOL. Oh Louie. . . by the third or fourth time through, we had a respectable trot through them.

We worked a lot on slowing down using the seat tonight. I thought we really did a nice job with this. I do have to be careful to not completely lock my seat and brace into my stirrups as I tend to do this. Just tighten my lower abs and slow the saddle down, not completely stop it unless I really mean to stop completely.

We also worked some on half halting, basically slowing my seat, then bumping a little bit with the legs or laying the whip gently on his side. Louie did manage to do one very nice square halt while we worked on that.

The other thing we worked on was lengthening the neck, by using the seat. My basic cues to get Louie to lower his neck are: apply just a little bit of light calf, especially the inside leg, tighten my lower abs, make sure my posting is nice and light, and very gently wiggle my reins a little bit (mostly inside, but sometimes the outside leg to get him to take the connection lower). This also worked really well, and I was impressed with how much I was able to get him to lower just with these simple things, sometimes without even using the hands. We did, however, discover during this exercise that I use my hands too much at times, and Julie thinks I should try to keep my hands a little more still to give Louie more confidence that he's doing the right thing. I need to keep my elbows loose to move, and give with the forearm, as that part of my arm "belongs to my horse."

We worked just a little bit on our walk-trot transitions, and found that these really can be very light and easy, and I really don't need to rev the engine a whole lot. Just a touch from an active forward walk, slide my pelvis slightly forward, and if he doesn't go off of the seat movement, give him a tap with the whip and try again.

Finally, probably the biggest thing we worked on tonight was my leg position. I need to roll my thighs in, so that my knee caps are basically touching the saddle, and my thighs are making more contact with the horse. When I do this, I also need to turn my feet way in, so that my heels are out, and keep a bend in my knee (light heels), so that my weight isn't braced down into the stirrups. This bracing is a really bad habit that I have which, lucky for me, gave me a one week sentence of riding without stirrups. . . Argh. It will be good for me, but I just hope I don't fall off while I'm at it! It should help me to keep the bend in my knee, use my thighs more (but not vice grip), and NOT brace into my stirrups.

A Cool Farriery Photo

2011-12-08T14:53:00.000-06:00

I snapped this photo of my farrier Pat making a set of winter shoes for another horse at the barn with my new iPhone 4s. I have to say, the camera is amazing.

Pat was out to pull Louie's shoes, so I'm hoping he's not too tender footed after losing the protection he's had for the past 8 months! Only time will tell. If needed, Pat will be out next week to make any changes necessary. I'm hoping that Louie will be able to stay sound barefoot for a good long while now!

Lesson 3: Shake the Coke Bottle

2011-12-01T21:28:00.001-06:00

Tonight was our third lesson. I got two nice rides in since our last lesson on Sunday, and it seemed to Julie as though they have paid off as Louie was doing great, much more forward, almost "round," and, surprise surprise- neck lower. I got him to lower his neck with one simple thing- when he did it, I praised him like crazy. He clearly feeds off of the positive reinforcement quite well. I did use just a bit of light seasawing as I used to teach him to lower while wearing the Chambon this fall, but just one or two little wiggles on the rein and he seemed to relax. So once I started linking that with bending and praising, it seemed to stick- at least so far.

So tonight's lesson we started with some basic bending and riding straight exercises at the walk and trot. I still am pushing with my seat, but I can't figure out how not to, as Louie pushes me, so I do my best not to resist. Anyhow, it must have been somewhat better today as I didn't get yetlled at quite so much for it today.

After some warm up, she sent us through a line of 8 cavaletti on the lowest positions (still about 6 inches off the ground) at a trot. The first time through was somewhat of a disaster. Louie rushed the first one, then spent the rest of the time trying to figure out his spacing and where to put his feet in a big hot mess. I lost control and quit posting, just kindof bobbling along through the uncoordinated jumble. The second time through was much better. Julie had me focus on controlling our speed and posting the whole time. By the third time, Louie went through with just about perfect stride, speed, and foot placement, but he still wasn't truly round. We changed directions and this time did the same things, focusing on maintaining our speed and rhythm (not too fast), controlling my posting so I don't land on Louie's back like my couch, but this time trying to encourage Louie to go round as he went through them, encouraging him to drop his neck and use his core to hold his back up. By the third time through the second way, Louie went through "almost round," which I thought was pretty awesome coming from how Julie felt his back was so hollow at our first lesson two weeks ago. It felt like I must have been riding some big warmblood doing a nice passage- it felt good! Julie really likes cavaletti because they help to balance a horse, as they have to work both sides equally. Of course cavalleti also help to strengthen the legs and back (if done properly in a round form), and improve rhythm and judgement for the horse in placing their feet.

Next we worked a little bit on getting Louie to shift his haunches out on a circle. Louie really had completely forgotten how to shift his hindquarters to the outside, so we needed to refresh the turn on the forehand lesson. Part of my homework for this week is to work on the turn on the forehand in both directions. The reason this is important is because when Louie tracks to the right, his "concave" side, he lets his left shoulder fall out too much, so she wants me to work on once in a while asking for haunches out to help keep the shoulder straight and re-define our "pie tin." Since Louie did know how to do this at one point in the recent past, a quick refresher should be easy. The one thing that is quite different between how Julie and Marlene teach is that Julie is okay with me moving my inside leg back, whereas Marlene would never let me move my inside leg back, which was my natural reaction, so, I guess back to what feels easy for me!

The last thing we worked on was a tiny bit of canter work (I mean like half a circle) to the left. Julie says that the key to a good canter transition in this exercise is a good walk to sitting trot transition a few strides before it. So, we spent the majority of our time getting a good walk to trot transition- without begging or really using any leg. The key is to shake up the Coke bottle (rev the engine!) then allow the transition to happen by just "thinking" it. So, we worked on what I would interpret as half halts, to help re-balance and get the hind end ready to spring into action for what's ahead. We worked on getting a forward, active (but not fast) walk, and half halt by asking for more go from the hind end with the legs and whip, but at the same time, saying "stay" with a very still seat (stop the saddle from moving) and a little bit of rein pressure if needed to stop forward movement. When it feels like there is a lot of energy brewing and the bottle is about ready to explode, let him transition into a sitting trot, just by thinking of it and letting the seat slide forward a tiny bit into the trot. After a few strides, with the inside leg quite forward, weight on the inside hip bone (literally feel the ischium pressing into the saddle) knee bent and heel light, and the outside leg way back (bent at the knee), ask for the canter.

We had about half a 20 meter circle of nicely balanced canter that Julie liked before he kindof fell apart when I asked him to work harder. We worked on pushing with the legs while using quite a bit of rein (hands low, wide, and very little following of his movement) to get him to essentially balance himself and be round in the canter.

Overall it was a good lesson and I'm really glad to know that Julie thinks we've made some good progress! I'm already looking forward to my next lesson! My homework for this week: work on the turn on the forehand and shifting the haunches out, and walk-trot transitions where I "shake the coke bottle" then ask for the trot without really cueing him with my legs.

Lesson 2: Ride from the Core

2011-11-27T12:02:00.000-06:00

Well first off, let me just say that my high hopes of Louie's mane being perfectly trained and lying flat are completely gone. While the binders were still in, Louie looked a bit like a Rasta horse with his hair-do today. Oh well, bands out and he's just going freestyle now.

We had another good lesson today with Julie. We've gotten a lot more "fast" but not necessarily "forward" since our last lesson. Today we worked on getting Louie more round, raising his back and lowering his neck. Walking on a circle, we worked on keeping Louie walking with good speed, light contact on both reins, and bending his body with my legs, and perhaps most importantly, holding my dang seat more still! When Louie relaxes his neck down, I need to give right away with my hands to encourage the reach. When he ducks back off of the bit, I need to get his back up, so tighten my lower abdominal muscles, and use my legs and whip to push him back up and into the contact.

We worked a lot on using my core properly to maintain my position (don't let me arms or legs get pulled forward by holding them in with my core) and trying not to "push" with my seat and wow am I sore- deep inside my lower abdomen/pelvis. I think my illiopsoas muscles hurt. I'm supposed to use my legs to control my horse's hind legs, use my core to control the saddle and the front of the horse.

Julie hopped on for a few minutes to work out an issue we were having with getting Louie to stretch down and she figured out that he needs right leg and right hand much more than left, so I need to stay stronger with those aids. She also got him to piaffe, though, not intentionally. (I think Julie likes Louie, though she thinks he's a bit lazy, but he's a nice horse and a cute horse).

We also worked on some trot work, and by the end I felt a bit like I was riding a bouncy ball. I need to practice riding like I don't have a saddle on, and landing my posting very gently (almost not landing) so I'm not sitting on my horse like my couch. Otherwise, all of the other rules apply that we've already learned.

We worked a little bit as well on counter-bending (Renvers?) on a trotting circle, I think to show me how important it is to keep my horse balanced and straight. More to come on that next week. She also said something about wrist bracelets for my puppy dog hands. . . uh oh.

Scattered in the lesson, we also worked on our halting and low and behold we did pretty decent with these. The main thing I think I learned regarding the halt is that I have to keep a light leg on him through it, don't just take everything off and let him fall into a halt, light heels (so that I don't arch my back), and very gradually use my core to stop the saddle from moving. We actually got 2 decent halts out of him with this.

Overall, it's been mostly work on me and my position/aids, and Julie uses Louie to teach me what to do. It's a little bit hard to learn, this dressage stuff, it's very complicated. Whew, my head is once again spinning, but this time I think I'm gonna be sore. Worked up a good sweat today!

Happy Boy

2011-11-22T22:20:00.028-06:00

I went up to visit Louie tonight after work because I noticed that 3 of his legs were warm to the touch yesterday when I was out. Though he didn't look or act sick or injured in the least, so I rode him yesterday, and we got some very nice forward! Anyhow, I was a bit worried about him, so I went up to visit and he seems fine as usual, all 4 legs felt the same temperature tonight. Who knows, my horse has been proclaimed "goofy" by more than one vet.

Louie's mane has been wanting to part right down the middle for the past several months, like an Icelandic. Maybe that means he's balanced and evenly muscled on both sides (doubtfully), but whatever it means, it looks kinda silly so I banded it on his right side tonight, in hopes to train it a little bit at least.

He was a happy looking boy standing in the tack up area, though I'm pretty sure he was upset that he wasn't standing next to the round bale any longer. He's already put on some weight and his hind end is starting to fill in again. The topline is going to take some time, but it'll come.

Lesson 1: Hold the Gouda

2011-11-17T21:06:00.000-06:00

Tonight was our first lesson at Sunborn Stables with Julie Penshorn. It was great, but I feel as though the thoughts in my head right now are similar to the little white dots on your TV screen when it goes snowy- swimming around in no particular order. So, I'm still trying to organize all of the things I learned/worked on into a meaningful formed memory. Our Saddlebred buddy Lisa also came out to watch us tonight, so she was there to help me recall some of what we learned. We're both looking forward to taking some more lessons!

So we'll start at the beginning- the saddle. I rode in my all purpose saddle, but Julie thinks it's too low in front (probably is wider than necessary right now with Louie's body shape) so we added a front riser. Much to my surprise, the front riser did not make me feel like I was sitting up hill, it still felt balanced.

I got on and walked for a few minutes and told Julie all about Louie, his training so far, what his bad habits are, his evasions, and how he's generally a very nice, laid back horse. Julie wanted to feel what I was feeling, so she hopped on Louie for a few minutes and got him walking with much more "motor"- his hind legs and core more activated, using a whip behind her leg to help reinforce what she was asking with her leg, as she quickly learned that Louie is rather dull sided. She got a super nice active walk and working trot out of him- his neck was relaxed down, he was really using his inside hind leg well (not continuously, but getting the hang of what she was asking him for), and he actually looked like he had impulsion- not lazy, but not "crazy" either- he was still relaxed through his neck and back but was really using himself nicely, much better than I feel that I usually get him to go.

Then Julie got off and I got on. We completely changed my posture. She first had me stretch up through the torso, lift my rib cage, then slowly drop my shoulders down. Then she had me pull my knees up out of the stirrups and rest them, bent, on his withers. I was to maintain my pelvis in that position while lowering my legs down to his sides. My thighs needed to be turned in, but not squeezing with the knees. So, heels out, but knees loose. The final posture change of this stage was the ankles- she wants my heels almost "up," and almost no weight in my stirrups so that I'm not bracing my legs down into the stirrup irons. By raising the heels up, she was asking me to bend my knee, as if I were holding a tennis ball or a piece of Gouda in the back of my knee- hence the title of this post. Mmmm I like Gouda.

Then we set out into a 10 meter circle at the walk. She wants me to shift my whole seat to the inside of the circle, and face my head at Louie's outside ear. She doesn't want me to squeeze with my legs, but rather bump, and actually kindof pester him with my inside calf until he moves away from it. One thing that I must avoid, however, is begging. I have to mean it when I bump his side, and if he doesn't move over, I use my whip. I am to keep a very light rein and not worry too much about him taking a lot of contact, but rewarding him when he seeks it, by backing off my pressure. She said I need very little backward pressure with this horse since his mouth is like butter. As for my legs, I should use my outside leg to hold the outside of him in place while I "push the pie crust into the pie tin" with my inside leg (the outside leg is the pie tin). We got some nice active walking as well, with some help from the whip. By the way, I took my spurs off of my boots as Julie doesn't really want me using them as it affects the position of the leg (I agree, though I also think the holding a whip affects the position of the hands). Anyhow, he's become so dull sided that I've become dependent upon the spurs, and I agree, I'm using them way too much when I could enforce my leg perhaps more effectively with the whip.

After we had a nice active walk going, Julie pointed out that I am pushing much too much with my seat, and that I need to save that for the bedroom (LOL!), and keep my seat more still. So, while I was no longer working so hard to get Louie to move forward, I was working really hard to keep my seat still, since it's much easier to just follow his stride. She pointed out that my pushing with my seat is actually just pushing Louie's back down, and it's better to sit quietly "like a little clothes pin that kicks its legs once in a while."

Toward the end of the lesson, we started working on our downward transitions to a slower walk or halt, which need a LOT of work. The goal is to get Louie to step under himself with his hind legs to stop, instead of just falling out of the gait on the forehand. Louie still has the tendency to raise his neck up with our downward transitions, so it's going to take some work to get that to stop. I need to keep him active in the walk with light pressure from both legs, imagining my body is like a soup can that is dented in on the sides (holding all of my guts in firmly), then blow off a little steam and "stop the saddle from moving." All the while, I need to keep Louie bent, and push slightly more with my inside leg, pushing the pie crust into the tin as I stop the saddle from moving.

Whew! That is a LOT to take in for a first lesson. . . at the conclusion Julie said that my homework is to work on getting more forward out of him, so I'll really work on getting this good active walk (like I saw one of the other horses do a few days ago when Julie got on for a training ride as I was finishing working Louie- it's a good thing when the product of your trainer's work is good!). It seems like she does like Louie as a prospect and thinks we're going to do well. I'm glad that she is positive because I see no light at the end of the tunnel with all of this snow fuzz in my way.

Overall I really learned a lot, and learned that I have a LOT to work on- more on me than on Louie at this point. I like Julie's teaching style, and I really like how much work she puts into teaching, she's not only good at teaching, but she's very passionate about it and motivated/energetic and involved. I feel that I'm not grasping the whole big picture quite yet, but I'm sure I'll get there.

In other news, Louie has moved up in the totem pole! He's in the paddock now with 3 other horses and apparently he's above one other horse there. What a relief for him to finally not be rock bottom. He seems to be settling in well and is not looking beat up at all, is enjoying the round bale, and got his light winter blankie tonight (it's brr cold outside!).

We're looking forward to our next lesson, but have a lot to work on in the mean time!

Home Sweet Home

2011-11-13T21:03:00.000-06:00

Louie moved to his new stable yesterday, and is settling in very well.

We had our first ride today and Louie felt great. We rode in our all purpose saddle, and he felt like he was moving really nicely and was relaxed but energetic. We got some awesome neck stretches at the trot; I don't think I've ever seen him relax his neck down at the trot like this before, with this much regularity.

The footing in the arena is awesome, I could tell within the first few steps at the trot, as they felt springy and powerful. Louie felt very balanced and controlled at the canter, and we were even able to practice some "lengthenings" (I put it in quotes as it's not really a true lengthening, but the closest we've come to it so far) at all gaits, and some lateral work at the walk.

The only thing that was a bit of a challenge for us was the tack-up area, and not because it isn't an awesome set up- it really is (and it's heated, so that's a huge plus in the winter!). It's a wide walkway with 3 double size tie stalls on one side, where there are cross ties for the horses, used for grooming and tacking. The challenge was backing into them. I suppose walking backwards into an enclosed space that you've never been in before is a bit of a high expectation for Louie's first time in the tack-up area. It took a minute, but he eventually backed in and stood in the cross ties very nicely while we groomed and tacked up. It will just take some repetition for him to master it, I'm sure.

We've got our first lesson scheduled for Thursday; I'm super excited! I'm also a little nervous for it, though, as being new to the stable and the routine, I can't help but worry that we'll stick out like a sore thumb, out of condition, and in need of a lot of work. . . well, as far as sticking out like a sore thumb, that might happen anyhow because I'm pretty sure Louie is the only Saddlebred at the stable. But hopefully we'll stick out like a pretty painted fingernail instead of a sore thumb, as I liken Saddlebreds closer to that analogy.

So far, so good. Louie was turned out today in a big grass pasture with his 3 new pasturemates, and I hear it went well. For the next few days though, he'll mostly be hanging out in his dry lot by himself until everyone gets adjusted. He looks pretty happy to me!

Getting Ready for Our Next Adventure!

2011-11-10T20:54:00.001-06:00

We've been spending the past week relaxing, doing a little long lining, but mostly just some peaceful grooming and eating buckets of soaked alfalfa cubes (Louie, not me). We are getting our items together and cleaned for a fresh new start at a new barn, to which we move this weekend. The fall weather has been perfect, and is just starting to turn cold, so the timing is perfect.

We're going to be moving to a dressage and eventing stable called Sunborn Stables, to ride with their fabulous trainer and instructors. The stable is a bit further from home than I'd prefer, but they take great care of the horses, are innovative and possibly more picky about how their facility and horses are maintained than I am. So, I am expecting the drive will be well worth it as I won't worry about Louie as much as I have in previous situations; he'll be in good hands, and we'll be immersed into a learning environment once again where we can just focus on our training and making progress in a new discipline. I am really looking forward to being able to ride through the winter, and to learn more dressage, and also improve our jumping skills. I'm quite confident that we will be able to make some progress at this stable, as they've got an excellent track record, many of their students actively compete all over the country, and they were able to help Louie and me with coaching in just a few minutes between rides at our dressage show last month. I am very hopeful that we'll be able to get an extended trot out of Louie!

Very excited for the move and looking forward to diving in to dressage head first!

Halloween Hack

2011-10-31T19:55:00.000-05:00

Louie and I had a nice hack down the road today, in the crisp fall air. The leaves were beautiful and the weather couldn't have been more perfect. Louie was very well behaved, but was clearly waiting for some little goblin to jump out from behind a tree. If I ever wanted a saddle seat horse, I sure had it today! Louie would relax his neck down at the walk on occasion, but otherwise was on high alert!

I managed to snap a few pictures on my phone anyhow.

Our shadow.

We were going to ride down to the public cross country ski trails that are mowed through 80 acres nearby (about 1-2 miles from the barn), but we realized as we got closer and closer that there was very noisy work happening at the gravel pit adjacent to the park and I didn't think that would be the most enjoyable riding experience, so we turned around and rode back home.

We rode past the hunting preserve to the South of us, thankfully there was no shooting today.

And this hill looks tiny from here, but it's a good size hill with a decent incline- great butt building work!

Other than being very up headed and alert, Louie was pretty well behaved, and we got some nice walk, trot, and canter (right lead- yay!) work out of him. I hate to trot and canter much on the hard gravel road, but I'm afraid there's no better option right now.

I do have two more bits of good news. . . Louie will be moving to Sunborn Stables in two weeks, to be able to ride during the winter, maybe longer! More to come on the new stable soon, but it is a stable specializing in dressage and eventing; we are very excited. I also just purchased a used dressage saddle that I think is going to work well for us- more on that later!

Walk Work

2011-10-20T20:44:00.000-05:00

The title of today's post is rather obvious- we worked on improving our worst gait- the walk. I warmed Louie up in the chambon in long lines, then hooked him to the cart. The arena was too rough to do much more than some good walk work, so we didn't trot at all, but worked on getting a nice, active walk. We probably drove for about 20 minutes, aiming for a good active walk with overstride of at least 6 inches the whole time. I also drove him for the first time, right from the start, in the halter fuzzies, which are almost as good as blinders for us. He did great, even being cool and windy, he was perfectly comfortable in front of the cart.

I got to thinking while walking along, that the gait I'm looking for is a bit like the dog walk that our Tennessee Walking Horses do- swingy and relaxed with a big overstride, lots of neck movement/headshake, and rounding up through the back with each stride. While Louie doesn't have the walk that our walkers have, we got some good active walks, using the whole body, that I think were quite nice. We found that this active walk was especially hard to maintain around turns and when we practiced "loops" or "swerves" as I now call them, following K-X-H in one fluid motion.

We then worked on some walk-halt-walk transitions. Louie still can't comprehend halting without raising his neck, but we're getting a good active walk sooner after departing from a halt than we usually get, so I guess that's good. I'll need to really work on having an active seat to keep this nice walk when riding.

Louie got a nice big dish of soaked alfalfa cubes and a good grooming after our drive. I think he looks forward to being worked because he knows there's a reward at the end, and my does he love his alfalfa cubes!

Louie Time

2011-10-18T21:40:00.000-05:00

Louie got a little "me time" treat yesterday to relax from his big event on Sunday. He enjoyed a tasty snack of soaked alfalfa cubes and a nice curry and brushing, and of course, a little time away from the herd (they pick on him). I think he really enjoyed his "spa day" treat.

And he loves to give kisses after eating alfalfa mash. Yummy!

A Few Photos

2011-10-17T21:01:00.001-05:00

I thought I'd attach a few of my favorite photos from the Hunter's Pace. These are all in the video too, but I thought they needed a permanent place on the blog here as well. Enjoy!

By the first corn field:

On our way back from being lost, a beautiful corridor:

Stopping by the beautiful golden shimmering field after the first jump field (none of which we jumped)

Lisa and Buster, our awesome partners!

The bridge we had to cross

Finish line! Yay! We made it!

Hunter's Pace

2011-10-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

Louie and I participated in the Long Lake Hounds Hunter's Pace in Hamel, MN yesterday, along with Lisa and Buster (another Saddlebred, formerly an Amish driving horse).

The weather was beautiful, a bit crisp and rather windy, but the sun was shining and the leaves were beautiful fall colors. The course was in great condition and aside from some riding along the road, the footing was great for most of the course. We traveled along roads, through peoples' farms and multi-million dollar properties, and on a portion of a public trail around a lake. There were lots of jumps on the course, though we were technically riding the flat course so we decided to skip most of the them. All of the jumps were coops, which Louie and I have never come close to attempting, but we did find two small "mini-jumps" that fit our abilities in the host's eventing field at the end of the course (one was essentially a down log, the other a small cross rail, neither of which could have been much over 12"). Aside from some small jumps, we also rode through mud, puddles, and over a wooden bridge.

We were given a map of the course, and there were markers with red and blue flags placed strategically along the course to let us know we were in the right place, but despite that we managed to get lost at least twice (the first time we went way off course into a neighboring horse farm, and took quite a while to figure out that we were lost to begin with, so that ate up about 30 minutes of our course time). Our getting lost and our de-conditioned horses led us to finish quite a bit behind the goal time of 1 hour 14 minutes, but we had a lot of fun to make up for our lack of speed.

Overall it was a really fun event and I am looking forward to participating in another one in the future! Another example of how Saddlebreds really can do just about anything!

Windy and Wiggly

2011-10-13T21:30:00.014-05:00

We had a nice hack down the road today in the cool and windy fall weather. The farrier had been out to fix up Louie's feet (Louie pulled a shoe on Monday, so we decided to just put him into plain plates before the hunter's pace on Sunday, to give some protection, yet help the transition to barefoot), so he was in good shape for riding again.

We set out down the road, riding along side the pavement, then on the gravel road, at a walk, trot, and canter. Louie did great, while he wanted to ride saddle seat (that Saddlebred comes out when he gets excited), he relaxed down enough to get some nice hunter trots and free walks too.

What I noticed from time to time, was that Louie wanted to swing his hind quarters around just a little bit to the side and "dog track." Now of course this is not an efficient way to utilize his energy, as riding straight, with the hind quarters tracking immediately behind the forehand allows all of his energy to be directed forward, rather than having part of the energy directed to the side. I was able to get him to straighten out most of the time, but soon enough we found ourselves back in the same crooked position, hollowing one side of his body again. I think he is too used to riding circles and has forgotten how to track straight. The other factor is that it was quite cool and windy outside which always makes horses antsy and brings out all of that extra energy that they don't know what to do with.

Well, I think that the hunter's pace we are doing this weekend should help him remember to track straight. Trail riding cures a lot of things, and I'm hopeful that some more regular trail riding should help Louie to realize how much easier life is to trot with the hind feet behind the front feet.

Dressage Schooling Show

2011-10-08T22:22:00.000-05:00

Well, we had a pretty good show! For our second-ever dressage show, Louie did pretty well; he did every bit as well as I would have expected him to, and at times even better than I expected.

We got off to a little bit of a late start heading to our first class as we wanted to watch one upper level horse/rider go in Prix St. George, which was about 30 minutes before my first class was slated to start. Luckily, they waited for us, as I scrambled to saddle Louie, and my friend Lisa did a quick mane braid and put on his bridle.

Our first class was the training level derby. This is a group class, intended to be a warm-up for horses and riders. Louie did well in this class, placing 2nd out of 4 with a score of 72.9%. Here is the video.

The judge came up to us for a few comments following the class, and said, "He's a Saddlebred, right?" I was pretty impressed that he knew, as not everybody expects to see Saddlebreds competing in the dressage ring. He asked how long I had had Louie and how long we've been riding. He told me that Louie had a great canter, and he was really impressed to see a good, true canter from a Saddlebred. I was a little bit surprised by that comment as anyone who's followed this blog knows how much we have struggled with the canter. . .

Following the derby class, I had a couple of minutes to warm up for my first test, and was very happy to get a quick schooling session from Julie Penshorn, the owner and trainer at Sunborn Stables. She had some very useful things to say. First of all, she wanted me to take the arch out of my back and ride from my core. She pointed out that when I arch my back, I pinch my knees, then that causes Louie to raise his neck up. Well that makes sense. When I was able to go around with tighter abs, a more relaxed back, and looser knees, Louie did seem to relax more. We worked a little bit on bending and getting Louie to relax and stretch down into contact. Julie reminded me that if he backs off of the bit, I need to push him forward and encourage him to reach out for it, but not hold a constant contact on the bit- lighten up once he takes contact to reward him for it, and keep pushing him into it, bending him with my inside leg. Finally we worked on our trot-canter transitions, as Louie was a little bit sluggish in departing into the canter, and I was begging him with my cues (back story here, in dressage we're not allowed to make noises or verbal cues to the horse, but I've always used a kiss cue to ask Louie to canter, so going without made it more challenging, so that's understandable). What Julie had me do was kindof cool. She had me get him really pumped up in the trot a little bit before we planned to canter, by kicking him a bunch of times, but holding him back (uh, I think that's basically like a half halt, right?), then sitting and asking lightly for a canter. At first it didn't work and Louie just trotted right through my canter cue, but after about 3 times, he got it, and in our next tests, he sprung right into the canter, sometimes even a bit earlier than I had planned.

Then the whistle blew for my first test- Training Level Test 2.

We scored a total of 66.8% on Training Test 2. We scored 8's on our trot circles in both directions, and 7's on our canters and stretchy circle. His comments for us on the lower scored portions were generally surrounding crookedness, lack of energy, and needing to relax and not be so tense (particularly in the walks and the change of rein trots). In our collective marks, we scored a 7 on gaits, 7 on impulsion, 6 on submission, 7 on rider's position, 6 on rider's use of the aids, and 7 on harmony between horse and rider. His further remarks were, "Very nice horse! I like! Great gaits! Walk needs work. More energy without speed or tension."

Before my last test, one of the Sunborn instructors, Jill, came out to give me some coaching. She was also the one reading my tests. With Jill we worked on the free walk, trying to relax and stretch down, and getting better tempo/energy/submission in the trot. I don't remember much from this coaching session anymore, as by then, I was sweating pretty good and felt a little bit like I'd been through a whirlwind.

The whistle again blew for my next test- Training Level Test 3.

We scored a total of 65.2% on Training Test 3. This time we scored an 8 on our left canter circle. We scored 7's on most of our transitions, our free walk (yay! the schooling paid off!), our second trot "loop," and our right canter circle. We got a low mark of a 5 on our stretchy circle this time, with a comment "shows no desire to stretch." Most of our criticisms in this test were about being crooked or tense. I can certainly see the crookedness, especially coming down the center line in this test. For our collective remarks, we scored a 7 on gaits, 6 on impulsion (maybe we were more tired by this test?), 6 on submission, 7 on rider's position, 6 on rider's use of aids, and 7 on harmony. Our overall remarks were, "Great canter! This horse is worth putting time into! Very nice pair. Thanks."

Following our last test, the judge had a few comments for us, which I always find very helpful. The judge loved Louie's canter, he said it is his most balanced and strongest gait (I'm thinking, what? really? as I've always felt it to be his weakest and least balanced gait- shows you what I know). He said his trot is okay, and his walk needs some work, as it's very tense, and needs more relaxation and impulsion. He said that the quality of our walk and trot work would probably hold us back in the 60's for percentages in the lower levels, while our canter could give us higher scores. He said that Louie would likely be penalized on the technicalities in the lower levels, but may do better in the upper levels, where there isn't so much emphasis on the walk. (That is, if he can make the upper levels. . . but hey, I like that upper level comment! ) Overall, he said he really liked Louie and he would keep him in his training barn. I made sure that Bjorn heard that comment, as he sometimes gives Louie a hard time since he didn't turn out to be a saddle seat horse.

We had a great time at the show, and our fellow Saddlebred mom Lisa came to cheer us on and helped us a ton! She even brought treats for Bjorn. If you're reading, thank you Lisa!! I'm not sure how we placed in our two tests, as Bjorn got antsy to leave before we could see the placements, but I don't think we were in the top 3 or 4, as there were lots of riders in training level today. Even so, I was SUPER impressed with how well we scored, as scores in the 60's are very respectable, and it's better than two years ago when we scored in the high 50's in intro- we've definitely made progress. And, I have to say, paying $15 for coaching was an awesome deal, as we basically got two mini lessons from two different instructors at the barn, and our tests read. We don't usually glean that much info from an hour-long lesson, so it was awesome! I will do it again, and in fact I might trailer up there to take some lessons this winter! We didn't end up doing the jumping class today, but that's okay with me, that was enough work for one day (read: we were worn out), and I think both Louie and I are going to sleep well tonight! Got to gear up for our hunter's pace next weekend!

The Chambon

2011-10-06T21:44:00.000-05:00

With our dressage schooling show fast approaching, I had a little bit of a panic moment realizing that we have SO much to improve upon- namely bit contact, lowering the neck, transitions, and the stretchy circle. So, like most of the training level tests.

I did a little bit of reading and chanced upon a recommendation for the use of a device called the Chambon. Now, I'm not huge on gadgets, as I believe they tend to be habit forming, but this one is kinda neat because I believe I can utilize it to teach Louie what I'm asking for, then hopefully I won't need it for long.

So, here is a Chambon, for those who are not familiar.

The idea of the Chambon is to apply pressure to the poll and the corners of the mouth when the horse raises his head up beyond a certain point. Since I've been struggling with finding a way to get Louie to relax and stretch down for many months (with the exception of getting him really tired then letting him jaunt along at a free, loose-rein walk), this device will help to teach him what I want, and all I have to do is associate a "cue" with the pressure he feels when the Chambon activates, and voila!

The thing I love about the Chambon in comparison to any other "gadget" is that not only is it gentle (mine is part elastic) and acts only when needed, but it leaves the horse's nose free to stretch OUT and is pretty much the only device that doesn't pull the bit back to the chest in some way. With Louie's (and most Saddlebreds) habit of curling his neck up into a circle, this will be most valuable to not create a bad habit.

So I constructed a home-made variety out of some of my old saddle seat appliances- surgical tubing from a pair of stretchies, and an old rope sidecheck. I've ridden him twice this week in this set up and so far the results have been fantastic. Since I've taught him a cue (basically just working the bit in his mouth) that he feels at the same time as the Chambon activates, he's learned that the cue means to lower his poll. He's now responding pretty easily to the cue and lowering just based on that alone. I'm very excited as I've fretted over trying to get Louie to relax his Saddlebred neck down for months and have just never had a way to get that message across. Well now I've got one!

The other really cool use is during transitions, since Louie likes to raise his poll up several inches for every transition he makes, this will help to just discourage that, and I can focus on the rest.

Our stretchy circle (at least the neck lowering part of it) as improved dramatically in the past 2 rides, and I am hopeful that the message will stick when the Chambon isn't there on Saturday during my show. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

Fuzzy Louie

2011-09-23T17:38:00.001-05:00

You can tell fall is here when you look at the horses. The highs have been in the 50's-60's, and the horses are feeling the cool fresh air. Their coats are still short, but they are starting to "fluff up" and right now they have that beautiful soft velvety hair that flattens back down when it gets warm.

I had another great ride on Louie, working dressage type patterns. I have been finding that mixing it up so much with circles, figure 8's, rein changes, serpentines, etc, really helps Louie's relaxation. I've been having him do, for instance, cantering 1/2 of a circle, then trotting, then back onto the rail. It's keeping him on his toes and helping me to plan my transitions and focus on precision. He's not as relaxed as he has been through his back, but he's also not curling up behind the vertical as often either. There's kindof a give and take there.

We're also working some on our lateral work, though I find that he loses forward impulsion after a few steps when I ask him to move laterally. We need more work on that first, but I'm sure if I had a lesson with Marlene right now she'd bring me back to walking and trotting circles working on getting him to bend, relax, and "hold hands" with my outside hand on the bit. I'll have to pretend she's there and work on making my circles smaller and larger to help make the lateral work a little easier.

For now, I'm super excited for the dressage schooling show and the hunter pace I'm hopefully going to do next month. I think Louie is too!

Show Photo and Future Aspirations

2011-09-21T10:27:00.000-05:00

First I wanted to share this very nice photo that Courtney Church took of us from our Midsummerfest Horse Show a couple of months ago- hand galloping in our ASB Hunter Country Pleasure Stake Class- weeee!!

Second, all the hubbub about the Saddlebred Sport Horse Incentive Program has got me thinking. I had a great ride on Louie on Monday, working on our dressage, and he was patient, relaxed, bending, and not giraffe-like in any way. I guess our "back to the basics" ride last week where all I did was bend him for about 20 minutes, and focus on proper circles at the walk and trot helped. We had such a nice ride that we worked on our dressage patterns a little bit. Of course I couldn't really remember them so I made them up as best as I could guess. Louie was awesome. So awesome that I want to take him to a dressage schooling show soon. Now of course I realized that I could have the same saddle seat wild hand galloping excitement that we had last week, but I can hope!

So, I found a dressage/jumping schooling show coming up in a couple of weeks to take Louie to, if everything goes as planned. Then as I was browsing the Central States Dressage and Eventing Association calendar, I came across something else that sounded like fun- a Hunter Pace! They have on the flat courses for beginners (their jumps are as high as 3'3" I think, which is too high for us), so I thought perhaps that would be fun! Something that I've never done before. All of these things have got me thinking that I want to take dressage and jumping lessons more than ever! So I'm looking for options for the winter, as I had planned to either trailer Louie somewhere for lessons or move him to a stable where I could take such lessons for the winter. Of course it's not winter yet, and I'd like to take him trail riding a few times first, as he's a great trail horse too!

The Saddle Seat Jumper

2011-09-13T22:01:00.000-05:00

Louie hasn't been much for relaxing and stretching down lately. . . so I've been playing to his desires and working a little bit in saddle seat frame. I think he might actually have some potential there! Might have to throw some chains on him and have my husband shoot a few pictures one of these days.

Well after we got some of the energy out with the saddle seat riding, we did a little bit of jumping, over a pole no more than 12" tall, but enough to get some leaping practice. The first time over Louie did a rather buck/jump, that was a bit awkward, but he improved the next time and did a great job thereafter, jumping the one lowly pole. I'm hesitant to do too much jumping with Louie's foot problems and how hard the ground is at the barn, but a little bit of very low, light jumping I figure probably won't hurt anything.

Louie has been enjoying a semi-vacation, as I've only been working him 1-2 times per week in the past few weeks due to working dogs and fall field trial season in session. The way I see it, it's probably okay as Louie is in too good of shape right now for me to get much of anything accomplished anyhow. I'm going to have to put him into a bitting rig to remind him of his hunter frame when we get back to a more regular schedule. . .

He Wanted To Run. . .

2011-09-01T22:13:00.000-05:00

. . . So we ran.

No doubt there's a change in weather brewing here today, it was 90 degrees and super humid, predicting a low in the 60's and a cool weekend ahead. As we can guess, that means some strange behavior from the horses.

Today the farrier was out to re-set Louie's shoes. He hasn't grown any heel on his left front, so we put a wedge pad back on that foot. We put a plain thick pad on the right front to balance him and help protect him from rocks. His feet were in pretty good condition other than the fact that Pat thinks he hasn't grown any heel because it's been so hot. We put some Magic Cushion hoof packing under his pads, so we'll see how that goes. We talked about strategies, and he is hoping that Louie will grow some heel this fall/winter once his shoes are pulled. I sure hope he does because he's very low on that left front heel right now.

All throughout his re-set, Louie was acting strange- spooky and antsy. So I decided to take him for a ride in the arena after Pat was finished with him. I had a completely different horse than I have had the past month. Today there was no quiet, slow, laid-back Saddlebred; today I had a racehorse under my saddle.

After a brief walk and trot warm-up, at the fastest pace walks and trots I can imagine, we just got right down to business and I asked Louie up into a canter. Soon we were hand-galloping, me up in two-point, and cruising around the ring, hoping Louie didn't trip or lose his footing around the corners. He didn't. We went probably 5-10 laps in each direction around the ring at a healthy hand-gallop before Louie started showing just subtle signs of relaxing- lowering his neck about 1-2 inches. . .

So we resumed our power walk. After a while we trotted, but again, it was a harness race-speed trot that I was having trouble balancing and staying centered in the saddle to ride. We did a few circles, but he just had a fire under his butt today and would not settle down like he usually does, so we cantered some more. . . just a regular canter this time.

After all of that he was sweating like crazy and breathing really fast, so it was time for a cool down. Lots of laps of walking, and we got a great stretchy long walk today, and even got a little bit of bending along with it. I decided we weren't going to accomplish anything other than burning off steam today, so I gave up and got off.

Here is Louie after his race today, just a bit sweaty. . . note the small dry spot on his hind quarters.

Silly horsie. . .

Road Ridin'

2011-08-25T23:35:00.017-05:00

Louie and I went for a nice ride down the road today. There is a gravel road that starts about 1/4 mile from the barn that we can ride down, and the shoulders are actually quite nice sandy footing to ride on. Louie, as it turns out, is a great trail horse, he's much more brave and confident riding out by himself than most horses are.

Something I found surprising was that Louie didn't seem to be scared of garbage cans or mail boxes like most horses are, but culverts are another story. He also didn't seem to mind the cars whizzing by him either from in front or behind him, as I had expected he may. Louie hardly spooked at anything, but sure looked that classic wide-eyed Saddlebred part!

We did a little bit of trotting along with lots of walking. We got some really nice active, reaching walks that are great for developing each individual leg's muscles. We also got some nice saddle seat style trots! Louie definitely livens up when he's out of the arena, or out of his comfort zone in general. He was sleeping when I tacked him up, but was wide awake and high-headed when he realized we were going someplace new. I got to work a little bit on my saddle seat equitation with his head up like a saddle seat horse, and it got me thinking I should maybe try showing him as a saddle seat horse at some point, maybe in a WSCA open show. After all, I already have a saddle suit and a beautiful day coat, along with lots of other saddle seat attire.

Perhaps you noticed the two links in the last sentence. A fellow Saddlebred enthusiast has started a new company that I think deserves a second look. She sells gorgeous custom saddle seat apparel made by Victor Layne as well as ready to wear suits at very reasonable prices. They make hunt coats too! Perhaps when Louie and I need an upgrade, we'll have to check out Blue Ribbon Diva!

For now, we're taking it easy on the trails and roads, and Louie is loving the simple life. He and his lady are also finally integrating into the herd, which is a bit of a relief, as he has survived a month in his new home and being a "real horse" with very few marks to show for it!

Coming Along

2011-08-24T08:51:00.000-05:00

The horses seem to be getting along better now. They're not exactly hanging out with each other, but at least I haven't seen any chasing or bad behavior in the past few days. I found out why it was maybe so bad, the mare was in heat. I think she must be out now because she's not quite as attached to Louie and life has settled down a little. Though, I think Louie's got a new girlfriend in the big pasture across the fence, where he'll be going come fall- a Friesan. She's pretty, and Louie has historically had good taste in girlfriends, his last one was a warmblood jumper. Louie and the Friesan have been grooming each other over the fence, and she seems to be fairly protective, keeping her herdmates away from him. All in all, it's pretty cute.

I haven't ridden Louie much except to just hop on and toodleoo around a few days ago when Sandy came to visit. I think we'll go for a nice trail ride down the road this week. Louie has settled in and is really relaxed and calm, I'm tempted to drive him down the road, but I figure we better master riding before we attempt to drive anywhere!

Sorting It Out- Day Two

2011-08-15T22:13:00.000-05:00

Things were more quiet at the barn today. I think they were all tired and sore from over-exerting themselves yesterday. I only noticed one chase, which involved Jackson and the mare, while I had Louie out to be groomed. The mare is seriously attached to Louie, I'm thankful he is not as attached to her, I find it rather annoying the way it is as I have to ward her off every time I get near my horse, they are practically attached at the hip.

I was a bit surprised to find that two of our three horses were lame today. Any guesses which two?? I'll give you a hint, much to my surprise, it wasn't the Saddlebred. That's right, I was sort-of mixed happy-sad to find that (happy that Louie was fine, sad that the other two were sore, but it serves them right, they were the ones doing the unnecessary and very mean chasing!). I checked all 3 of them over, no obvious leg swelling, heat, tenderness, no rocks in the feet, etc, and it looked like Cash and Jackson were only mildly off. I'm sure they'll shake it off in no time. Jackson had a little swelling in his chest, where he had a hematoma earlier this summer, probably got kicked again, but Cash looked pretty clean, other than being due for a re-set on his front shoes.

Louie just had a little cut on his left front leg (from interfering I'm sure), swelling of his right jowel which is probably either from a kick or a bug bite (but no tenderness, no difficulty eating, no difficulty with the bridle, etc), and a rub on his cheek bone from his halter. Overall, I was pretty impressed that he got out of the first day of introductions relatively unscathed, especially with the way they were running around yesterday!

I took him out for a nice ride, just an easy ride of mostly walking and trotting, working on extensions too. He was good. Still needs a fair amount of reminding to relax, drop his neck, etc, but he's doing a nice job. Now he'll have a few days off and hopefully he'll continue settling in to his new pasture. I do have to say, if he was mellow before, he's really mellow now, not spooky or nervous, hardly grinding his teeth anymore, doesn't seem to be girthy anymore- I think this pasture life is a good thing for Louie!

The Pecking Order

2011-08-14T22:29:00.001-05:00

This entry could have been named "introductions," but due to the nature of the interactions, I felt the current title more appropriate. . .

Louie and his girlfriend finished their quarantine time and joined the herd today- all four of them (it's a smaller herd in the summer because only a few horses come in to be grained once a day, the rest get enough to sustain themselves on the lush pasture). Two of the 6 are senior horses, two are our Tennessee Walking Horses (Cash- the Alpha, and Jackson- the Sidekick), and of course Louie and the lady.

I don't know if it was because there was a mare introduced to the herd or if this is the way Cash always treats newcomers, but I felt bad for poor Louie and the mare. At first I didn't notice any commotion, just the two of them grazing out away from everybody else, which I thought was pretty normal for new horses in a herd. Then while I was tacking Louie up to ride I saw Cash and Jackson chasing after the poor mare, running her down back and forth, back and forth. Then when they felt they had had enough fun, they retreated back to their shelter and left her in a corner separated from the herd. After a little while they were back at it again. . .

I went and rode Louie, we had a nice ride, the footing was a little slick from all the rain we had yesterday, but not too bad. We worked on extensions in the walk and trot, and suppleness/roundness in all gaits. I got a good work out- wore my new heart rate monitor and burned 541 calories in a 35 minute ride! Wow! Louie got a good workout too. As an afterthought, I probably shouldn't have pushed him too hard.

When I put him back in the pasture all was quiet for a while. I walked him over to the automatic waterer and pushed down on the floating cover and put some water to his mouth. I thought maybe he'd want to drink after a hard ride, but instead all he did was scratch his head on the waterer. You can lead a horse to water. . . I stayed in the pasture for a little bit, watched Louie roll, then he and the lady went off to graze together. No action from the Alpha, so I walked over to say hi to them and check on them. I told Cash to be nice. Unfortunately he didn't listen.

As I was putting my saddle away I heard commotion and looked to the pasture to see Cash and Jackson chasing Louie and the mare all over the pasture, weaving in and out, tight on their tails. Louie let fly and clipped Jackson in the face with both hind feet (I don't think he was seriously hurt, just brushed him I think). Louie led the chase, with the other 3 behind him, like 4-in-line barrel racing. Luckily Louie is more agile than he looks, he dodged around some trees, cantering like he wasn't all that worried, just fast enough to stay away. Cash tried to corner him , but Louie protected his lady. At one point another boarder came up to see the action and pointed out that the two new horses were being chased, so I told her, "the funny thing is that 3 of the 4 horses invoved are mine. . ." We had to laugh a little. After a few minutes of action-packed adventure, Cash and Jackson retreated to their shelter, where Cash, the Alpha then proceeded to remind Jackson that he is the boss. All in all, I think Jackson took the brunt of the battle, he tripped or fell once (all fours in the air), took a kick to the face, and I think got kicked or twisted a hind leg, which he limped on for a few strides, then shook it off and proceeded to try to remind Cash that he was his Sidekick buddy, and they were a team.

Louie and the lady stayed in the far corner of the pasture for the rest of the time I was there, where one of the senior horses ventured out to say hello, in a much more kind manner.

I am interested in the herd dynamics in this situation. I am assuming Cash wants Louie's lady, and they're going to have to duke it out and somebody (I'm sure Louie) will have to back down and assume his spot in the pecking order. It's a matter of how long. . . how long will they continue to work out their differences? I wonder if it had just been Louie new to the herd how the situation would be different, just adding one gelding versus a gelding and a mare? At the same time I'm glad Louie has a buddy, I figure two on two is better than two on one! I'm sure they will sort this all out quickly. Louie can be a bit of a pest, and Cash doesn't put up with any non-sense. I had hoped that since they knew each other and lived together for more than 6 months, used to get ponied together (granted it was a couple of years ago), that they would remember and get along. Apparently not. I just hope they get it figured out soon and nobody gets hurt too badly in the meantime.

More on The Stable

2011-08-11T22:03:00.000-05:00

I promised more photos of Louie's new home, so here it is. He has not taken advantage of all of the facilities yet, but in time. . .

The tie stalls, where the horses come in to eat once a day. I love that they separate them for feeding, which allows each horse to receive a customized feeding plan, and is more than a lot of pasture boarding stables offer.

The indoor "arena," a small lunging space that is protected from the elements, allowing for at least a little bit of work to be done in the cold months of the year.

The other half of the barn, a few box stalls, which Louie will not be utilizing. Unfortunately I didn't get any of the chickens or cats in this photo, they roam the farm and add a lot of character to the barn, not to mention great desensitization for the horses!

And the best part, acres and acres of grass pasture.

The outdoor arena, good size for riding or driving.

And of course, friends. Louie has met Cash, on the right, but has not really met Jackson, other than the show that they travelled to together.

Room to run!

Louie will have to figure out how to use an automatic waterer, but he's pretty smart, I don't expect him to have any trouble.

So here is Louie in his quarantine pen. Another thing I love about this barn is that they have good quarantine practice. Every new horse spends 2 weeks here before mingling with the herd, so that any disease that the horse might be carrying has time to incubate and show clinical signs. So far, so good.

What a cutie!

Complete with new girlfriend.

And he's a happy horse.

Overall, I think Louie is really happy in his new home, but I know he is looking forward to getting out of quarantine and into the main pasture where there is lots of room to roam and grass to eat. Only 3 days left!

The New Stable

2011-08-10T10:29:00.000-05:00

Well, so far so good, Louie thinks of his new home. I moved him right after the show to his new home in Hugo, MN, just a small friendly stable with the basics- pasture turnout, fed once a day in a tie stall, outdoor riding ring, and a small indoor lunging space.

My first impressions of Louie in his new home- he loves it. When I go out to see him, he is brighter and happier than ever. I think he's enjoying being able to move around and not be confined to a stall too, which I know is healthier for him. So far I've long lined, driven, and ridden- once each. The outdoor arena has got a fair number of rocks in it, but I know that the staff are working on improving it, and so far it hasn't been a problem (knock on wood!). Louie likes this outdoor ring, it's got great views, and hardly any bugs. When I rode last night, I didn't even put a drop of fly spray on him.

We will get more photos of Louie's new home soon, but for now, I thought I'd post a few pictures that my husband took last night, what a gorgeous night for a ride! Finally a break from the heat, just picture perfect riding conditions.

Just as most horses take a little time to set in, so does Louie, so he's a little more stiff and not quite as soft/relaxed as he usually is, but he'll get there.

My husband with his funny photos. . . wow look how crooked my legs/saddle are! I hope it was just how we stopped/were standing!

Beautiful lighting, and a view of the pond beside the arena.

This is kindof a cool photo, I think he had it in sport mode, which must focus in the center and let everything else fall out of focus. I can clearly see my equitation difficulties here.

A quick video he shot of us trotting in a circle, Louie looks pretty sound to me!:

I'll add more photos later. Until next time, happy trails!

Mid Summerfest

2011-08-04T22:14:00.000-05:00

The horse show went well! It was miserably hot and sticky, but Louie was a pretty good boy and we had fun. We brought our five-year-old Tennessee Walking Horse gelding, Jackson, as well, so I really had my hands full, but it was worth it.

Louie's first class was not so great. He was acting a little spooky, and anticipating a lot. I had trouble getting him to walk, and keeping him on the rail (he wanted to drift to the inside during the walk, trying to canter). We got around, but it was not a great ride. The photographer did get a beautiful picture of him from this class. ASB Hunter Country Pleasure

Our second ride was the following evening, Open Hunter Pleasure. I had time to ride Louie in the ring that afternoon and we got a lot of our issues worked out. We worked on walking, patience, and realizing that there were no horse-eating monsters lurking along the rail. Then for a little added reassurance I put my spurs on (I have been riding in spurs all year, and find them to be quite helpful at times). Our ride that evening was awesome- one of the best rides I've had. He flat walked, took his transitions beautifully, and we had great gait extensions. Even my husband commented on what nice extension Louie had in his gaits at this show compared to last year. I was pretty impressed since we've hardly worked on it. But that is one of my main skills I'm trying to build up for the show ring. Open Hunter Pleasure Well, we won that class, and my husband thought it would be fun if we did our victory pass at the hand gallop. Weee!!

After our second class, another competitor came up and asked me if I'd be interested in riding in an Open Hunter Stake if they added it, so naturally I said yes. The following afternoon was the Open Hunter Stake. It was dreadfully hot and I was so dehydrated and hot it was all I could do to stay on and get through the gaits. My husband was standing on the rail saying "smile!" but I just couldn't get up enough energy for anything more than the absolute essentials. Louie was a little boogery in that class as well, same issues as the first class, but to a lesser degree. So we took the Reserve in that class, which I felt we deserved. Open Hunter Stake

Our final class was the ASB Hunter Country Pleasure Stake, and we were the only team in the class. We had a pretty nice ride, better than the previous ride, as Louie was not as spooky and walked a little better. We need to work on our walk and having him not anticipate the canter. This is a really common problem in show Saddlebreds, and my last Saddlebred had the same problem that I never was able to really cure. Louie's is only just beginning, so I think we can work on it, we'll just have to get creative and I need to be really firm on not allowing anything other than the gait I ask for. ASB Hunter Country Pleasure Stake

The photographer, Courtney Church, snapped some great photos of us, as usual. This is my favorite, from the Hunter Country Pleasure Stake- in the hand gallop. I look like I was tipped forward, but I usually feel very balanced in two point, so I think it's partly just an optical illusion and maybe the angle of the photo. Hand Gallop

Overall, Louie had a great show. We received some nice comments from other competitors and even a few trainers on what a nice horse Louie is. Sometimes I feel that I have two different horses- one at home and one at shows. But he is very beautiful, and I'm sure he probably makes a very elegant hunter.

We used our new rubber stall mats and a hoof packing called Magic Cushion Hoof Packing, and I think it helped him. It is supposed to act as sort-of a liniment and increase blood flow to the hooves, something Louie can use. He is doing great in his plain plates, moving really nicely, and after the show he moved to his new home. More to come on that later. . .

Preparations

2011-07-27T22:37:00.000-05:00

We've been very busy preparing for our big show this weekend. Louie is moving pretty nicely in his plain plates and I've gotten most everything packed up and ready. I have hardly ridden in the past 2 weeks because of the heat, but I think Louie will be okay, he remembers his lessons well.

This show will also be Louie's introduction to his new pasture buddy, Jackson, our 5 year old walking horse gelding, who we are also bringing to the show. We'll see how that goes, I can just about smell trouble already from those two!

Then after the show, the big move, and Mister Spoiled Pants will be kicked out of the stall to be a horse for a while. I can't decide whether he'll be happy or sad about that, but I'm expecting happy.

I also wanted to apologise to those who have left comments lately, I have been having difficulty logging in to reply to them for some reason. So I apologise, but I really appreciate your support! We will check in after the show!

Puddles of Slobber

2011-07-21T21:37:00.000-05:00

Louie had the farrier out today to put on new shoes- sans the pads. He was exhausted from his past 3 nights outside fighting the bugs, so he stood in the cross ties and slept while Pat worked on his feet. He was almost as sleepy as when he was sedated for his dental work- no kidding! Well the weather has finally cooled off some today (84 degrees and much less humidity than the past week), and he gets to spend the night in his stall, so I bet he sleeps like a rock.

Shortly after I brought Louie in we started to notice something strange. Every few minutes, he would open his mouth and move his tongue around a bit and about a cup of drool would land on the floor. It was so bad that I had to hold a rag under his mouth for the farrier to work on his front feet! Nothing better than a hot drool bath.

We think he must have been eating a lot of clover, which is known to cause excessive drooling. I just hope that he stops slobbering in time for our show next week! Well, if he doesn't, he'll have a very well lubricated mouth. He was a little lethargic when I rode him today, probably because of the heat and bugs he faught the past several days, but I worry about him getting dehydrated from all that slobbering!

Heat Wave

2011-07-19T22:24:00.000-05:00

We're in the middle of an extreme heat advisory across the entire midwest. Today the heat index was 119 when I looked at it at 5:00 pm. . . We reached a record for dew point, I want to say 83, but I could be off on that number.

Any way you cut it, it's HOT! Way too hot to do anything outside, let alone work horses. And I feel bad for the horses, sweating just standing there. Louie's fan broke this week too (bad timing!) so he's been sweated head to toe when I go out to see him in the evenings.

Lucky for Louie, the barn manager was able to arrange to leave the horses outside overnight, last night and tonight, as it's just way hotter inside the barn with no airfow. I think the horses are loving it. Of course there are more bugs outside, but at least they have a breeze, space to roam, and large quantities of water available. Unfortunately, none of Louie's pasturemates were allowed to stay out overnight, so he's all by himself in his pasture, with one other horse to seek out for company over a fence. Either way, I think he's happier outside, I know I would be.

This all is good practice for him too, as soon Louie is going to become and outdoorsman. Well, in a sense. Since the vet recommended I get him out of the stall, Louie is moving to a new barn at the end of the month to be on pasture boarding. It will be a new experience for him, but I think it will be better for him long-term. I'm looking forward to letting him be outside enjoying the cool evening breeze soon. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is winter. . . I have to admit I love having a somewhat warm and decent place to ride in the dead of the winter, gets me through the long depressing cold half of the year. Well that is one part of the plan, Louie may move to another stable for a couple of months in the winter so that I can ride and get my horse fix when it's too cold to be outside. Well that's a long ways away, right now we have more heat and humdity than we know what to do with. We're sweating at the thought of going outside. Ack!

Sharp in the Tooth

2011-07-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

Louie had his teeth floated this week because they were getting a bit sharp around the edges. The vet was pretty surprised how sharp his teeth had become in less than a year's time since his last float.

Here is Louie, after the sedation. He got pretty tipsy and nearly fell over, apparently he's a lightweight.

But I think he's happy now that his teeth are no longer scraping the insides of his cheeks!

Summer is Finally Here

2011-07-10T18:22:00.000-05:00

It has been hot here in Minnesota for the past few weeks. I guess, it is July. Louie has been sweating pretty profusely when I get him out of his stall in the evenings. So much that tonight I actually had to hose him down before working him.

Louie was kindof an idiot with the hose bath today. First he got himself into a situation caused by hunger and the desperate need to eat the grass in front of him, where his hind legs were straddling a plank that was resting up against the fence. I'm sure you can predict what happened next. Of course he took a step to the side, moved a hind leg only to meet the plank then had a brief spaz while he tried to free himself from the mess he got himself into.

Only moments later he decided to walk forward over the hose, and got that stuck on one of his hind legs, and had the same reaction again. This time he backed himself into the fence then stopped and thought, oh crap, now I've done it.

Then after all of that drama he settled down and let me finish his hose bath. After all of that fiasco we had quite a lovely drive. For a while I was nervous about driving him with that attitude, but he did just fine. Clearly we need to work on some desensitization to things around his legs. . .

The Vet Re-Check

2011-07-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

Well I brought Louie back in to see Dr. Turner this week for a re-check on his lameness. He was happy with the shoes and the way Louie's feet were looking.

He did one of the most thorough physical exams I have ever seen, doing flexions of all 4 legs, watching Louie walk, trot, and canter on soft and hard surfaces. He palpated every part of Louie from his teeth to his feet to his back. He checked his flexibility and neurological system. After all of that, he came to the conclusion that my horse was goofy- in otherwords, not right, but not terribly wrong.

So we decided to do thermograms to try to pinpoint the soreness. The only areas that lit up on the thermograms were the right hind leg (the whole leg) due to Louie using that leg more than the left hind, and an area on the left side, back part of the rib cage near the spine. This is the same area that Louie had a knot in last fall, and the same spot where he's been sore since I tried all of those dressage saddles this winter. We don't know what it is, but it's possibly a rib out.

Then we basically came to a decision point of- do more looking, X-rays, bone scans, MRIs, etc, or give it some time and try to work through it to see if it will go away. The choice is hard and we all hope we never have to make the decision, but sometimes we need to draw the line with diagnostics and treatment of equine problems. Because there was nothing glaringly wrong with Louie and he didn't see any reason I shouldn't keep working him, we decided to give it some time, keep working him, try to almost ignore the headnod at the walk, and try to get him more time out of the stall. He also recommended I have his teeth checked and also agreed that chiropractic and massage may be helpful, especially for the rib on the left side.

So. . . I had a great ride and a great drive with Louie this week. We're planning on going to a show at the end of the month, and probably more trail riding. :) I'm content with the decision, as afterall, I can bring him back at any time if I choose to do more looking into this mystery lameness.

A New Gear

2011-06-23T20:48:00.000-05:00

I heard Louie was a naughty horsie when he was turned out this morning. So I told him he was going to get a hard workout today. Well, I think I'm the one who got the hard workout, my legs are sore!

After warming up, we worked on simple lead changes several times in a row (probably 6-8 changes) in Figure-8's and Louie did great, he got all of his leads on the first try.

Then I thought, I'm just going to experiment with something, so I picked his head up and asked him to step up into a saddle seat trot. Much to my surprise, off he went! He did pretty well, but couldn't really extend or keep going for long in a saddle seat frame. Well, because I haven't worked him that way I'm sure. I felt like his motor just died after about 2 laps like that and I was clucking and pushing like crazy to keep him going. He'll have to build up to that if I'm going to ask him for it.

Well, after a little breather, I asked him to trot again, this time asking for a hunt seat frame. When I asked him to step up a little, he slid into almost a new gear of extension that I haven't felt him do before. Wow! Cool! So, while I'm sure it won't be good for his back, I think asking him to do a little saddle seat work now and then may help him to build up muscles and loosen him up in a different way than what he's used to. Who knows, maybe he'll decide he really wants to be a saddle seat horse afterall. . .

Trail Time

2011-06-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

Louie and I went on a wonderful trail ride yesterday with a few of our barn friends. We just went to a nearby regional park, but got probably 3 hours of riding in, which was a blast. Louie was a little off at the walk, but he doesn't seem to be in much pain with his head-nodding/short striding, and he was happy and excited to be out cruising the trails.

Louie much prefers being the fearless leader, though he followed willingly as well. He plowed through tight wooded trails that at times were almost too narrow to pass safely. One thing I noticed that was quite interesting was his ear position. When Louie was out front his ears were always forward. When he was the back horse his ears were almost always back (listening). I think this could be partly his display of preference for the front, but I really think it's herd instinct and he was watching/listening to protect the herd from his position in the group.

We did manage to snap a few photos and videos, in these two videos you can see his ear position, and also his subtle head-bobbing, which persisted at the walk for the entire trail ride (didn't warm up out of it like I expected). Well, overall it was a great time and I'm looking forward to the next time we get to go out trail riding! Perhaps next weekend?

Checking out the view.

Louie felt like a saddle seat horse!

Our riding buddies.

Louie had fun walking through this field of lush green goodness!

Back at home in front of the pack.

Taking a break at the trailer. 3 hours is a lot of riding for poor baby Louie.

Sweating away the pounds!

My pretty boy.

The world always looks better through the ears of a Saddlebred.

And finally, the videos:

Leading the way.

Bringing up the rear- and trotting!

The Diet

2011-06-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

I had to buy new plastic baggies for Louie's feed since 3/4 pound of feed looks pretty silly in a gallon freezer bag, and 1/4 pound looks even funnier.

That's right, 1/4 pound. That's what Louie gets to eat now, granted it's twice a day, but he's pretty cheap to feed for 1/2 pound a day! I would consider not giving him any grain, but I need something for his MSM to stick to, and it would be cruel to watch him get skipped over when the feed cart goes by and doesn't make a stop at his stall.

I'm sure he'll be disappointed in the lack of feed he's getting, but it's for his own good. He needs to lose a few pounds and he is still a little off, so I'm not super comfortable pushing his exercise up a whole lot. But that's a whole 'nother topic.

The diet goes into effect in 6 days, after his current bagged feed is used up. I thought it was pretty cool that I could fit a month's worth of food into a single grocery bag to bring it to the barn. We'll see how he looks in a month!

What You Get

2011-06-02T22:18:00.000-05:00

. . . when you don't see your horse for 2 weeks. . .

is a fat horsie.

Yeah, Louie is a little chubbier than the last time I saw him, I'm sure partly because he didn't get any exercise and partly because the horses were turned out on to the green grass over the past 2 weeks. So, what he needs is some exercise, and maybe a decrease in his feed- a good ol' diet.

Who me?

Tonight he got some good exercise, I got him nice and sweated up with just some basic walk-trot-canter work. He is doing great with his transitions, his leads, and speed control. He seems a little stiff on his right front leg still, but not head-bobbing or lame, and he seems to work out of the stiffness when he is pushed a bit. So, that makes me happy. Now we just have to work on trimming down the waist line.

Lonely Louie

2011-06-01T09:36:00.000-05:00

Poor Louie has been lonely this month. With spring field trial season coming to a close, Louie has enjoyed some vacation time to himself while Jackson has been riding over 100 miles every weekend. Below is a photo of Jackson and me (on the right) riding with our friends Hanah (10 years old) and Banana (left)

Luckily Louie has friends at the barn who stop in to visit him and check on his shoes. It sounds to me like he's doing alright, but I'll be out tomorrow to say "hi, remember me?" I don't know if he'll be excited or disappointed, but I'm looking forward to seeing the big guy.

Transitions

2011-05-17T22:31:00.000-05:00

We've been having fun rides the past few days. We've been working a lot on transitions. We're working on halt-trot, trot-halt, walk-canter, halt-canter, canter-walk, canter-halt, and of course transitions within gaits. We've got 3 decently separate speeds of canter, slow, normal, and extended/hand gallop. I think it's nice to mix in a little variety in speeds within each gait to keep Louie responsive. The transitions also help to build balance, strength, and coordination. I'm very surprised by how easily he has taken to the halt-canter transitions, he's taking them right from the walk, NO trotting strides in between! I'm amazed. And he's only missed his leads a few times when cantering straight down the middle of the arena, he has been pretty much rock solid when on the rail. We just need to work on figuring out which lead I'm asking for when there isn't a rail to guide him. But first things first. . .

He's been feeling pretty decent. Tonight Bjorn came out to watch our ride. He noted what I have felt the past few rides- Louie feels stiff at first, but loosens up as he warms up. He is just a tiny bit off and head-bobby at first as well, but not bad.

What I have noticed is that he is incredibly tight/resistant to bending to the left. Our circles to the left are collapsed, asymmetric, and I feel like the saddle is sitting at an angle. Our circles to the right are pretty decent. I think it might be time for some chiropractic adjustment.

Bjorn noted tonight that Louie had less arch to his neck, less break over the top of the neck, and held his neck more straight and higher, nose less tucked. I think that is in part a function of being stiff and a little sore, partially deconditioning/lack of suppling, and partially a product of building contact with the bridle- he's not sucking back behind the vertical nearly as much as he was before, which is actually a good thing. The rest of the reasons, well, they need some work. I'd like to have a chiropractor out in the next few weeks to adjust him to see if that helps our circling, and he'll be due for his next re-set for his shoes in the first week of June. I'm hoping that will help his soundness, if not, we may be going back to see Dr. Turner again.

Overall, he's doing pretty decent. I'm happy to have a mostly sound riding horse again and we're doing really well on our transitions and gaining some conditioning, if nothing else.

Time for Mud

2011-05-10T21:34:00.000-05:00

Louie has had a pretty easy schedule lately- go outside and play in the mud (and get caked in mud head to toe so I have to spend 30 minutes just removing the mud each day before we can do anything- silly horsie) and work a couple of times per week. It is spring field trial season, which means Louie has an easy, though somewhat lonely life for the next month or so, and his brothers Cash and Jackson are working really hard. I somehow don't think Louie minds. He was pretty lucky to have a barn buddy to take him out to eat some green grass last week while I was gone.

On the lunge line, he looks a little bit off still, but not too bad, and nothing that is stopping me from working him. We had a nice ride yesterday, including walk, trot, and canter both ways. Much to my surprise, he took both canter leads correctly from the walk, and didn't get fussy/antsy over it. He's doing great with his shoulder in and haunches in, though we need to work on keeping the neck just a tad straighter in our shoulder in movements as we do have the tendency to bend a little too much at the base of the neck. Overall though, with the exception of conditioning, we're just about picking up where we left off.

A Sound Horse

2011-04-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

I had a great ride on Louie tonight- for the first time in about two months! His head/neck position was just a little bit inconsistent, but nowhere close to what he was doing at my last lesson. He was moving out soundly and using himself really nicely. Of course he was a little bit tired and deconditioned, but we'll work up to more endurance as we build up more strength again.

We worked on some trotting poles/gymnastics that our friends were practicing as well. It was set up for canter strides, but Louie and I mostly worked on it at a trot, but once at a canter. He bucked/kicked at the little baby 6" jump once after jumping it when he bumped it with his legs- he said, "ow! That hurt!" That was pretty funny.

We practiced our shoulder in, haunches in, and leg yielding at the walk and Louie did great. The lateral work is pretty much picking up where it left off. We also cantered briefly on both leads, and that was great too.

I was SO happy with him, we had a nice ride, he felt really good, sound, and moved out nicely. I'm very happy to have my horsie back again! I'm also excited to go to the MN Horse Expo tomorrow- a whole day of horsing and shopping!

Happy Horse Shoes

2011-04-25T21:51:00.000-05:00

My farrier Pat came out today to shoe Louie. He had 3 degree plastic wedge pads that he used with a plain steel shoe. We measured Louie's feet before trimming, after trimming, and after shoeing. We also talked quite a bit on shoeing techniques (complete with illustrations) and why it is actually better to cut the heels off of a low foot with under-run heels (to widen the base of support and place the support further back under the heel rather than keeping high pressure over the heels, which don't allow them to grow as easily).

We did find a discrepancy between Pat's hoof angle measuring tool and the computer generated angles from Dr Turner's office. Of course you have to take into account the human error and the shape of the outside hoof wall (ie a dish) which affects the angle. Dr. Turner's numbers put the left front at 48 degrees and the right at 55. Pat's measurements found the left front to be 48 degrees and the right to be only 52. We took a lot of heel off of the right front and a little bit of length off of the left front as well, so that after trimming, the left front was 47 degrees and the right front was about 46 degrees. After adding the 3 degree wedge pad and shoe (remember, the shoe can affect the angle depending on where you place it- further back will make a steeper mechanical angle by shortening the breakover distance), both feet measured 54 degrees.

As for toe lengths, before trimming, the left front was 3-7/8" and the right front was 3-3/4". After trimming, both toes were 3-3/4". The heels before trimming were 1-3/8" on the left front and 1-3/4" on the right. After trimming, both heels were equal at 1-3/8". Of course Pat also lowered the outside hoof wall of the right front by about 1/8".

So, without further ado, here is the finished product.

This is a view of the left front foot from the right. You can see the under-run heels, but the angle is much better now. You can also see how Pat set the shoe back just a bit to not only support the heels more, but also to make for a higher mechanical angle and an easier breakover.

Happy horse with new feet (and bell boots)

And I think this could be my favorite, showing off his new kicks and looking rather aloof- pretty pleased with himself.

I think the best news of all, is that after that, not only did the shoes cost me less than what I had expected (I thought the price was going to be comparable to that of a Saddlebred show shoe and cost me $200, but Pat only charged me $30 for the pads, so that made me really happy), but I lunged Louie afterward and he was moving much better than he has moved in 6+ months. I was thrilled to see how comfortably he was moving. Still just a tad shorter on the right front than the left, but the head nod is gone, he's moving much more freely through the shoulders, and I think with time he'll start moving nicer because he won't be expecting it to hurt like he probably is now.

Our plan now is to reset him again in 6 weeks, and eventually, the goal is to actually set him with his right front at a lower angle than the left, so that during most of the middle of the shoeing period he will have equal angles, and he'll only be slightly higher on the right by the time he needs to be reset. We also looked at the wedge shoes that Pat has available and talked about the pros and cons of these. Basically, these will be used as needed to give him the lift and still be able to show him, but the pads are ideal because they protect the foot a bit more and allow the weight to be spread out over a greater area. Seeing Louie move today was one of the happiest days we've had in the past several months. I'm very excited to get back to working him again. Now he just needs to keep them on in the mud!

Some Shoeing Changes

2011-04-21T18:13:00.000-05:00

Sorry for my absence, I've not written much lately about Louie. The reason is because he has not been doing much of anything lately. He was having some soundness issues, moving very short strided and toe-first with both front legs, and lately becoming even more uncomfortable and actually lame on the right front. Argh. So I did what it seems like the vets always have me do and I gave him time off, like about a month, from any type of work. But alas after several weeks of rest and no improvement in his soundness, it was time to bring him in for more evaluation.

So I brought Louie back to Dr. Turner for a lameness exam. It seemed like he did a lot of looking/testing; in addition to the basic lameness exam and flexions, he blocked Louie's right foot, and Louie improved. He got X-rays of both front feet, and came up with a plan, and gave Louie a cortisone/hyaluronic acid shot in his coffin joint. Basically, the diagnosis is soft tissue inflammation around the coffin joint. The reason- Louie's uneven front feet. Right now if you look at Louie head on, his right knee is about a centimeter higher than his left. This is because his heel is so much higher on that side. One would assume that that much of a leg-length discrepancy would cause pain all the way up the kinetic chain, in the fetlock, knee, shoulder, back, etc.

So, we've got some plans for corrective shoeing. Louie's right front foot is at a 55 degree angle. His left front foot is only at just under 48 degrees. So, the plan is to correct the angles to make them both the same, increasing the angle of the left front by 4 degrees and decreasing the angle of the right front by 4 degrees. The way Dr. Turner wants us to do that is to trim the foot to decrease the angle of the right front by 7 degrees and increase the angle of the left front by one degree (this should make him just about even), then put Louie in plain shoes with a 3 degree wedge pad on both front feet. Of course with how fast Louie's feet grow (and therefore how fast his angles change), we'll have to have him re-set at least every 6 weeks to maintain these angles.

The disappointing thing is that I won't be able to show Louie in Saddlebred Hunter Country Pleasure with wedge pads on. When I talked to my farrier, he did mention that he has aluminum wedge shoes, which are thicker at the heel, that I could use instead of the wedge pad. This might be a possibility to put him in these shoes later this summer, but for now, we need the pads to allow the feet to heal as quickly as possible.

Well, while that isn't awesome news, I'm glad that it didn't turn out to be anything bad like navicular disease or laminitis- always things that run through the mind when dealing with front end lameness. I'm hopeful that we can get him feeling better and I feel that we have a really good plan to get Louie sound and moving right again. My farrier is coming out on Monday to adjust his angles and put the high heeled shoes on. Now it will be up to Louie to keep them on in the mud and all.

Last Year

2011-04-03T09:25:00.002-05:00

Can you believe that last year at this time we were doing this outside?

This year we still have snow on the ground, and the temps are only in the 40's. Depressing. Ah well, it should look up soon, the snow is melting, and at least it is warmer than it was last month.

One-sided

2011-03-28T22:27:00.000-05:00

Today we had Cordia out again to evaluate our saddle fit, since Louie, the big wimp, has had a sore back.

I was surprised by what she found. She found a dent/flat spot in the left panel where he had pushed all of the flocking away from the spine, that was actually causing that portion of the saddle to bridge. I asked her how she thinks this happened, and she stated, quite frankly, "well I don't think he is bending to the left very well." Hmmm, strange, because Marlene, our instructor, always comments on how much better he goes to the right and how he always looks stiff going to the left. She has told me a few times how strange that is because most horses bend better to the left- naturally, because we handle them from that side. But clearly we can see that he is pushing his spine to the left, preferring to hollow his right side.

She put what seemed like a whole pillow's worth of flocking back in to fill out that spot again, then re-checked the fit. I am hoping that this will make him more comfortable again, but I'm wondering why he hasn't been bending that way, as I didn't really notice that huge of a problem. We will have to try to work on bending equally both ways, and maybe we'll have to have the vet/chiro out to check out why he resists bending in that direction. Anyway, I'm going to give him another week or two off from riding, as he is still palpating sore, and it's been two weeks since I've ridden him- does that seem like a really long time?

On a good note, we found a great fit in a dressage saddle- the Thornhill Klasse, the one with the external block that I'm excited to try. They have one at our local tack shop that I plan to try in a few weeks once Louie's back shapes up.

Equine Intestinal Parasites and DIY Fecal Counts

2011-03-27T14:40:00.002-05:00

We've all heard about the problems with resistance to our commonly used dewormers for horses. This problem is very real, and impacts all of us as horse owners. I have been procrastinating on finishing and publishing this post, but it is an important issue that I care quite a bit about and thought it was time.

For many years horses have co-existed with parasites. These parasites come in many different forms, but the ones that are perhaps the most important in the health of our horses and parasitic resistance today are the common intestinal parasites- strongyles. While a small worm load is acceptable, and even beneficial to a horse's immunity, large worm loads cause a lot of problems including anemia, weight loss, and of course can lead to impaction and colic. To combat this, most horse owners use a standard deworming plan that rotates between two or three classes of drugs used to rid the horse of these parasite burdens. The idea behind the rotational deworming program is to use different types of medications each time to prevent worms from becoming resistant to them. The standard deworming program involves rotation between three major drug classes- benzimidazoles (fenbendazole, oxibendazole), tetrahydropyrimidines (pyrantel pamoate, pyrantel tartrate), and macrocyclic lactones (ivermectin, moxidectin). The fourth drug class includes the drug praziquantel, which is used to specifically target tapeworms, and is generally administered along with ivermectin or moxidectin. This rotation is usually administered every 2-3 months, depending upon the climate, herd size, and veterinarian recommendations.

However, over the past 30-40 years since this rotation was implemented, the worms have become much smarter, and our usual medications are not working as effectively as we would expect. The worms are surviving administrations of deworming medications and going on to become even stronger. Two of the three major drug classes (the benzimidazoles and the tetrahydropyrimidines) have been found to have significant problems with resistance, yet they are continuing to be used in the same way as they have been for the past 40 years. Part of this problem is lack of awareness on the part of horse owners administering the drugs, part of the problem is lack of resources in making a plan to change the way we use these medications, and a large part of the problems, scariest of all, is the lack of alternatives available to replace the drugs we currently use.

So what are we supposed to do about this problem of parasitic resistance? Well that's a good question. Of course there are several methods that can be used to keep parasitic infections to a minimum- this includes proper disposal of manure, pasture management (picking feces out of pastures being actively grazed), and judicious use of deworming medications. One tool that horse owners can use is a quantitative fecal egg count. This is a test that is readily available through most veterinarian labs. But this is not a one-time, quick-fix answer. Fecal egg counts (FEC) must be performed periodically, in a way to not only determine when deworming is needed, but also to assess the efficacy of our deworming medications. By using FECs, one can estimate a horse's current worm-load and determine whether deworming is necessary or not, so our precious few deworming medications can be used judiciously, and only when needed. We can also check the efficacy of our medications by performing a fecal egg count reduction test (FECRT) 10-14 days after administration of a deworming medication. If the dewormer medication was effective, the strongyle FECRT should show at least 90% reduction in the egg count.

FECs can be performed by your veterinarian lab, but they are expensive, usually ranging $20-40 per FEC. If you are scientifically minded (and maybe at least half crazy like me), you can do your own FECs, and they're easy. I started doing my own FECs a little over a year ago, and it has revolutionized the way I deworm my horses. There is some learning involved in getting started, and some up-front cost to get set up with the tools necessary to perform these tests, but after the initial input of time and energy, I have found FECs to be quite easy, and relatively quick, with very little cost.

The Horse (http://www.thehorse.com/) has several excellent articles about equine parasites and resistance, and even a step by step tutorial on performing your own FECs. The materials needed to get started include a microscope (I purchased a very basic microscope with a mechanical stage, monocular eyepiece, and the required 10x objective for $50 on ebay), counting slides with grids (I would recommend the Paracount-EPG kit from Chalex Corporation complete with two marked mixing vials, transfer syringes, two McMaster counting slides, and instructions- a very nice kit available for $50-60 from http://www.vetslides.com/- note, I would recommend purchasing the kit with green grid slides, much easier to see through the microscope) , and float solution ($10 for a gallon from my local vet's office). So that's a total investment of $120 to be set up to do these tests for years to come- a small price to pay, in my opinion, for the health of our horses. In reality, the supplies paid for themselves in four tests in comparison to what I pay my vet to do them. The Paracount EPG kit is really nice and easy to use; it includes step by step instructions for setting up and interpreting the results of the FEC and FECRT, as well as information on the egg reappearance period for the commonly used drugs (basically how long each dewormer is effective), and pictures of the common parasites seen on FEC. FECs are quite easy to perform with the help of this kit and the information available from The Horse.

I have been doing FECs for Louie about every 2-3 months, and often after deworming for a FECRT. The owner of the other two horses in Louie's pasture also has me do FECs for her two horses, so we get them all on the same page, and deworm them, when needed, on the same schedule. In my own research, I have found ivermectin to be 100% effective (though there are reports of ivermectin resistance, which is very scary), fenbendazole to be only about 10% effective (and I haven't used it since, fenbendazole is the dewormer with the greatest problems with resistance), and pyrantel to be between 50 and 90% effective. We generally rotate between pyrantel and ivermectin (+/- praziquantel- we use this twice a year to cover tapeworms, which do not routinely show up on FECs), but I am also going to try moxidectin (Quest) this spring, to increase the number of drug options used, though we are still only using two drug classes. Perhaps fenbendazole will re-gain efficacy in the future if it is not used for a few years, but only time will tell.

Last summer, my husband took a few photos of the FEC process (never mind the eye-patch headband, haha, I know it looks pretty silly, but I have to cover one eye in order to focus through the monocular microscope).

Mixing the manure with the float solution in the measuring vial:

Drawing up a small amount of the mixture with the syringe to apply it to the slides.

Injecting the mixture into the counting slides.

Rinsing the tools, here you can see the set up, the measuring vial (I use a tongue depressor to stir), the syringe, and the loaded counting slides.

Looking through the microscope and counting the eggs (the number of eggs within the two grid areas on one slide are counted, then multiplied by 25 to reach a final eggs per gram count, administering dewormer at anything over 200 EPG)

And the end result- happy, healthy horses!

Do Horses Care?

2011-03-24T21:21:00.000-05:00

Every time I go to the barn to visit or work Louie, I pick out his stall (the few piles that have accumulated in the couple of hours he's been in) and re-arrange the bedding where he has pushed it to the side so that he's got plenty to stand on.

Today as I was doing this, it got me thinking, does my horse even care? Does he appreciate this or would he rather have his stall messy?

Does he care that I scrub his buckets every week and feed him warm alfalfa cube mashes when it is cold outside? Does he care that I dust his stall walls and make sure his mats are perfectly level?

Well, I think he appreciates the alfalfa cubes, and I'm pretty sure he appreciates the freshly scrubbed buckets, but I'm really not sure about the rest. Do you think your horses care about all of this fussing we do over them to make sure their living conditions are orderly and "comfortable?" I think Louie'd rather be outside rolling in the mud.

What happened to spring?

2011-03-23T22:18:00.000-05:00

Yikes! Brrr is it cold! Two days ago it was in the 40's-50's, sunny, warm and beautiful. Yesterday it was 30 degrees and raining. That rain turned into ice and then we got 4 inches of snow, and it is now less than 20 degrees outside. Ick. I thought winter was done and over, I guess I was wrong! Glad Louie got his blankie back on yesterday.

I hope this cold weather goes away and we get our spring back soon. Stay warm!

Transition to Blind Driving

2011-03-17T20:41:00.000-05:00

It seems as though Louie's back is sore. . . I think this is why my lesson, and the two subsequent rides I have had, were not so good. We are going to be having the saddle fitter out to check out our normal saddle, though I suspect the trials of a number of different saddles on him is what contributed to the soreness. So, we're taking a little time off from under-saddle work and focusing more on driving to give his back a little time to settle down.

Today we drove, and started our transition to the blind bridle. As you probably know, Louie still drives in an open bridle, as he is more comfortable being able to see me and the cart and his surroundings. This is fine, and we drive at home without any problems whatsoever. However, if we ever want to show, or compete in carriage driving, we will have to learn to drive in a blind bridle, with blinkers.

To make this transition, we are repeating each step of the lining, hooking, then driving process in a few steps. The first step is to progress through each stage with a pair of big fleece halter fuzzies on the cheek pieces of his driving bridle, which will block out his view behind him, but not to the sides, and if he really wants to, he can just turn his head slightly and see everything behind him. The next step will be to either use a blinder bridle with the blinders positioned wide and more open or a blinker hood, then finally drive with a normal driving bridle with the blinkers in the normal position.

Today we drove with the fleece halter fuzzies on the cheek pieces for the first time and Louie did great, he didn't act any differently or less comfortably than he did without them. I think this transition will be easy, but we're taking our time to be on the safe side.

We did learn something that does still bother Louie, and that is the sound of something unpredictable behind him. After I unhooked him, Sandy was driving one of her minis and Louie was a little bothered by it. He always looks at the minis when she lunges them, as if they're some strange two-headed, hoofed dog or something, but pulling a cart is a whole new experience for him. I was walking him around the arena in his harness (still with the halter fuzzies) after unhooking to let him have some exposure to these little buggers pulling carts when one of them broke into a canter behind him, and the sudden change in the rhythm of the noise startled Louie. He had to turn around and look, spooked a little bit, then proceeded to walk around in Saddlebred style. After I removed the harness, I let Louie stand in the middle of the arena while Sandy drove her other mini in circles around him. He didn't so much as lift an eyelid.

So, we will have some desensitization to do with each stage of the transition to the blind bridle.

More Saddles and Less Progress

2011-03-12T21:42:00.000-06:00

We had a lesson on Thursday evening and I tried out another new saddle- a Thornhill Zurich. Well, let's just say that the Saddlefitter is right when she describes the body types of her saddles- the Zurich is definitely built for a narrow, thoroughbred-type back. Needless to say it was too narrow for Louie and pinched him, so we had kind of a crappy lesson.

If I were smart, I should have taken it off and put our regular saddle back on and continued the lesson. But I wasn't. We didn't even make it past the basics, walking and trotting in a circle with a bend. Marlene wants Louie bent quite a bit to the inside while riding a circle, she wants his neck hollow on the inside and bulged out on the outside, the inside rein should never touch the neck. Louie's head/neck position was extremely inconsistent, as expected, he didn't want to stretch down to find the bit.

Because we couldn't get those basics right and consistent enough, we didn't have time to work on our lateral work. I did ask her to just quickly check our shoulder in before our lesson ended, and he did really well in one direction, and was dull/asleep to my aids in the other. The direction that he did well in though, Marlene was really happy with how we did.

What we need to work on:

1. Saddle fit. I need to ride in my regular saddle for a while to get Louie's back back to feeling good before trying more dressage saddles. In addition, Marlene thinks we should ride at least 3-4 times per week if we expect to make any progress.

2. Be very precise. When Marlene is not there, there is nobody correcting me for letting Louie drift inside/outside of our circle or for taking a step forward off of the rail and out of shoulder in. We need to be more precise in the movements we do, and Louie needs to respond immediately when I ask him for something (ie- more bend, move forward, slow down, etc). We also need to work on our up and down transitions, not only so that he doesn't throw his whole head/neck in the air, but so that we don't loose the frame and connection that we had when I asked for the transition. This means keeping contact, bend, and body position/direction of travel consistent. This is part of being precise, we want a smooth transition, not a stoppage of one gait and after a few seconds, resuming in another.

3. Holding hands. By this, she means Louie taking up more contact with my outside hand. This is frustrating because right now I'm getting about a 1 on a 10-scale for pressure on my reins, at some point in the past I was getting 2-3, but about a month ago I was getting about zero or even negative contact. So, I'm happy with 1 for now, but I need to continually work on getting 2-3 pressure on my outside rein. Marlene determines how much pressure is on each rein by determining which rein is higher, whichever looks higher from where it goes from the bit to hand, is holding more contact.

4. Relaxing, yet keeping good energy. There were a lot of distractions during our lesson, a lot of people riding, entering and leaving the ring. Every time Louie had the opportunity, he would lift his whole neck up, loose the bend, and gawk. We need to work on keeping his attention, relaxing into the work we're doing, yet keeping enough rhythm and energy so that he doesn't lose forward momentum when I ask for bends, transitions, etc.

Well, I think that's enough to work on. I'm trying to drive Louie more, and had a very nice drive on Tuesday, so it's tough to make a lot of progress between trying to vary Louie's workouts, my own *real* work schedule, trying to get some exercise for myself, and spending time with family and friends. Stress. Whew! Well, we've been making good enough progress on 2-3 rides per week all along, I don't think I need to quit my day job just yet.

Five Years Old

2011-03-11T09:19:00.004-06:00

Happy Birthday Louie! My big baby is 5 today!

Dressage Saddle Trials

2011-03-06T20:32:00.000-06:00

Well, Louie and I are getting back on track with our dressage, he is doing (in my opinion, we'll see what Marlene thinks on Thursday) fabulously with shoulder in and haunches in at the walk, and we've even been trying a little bit of leg yield and shoulder in at the trot. This is much harder at the trot, but I don't feel at all like I'm working hard to get it at the walk anymore. So I think in time it will come. I hope that this week Marlene gives us the all clear to continue our work at the walk and start working on the trot.

All the while, I've taken out a few dressage saddles on trial from a local tack shop, and alas I learned that dressage is much easier practiced in a dressage saddle. So I think perhaps I must get one, but, since I'm not totally committed to dressage as my primary discipline, I don't want to fork out a lot of money for one either. I know, I'm picky, and that is a lot to ask. But once again, we're faced with the same huge challenge- the fitting. Thankfully with all of the work we went through last spring/summer to find our hunt seat saddle, I've now got much more knowledge at my fingertips about fitting and what we need. But it's still a struggle to find that perfect saddle.

We have tried 3 saddles thus far, two of which were nice, but not quite right for me as a rider, and one other that I brought back, but I think could work. The above photo is from our ride yesterday in a Lovatt and Ricketts Ellipse saddle, taken by Laura from our stable (thanks Laura!). Looks like we're working on a leg yield here, if I have to critique Louie, he has too much bend here. But as you may be able to tell from this photo, my leg position isn't ideal, and I had a little trouble keeping my lower legs in the correct position. I couldn't balance well with my stirrups at the length where they should probably be (longer), and the stirrup bars are a bit too far forward so I have trouble balancing my legs beneath me. Also I am having trouble keeping contact on Louie's sides with my lower legs in this one, so needless to say, it is going back to the shop. Super nice and comfy saddle though, buttery luxurious leather, just not the right balance for us. Thus the search continues. Stay tuned. . .

Lord of Leaping

2011-03-01T22:26:00.001-06:00

Well I don't think Louie will make a show jumper, but he sure had fun free jumping tonight!

We set up 3 jumps today, one by itself, and then a combination on the other side of the arena. None were super high, but enough to actually make Louie pick up his feet and get a little work out. It worked because he was steamy by the time he finished a few laps each way.

At first he refused the first jump saying, "Mom, really? You want me to work that hard?" But after I told him, "Yes Louie, over the jump," he practically aimed for them himself. A lot of horses would work really hard to avoid going over the jumps, but Louie didn't even try to avoid them, even when he left himself a really short approach, he aimed straight for the jump and took them like a champ. If I would go to adjust one jump, he'd take the other one on his own while I walked away. I actually think he liked it. Well that's good because I had fun watching him! And, we got him to go both directions on all of the jumps this time; having 2 ground people with whips makes a big difference!

I caught a few blurs on my cell phone. Not that these show his form or his expression, but you can see that there is a brown blur going over the top of the white blur. Here is a "nice" shot of him going over the second jump in the combination. These were spaced just perfectly to give him some really good gymnastics, no stride between, just land the first and jump again. I'm sure there's a jumping term for that- maybe I'll learn the jumping vocab someday. Anyhow, this gymnastic exercise is good for his balance, timing, spacing, and great for his muscles.

Here you can see him getting ready to take off, getting his hind end tucked under him and ready to push. He used himself much nicer tonight than what I've seen of him in the past- he often stops in front of the jump, then hurls himself over with his front end. Tonight was more like a horse should jump, it was fluid and comfortable looking.

Clearing the single jump on the far side.

What fun! Sometime I should bring my video camera out for this, then you can see what fun Louie has.

Drive Time

2011-02-22T21:44:00.001-06:00

Hallelujia! We drove for the first time in months! A week or two ago when Sandy was there, we put him between the shafts, but didn't hook him. Even with all the scary stuff happening that day he kindof settled down in the cart.

Well today I noticed that the scary end of the arena had less stuff in it, and there was a direct correlation to Louie's spookiness- it was much decreased. Granted I had to move one of the carts around a little bit to get to mine, so that gave Louie something more to look at once again.
So after a lengthy warm-up in the long lines, since Louie was so nicely behaved and didn't appear to be jumping out of his skin too much, I pulled the cart up and hooked him up. We long lined with the cart hooked for a few laps just to see how things would go, but they went fine so I hopped in. It was like we never stopped driving. Yay! We picked up just where we left off, still dealing with some whip anticipation and wanting to bend his neck to the middle even if we're going down a straight away, but it was reassuring to not run into any trouble. We kept the drive short so as not to push our luck, but probably went about 5 laps in each direction at a walk and a trot.

I was very happy with my Louie boy, and he looked so happy driving along, I just know he missed it, as he just feels so relaxed and comfortable in front of the cart. I'm looking forward to spring time when we can get outside to drive in the big outdoor arena before the bugs come to life. :)

Free Jumping

2011-02-21T21:39:00.000-06:00

I didn't have much time to work Louie today, and since we had 12 inches of snow land on us last night and today and I had to work all weekend, we we weren't very motivated to do much real concentrated work. So, we did something that I don't think we've ever done before- free jumping.

I set up a small jump with a pole propped up on a barrel at the one end and the other end on the ground at the wall, and a chute with another pole propped up on the barrel on one side of the jump. I intended to have Louie approach the jump from the side with the chute, then go over it. Well, he didn't want to approach it from the chute side, but he did approach, but refused the first couple of times from the non-chute side. I think he was confused as to why there was a barrel laying in the arena, and why go near that if you don't have to? Well after a few tries, he finally decided it wasn't so bad and popped over the little diagonal-rail. Good boy!

I tried several times to get him to approach it from the side with the chute, but he was not going to have it. I think this is because I positioned the jump about 2/3 of the way down the arena, and the side with the chute was the longer portion, so he had way more time to decide to skirt out of the way and skip the obstacle. I never did get him to approach it in the intended direction, but he sailed over it about 10 times from the opposite way. Fun!

Next time I think I'll set up a second jump or a series so that he has to navigate two obstacles close together. That could be fun, and I want to do what Mary had told us to do last year when we started to try some little jumps- space them differently every time so that he has to figure out where to put his feet on his own. That will help him learn how to time his own strides more effectively. This is good cross training, and gives him some freedom of expression, as he gets to run around and "get the bucks out" a little and have some fun.

On the Lines Again

2011-02-13T20:23:00.001-06:00

Today I worked Louie on the long lines again. I think I've long lined him only once or twice since starting our dressage work. Eek! Bad Mom! Just being honest.

The warm weather (high in the 40's today!) had been making large sheets of snow melt and slide off of the roof, which apparently made terrible noises while we were tacking up (really not that bad, but it got Louie a little worried). So I grabbed my stretchies.

When we got into the arena, Sandy was driving her mini, and Louie had never seen this before- like a large dog pulling a lady around in a cart- weird! So he was already nervous, and now had THAT to look at too. It was a good thing I had the bungies. We started down at the far end of the arena (the scary end to begin with), clipped the bungies, and away my saddle seat horse went! Wow, he's starting to give me second thoughts about what discipline he wants to do! His neck and head were up and set like a nice country pleasure horse, and he was working those stretchies, going level or better, and really driving off of his hind end. It took several big circles around the end of the arena in each direction before he settled down enough to take them off.

After a bit, we took off the bungies, then did a few big laps around the whole arena at a trot. I couldn't go too far, I'm a little out of shape for this activity. We settled down and walked and Louie was actually quite calm by this point, so Sandy came back in the arena and helped me get the cart behind Louie. We didn't hook it, but put the shafts through the tugs and while I ground drove, Sandy led him with a lead rope by his head. Louie did great, not a care in the world. I think being between the shafts actually relaxes him. I've been so hesitant to hook him with all of the scary stuff going on between the far end of the arena, snow melting, etc, but I felt better about that today. It's only been a few months since our last drive, and I'm hoping with Sandy being there more often now, we'll be back in the cart again soon!

The Meltdown and The Recovery

2011-02-10T21:04:00.001-06:00

Well, since the last post, Louie and I had 2 terrible rides; Louie was very frustrated/anxious, and refused to take bit contact, sucked back behind the bit and refused to work in a relaxed state of mind and body. I think Louie was suffering from a few different things at once- boredom, frustration, and confusion. That's not a very good combination, but I think that I've figured out some answers to why he is feeling this way.

1. We have been focusing so hard on our dressage lessons and trying to perfect everything that we haven't been changing up the routine like usual, and have been really working on the same things most every time I'm out there over the past 2 months. I haven't driven him since November because the "scary" stuff in the indoor is still making him anxious, and I don't want to have an accident with the cart due to him spooking. But, it really is bad of me to have not changed it up at all, I at least need to long line him once or twice a week so he doesn't become dressage-sour.

2. He thinks Mom's confused. I keep changing the way in which I ask him for the same maneuvers because I find out in my lesson that I had been doing it incorrectly between lessons. Then I change the cues, and now we've gone through several sets of cues for the same end result and Louie is a little confused as to what I want, and naturally, frustrated.

I've done some major soul searching as I gave Louie a few days off to forgive me and clear his head, and I think I've found some answers. I thought about all together giving up and quitting dressage lessons. But instead, I did a lot of reading, asking, and research and I think I have found some information that is helping me to obtain the information that I need. While Marlene is an excellent instructor in many ways, I have a hard time understanding exactly which aids and cues I'm supposed to use, and when/how to achieve what I want. I think part of this is because Louie's not trained in dressage already so I'm teaching him as we go, and I think part of it is the fact that I am somewhat trained in riding in general, good or bad, and I don't necessarily apply the cues in the purest sense as I subconsciously use other aids to get what I want the way I've done for years.

I started reading the book "Centered Riding" by Sally Swift. This is a book that I think many riders from many different disciplines own and enjoy. While reading it, I really started to understand the aids and cues that I need to use. It is finally occurring to me that I don't necessarily use my legs to control Louie's front legs, I can use my hands to control those legs, and I should use my legs to control Louie's hind legs. For instance, in a half-pass toward the rail, I would use one leg at the girth and the other with very slight contact behind the girth. I use an intermittent pressure with the girth leg (inside leg), pushing him into my outside hand, and the outside leg pushing us forward. The inside rein is used basically to take an ever so slight bend. In the past, I would get all bent out of shape because Louie's front end would drift to the outside sooner than his hind end, and I had no idea what I should use to stop it, as my outside leg is positioned behind the girth, where it can't control the shoulder. Well it dawned on me while reading this book- I use my outside hand to control the movement of the outside shoulder. To prevent it from popping out or moving too quickly, I can tighten the pressure there. Amazingly enough, if I put too much pressure on the outside rein and inside leg, Louie actually almost turns his haunches to the rail. Crazy how this works, it's really the opposite of what you learn in most other disciplines. And for the seat- no more focusing on weight on one side vs the other, I'm going to try to keep it even on both seat bones, and using a good following seat, following each stride, and when I want Louie to move laterally, taking a longer following motion, to shift my center slightly laterally so that Louie will follow.

We had a "recovery ride" on Monday to just relax and get back into the gears of walk-trot in a straight line with Louie's nose in the air.

I guess the recovery ride helped because today during my lesson, while Marlene was prepared to see a meltdown, she saw the same old same old, relaxed and quiet Louie as she ever sees. He made such a liar of me. Well, we had a nice lesson and worked more on our shoulder in and leg yielding, which went great. Then after the lesson since it was not even 10 degrees outside and we had been basically walking the whole time, I decided to do a little trotting/faster paced work for a few minutes to warm up before I got off and my frozen icicle feet shattered when they hit the ground. We trotted for a bit, then worked on our shoulder in again, but this time, Louie got frustrated and ducked back behind the bit again. I wonder why he did this? I think I became less relaxed when Marlene left, and I was pushing him harder when it was just me. Perhaps this is maybe part of what is causing the frustration?

So I need to do a few things to get out of this rut. We've got a month until our next lesson. So in that time, I plan to work more on long lining between rides, and varying our routine, hopefully some ground poles, caveletti, etc. Then when I do ride and work on dressage, I'm going to bring my "Centered Riding" book with me, and re-read a section during my ride so that I can stay in a clearer, calmer state of mind while working on these new techniques. And I'll try not to over do them either. Well, that's a lot to work on, or, I guess a lot to not work on sort-of. But for sure a lot to think about over the next few weeks.

Video Time

2011-01-30T12:51:00.005-06:00

It has been a long time since I've had a video taken of Louie (I think almost a year!). With four dressage lessons under our belt and the great improvement I've noticed in his canter (slower, more controlled and balanced, and getting both leads like a champ!), I thought it was time to get an updated video.

This was not our best performance ever, I could feel Louie backing off of the bit, which he rarely does anymore, and he was fussy and seemed more agitated than normal (that could have been performance anxiety from me or it could have been residual excitement from watching the bobcat move the round bales through the arena when our ride started- scary!). At any rate, he was decent, but definitely held his head higher and more backed off of the bit than usual, and as you can see, this smart horse is anticipating the canter on more than one occasion. Time to change up the routine again- we can get one or two rides at best of asking for similar type (in this case trot-canter) transitions in any semi-consistent place (lately it's been at X, A, or C) before he catches on and I have to throw him a curve ball again.

I had a heck of a time getting this video into a saved format on the computer (had to use a different movie maker program on my computer to first change the video from a .vob to an .avi file, then it removed the audio, so I found a pleasant song on You Tube audio swap- ay ay ay. . .). But alas, here it is! Enjoy!

(hint- if you click the box in the lower right corner to "Watch on You tube," you can enlarge the video and click the X boxes to remove the ads at the bottom)

Hula Leah, Hula! And on your inside seat bone!

2011-01-27T22:54:00.001-06:00

You'll never guess what Marlene had to say tonight in our fourth lesson. She said we are doing great with our shoulder and haunches in, but I need to Hula my hips more because I am locking them up. How funny is that?! I knew I was doing that, but to hear her use those exact words was just priceless as that's what I was thinking after we had our twisting revelation a couple weeks ago. Ha!

Well we didn't really work on much new tonight, but uncovered an error in my haunches in training. Our shoulder in is really quite nice and Marlene is really happy with it, but I have to remember not to take too much bend as I am wanting to over-bend to the inside with the neck. She wants the neck straight and the body bent, my head focusing on traveling straight while my hips are turned toward the middle. And of course hula-ing to keep my seat moving and not lock up and give a conflicting message to Louie.

For haunches in, I was putting more weight on my outside hip bone to get Louie to move his haunches away. Well I guess this is incorrect. I should still turn my hips like I have been, but I need to keep more weight (not all, just more) on my inside seat bone- ALWAYS. The seat is used to keep the bend, so when doing haunches in, he still needs to be bent toward the inside, and I still need to keep more weight on the inside seat bone, applying leg pressure behind the girth on the outside leg, and a knee/calf at the girth on the inside to leg yield to the wall. All of that while not locking my hips. Whew! Well that's going to take some work, probably with my eyes closed or something.

We worked on a drill to help me keep my weight correct, and that was to aim down one straight away doing shoulders in, then transition to haunches in, then back to shoulder in. This should help me keep the momentum going forward with my seat, and also keep the pressure consistent on my inside seat bone through the whole straight away. Through all of it, I need to keep kindof playing the bridle a little bit to keep Louie reassured and not raising his neck/head up in confusion.

Sandy came to watch our lesson today too, and it was nice having her there. She got to see what kind of "college education" I was getting and she really liked Marlene as an instructor and liked watching our lesson. After the lesson, Sandy even hopped on Louie and took him for a spin in my new saddle, which she thought was great. It was good to see her get back on a horse again and though Louie was rather confused, he did a nice job toting her around in a couple of circles

Overall, we had a very nice lesson, learned a lot, and have a lot to work on for next time. Marlene was genuinely very impressed that we'd made this much progress in four rides though, with all of the cold weather we've had. That made me happy, but of course I'm fairly motivated to make the most of these lessons. They're great for both Louie and for me and I can't wait to see what kind of progress we will make in the next few months!

Mister Mohawk

2011-01-24T00:00:00.000-06:00

I don't dare clip Louie too much when it's 20 below outside, so he's grown quite a nice mohawk in the past month or so. Eventually it will warm up a little bit and we'll go back to the clean shaven look, but for now, I think it's kinda cute!

Thanks Laura for the photo, I tried taking several of his mohawk on Friday but none of them turned out. :)

Cold Snap

2011-01-20T21:03:00.000-06:00

It is cold here in Minnesota. The low tonight is supposed to be -17 and the high tomorrow is predicted at 1 above. Needless to say Louie is enjoying some time off until it warms up a bit.

This is the time of year we all dread, but at least the days are getting longer (noticeably) and we know spring will be right around the corner. Well, until then, I hope the weather warms up so that we're able to resume our dressage homework, of which we've worked on twice in 2 weeks. Ah! Come on spring!

Those Hula Lessons Paid Off!

2011-01-10T21:53:00.001-06:00

I'm just kidding, I've never had Hula lessons. But I felt like I had tonight.

Louie and I had a great ride tonight, though I don't think he really noticed, but it really was a breakthrough.

It was our first ride since our lesson where we worked on shoulders in, haunches in, leg yielding, and learned that my inside leg must never be behind my outside leg. Ah!

So we started with our usual warm-up activities, did a little short bit of trotting and cantering, then proceeded through the levels of what we have learned, up to the leg yielding to the wall from the quarter line. As we were doing this, I recalled what Marlene had requested in my last lesson- to almost try to have the haunches reach the wall before the forehand. To do this, I turned my hips slightly, rotating toward the inside, and Louie's haunches did reach the wall just before his forehand, even without sliding my inside leg back. Alright, so we've got that over-correction down!

We proceeded to work on shoulders in and haunches in. I used my seat and my hips to help cue Louie without moving my lower legs back to make the cue. I tried to apply more thigh/knee pressure where I wanted the forehand to move away, and more lower leg pressure to control the main movement/haunches. He caught onto the hips/seat rotation really quickly. We were able to switch back and forth between shoulder in and haunches in quite simply, with minimal body contortion and funny faces (from contracting my leg muscles so tightly) from me, and mostly using my seat to shift Louie's body. So I decided to test the theory and pointed Louie straight down the center of the arena. We focused our gaze straight at the far wall, and I twisted my hips. Like a rudder, Louie's body rotated with me. We straightened. I twisted the other way, Louie shifted. Wow! So cool! I petted Louie a whole bunch, and told him how good he was for listening to my seat so nicely. I'm not sure he understood what all the hubbub was about, but I think he understands what I'm asking him for.

I'm super impressed that Louie picked up on this hip rotation so quickly. This is going to make these two exercises much easier for us, as I won't need to kill myself with my legs if Louie continues to listen to my seat so nicely.

Of course right now, some of our cues feel a little rough and un-polished, but Louie is responsive, and it should improve from here. I'm thrilled! Now I need to work on not locking my hips when I turn them, as I have a tendency to stop following the movement with my seat when I use any of my abdominal or thigh muscles.

So we'll continue to work on these maneuvers at the walk, on and off of the rail, for the next three weeks until our next lesson. I'd like to start some preliminary trot work with these if all goes well, at least the leg yielding from the quarter line, as I think Louie can handle that.

Of course we'll continue to mix the canter in with our new lessons. I figure, since Louie thinks the canter is such a big deal right now, one good way to get it to not be a big deal would be to continue to work it in as part of the routine as we learn new things, that way the canter will become one of those "easy," previously mastered skills, and not the newest and most challenging thing. Already since we've been working on our dressage, the canter has improved. It has become considerably more controlled, slow, balanced, and our departures and leads are improving, and we've hardly worked on it. Awesome. This dressage stuff is so good for us, and I'm so grateful for having found such a fabulous instructor to learn from.

A Revelation on Legs

2011-01-06T22:42:00.001-06:00

Tonight was our 3rd lesson with Marlene and we really learned a lot. She was impressed with our progress and our work ethic as I think she can tell how hard we work to get things down from one lesson to the next.

By this time Louie and I are comfortable with walking and trotting circles and keeping a proper bend, with proper pressure on the reins, seat, and legs. Our downward transitions have really improved, and I think the gentle bit sliding left-right-left-right is going to be the key to remedy that situation. We can both tell though, that a light bulb went off between the last lesson and this one in respect to Louie's downward transition head/neck position.

Tonight Marlene wanted to start on leg yielding. She asked me to walk the quarter line, then leg yield Louie back to the rail, keeping his body very straight, and if anything, a tiny inward bend at the poll only. She was pretty impressed the first time we did this at how well Louie respected my leg and moved toward the rail. I think she was expecting that he knew nothing more than how to go forward. He didn't do it perfectly, nor did I, but he did move toward the rail very willingly, and kept his body mostly straight. We have some room for improvement here as I need to get him to move over without having to move my inside leg back.

We then progressed to shoulder in, which is supposed to be easier than haunches in. Ha! Marlene was shocked when we did okay with the shoulders in, but actually did better with haunches in. Well, we figured out why, and that is because of the "different" way I trained Louie to shift his haunches and forehand to begin with. When I teach any horse, I put one leg behind the girth to get them to shift their haunches away from the pressure. Well, when you are trying to ask your horse to do shoulders in, doing it that way results in having your outside leg ahead of your inside leg, as the inside leg slides back to drive the haunches out. Oops! We found out tonight that is a big no-no, and that the outside leg should NEVER be ahead of the inside leg. The reason for this is because if you need to do this to ask for shoulder in at the canter, it would confuse the horse into thinking that you want to switch leads.

So now how do we do shoulders in without moving that inside leg back?? Well it's going to come down to shifting the weight/turning my seat and probably using my upper leg to try to hold the shoulder in with the outside thigh/knee, and push the body out with my inside calf.

Naturally haunches in is easier based on the way Louie and I learned, I'll be able to hold him in with the inside knee, and use that outside calf, which is allowed to be back farther, to drive the haunches in. So, we'll have to REALLY work on this in the next few weeks before our next lesson and straighten out our system of aids to make this happen.

One way that Marlene recommended we try, is use the haunches in, which comes easier to us, to help teach shoulders in, which really is the same basic maneuver, just with a wall on one side or the other. She recommended we walk down a rail, do a few strides of haunches in, then straighten and proceed to shoulders in. She said most horses are better at haunches in one way and shoulders in one way, usually opposite directions, and she can't figure out the reasoning behind that as they are essentially the same maneuver, just with a wall in a different spot. Anyhow, haunches in is easier for us to the left, and shoulders in is easier to the right.

Well, our next lesson is 3 weeks away and we've sure got our work cut out for us before then!

Better Rides

2011-01-03T21:40:00.000-06:00

Last night and tonight we had two pretty nice rides, and we've made some progress on our "scary" arena problem. The common denominators were that we rode by ourselves and had the radio on pretty loudly. I think the radio made a big difference because in the quiet, every little sound on that end of the arena was noticeable. The other aids that we've been using are an over-exaggerated bend on that end of the arena and keeping busy with lots of circles and constantly working and thinking. We've also been free lunging Louie more lately, and he goes down to check out the "scary end" regularly on his own, which probably helps to build his confidence there too.

Last night we worked on our downward transitions. I have discovered that I tend to completely let go of everything when changing gaits- sometimes even in upward transitions! I tried doing the downward transition with holding the exaggerated inside bend, but Louie soon learned that he should slow down, and walk in a tight circle instead of stopping. Argh. So I basically went back to what I did with the upward transitions- seasawing the bit in his mouth, left-right-left-right as I asked for the transition. This is slightly more challenging in the downward transitions than upward because increased leg pressure seems to be an easier cue to pick up on- well, at least for now. We had a few very nice stops (walk-halt) and I made sure to make a big deal of it with lots of praise, but it hasn't sunk in yet. We'll keep working on it.

Tonight was a fairly intense, but short ride. We worked a lot of Figure-8's. Louie tends to get worked up after we canter- this is a long standing issue and is probably going to be a long road to improving it. After we canter, it becomes quite difficult to walk quietly on the rail or in a large circle using ANY leg pressure- every touch of the leg suddenly means trot or canter. Argh. So we trotted for a while to try to relax and clear his head after our first canter, but Louie didn't really want to relax into our trotting Figure-8's, so after 3 or 4 of them, I decided, okay, let's do some more cantering.

I think Louie feels like he needs to get a certain amount of cantering out of his system before he can feel content with walking in a relaxed manner following the canter.

So I cued him up into a canter and we did a circle. Then I thought, well, the heck with boring circles, let's keep doing Figure-8's! So we did a few cantering Figure-8's with simple lead changes in between. With all of those lead changes off of the rail, I was amazed that Louie nailed almost all of them and got the right leads! Out of probably 8 upward transitions, Louie took the correct lead 7 of the times. He missed the second to last one, going to the right, but I took him down and re-cued at the top of the figure (end of the arena) and he picked up his right lead without issue. Then we stopped. Fun! He was pretty tired and willing to relax and walk after all of that. It was a good exercise for him and it seems as though his leads are definitely starting to look up!

Overall, while both rides had frustrating aspects, I was quite pleased with both of them, feeling as though we did something well each time, even if it was just braving the far end of the arena by ourselves.

2010 Year In Review

2011-01-02T22:27:00.001-06:00

Looking back, 2010 was a great year for Louie and me. Between our training progress, new adventures, and successes, we really added a big chapter to our lives in the past year. Let's look back from where we were this time last year to now, to really put things into perspective.

In the winter of 2010, we were mostly working on long lining. We had taken about 5 months off from riding due to Louie having a sore back and left hind leg, and to give him a little time off to develop both mentally and physically. Louie and I did a lot of cardio training together, me running around the ring on the end of the lines, and actually this is how we finally started to solidify our right lead canter.

Louie discovered what "Uncle Jimmy's Hanging Balls" are, and he loves them.

Louie had his first session of chiropractic plus accupuncture, and I think he liked that too.

Louie and I started learning how to jump. We still have a long way to go in this category, but it doesn't come overnight, and it's not Louie's strongest suit.

We worked with a phenomenal carriage driving trainer, Steve Wood, and not only overcame our fear of the plastic sled on the sand,

but we officially "broke" Louie to drive- in a real cart.

As it turns out, Louie loves to drive, and is very good at it.

We met with Master Saddle Fitter, Cordia Pearson, who helped us to finally find a suitable hunt seat saddle (a nearly impossible task, so we learned). We still keep in touch and Cordia loves to hear how Louie is doing with all of his adventures.

Louie somehow made ground beef of his leg, and we had to skip a show I had wanted to attend.

We got a new quick hitch harness, and we love it.

Louie's leg healed, and he came back better than ever, worked some kinks out of the canter leads, and went to our first Saddlebred Show at the Washington County Fair. We had fun splashing through the mud!

Louie enjoyed the dog days of summer while I was off at field trials with Jackson (the other child). The days went by and summer faded into fall.

We went to the Octoberfest Horse show (another Saddlebred show) and Louie did great, made improvements in each class and even impressed the judge.

In the fall after show season was over, we went trail riding at Lake Elmo Park Reserve with my husband and Jackson (the TWH "other" child) and Louie proved what a great and safe trail mount he could be.

As the leaves changed, we had a photo shoot (I haven't even posted all of these photos here yet, so this is a sneak peek) ala "Glamorista" with my good friend Karina Peterson, from k. noel photography (http://www.knoelphotography.com/).

We went on another trail ride with a big group from our stable- we dressed up in all the blaze we could find since it was opening deer hunting.

As fall cooled into winter, we started taking dressage lessons with an amazing and successful rider and S-Judge (becoming an S-judge is no easy feat!), Marlene Schneider. So far our lessons are going great, and Marlene and I really seem to connect. The lessons we learn will not only benefit our hunt seat show ring performance, but will be overall very beneficial to Louie's health and condition.

Wow, that is a lot to take in! We've come so far in the past year. Just imagine what 2011 will bring- I'm sure more dressage, jumping, showing, and driving! Louie and I don't have a specific resolution for the new year, but to continue to have fun, learn, and enjoy one another. Here's to a fabulous 2011! Cheers!

Finally Ditched the Fashion Faux Paux

2010-12-27T13:34:00.001-06:00

Another boarder and jump/dressage rider at my barn has been teasing me about my riding in tennis shoes and half chaps for months. . . It's really comfortable. . .

Well, when I realized I needed spurs on Louie, I then realized that spurs and tennis shoes just aren't compatible. So I broke down and got a pair of paddock boots. These are really comfy, great for my wide and hard to fit feet, and work great with both spurs and half chaps. I've used them about 3 times so far and. . . okay. . . I love them!

Second Dressage Lesson

2010-12-23T22:41:00.000-06:00

Well tonight was another good lesson for Louie and me with our new dressage instructor Marlene. It had been a month since our last lesson, and between working so hard on the scary end of the arena and having a two-week break that seemed to have put us way behind, we actually made some noticeable progress on our homework! Our bending around our circles has definitely come along, and I was able to hold Louie out on the circles much easier this time. Of course the addition of spurs really makes that a lot easier.

So tonight we continued to work on our bending, noticing that Louie, unlike most horses, actually bends to the right much easier than he does to the left. When circling to the left, he wants to just bend closer to the poll, but not from the base of the neck, so that is something we need to work on. He also wants to go just a little bit more rushed at the trot to the left than he does to the right, which Marlene thinks is probably a function of discomfort in bending in that direction.

We think we may have discovered a key to getting Louie to downward transition without pulling his head and neck up- and that is to hold him into an exaggerated inside bend while slowly relaxing into the transition. What Louie wants to do is to snap his neck straight and raise up, but not allowing him to straighten, he doesn't take the opportunity to lift either.

We showed Marlene our canter for the first time tonight, and while it wasn't Louie's best work- throwing his neck in the air and loading his inside front leg, losing his balance and dragging himself around the circle in the canter. She said it wasn't a bad canter but I've definitely felt him do better. We talked a little bit about his reluctance to use his right lead and Marlene recommended I try transitioning him with his haunches shifted to the outside of the circle. We tried it once and low and behold, it worked! He took his right lead and was much more balanced that way in the first few strides, whereas usually he takes several strides to put himself together. So we will keep trying this.

Another thing that Marlene wanted me to work on is where my hands are. I have a really bad habit from my earliest learning's of western pleasure, and that is to cross one hand over the mid-line of the neck, in attempt to neck rein. I have been scolded for this before in my saddle seat lessons, but old habits die hard, especially when they are left alone to their own devices for many years while not taking regular lessons. One thing that she wanted me to think about was keeping my hands equidistant from Louie's neck, and if anything, keeping the inside hand farther away, toward the middle, like a leading rein. This is difficult for me to do and will require a lot of work, but we're pretty determined.

I'm looking forward to our next lesson, in the new year. But for now, we'll work on our new homework and of course take a few days now to celebrate the holidays. Merry Christmas!

He's a People Person

2010-12-19T19:16:00.000-06:00

Today Sandy and I worked on Louie's fear of the far end of the arena. Sandy stood at the far end of the arena and coached us around the corners, and with a few exceptions like him spooking at a few steamy turds he had left the lap before, Louie did fabulously- almost like there was nothing scary on that end at all. We walked, trotted, and cantered and felt almost like we were making progress again- almost up to where we left off 3 weeks ago.

Then Sandy left, and I wanted to work on just a little bit more trotting with Louie. Within 2 passes after Sandy left, Louie was back to his same usual BS- looking, stiffening, shying, scooting, etc. I thought about it a bit and it occurred to me that the difference between that time and 5 minutes before was the lack of a human at that end and the talking that was occurring back and forth between Sandy and I. It was eerily quiet in the barn and you could hear the snow shifting on the roof and the melting drops of water falling from the roof. So, I started chatting to Louie (I almost never talk when riding unless it is to somebody on the ground) and it seemed to help for a pass or two. Then the third time, a small piece of snow fell down from the arena ceiling. Louie planted down on his hind end, did a 180 and took off at a moderate paced canter. This is his same bolt that he's done with me in the past once or twice, and while disturbing, it doesn't really seem so sincere as he stops quickly after just a few steps.

I got him stopped and was so filled with rage and frustration, I couldn't help but take out some anger with a swift hand to the neck. I screamed, then cried. We sat there and pouted for a while as I tried to think of what to do next. After I had finished my mental breakdown, we headed back to the same place again at a walk or a trot, I can't remember, and scooted by that end again a few more times making half-circles on that end of the arena. Another boarder walked in and I still had tears in my eyes, but I hadn't seen her for a few weeks, so naturally we chatted for a little bit while I rode. Strangely enough, Louie shaped right up, still looked and stiffened a little bit going by that end of the arena, but he felt so much more at ease having another person on that end of the arena. I get it! He feels that he needs the reassurance of having a human on the ground by him in this situation (he is just fine when leading him or lunging him on that end)- two conversing humans is even better! Huh! How about that?

Well obviously the scary obstacles at the end of the arena are something he needs to get over, but it has been taking an excessively long amount of time and is honestly starting to wear on my nerves and my confidence. We are not really making progress on our dressage homework and our next lesson is scheduled for Thursday. While I am hesitent to stop working on it under saddle for a while for fear of making it a bigger issue than it really is and build my own anticipation more, I really think that we could probably benefit from some more work in long lines for a while. . . While I would love to be driving him right now, there's not a chance in heck that I'm going to hook him to the cart with this kind of behavior. When we ride, we will probably end up doing most of our dressage work at the "safe" end of the arena so that we can focus and try to progress, and for those trips around the other end, I will probably set up some obstacles like jumps/poles, or barrels on the insides of the corners on the "scary" end to keep his mind occupied and focused away from the wall, and maybe turn on the radio in the arena. If I have the chance, I may even try to ride him outside a time or two through the snow.

What do you usually do to help your horse overcome his/her fears?

2 Steps Forward, 10 Steps Back

2010-12-17T20:01:00.000-06:00

Ugh. After coming back from a 2 week hiatus while we were at the Weimaraner National Field Trial with our dogs and our two Walking Horses, Louie seems like he's taken 10 steps backwards in our dressage lessons. And, he's still pretending to be scared of the far end of the arena.

I lunged him earlier this week on the scary end of the arena and he hardly blinked going by the scary stuff. When I rode him last night, he was back to his full "flight mode." Argh. This is definitely testing my patience, so Sandy and I plan to do a little working on it this weekend. There were moments when Louie appeared to have forgotten how to do the simplest things like "go" and "turn." By the end of a short ride, we were able to make a little bit of progress, pass the scary end without *that* much trouble. But we still have a very long way to go to catch up to where we left off 2 weeks ago. . .

Still Scary, but Better

2010-11-29T21:33:00.015-06:00

I rode Louie again tonight. It was the first time I had ridden or even worked him since last Tuesday when he was so deathly afraid of one end of the arena. He was still scared of the barrels, poles, and jump standards at the end of the arena, but I called his bluff when he suddenly became more scared half-way through the ride. We worked through it, confronted our fears, and while he was never really relaxed on the scary end of the arena, he survived.

We continued to work on our dressage homework- leg yielding and shifting the ribcage, which is becoming easier for us. Louie is responding to my leg pressure nicely, and I'm using it intermittently, which is really helpful for both of us. Once in a while, as we were riding a circle, I would look down at him to see the angle of his body- haunches following along the circle, neck and head bent to the middle, a nice curve going through his back. I'm sure Marlene will have criticism for us, but I was pretty pleased with some moments of our ride. Even when I worked figure-8's in two point, Louie responded perfectly by bending his body around my leg immediately when we would change inflection on the figure-8.

We worked on just a little bit of canter. Louie took his canter leads and departures really well! I attempted to do the same basic exercise at the canter, but I had too hard a time staying in the saddle to do that. We were just about to be done for the night, we were cantering around the "good" side of the arena and I had planned to stop at the far end and proceed with our cool down, but Louie spooked at something from the "good" end, tried to bolt, then broke, then picked up the wrong lead when I asked for the canter again. Argh. I brought him back down to the walk and we worked on changing gears from super excited to "settled" for several minutes. Then we tried again- Louie departed beautifully onto the right lead from the center of the ring- no wall to aid him in getting his lead. I was happy.

I definately think our lessons in dressage will help with our canter work as Louie becomes stronger and learns that he must bear weight on the hind legs properly, reaching underneath himself and supporting his body on a circle. I almost felt like our canter transitions had improved already, but I think that must be wishful thinking, as we've really only been working on some very basic concepts for a few rides and this was the first time we had cantered since our lesson. But if I believe it, I'll be motivated to continue, which will be good for both Louie and me.

Lastly, Louie is now going to have a small vacation from ridden work- we have our National Field Trial to attend next week, so "mean Auntie Sandy" will be helping Louie overcome his fear of the scary arena with some lunging to keep him in shape and desensitized while I'm gone. We'll have our next dressage lesson soon after I return, so I want Louie to be rarin' to go and ready to focus on dressage when she comes for our lesson!

Louie Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2010-11-23T23:08:00.000-06:00

This was tonight's theme. Perhaps it was the 17 degree temperature outside, but Louie, along with most every other horse attempting to be worked tonight, was practically mistakable for a very large wild rabbit on a leash tonight.

There were a few terrifying items in the arena tonight- some new jump standards, in their vertical torturous forms (the wand). A tarp which wiggled and shook like the veil of a death eater (the cloak). And some big blue barrels that not only were imposing in their sheer size, but also produced a hollow, eerie sound when touched (the stone). Gathered together in the "scary" end of the arena, these items made half of the arena nearly impassable.

After a few passes in the saddle, it was clear that there was no chance we were going to accomplish much of anything productive tonight, so we did a little lunging in the scary part of the arena- complete with leaping, bounding, bucking, kicking, galloping, and that wild eyed look of sheer terror in Louie's face- every time he passed the scary new items.

He settled down after about 20-30 minutes and some in depth investigation where I searched the suspect items to try to identify the horse-eating monster lurking between them. No such monster was found. Louie was so incredibly relieved that he relaxed just a bit, but not even close enough to accomplish anything productive in our lesson tonight. We did accomplish one thing though. By the end of the evening, we were able to walk past the deathly hallows with only a slightly increased briskness in our step and one eye turned quite intently, searching for the evil lurking within.

Shift the Ribcage

2010-11-21T23:36:00.001-06:00

Tonight we practiced some of the skills we learned at our dressage lesson. I tried to put on spurs, but soon discovered that the spur straps that I had were not long enough to fit around my tennis shoes. So I grabbed a whip instead. This definitely woke Louie up and he respected my leg much much more knowing that my whip might bite him if he didn't listen to my leg.

It took a fair bit of warming up before he would settle in and work, but by the end of the lesson we seemed to have gotten the walking in a circle drill down fairly well. With an inside bend, with more pressure on the outside rein, better balanced pressure with my legs (and intermittent, not constant), and keeping the hind end in, without me falling off of my saddle. So that was a very good thing! I made sure to praise Louie frequently when he was doing the right thing. I do think a) having the whip, and b) not having a person standing in the center of our circle that Louie wanted to visit made a big difference. But what made a really big difference was a comment from one of the other riders at my barn saying that she thinks of it this way: if you push the ribcage to the outside, then the horse should naturally be bent slightly toward the inside. If you keep your reins the same as they were when you were going straight, there will be less pressure on the inside rein as the horse is bending away from the outside, taking up contact on that rein and lessening the distance on the inside rein. Aha! This was a light bulb moment for me!

We also worked on this at the trot, which was pretty decent, but needs more work as Louie seems to still think that one leg at the girth means go faster. We'll get it, he just needs reminders and me doing it more often.

We worked on our not-so-good downward transitions. I found tonight that the going slower slower slower, and if he raises his head up- push him forward method was not working as well as I had hoped. Louie was actually becoming confused and then just stopped transitioning- he'd just continue at a jog trot with me sitting in the saddle until I pulled him up- at which time he would raise his head. Ugh. . . I recall Louie used to lift his neck to help him transition into the trot from the walk. He rarely does this anymore, because I had to work with him to get him to not do it- by gently sea-sawing my reins before asking for the transition, and continuing it as he was changing gaits. Then re-doing it if he lifted his neck, until he realized he could make the transition without the extra "balancing." I tried this with the trot-walk transition a few times and it seems to be working fairly well- better than the slow down method. The only problem is that I think the downward transition cue gets lost in the rein wiggling, so I might have to add some extra cue for a while here- a sigh or something usually works. So, I think I might try to fix this issue this way instead, and hopefully I can make some progress in the next few weeks, then hopefully we just won't have to worry about it regularly, just like we were able to do with the upward transitions.

The Start of a New Journey- Our First Dressage Lesson

2010-11-18T23:06:00.000-06:00

Tonight Louie and I took our first lesson with a new dressage instructor- Marlene Schneider. Marlene is an accomplished USDF judge and rider/trainer, and as it turns out, an excellent instructor. We are pretty lucky to have the opportunity to take lessons with such a great instructor, and I'm very excited to start on this journey! Louie, on the other hand, I think saw tonight's lesson as more work, and being the smart horse he is, is already contemplating how to get out of doing more work and get back to his food.

Introductory lessons are always rather slow, but being that this was my first lesson, I feel like we really left with some good ideas to chew on and a lot to work on in the next few weeks. We plan on taking lessons every other week or so, but due to holidays/travel, our next lesson will be a month away. But that is alright, it will give Louie and me plenty of time to work on what we learned tonight.

One thing we learned tonight is that Marlene has an interesting, and effective way of viewing the amount of pressure used with the seat, leg, and the hands-she grades it on a scale from 1-10 and frequently asks me what number I'm at with each hand or leg, etc. We then use these numbers as she instructs me to put more weight in my inside seat bone, etc.

Another analogy that I really liked was one about holding both ends of a whip and pushing them together to make the center of a whip raise up. This is like using the legs and the hands to bring both ends of the horse together and raise up in the middle- lift the back. If you let go of your hands or seat, the whip goes flat, as does the horse's back.

Tonight we worked most on walking in a circle, staying bent to the middle, but with more pressure on the outside rein than the inside, and my inside leg and seat pushing him into the outside rein. This was very challenging to do, especially with a horse who is new to the concept and a rider who hasn't asked her body to work in this particular way before. We then worked on this briefly at the trot, which was actually easier as Louie seemed to be more responsive to my legs at the trot. The moral of the story of tonight's lesson though, I think, is that I need some spurs or my legs are going to break. Owww, I know I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

There were glimmers of hope and understanding, and moments of frustration and total transparency of my deficits in Louie's training tonight, but Marlene has a really good eye and was able to help me to see these strengths and weaknesses in my own self. She is also excellent at reading body language and could tell every time Louie gave her the stink eye or told her or me how he felt about his new expectations. There was actually a moment of laughter and frustration mixed into one as she asked us to trot and Louie, totally dead to my legs squeezing with all my might, plowed right through my right leg into the middle of the circle and would NOT trot. He walked in a circle to the right, tighter and tighter, going through my right leg as I was shoving it into him with all the strength I had. Ugh! I kicked, bounced, did everything I could and he would NOT GO faster. Finally I walked him back to the rail, caught him off guard, then was finally able to pick up a trot and complete the exercise.

Marlene also had some good advice for me on my downward transitions. Currently, Louie feels the need to lift his neck up when we transition from trot to walk. So, we're going to work on slowing down and lightly working the bit in his mouth to keep him active and on it, and continue to go slower and slower, while maintaining the head position, until we break into a walk. If he tries to raise his neck up, he has to trot more. I think this could work. I've got a few weeks to try it, so I'm hoping that it will work because we really need to work on our downward transitions in a bad bad way.

Overall, I thought the lesson was great, and I really feel that Marlene is going to be able to help us- not only to learn dressage, but balance and improve our riding, and strengthen and develop the proper muscling for both horse and rider. Louie and I have much to gain from Marlene's expertise, and I think she is going to be a good fit for us. I love that she is not critical of the fact that I ride a Saddlebred, or the fact that I really want to work him as a hunter (right now, though that could change at any time) and use the dressage as more of a cross training exercise. I think she understands the utility in which I'd like to learn dressage, and I love how open minded she is. Plus she really stays on top of me and pays attention to what I'm doing and how Louie is responding- something that not all trainers seem to have a knack for.

I'm really excited to begin working on tonight's lessons, and though I'm sure Louie is going to protest, I think these lessons are going to be such a huge benefit to our riding. We will see how the next few weeks go practicing on our own- I'm sure they're be fraught with frustration, but in the end I know it will be worth it.

Whip Anticipation

2010-11-16T22:43:00.003-06:00

Driving in an open bridle is a wonderful thing- with one exception. Without blinders, a horse can see, and anticipate, the use of your whip as you use it as an aid to turn, move over, or change directions. The past few drives Louie has definitely been picking up on this and I have to be very careful that he doesn't move away too much. I do my best to try to keep my whip neutral and work on patterns to keep him responsive, but it's one indication to me that we should start re-introducing the blinders.

Tonight I long lined Louie and for the first time in many months, added the blinders after a brief warm-up. We will need to carefully introduce driving with the blinders, but he did great with them on, picked it up again like riding a bike, and it really helped with negating anticipation of my cues.

After I warmed Louie up in the lines and blinders, he played the role as a "lesson horse" to teach another boarder who wants to learn to long line, and eventually drive her riding horse. Louie did great as a teacher and was very patient with her for the most part.

It was interesting as I don't teach regularly and don't really think about how I integrate my body and brain in order to smoothly long line, but breaking it down and thinking about what I do subconsciously was actually rather revealing. However, I wasn't even able to realize what I do with my body until I was able to see the gaps in communication between Mary and Louie, then I could see what she did compared to what I did and figure out how to help her. One of the most tricky things was doing circles and keeping Louie appropriately "in" and "out" on the circle and with even tension on the lines. Mary figured it out after I eventually realised what I was doing with my own hands so that I could put it in words to show her. Another thing that was a little tricky, but quickly solved was changing directions and changing sides behind the horse, and flipping the reins from one side to the other- just at the right moment.

Overall, it was a nice lesson- a good re-introduction to the blind bridle and a very nice introductory lesson for a new driver.

Big Weekend

2010-11-09T21:57:00.000-06:00

Well, I've been out sick the past 2 days and not really in the best mind to update Louie's blog. He had a couple of big days last weekend, and we're waiting for a few pictures to post about our happenings. On Saturday a friend from work brought her 5-year-old daughter out to the barn to ride Louie. Laney is horse crazy but has never gotten to ride, and Louie did really well giving her a pony ride around the arenas.

On Sunday, we had the opportunity to go on a trail ride with a few other people from the barn (6 of us all together). It was hunting season, so we made sure to cover ourselves in blaze orange. We rode in a regional park where hunting is not allowed, but the park is surrounded by farm land, and people can be stupid, so I wasn't going to take any chances. Besides, Louie looks a little bit like a big deer with his brown coat and white at either end. If he had antlers. . . well, here we are all decked out in more blaze orange/bright colors than we thought was possible! It was fun getting him all dressed up- almost like being on parade!

In case you can't tell, he had orange yarn in his tail, a few big pieces of fabric that I had left over from a sewing project- I draped one over his hindquarters like a quarter sheet, and tied another around his neck like a scarf. I don't think there was any chance of missing us in this get up! He was a really good boy on the ride- and led the way fearlessly. He was definately happiest and most relaxed in the front of the group, but did well in the back or middle too. He's probably just used to having to walk so quickly to keep up with Jackson and his walking horse gaits!

A Few Show Photos To Share

2010-11-01T21:50:00.000-05:00

I am so very pleased. I just received these jpegs from the photographer of both of our shows this summer/fall- Courtney Church. We have an 8x10 of the Octoberfest one (bottom) on the way and the other two are already framed in the house.

The first one was from one of the classes at Washington County. Louie was afraid of the announcer stand that we were approaching, and scooted past it all day. Here you can see him getting into his "Saddlebred" gear as we were about to approach the stand. I look terrible as I'm telling him "whup! easy!" and he is not exactly in a hunter frame here ;) but I think she really caputred his beauty and expression well.

Of course this one is from our victory lap in the ASB Hunter Country Pleasure class at Washington County back in August. Not a huge accomplishment to beat one horse in the mud- as my husband says, but it was our first ASB show and it is a great photo.

Lastly, our photo from Octoberfest in the ASB Hunter Country Pleasure Stake class. We had 4 classes worth of photos to choose from, but this was my favorite. She caught him in the right part of the stride and me sitting. Unfortunately for the sake of my show photos, I always post on the correct diagonal in the show ring so the photos always either catch me on the "up" part of the post or with the wrong front leg forward. The difference is slight, the chest looks better when it is more open with the outside front leg forward in the photo, but it's okay, this is still a good photo- Louie and I both look like we're doing our jobs well. This was a really good ride too, so I'm glad to have a photo to remember it!

No recent riding or training updates. Today was tack cleaning day and that is a lengthy process!

The Hardest Gait

2010-10-30T22:46:00.001-05:00

The canter just does not come easily to us. Some days it is relatively easy, but most days it is wrought with anxiety and frustration. With that said, Louie has actually been taking both leads fairly well lately and has hardly missed a lead any of the times I asked him in the past ride or two. I am SO relieved that he is finally taking both leads pretty well under saddle and is no longer favoring his left lead (at least under saddle- he still does on a lunge line). His biggest issue lately is that he doesn't want to pick up the canter right away when I cue him, but instead he wants to trot 10 or so strides before finally taking the canter from a walk. And, in that amount of time he's successfully un-done any bit of set-up preparation I've given him to take the correct lead. We stop and try it again until finally he lunges into it because he is so angry and frustrated, behind the bit, grinding his teeth, jigging, ears back, that he wants to run. We've got to find a more pleasant way to get into the canter cleanly. Seeing other horses pick up the canter with ease just frustrates me further.

Tonight we rode and we reached a fair amount of frustration over the canter. Louie actually took his leads well and by the end of the lesson was doing pretty nice canter departs. But it was no easy feat for me. I tried to pay attention to what I was doing with my own body when I was cueing him. I found myself putting so much weight in my outside stirrup that I had actually shifted my saddle an inch or two to the outside by the time I finished cantering one direction. I also found myself shifting my whole seat to the outside to cue him- literally not sitting in the middle of the seat. Third, I caught a glimpse in the mirror and noticed that I had completely let go of any bit contact right at the time when I cued him- something I used to do frequently until Sandy corrected me- and not "throwing him away" during the cue had been really helpful in maintaining enough impulsion to get into the canter.

Well, I think the mirrors and paying attention to my own position tonight helped to shed some light on my crookedness that I have noticed over the past month or so. I think I am just riding somewhat sloppily rather than being specifically unbalanced from one side to the other, though I have found myself with my right seat bone sitting outside of the seat more times than the reverse. I do have some ideas on a few things that may help us.

First, I need to keep paying attention to my position in the saddle like I did tonight. Louie has lost a little bit of weight in the past month (intentionally), so I also have to make sure my girth is tight. I need to try to stay relaxed and loose- deep breaths, this also helps to relax Louie. I need to keep working on transitions throughout the winter until they are second nature, but I think some work without stirrups, or even just with longer stirrups, or perhaps even in a western saddle may help to keep some weight in my butt and out of my stirrups. Lastly, I may have to break down and put some spurs on, as part of the reason I find myself sitting with one cheek out of the saddle is because I am contorting my body around so much to gather enough strength to push Louie over with one leg as he sometimes chooses to not be responsive to my leg. I also re-visited the fact that leaning on the bit does not slow him down any more than having no contact at all, but intermittent contact is far more effective.

So, I have my work cut out for me, and I really think that a dressage trainer could help me to clean up my riding, sitting more straight and balanced, using the proper muscles, cueing without falling off one side of my saddle, and helping Louie to become more responsive. I am hopeful. We shall see. I will continue to work on our cantering as we wait to start working with an instructor on a more regular basis. I also think that revisiting some canter work in long lines may be helpful as well. As they always say, "practice makes better!"

Hello Winter

2010-10-28T21:54:00.000-05:00

Brrrr, what happened to those 86 degree days we had a few weeks ago? Tonight on my way home from the barn my thermometer said 31. Yikes! I guess winter is coming. Why is it always so much harder to adjust to these mid-range temps (30's-50's) in the fall than the spring?

The past few days have been very rainy and windy, and sharply colder than last week. I am very glad that I got a new turn-out sheet for Louie, this is exactly the kind of weather that it is good for.

Tuesday it was so windy that the barn was making all kinds of noises. Louie was spooooo-ky! Tonight he was back to his normal self so we went for a drive in the indoor ring. Not a real hard work out, but a little conditioning for him and other than being a little inconsistent, we had a very nice drive.

We met a dressage trainer tonight that I may take some lessons with over the winter. She has an excellent reputation, and is certified to judge up to Grand Prix, in which she has competed. She seems easy to work with and not set on turning me into a purely dressage rider, understanding that I want to continue to drive and show Louie as a hunter in the Saddlebred shows. I'm excited to give this a try. Of course all of those credentials come with a pretty price tag, so I'll be lucky if I can afford bi-weekly lessons. I think I'm going to give it a try, as I think a dressage trainer will be the best way of getting a nice extended trot out of Louie. We'll see- more adventures!

Crooked Me

2010-10-21T22:43:00.014-05:00

I took Louie out for a nice ride in the outdoor arena this afternoon. He was feeling good so we worked on a few ground poles, a few jumps (like 2 or 3 total, so as not to overdo it), some cantering and hand-galloping. We had fun and I got a good work out too. I think I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

It was my second ride in my brand new stirrup leathers. I hadn't bought a new pair since purchasing my saddle, so I felt it was time to find some, as all of the ones I had were old and stretched out, uneven, and in order to be close to the same length, I had them on hole 9 on one side and hole 11 on the other. I had one pair of very nice stitched Beval leathers, but they were the standard 54" length and not long enough with my long legs to fit the end through the keeper on the flap. It was time for an upgrade. So, after much thought, I purchased these Nunn Finer nylon cored double stitched leathers in 1" x 60" size in a color that would hopefully match my saddle. Well, I love them. They're a bit bulky and not the softest leathers on earth, but they are very strong and should be durable. Plus the color options are wonderful. I will be sure to switch my right and left leathers out from time to time, but these really shouldn't stretch too much.

Well, before the stirrup leather purchase, I had occasionally felt crooked in the saddle, especially over the past month or two, so I thought that was what was to blame. In the past 3 weeks, my horse has been adjusted by a chiropractor, my saddle's flocking has been professionally adjusted to now a perfect fit (it really wasn't bad before, just tiny little adjustments), and I've found these new leathers, which are exactly even. And, even after all of that, I still managed to find myself crooked by the end of the ride. I felt like I was going to slide right down off of Louie's right hip, my left hip was higher than my right, and when I got off, my saddle was actually crooked, tilted slightly to the right, so that my right stirrup iron was about an inch lower than my left! Ugh. It must be me! I do have problems with my left sacroiliac joint, and this frequently shifts while riding, but I think it is time for me to commit to a core strengthening pilates/yoga program.

I know many riders have found themselves in this same situation. Just imagine the confusion we must be sending to our horses when we are so crooked and unbalanced ourselves. It is no wonder our horses prefer one lead and one direction of bend. Tonight, when tracking to the left, Louie had been self-maintaining a bend to the outside, unless I actively worked to keep him bent to the inside. It makes perfect sense though, by bending to the right, he was helping to try to shift me to the left more, to be centered over him instead of falling out of the right side of my saddle. Horses are smart, especially Saddlebreds.

Well, here's to the start of "Leah in the Making" as I attempt to straighten myself out so that we can ride more centered again.

A Trail Ride Memory

2010-10-16T22:26:00.001-05:00

This morning we went on Louie's first official "trail ride." If you have been following his blog, you may remember that he had been to a field trial a year and a half ago, but no true, real trail rides, so I was a little anxious to see how he would do. My husband and I brought Jackson, our 4-year-old Tennessee Walking Horse, and Louie over to Lake Elmo Park Reserve, about a half hour from home.

We were actually celebrating an anniversary, as 5 years ago yesterday is the day that Bjorn proposed to me, while on a trail ride in this very park. At that time we were riding my old Saddlebred gelding, Social, and our other Walking horse, Cash, so it was an anniversary to share with a new horse of each breed. Below is a photo from that ride 5 years ago, taken right after the proposal.

Below, Louie and I approaching the exact location where Bjorn and I got engaged.

Below is one last picture of Social, from our ride 5 years ago, heading home on the trail after a wonderful ride.

So back to today, I decided to try riding Louie in Jackson's western saddle, as it was a little bit more geared for trail riding than my show saddle, and Bjorn rode Jackson in Cash's saddle, which is actually starting to fit Jackson pretty well now that he has gained some weight. Jackson's saddle also fit Louie decently too. Not as well as his show saddle, but to ride in for a few hours, it was just fine.

A beautiful perspective- through the ears of a Saddlebred.

We set out down the trail, enjoying the fall colors and encounters with squirrels, bicyclists, benches, dogs, and of course other horseback riders. At one point we came to one of the largest trees I have seen in this area, it even made Louie look small! Grey Horse, this one is for you!

We were able to snap a few photos more along the way. The trail meandered in and out of the woods, up and down hills, by corn fields, old buildings, and around the lake.

We just did a short 5 or 6 miles, but we rode for about an hour and a half, and had a really good time.

Both horses were SUPER well behaved, and Louie was a rock star on the trail! He flat walked the whole time, was the brave one to pass scary objects like benches, culverts, and bicyclists, and we even cantered one little stretch down a straight away. He was really a good boy and I think he had fun, I know Bjorn and I did!

Jackson was also very well behaved, he is usually my field trail horse, but we're trying to get Bjorn to be more comfortable with him so that either one of us can ride him in trials.

Bjorn focusing on riding Jackson, and how to operate two hands on the reins

Jackson has a pretty fast walk with his huge overstride, so Louie and I spent a lot of time looking at the world from this view.

On the way home, we ran into Michelle and Princess, a friend of ours from Louie's barn, blazing the trail on her way out. Here are Louie and I, stopping to overlook a part of the lake on our way back home.

Eventually we arrived back at the trailer, though I could have ridden a few more hours. Louie and Jackson stood nicely at the trailer, hardly tired from their short, but refreshing ride. The horses had a nice time getting out to stretch their legs on a beautiful Saturday morning, and Bjorn and I had fun remembering our first ride in this park, 5 years ago.

Octoberfest Was a Success!

2010-10-11T21:05:00.000-05:00

We had a great show! We arrived on Friday afternoon, got Louie all settled into his stall, and set up camp for the weekend. We had some extra time before my first class, so we walked around the arena to check out the scary center display and the sights and sounds around the arena, and got to watch quite a bit of the show before it was time to get ready for our turn to ride. We had a nice warm-up ride and Louie felt great and sound. He was moving really freely and had a nice floaty trot. I'm not sure if it was the farrier or the chiropractor I have to thank for that, but probably both. :)

My first class Open Hunter Pleasure, and there were 9 horses in it- mostly Morgans, but a few Saddlebreds, Arabians, and even an Appaloosa. It was a big class with a lot of anxiety potential, but Louie did an outstanding job and handled it all like a seasoned veteran. He didn't spook at anything, and I tried to ride smart and pay attention to our surroundings and horses around us, which can be a difficult task when riding a green young horse! We had a nice ride with one exception. When they called for the right lead canter, I think I may have given Louie a tad much of a cue as he kind of did a flying leap/lead change/jump into the right lead. The judge caught the end of that transition as I was in the corner of her view at the time. I wasn't even sure if Louie got his hind feet onto the proper lead, but I didn't care, I figured what the heck, he got into the canter and there are 9 horses in here, I'm not going to place anyhow. Well, I was just a bit surprised when they called us for 2nd place! I had been talking to another competitor (the one who shows the gray ASB that I showed against at Washington County- turns out she is a professional, so that's why she didn't show back in HCP that day) and literally said something like "you've got to be kidding me!" I guess I didn't expect to do so well, but that shows you how much I know about how we look and whether we're competitive or not! My husband watched the class and told me afterward with full confidence that if Louie hadn't done that hop-jump into the right lead we would have won the class. Wow, I don't know what to say about that, except that's awesome! I'm not going to complain about my ride or dwell on Louie's exuberant transition, Louie was a really good boy and handled it really well, especially for not having ridden in 2 weeks.

Our Saturday started out with Hunter Pleasure Novice Horse in the morning session. There were only 2 horses in the class, I believe my competitor was an Arabian horse, and we both had nice rides (Bjorn said the other horse did well, I wasn't watching it haha). We had a nice ride, and won the class. We still had some over-zealous canter transitions, but they weren't quite as exciting as the night before. Here is a photo from the novice horse class, with me looking kind of silly, but sporting my new pink shirt that I picked up cheap at the tack swap: http://www.courtneychurchphotography.com/ofest2010/class138/pages/OCT_6375.htm

In the evening session, we rode in the ASB Hunter Country Pleasure class, and were the only entry. Bjorn and I were both rather disappointed that there weren't any others in the class, as the hunt seat and sport disciplines frequently seem to be central to debate, and are in need of more support from exhibitors and entries- a large part of the reason Louie and I are finally getting out there to do it. It would have been nice to have seen a full class of nice hunters and really show the spectators what a Saddlebred can do in a different seat, so I am hopeful that we will have bigger classes to show in next season (based on the size of the classes this summer, we should definitely have bigger classes in the future). Well, needless to say, we got to do the victory pass again, but really, we had a nice ride. Louie broke from the canter in the first direction down to a trot for a stride or two- for some odd reason- but the rest of the ride was good. Strangely, he was more spooky when he was out there by himself than with the group of 10. I guess maybe because he was alone with no other horses to reassure and comfort him, but he did well, didn't have any major issues and had a nice ride.

Finally, Sunday afternoon was our ASB Hunter Country Pleasure Stake. We were the only entry again for this class, but we had a great ride. I was really able to push Louie in the extended trot and use my legs like I do at home. We did a nice pivot on the haunches to change directions and sprung out with a nice driving trot the second way. I asked Louie to bring his head up just a bit higher in this class because I wanted to get a nice photo, and it looked better with the angle that the photographer had been taking pictures. As we were standing in the line-up, the judge came up to us and had some very nice things to say to us. She said we did a great job out there, she knows how it can be difficult being the only one in the class, but she can tell that we really work hard at this and are doing a wonderful job. She commented on how she liked to see that I had Louie bent over his inside shoulder (bent to the inside) the whole time- somewhat surprising to me that a Saddlebred/saddle seat judge would notice such a thing being that so many show horses are bent to the outside in the show ring. I was very happy to hear such nice compliments from a judge, and it made me feel very proud of how far Louie and I have come in the past 2 years. Bjorn finally came out to the ring to help with the victory pass photos, I was hopeful to get a good one with the ribbon, but no such luck. The photographer did, however, get a few very nice ones during my ride. She got some showing him in extension, which is really the way I prefer a hunter to be photographed. I really like how Louie looks in this photo- the part of the stride, etc.
http://www.courtneychurchphotography.com/ofest2010/class186/pages/OCT_8139.htm

But, this one, I think I like better- I like how I look and the background better here, even though I like the part of the stride he is in just a bit better in the other photo. http://www.courtneychurchphotography.com/ofest2010/class186/pages/OCT_8140.htm

I am open to suggestions between the two photos! And I may have her add in a ribbon, just have to decide whether I want it on the bridle or on my boot.

Overall, it was a great show, we had a great weekend, beautiful weather, and a lot of fun. We had 4 solid rides, and Louie felt great. We got a lot of compliments from trainers, other exhibitors, and of course the judge. I'm pretty sure Louie even made my husband proud (Bjorn really likes a nice saddle seat horse and has always been a little disappointed since I decided to make Louie a hunter), which made me really happy. I couldn't be more proud of my boy, from the good rides to the tiny little things like standing in cross ties, stall behavior, handling, standing in line-up, entering and exiting the ring, etc. It was almost like he had done it 100 times. He was such a good boy- and a trooper!

I checked on him today and he was feeling pretty good, moving pretty well, just a little heavy on the forehand, but not bad. I was stiff this morning so I would have to imagine Louie was too. I took him out to eat some grass and gave him a bucket of soaked alfalfa cubes as a treat. Here is a picture of him at home in his stall with all of his ribbons (I only put them there momentarily for this photo because Louie would have eaten them all if I left them there). What a GOOD BOY!!

Well, Here Goes Nothing!

2010-10-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I rode Louie last night and he was pretty decent. A friend of mine at the barn had her chiropractor out so I had her give Louie a little rub down and work out some knots, and get some bones back in place. We'll see if it helps. Putting Louie's front shoes on seemed to make a big difference, so we'll see! I need to find a good masseuse, as massage is something that Louie has really benefited from in the past and we could use one more regularly!

The show starts today, and I show in 4 classes- one tonight, two tomorrow, and one on Sunday. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that Louie will be feeling okay. I ordered 4 bags of shavings for his stall (apparently that's how many most people order! Wow, seems like a lot, but okay we'll go with it!), and am getting everything packed this morning. It has been a long time since I've shown at a multi-day horse show, but I'm looking forward to it! This MN show crew knows how to have a good time, so we will have fun one way or another. Let's hope I don't forget anything. Well, here's goes nothing!

The Best Farrier in the World

2010-10-06T22:45:00.000-05:00

Well, there could be better farriers out there, but I don't know any better than my farrier Pat. Pat has been my farrier for the past 4 years, and I think he's wonderful. He is very accommodating, has a fabulous fun sense of humor, does a great job with my horse's feet, and best of all puts up with me! He came out this morning to work on Louie's feet. He watched Louie move, both down the concrete aisle way, then on a lunge line in the arena, and Louie was looking a little better than yesterday- perhaps the 1 gram of bute I gave him last night helped?

He hoof tested Louie, who wasn't particularly sore, but we opted to put some shoes on to help support his feet, and Pat adjusted them to account for Louie's different angles, placing the left front shoe further under his foot to speed his break-over and support the heel more. After he finished, I lunged Louie again and he looked a little bit better even than he did before. He's starting to look more like a normal horse and less stiff and goofy than he did yesterday.

I went out again this evening to see how he was moving, now 24 hours from his last bute dose, and Louie was moving pretty decent, even for being fresh out of his stall. He's more willing to lower his neck, and moving more freely, and not lame on one foot vs the other. I'm very happy and starting to gain confidence that the show this weekend is going to be a doable thing for us! At this point I think we have nothing to lose- he doesn't look lame, has no obvious tenderness or swelling anywhere, so I see nothing to potentially worsen. We'll just have to be careful and keep an extra eye on him at the show, taking extra precautions to keep him feeling good. Yippee!! Thank you Pat!

Pat is a little camera-shy, so here is a picture of Louie in his new shoes, and bell boots to help keep those shoes on!

More Proof

2010-10-04T21:24:00.000-05:00

More proof of Louie's show hatred. . . He tries as hard as he possibly can to spoil my fun. Well, here's the scoop, we've got a show this weekend that we've been planning on doing for the past few months, Octoberfest Horse Show, our state's last ASB show of the year. We're all ready, up until about a week ago, we've been doing great with our leads, new saddle, cuts healed, etc.

Well, Louie had been off in one of his front legs about a month ago, just slightly, so I gave it some time to heal, and continued to work through it, but it just hasn't really resolved. He's not head bobbing lame, just really tight through the shoulders and landing a little bit toe-first and short on both fronts- slightly more so on the right. Our vet came out to take a look last week (I had planned to have her do some chiropractic adjustments in preparation for the show) and diagnosed him with a right front high-mid suspensory ligament strain/sprain, and tender heels on his left front, due to his lower angles on that side and probably compensating for his right front being sore. She opted not to do chiropractic on him since he is off and will likely not benefit as much from it as he would if his legs/feet were all feeling okay. So we're on rest- paddock/stall rest for 2+ weeks, DMSO, hand-walking, etc. Louie hates it. He hates not being with his buddies, not eating grass, having all kinds of pent-up energy with no outlet to express it, and did I mention he is a weanie for pain? He HATES the DMSO with a vengeance. So I have to walk him around and distract him for several minutes to an hour after applying it. I hate putting it on and causing him pain just as much as he hates having it put on him.

Our vet is so wonderful and understanding and she knows how much I want to go to this show. She's not certain he'll be comfortable enough by then, but at least didn't totally shoot it down. We're having our farrier out on Wednesday morning, and he's going to put some front shoes on Louie to see if they make him just a bit more comfortable. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and in the meantime doing the rest, DMSO, hand-walk regimen in hopes that he'll be moving comfortably enough by this weekend to show him.

I do go back and forth with this debate of whether I might injure him more by taking him to the show, but this is the way I see it. This injury has been going on for more than a month, and I've been working him through it the entire time up 'til now- and not just babying him along, I'd been doing some pretty substantial work with canter leads, simple changes, driving- speeds and intervals, etc. It was no worse with all of that work than it was before it. Not to say 4 classes in a horse show is easier than work at home, but I don't realistically see a huge potential for significantly worsening the injury as long as we're careful. I've been palpating his suspensory ligaments each day before I apply the DMSO and it really doesn't seem to be tender any longer, and the trace of swelling that he had last week is now gone. And, after this show, we have nothing on the docket for months. Perhaps a trail ride for him if he's sound later on this fall, but otherwise he can hang out in stall/paddock and rest until March if he wants/needs to. All impatience aside, I really do worry about him (excessively), and will be taking this entire show thing, class by class if we even go, very cautiously and playing it by ear.

The fun of the preparations have begun, dampened only somewhat by Louie's injuries, so let's hope that our farrier can work some magic and get Louie feeling good on Wednesday!

Practically Famous!

2010-09-28T22:42:00.000-05:00

Turns out, Louie and I are practically famous! Well, maybe not famous, but this is pretty cool- check out Cordia Pearson's website! For those of you who do not know who she is, she is one of 15 Society of Master Saddle Fitters certified saddle fitters in the US, who helped us to find our new saddle, a few months back. She was so pleased with our show photos that she asked to use one on her website. Thank you to Courtney Church and of course to Cordia for making it possible!

http://www.saddlefitter.com/berlin.htm

Interval Training

2010-09-26T22:27:00.000-05:00

Tonight was a beautiful evening for a drive. About 60 degrees, sunny, with a slight breeze. The sun was setting behind the barn and there was hardly a fly around the place. Great jeans and sweatshirt weather. So, I harnessed Louie up to enjoy a very nice drive in the outdoor arena. The heavy rain that we had recently has just finally dried up enough so that the footing was perfect in the large outdoor arena today. Plus, it was recently dragged, so it was super smooth for my cart.

We tried a little bit different tactic today while driving, since it was mostly for conditioning, I thought I would pay close attention to how much we were driving in each direction, since most of the time I just kindof willy nilly choose which way I'm going to go and when I'm going to turn, how long we're going to continue, at what speed, etc. So tonight, we did intervals. I started with 3 laps of a nice medium trot in each direction. Then we walked a lap after the warm-up to sort of change gears. I planned a variable rate work out consisting of 3 speeds of trot in each direction, with no walk in between. We started off tracking to the right, with a slow jog (think western pleasure, very primpy and floaty) for 1 lap, a medium trot for 1 lap, then a fast trot for 1 lap (I don't say extended because the gait wasn't truly extended- that, along with blinders, is our winter project). Then we decreased back down to a medium trot, then a jog, then switched directions and completed the same build up-build down type of routine. I did have to change up my transition point a little bit as we went along as I figured Louie would catch on to that rather quickly, being as smart as he is.

After our intervals, we walked for a cool out- remember, our outdoor arena is like a football field, or maybe even bigger. Anyhow, it's huge and just those few laps, when I actually counted, really added up to quite a long drive. Louie wasn't sweaty and was really hardly breathing fast when we finished, but we had a nice drive and got some good conditioning in. A nice way to work, as his back has been a little bit sore again lately- too much riding and not enough driving. . . bad mom!

I also figured out something else tonight. We tend to have a problem while driving, in that Louie wants to keep his nose bent to the inside all the time (man, I wish we had that problem when riding!). It's really better than the opposite, in my mind, but at times it does get a little scary for me, as when I ask him to come in off the rail, he just bends more- and the cart and the rail can get a little close for comfort at times. So I figured out tonight that when I ask him to turn to the inside, I usually take up the slack with my inside rein and use my whip on the outside of his barrel. Well, when I do that I totally throw away my contact on the outside rein, allowing him to keep bending and bending and bending. So, I paid attention to my hands and held contact on the outside rein tonight when I asked him to turn into the middle a little bit and come off of of the rail. It worked pretty well and for the most part he turned much easier, without excessive bending. Yay! I hope that method continues to work for us.

All in all, Louie was a very good boy tonight and I really enjoyed spending time with my beautiful horse on such a beautiful evening!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

2010-09-23T22:34:00.001-05:00

The cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis are in the midst of a monsoon, huge amounts of rainfall accumulated in the past 24 hours and more to come. . . needless to say this makes life with horses not quite so merry. I don't think Louie minds so much, he enjoys rolling in the mud and splashing through puddles. But me? I don't care much for spending half my ride time cleaning the mud off of his legs and just trying to get him clean enough to work.

We just had a short ride tonight, all of this rain has made the arena rather wet so not too much work to be done until it dries up some. We worked on various speeds at the walk and trot, as well as our sitting trot, which is really coming along nicely. We worked a little bit on some half-passing and full-passing, which Louie is starting to grasp. I think this will be helpful to keep working on the lateral movements too so that he will truly understand that one leg on his belly means move laterally, not forward faster!

I was thinking while I was riding that perhaps I would be interested in taking some more formal dressage lessons this winter. The challenge with this is finding the right person who will understand that I do not want to compete in high level dressage and completely commit to riding a new discipline (at least not right now), but moreso want to incorporate dressage training into Louie's hunter training. I would think that perhaps a trainer who works with eventers could grasp this concept, even though their riders actually do compete in pure "dressage," but I can't imagine that they ride terribly differently when jumping or hacking. Anyhow, I am looking forward to possibly persuing this further over the winter, but for now, we have to focus on our next objective: Octoberfest horse show in 2 weeks!

Free Time!

2010-09-13T21:51:00.002-05:00

Louie is enjoying his time hanging out with his buddies while our other 4-year-old, Jackson, is spending a lot of time working at field trials this fall. Thanks Laura for the fun photo of Louie (above)!

Jackson, having fun (well I'm not sure if he thought it was so fun, but I sure did!) riding at our trial last weekend, thus giving Louie the weekend off (below):

A Long-Needed Riding Lesson For Me

2010-09-05T22:47:00.000-05:00

This afternoon we had a riding lesson with a new instructor, Julie, who teaches at our barn. The lesson was rather spur of the moment and we hadn't really worked on much lately with Louie being sore (which, now he seems to have recovered from fully). I didn't really have anything in particular I was working on or wanted to emphasize, but moreso I wanted to get a fresh set of eyes to watch us and tell us how we were doing and what we can work on to improve. I hadn't had a formal riding lesson in hunt seat in probably 10 years, which is way too long for any one person to go along not having his or her equitation picked on.

In the past 5 years, I've had only "project horses," in which the focus of our work and lessons has always been on improving and training the horse. Naturally, when training a horse, whether teaching a new skill, breaking, or riding through a difficult situation, a person rides in a functional form of equitation, and you can't expect them to ride in perfect form all the time when training. Well, 5 years of riding like that and not being reminded to do such things as hold your wrists flexed, fingers closed and keep your toes in will do strange things to a person's form. So we worked some on that. For me, none of the things I heard today were things I'd never heard before- toes forward, shoulders back, flex the wrists, look up, etc. I just need the reminder- over and over and over again at nauseum to get it to sink in. And I can pretty much guarantee I'll need it again next time as it slips from my brain. . .

We also worked quite a bit on canter transitions, which honestly Louie and I haven't worked on since our show a month ago. We worked mostly on trot-canter transitions (which we all together stopped doing a few months ago when we had so much trouble with Louie's right lead), and a lot of circles and figure 8's, which was great in getting Louie to take his leads as I asked for them rather than relying on the rail to tell him which lead to take. He wasn't perfect in his leads, he probably got the correct lead 70% of the time, but he did pretty decent overall and didn't really show a huge preference for one lead vs the other, which made me happy. We also worked on the sitting trot (which is a fairly new thing for us, though Louie does know how to jog thanks to all of our work on the jog in long lines and in the cart), and I got quite the ab/back workout in sitting the jog! I think I must have sat the jog alright considering Julie didn't pick on my form that much with that at all.

We also learned one other new skill that I am really excited to keep working on- feeling our diagonals and picking up the correct diagonal without looking. I can do this now from the walk and the sitting trot, it's a matter of feeling which hind leg is moving underneath you and posting off of that movement. By the end of the lesson I was getting it probably 90-95% of the time. Also, picking up the correct diagonal in a downward transition from the canter without looking- this one is a little more challenging, I think because I am never really sure *when* Louie is going to break from the canter to the trot. But the goal is post on the very first trot stride after the transition. It worked most of the time, but it is a little tricky sometimes to get this one right. I think with more practice and getting Louie and I in sync, we'll get the hang of it.

Overall, it was a pretty good lesson- a nice refresher on some equitation things I need to work on and really a good "change it up" workout for Louie, proving to me that he really CAN canter in a smallish circle and actually has decent balance. Louie and I got our butts worked and will probably both be sore tomorrow- in a good way. Julie and I disagreed on a few points such as what a half halt is and where my toes should be facing, but overall I definately gained some new knowledge from her and think I can learn more as she teaches so many different disciplines- next plan will be to hopefully take a jumping lesson- something rather foreign to me (at least jumping in proper form lol). We shall see- the way I figure, only good things can come from new ideas and things to work on from another set of eyes.

Easy Peasy Mac And Cheesy

2010-08-30T09:35:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite "lines" from a friend at work. But really, it kindof describes Louie. Not so much the Mac & Cheese part, but the easy part.

Louie has been a little sore since our possibly-excessive jumping extravaganza last week, so we're taking it a little bit easy. Coincidentally enough, Jackson, our 4 y/o walking horse gelding who is at Mel-o-Dee for a month somehow managed to hurt himself too (I think too many rollbacks in the pasture). So, I've got two sore 4-year-olds who should be getting worked. Well, Friday my husband and I went out to the barn to visit the horses. It was a beautiful evening, so instead of letting our mildly lame horses sit in their stalls, we saddled them both up and went for a nice relaxing ride in the outdoor arena, just gentle walking for about 20 minutes. This was a good chance for them to get out and stretch, and keep their minds mentally engaged in the fact that they are learning young horses, and work is expected of them. Bjorn rode Jackson and I rode Louie.

It occurred to me while I basically pony-rode Louie around the outdoor ring that he is SUCH an easy horse, so mellow and even tempered. He wouldn't hurt a fly- well, unless it landed on his butt within tail's range. On the rare occasion he spooks at something, but he never really loses his mind or tries to pull the wool over your eyes like some horses. Really, he's a pretty safe and trustworthy mount- suitable for a child even. That is a pretty cool trait, in my mind, for a horse to be safe enough for a child to ride. It makes them so much more enjoyable and easily useable for a variety of people. I don't think I've really ever had a horse that was child safe, except my husband's walking horse "Cash," and I'm realizing just what a great horse I have in Louie. :)