Round-Pen Reasoning or Lack Thereof

Today I arrived early enough for my dressage lesson that I had time for a really good grooming and some ground work. I am a fan of the round pen for seeing what I have to work with on that day, for setting ourselves up for success with a calm session of join-up etc., but I encounter a problem sometimes which I'm hoping someone might be able to help me with.

Here is how we start out, with my OTTB Montana on any typical day:


Then as he gets warmed up and muscles nice and loose, the trot gets bigger and springier; all good, right??



Then we do a little join-up, horse-follow-closely this PonyGirl etc., feet pickups, and general stroking "I am your comfort zone" stuff.

Back to work but things start to get a little more interesting; he is sniffing the air and I love the way he shows his noble Arab ancestry, but I know he is thinking thoughts of how spiffy he's feeling:



And then we get this type of thing:




And while I am saying, "HUP-hoa" and trying to project calming vibes with my body language, he goes on to this:



And then we get a bit of this:



And I believe at this point he is apt to damage himself in the small circle that a roundpen presents.

There have been days when he just bucks and farts and gallops around the roundpen at a solid slant until he is too tired to move, and then we have the fake 'join-up' of a tired horse and a relieved human.

Is there a way to keep the buckey/slantey/gallop phase from ever starting up in the first place?

My son's graduation in 3 minutes!

My older boy graduated from Indiana University last Saturday and here is a 3 minute video of commencement. Any university that has the line, "Glorianna! Frangipana!" in its alma mater has my respect as well. I mean, you need a rhyme for Indiana and this is not an easy thing, so go for it. I stayed at a little cabin in Brown County State Park, to avoid the $300+ hotel rates that the town offers for graduation weekend. It is a luscious and tasty state park for horseback riding and I mean to go back there some day - what hills! And softly firm ground, and majestic trees.

I saw probably a thousand horse trailers on the road all the weekend - it is riding time in Indiana! And so many happy horses up to their hocks in sweet green grass. Spring is advanced far beyond us there; dogwood trees in full bloom, redbud, crabapple, intense.

On the way home, my truck loaded up with years of dorm and rental accumulation, we stopped in Madison to visit the younger boy and eat Chinese food at his favorite restaurant. The boys walked ahead of me talking genetics shop and I took this picture which warmed my heart:

Fear Strategies

Recently I have read a great deal of interesting things about fear in relation to riding horses. Over at NuzzlingMuzzles' blog (see links to the left) you may find a great series of posts about experiencing and responding to a riding injury, and what it leaves behind. This blog's author invited folks to share their strategies for dealing with fear, and I have a few that work for me. Maybe they will help someone else too.

My off-track thoroughbred and I scared each other to death for 2 solid years, mostly because of my incompetence and his inexperience in normal riding situations. But even though after 7 years I now know him very well and am a better rider, he remains a reactive horse. As he advances in dressage and becomes very supple and fit, this makes him pretty to watch because it gives him that spark. But it triggers in me memories of falls and failures that set us up for more of the same.

In the above photo you see him in his favorite setting, galloping around a course of jumps. You also see how strong he is and full of himself. I psyche myself with the following tricks:

1. "Horse, we are in this together." Every time I get on his back, I say this to myself; it continues: "Wherever you goest, I am goesting right along with you and I am NOT getting off before I am ready." I had noticed I had a certain defeatist attitude when he spooked or offered to gallop; I would curl forward and start to separate from him. So this little self-hypnosis plugs me in and tells me I am on for the duration.

2. Bucking straps are a grand invention. I have some sort of grab strap on every saddle and during our walkaround warmup I remind myself where it is without looking, just to get the body memory of reaching for it back activated. I also grab it and pull a few times, so he doesn't associate that movement with an 'episode'.

3. "We are not done yet." To keep on working even when I've had an unsettling episode was hard for me to learn, but so good for him. Right through a spook, right past the looky spot, right back to trot after an uninvited gallop-offer, keeping on with the work as smoothly as possible helped him calm himself.

He may never be a steady-Eddy but I am so much more steady myself that it matters less. What helped me the most was good riding lessons with a competent instructor who put me and SpeedyBoy on the longe line for what felt like forever. She took away my stirrups, she took away my reins, it made me sore as all getout. It has paid off so well, I recommend it for anybody who ever felt unsteady on a reactive horse.

Oh this weather! Whineywhinewhine

Yes it is April 26th and snowy at a fresh 32 degrees this morning. There goes my horsey weekend. It was supposed to involve a lot of road riding which is excellent for Johnny; close to my barn there's a nice stretch involving two gentle hills that are so good for building up his back muscles after a winter of arena circles. But in this weather I just wimp out; the pastures are open to wind and just thawed enough to be deep mud. Spring is not the horseperson's favorite season in these parts.

So I went to the Whole Foods Co-op and bought these luscious strawberries to console myself:


And in the end, the Stoics had it right:

How many accidents could happen here?!

Here we see my precious horse Johnnie willing to risk his neck for a clump of tasty weeds. We were staying at a friend's house on our way to a great horse camping adventure in the Black Hills, and I was a bit less cautious then than I am now. I have learned that Johnnie is both an escape artist and somewhat accident prone and his gates etc. have to be very carefully checked and double fastened. Also, he will grab, chew, and generally raise hell with any object in his vicinity - the world is filled with toys in his opinion. This includes your jacket hanging on a rail, your water bottle, his own reins, anybody's grooming tote, etc. He unties all safety knots and wanders a short distance away from the hitching post, just to show he can.

This leads me to the subject: Pasture Accidents. He has had two serious ones, awful cuts which put his future mobility at risk (possibility of infection). One was a deep cut to the hock which if the joint had become infected, could have ended his useful life. Another was a mystery puncture/tear wound on his right haunch, about 7 inches long and with an equally long "tunnel" inside between the muscle and the skin, just as if he had sat on a metal rod. We have gone over the pastures with a fine tooth comb and in one case we found what he cut himself on - a corrugated metal facing on a run-in shed - but in the other case it is still a mystery.

It is so hard to keep horses safe! Frightening accident stories are all over the internet and they are only the tip of the iceberg of what really goes on in the horse world. Horses are far worse than toddlers in my opinion, if only because they are so freaking strong. I guess we can only pray and try to set things up for safety.

My son singing! Handel, 'Messiah', "Death, Where is thy Sting?"

He just had his senior recital at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. Yes he is finally going to graduate! But I still have one at Madison so the IV drip from my bank account to university bursars is still hooked up. However, here is some of the older boy's singing, not from the recital but from a concert last December. He is singing a duet with a friend:

Close Encounters of the Turkey Kind

Last Thursday we were transporting a vanload of Honors students to a conference in central Wisconsin when we encountered a wild turkey of gigantic proportions. I was following the van in my car and saw a big bird come swooping up from beside the interstate, head straight for the van windshield, smack into it releasing a boatload of feathers, land on the pavement and walk away. Yes, strange and even impossible as it may sound, the turkey walked away from this shattering experience at 70 mph. (I think the turkey cannot have lived long after though.)

A student in the passenger seat was sleeping with his hat over his face, which may just have saved his eyesight. As it was, tiny crumbs and shards of glass covered this young person's clothes and he glittered in the sun. We pulled off the freeway and into a convenience store where everybody knew exactly what had happened from the shatter pattern of the glass. "Met up with a turkey?"

I would never have believed a turkey could kill a windshield like this. It was deflected in about 4-5 inches. We made it to the conference after calling the university to make sure driving was legal. And by a miracle, thanks to Kingdom Auto Repair in Menomonie Wisconsin ("Serving Jesus and Our Customers"), we got the windshield replaced and the van & all students safely home.

I felt so bad for the turkey - what must that be like; a beautiful warm afternoon, an adventure out of the usual territory, and sudden impact. These highways of ours cut the habitats in pieces and some animals don't get the message about how we own the whole universe and must drive all over it at will. And what do you think was served at the conference lunch? Yep.