Clear Solutions in Outside Eyes

When Kate and I got home from the show, I decided to take TC out and try out the ear plugs. Maybe if I could get him more comfortable with the noise, he would at least be more toward the horse I had at my lesson on Thursday.

It took me a very long time to get them into his ears... he doesn't like having the insides of his ears touched and he was looking at me like I was actually torturing him. But I did get them in and when he had them in, he was visibly quieter.

Undersaddle... still buzzy and tense. Maybe (??) not as bad as he had been, but I think by that point I was too far gone. The longer I rode, the closer I was to crying, and when I finally stopped, I couldn't help it. Poor Kate had to witness this. Sorry Kate.

This tail is insanity

The thing that kept me from fully losing it was the idea of having my lesson on Sunday, the next day. I had high hopes that I'd get an outside perspective from someone I have the utmost respect for so I could see the situation more clearly.

The next day, I arrived early to watch Kate's lesson, then hung out with her and chatted (since we didn't get enough of that over the last two days?) until it was time for my lesson.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the ear plugs in, but that's okay, he's not used to them anyway. I took note to clicker train it in the future.

I came into the lesson asking the trainer if she'd mind getting on him to see what she felt. She was happy to do that and so I went to warm him up for her and told her all about the issue. As I picked up the trot, he flung his neck around, which is not exactly normal in the beginning... from there he was an absolute ball of tension and within the first two trot circles, had scooted off with me several times and then flung himself straight up into the air and bronc bucked a few times.

Mine is that one that exploded

I told the trainer she didn't have to get on him, that today was an especially bad day, and that I wasn't sure what to do so it'd be nice to just talk it out with her. As a trainer, this is like, my worst nightmare lesson, the horse is so bad that there's really nothing you can do about it. Honestly, I couldn't tell you what he needed and I know the horse super well, he's never immediately that bad. I probably would have ridden it out, but it would not have been good, it would have been a full hour of trotting and cantering and praising any moment of relaxation and probably ending in a lot of sweat and tears.

So instead of insisting that she help me ride him through it or what not, we turned to talking about the entire situation, with her giving me some ideas of how to manage this issue until we have a permanent fix.

She had some really good things:
- work to get him to respond to my seat more than my hand for the whoa (this was before he exploded, I assured her that he was very responsive to my seat for whoa when he wasn't being tense)
- use my inner thigh to press his neck away from me, my inner thigh should not allow the neck to pop up
- a bonnet with thick ears (noise canceling) would be a good way to reduce noise without the ear plugs, I've ordered one
- TC loves having his forehead tapped, it seems to relax him (this was a technique she used to bring a very externally focused horse to a more internal focus, more on that in another post), so I should look to get some beads on his ear bonnet so that as it flops a bit, it lightly taps his forehead

Look at this tiny bird I found in the barn aisle one day!

That permanent fix I mentioned earlier? Moving barns.

That was the perspective I needed. I obviously thought about moving as the solution after Thursday, I mentioned it in yesterday's post that it was my first thought, but having someone who knows nothing about the situation (and who I respect very much) tell me that this was the clear solution was the push I needed.

This barn is super ideal in a lot of ways. He's in a nice big paddock, it's a full two hundred dollars less than any other location I found, and Kate is there and I could make an entire post about why that's been amazing.

But this trainer was right. This problem has an easy fix. If he isn't like this anywhere else, this is the solution. I don't have to work through this issue. I have to listen to my horse and when he says he doesn't like it at this barn, we are moving.

This but horses

At the end of the lesson, I had gotten off and was petting TC, telling him that I'd do anything to fix this issue, and TC was being all cuddly as if he didn't spend an entire lesson spooking and trying to chuck me in the rafters.

Trainer told me how lucky he is to have someone willing to listen to him and complimented me on my tact. I thanked her and said that I'd do anything to get this fixed for him.


Then I walked him back to his stall and burst into tears. Obviously. I haven't been as tactful as I should have been. Horses don't just randomly change their MO, but my first instinct was that it was a training issue that I needed to fix and I was less than patient about it. I felt like such an asshole, he was telling me "SOMETHING IS WRONG SOMETHING IS WRONG I HATE THIS PLACE" and I was just telling him to get the fuck over it. I hate it when people do that to me, so why did I do that to him?

I talked myself down. It's only been four months. Six of those weeks have been me not riding him (three for mono, three for when I did only ground work).  So much of that time was trying to figure out why he was acting like this.

So much this

It was easy to make excuses for why he was misbehaving! At first he was in the smaller paddock, that could totally have put him on edge. Then our winter lasted for freaking ever, and he hates winter. Then I thought it was his back, teeth, saddle fit, so we did all that. Then I wondered if he'd been a little like this (pushing into the bridle) since last year and he was just struggling to learn to be in more self carriage. Then I thought he was just out of shape. There was always a reason.

But I never stopped trying new things and trying to figure it out, even if I was less patient than I should have been. Well, now we have it figured out. And I'm putting together a plan so that he doesn't have to be ridden at his current barn, more on that later.