Yesterday I got in my New Year's Day rides, both of them short, careful walks over sand footing frozen as hard and rough as broken concrete. My heavier chore coat was in the house for mending, so I wore my lighter chore jacket over a fleece top and fleece vest, plus my heaviest winter riding tights, wool socks, winter paddock boots, headband, and winter riding gloves. It was not enough. If Stella and I could have done more than walk I might have warmed up some, but just walking left me aching with cold. For evening chores I pulled out a warmer coat and a fleece scarf to wear with my Eddie Bauer fleece-lined pants and fared better.
By this morning it was 10 degrees warmer, then warmed up another eight degrees. The arena footing was still pretty hard, but a stiff wind was working on blowing in the next weather system (rain for days), so I decided to risk turning the horses out. Lance decided the surface was too hard for laying down and rolling, but they did get to move around – especially Stella.
I thought Stella was even more breathtaking than usual with her mane tousled and tail blowing!
Hopefully we'll be able to find some dry windows in which to ride this week.
Between the weather (mostly very wet, plus a good dose of snow), travel (gone six days), and the holidays, December has completely trashed my consistency in the saddle. Just getting the horses turned out for short periods of exercise regularly has been a challenge. So my focus this month has been on maintaining relationship and trust, not advancing Stella's dressage training. I tried to document our rides with at least one snapshot, and succeeded with most of them.
December 2: a ride down the road through the ravine and up to the valley viewpoint, the first time Stella's gone to that point:
That branch down on the right side concerned her
SO many trees being strangled by ivy!
Squeezed in another ride December 3 before our trip:
December 10, the day after our return. Considering that she was confined for a week, Stella was very, very good. She didn't even act that pent up during turn-out before our ride!
December 17. It rained a LOT; this may have been my next opportunity to ride. She was on her toes, so we didn't actually leave the property.
I schooled a pent-up mare in the arena December 21, and promised her that our next ride would be out of the sandbox. The next day was blustery, but true to my word, after our walking warm-up in the arena
we headed up the lane. It was trash pick-up day, and three of the neighbors' big trash bins' lids had blown open, trash bags within billowing and lids swinging and banging. Stella was as tense and alarmed as I've ever seen her, but once she stood and stared, she was willing to skitter by them. I was SO proud of her for being biddable in the face of such terrifying apparitions!
By the time we got to the mailboxes it had started to rain, so we turned around to face the stiff wind driving raindrops in our faces (and Stella's mouth foam onto her neck and chest) and headed home.
You might notice that she's wearing a different bridle on this ride. In my ongoing effort to figure out why Stella gets so face-fussy, I wondered if her ergonomic bridle was bothering her somehow. So I switched to the very first bridle I purchased for her, after punching some new holes to make it fit better (same bit). I'm not sure it addresses the fussiness, but it is easier to put on and take off, so it has been Stella's regular bridle since.
On Christmas Eve day, I decided to open the arena gate and give the horses a few minutes' access to the winter grass as a Christmas treat. After I took these photos, Stella took off and raced around the pasture; Lance kept his head down and ATE until I dragged him away for fear of founder given his metabolic syndrome.
Then Stella and I schooled in the arena for a bit.
On Christmas morning we awoke to a slight dusting of snow, but the next day we got a winter wonderland of white!
I turned the horses out, and they were both frisky, even Lance. Listen to him snort!
As I caught them to take them back to the barn, it started snowing again:
I couldn't resist the opportunity to take some beauty shots of my pretty girl:
And when the snow shower abated, I couldn't resist a short ride in the snow!
December 27 was another beautiful snowy day, another snowy turn-out, and another short ride..
Our house from the arena
Tomorrow is New Year's Day, when, come hell or high water, I spend some time on the back of a horse. I thought it would be nice to spend time on the back of BOTH horses, and since today was dry, we did a trial run. Lance just got a loose-rein walk around the arena; then I had a short but lovely school on Stella.
I made a couple end-of-the-year purchases. One is this CoolMax stable sheet for Stella. It's a bit big on her (it was the smallest one left on clearance), but I think it will work. (It's teal, not blue.)
After talking to a friend who has used it successfully, I also broke down and bought some SmartCalm Ultra Pellets to try on Stella. She's only been on it two days so it may totally be my imagination, but Stella already seems calmer. The horses didn't get turn-out yesterday, and I rode Lance first. Normally Stella would have jumped around in her paddock with pent-up energy, but she just watched us walk around, and then was quite good when I rode her. Time will tell; the product comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, so there is no risk to trying it.
10/30: First ride this week because of work, weather, and leaves. Many thanks to my husband for blowing out the arena! I didn't know how Stella would be after such limited turn-out and no riding this week; the girl really needs her exercise. Other than being a little more 'on her toes,' she was good. Wasn't sure I was going to ask her to canter, but when I did, she took the correct lead (right). The canter wasn't nearly as soft and quiet as it had become last week, but that wasn't surprising. Didn't successfully get the left-lead canter for awhile; she took the right lead circling left twice, so we tracked right again so she could take the correct lead on cue. Then we tracked left again and she got the correct lead, so we finished on that positive note and cooled out.
Looks like someone was tightening up an invisible check rein in the above photos!
10/31: A dry Sunday and the arena was still mostly clear of leaves, so two rides in two days; yay! After our warm-up (I always walk her around the arena three times in each direction plus a couple figure-eights on a long rein so both of us warm up our ligaments and joints; I probably need it more than my young mare 😏) I wanted to ride her down through the woods again, but I could hear someone taking advantage of the good weather to grade the gravel road so that was out. We had a good schooling session. When it was time for canter work, I asked for left lead first this time, and she took it beautifully when I moved my right leg back. Same thing circling right; she picked up the correct lead with just a repositioning of my outside leg! I should have quit then, as the rest of the canter work went downhill. She got pretty fussy in the bridle, and didn't get all her leads. She was fussy in the bridle yesterday, too, but I had chalked that up to a week off. Today it was worse, so I checked her wolf teeth after our ride. Their status hasn't changed; one has erupted, two have not, and one is still a no-show/no-feel. She didn't mind me checking, so that wasn't the cause of the fussiness. I was thinking about scheduling another lesson with Suzan this week, but think I'll wait.
No, not behavioral ones; Stella continues to be reliably sane. If she doesn't get regular turn-out for some reason, she is definitely more energetic and tense, but never out of control. The eruptions I am waiting on, before scheduling another lesson, are the rest of her canine teeth. Suzan advised riding her bitless or on a loose rein until those come in and her mouth is more comfortable. Since I don't have a bitless bridle (my German hackamore doesn't qualify), I am riding Stella as carefully as I can to not aggravate her sore mouth. Stella is letting me know that I am mostly successful, and we continue to make steady progress, especially at the canter, riding 4-5 days a week. In our last four rides, she has picked up the correct lead and maintained the canter for several 20M circles with my verbal encouragement to keep going. Can you see my smile from there??? 😁
We got over two inches of glorious rain Friday night and Saturday, so for right now we get to ride in a dust-free arena. Sunday I turned her loose in it first to let off steam, as the pasture was still muddy and slick.
Hopefully I can record a dust-free ride with Pivo before the arena dries out again; I want to see us canter!
The farrier was here Monday. When he started trimming Lance, he noticed that Lance's right hock was really swollen:
By later that day, the swelling had progressed down the rest of the leg:
I had been gone Thursday through Sunday and Rick had cleaned stalls that morning, so I hadn't been in with Lance, but I still felt bad that I hadn't noticed. I kept the horses in a couple days to keep Lance from aggravating whatever he had done to it, but it wasn't until I turned him and Stella out Wednesday that the swelling finally went down. All that running....
But the next day it was swollen again – and Lance was lame. 😒
So we added SMZs (antibiotic) to his Bute (anti-inflammatory) on top of his meds for 'asthma' and 'diabetes,' and although he thinks we're horrid for ruining his mealtimes, the lameness has abated though some swelling remains.
A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to turn-out last week. I had opened Stella's paddock to the lower pasture and haltered Lance to lead him out to the middle pasture, but decided to give him some fly relief first. I sprayed repellent on a tissue in the tackroom, then started wiping his face where he stood in the aisleway. He lifted his head a bit – and then went into what I can only describe as a seizure. He kind of sat backwards and crashed to the floor, lurched up and forward onto his knees, tried to get up and crashed on his side, thrashed a bit, lurched up and forward again . . . and then stood there. I was terrified, both for him and for me, thinking he was going to die right there in front of me and also fully aware that getting pinned against the concrete floor or a wall by my 1200 lb. horse would be a Very. Bad. Thing. I carefully guided him outside, watching him like a hawk. He tried to snatch a bite of weeds like normal, so I turned him loose in the pasture. I kept an eye on him throughout the afternoon and never saw anything amiss; other than some scrapes on all four fetlocks and over one eye plus a bloody nose he seemed fine (and has been ever since). Of course I told Rick about it when he got home. He said he's seen one other metabolic horse do that, did some testing, and found out the horse had developed Cushings on top of metabolic syndrome. So he drew blood on Lance and has sent it in; we're waiting on results and I'm not riding him at all in the meantime.
They were turned out in their respective pastures again Friday afternoon when I happened to see an unusual amount of activity (I was still keeping a closer-than-usual eye on Lance). I stepped out on the deck to see what they were reacting to, and saw this:
"Is that a pterodactyl? I think it's a pterodactyl!"
On Sunday evening, we decided it was time to try turning Lance and Stella out together. We led them to the upper pasture, and after a momentary "yahoo," they settled down to eat. Lance showed no animosity towards Stella like he has in the arena; it seemed that without Oliver in the mix, everything was fine.
After an hour or so, I decided I'd better check on them. When I stepped outside, I could hear hooves on gravel. I hollered at Rick and ran down the driveway, grabbing the halters on my way. I could see that the horses weren't in the pasture but could no longer hear them on the gravel, so I headed SW, calling both their names, and Rick headed NW. As I neared a neighbor's, they confirmed they'd seen the horses, and directed me to the field next to them. After a short game of "catch me if you can," good boy Lance came to me, and we led him home with Stella following. Neither of them had a scratch and the fence is intact, so apparently they both jumped it! That's very uncharacteristic of Lance if not Stella, and a shame since that's the one pasture that still has some decent forage. Sigh; it's always something when you own horses!
I'm a homeschooling, horse training, animal loving, garden growing, part-time business running, spinning and knitting shepherd who loves the Great Shepherd.
