What is Wrong with Sundance?

Sundance has been not feeling good for a couple of months now, so on Tuesday I hauled him down to the vet for my mom. 

I rode him all summer long, since he was the only one I had to ride with TC doing mostly ground work at the time. Mostly I rode him on the tracks and on the trails, I even took him out to HBR, the local trail facility, to walk on the flat road there.

But then this fall we noticed that he was losing weight and topline. I was surprised because he really was in more work than normal (which has been no work for a few years since my mom stopped riding). I stopped riding him in early November and we fed him more and more. Soon he was eating more than TC!

Poor naked pony

We had the vet out in early December for blood work and it wasn't great. He was anemic, showed low protein, and had a few other values that were pretty off. We redid his diet, adding a bunch of alfalfa for the protein. And he continued losing weight, so we did another round of bloodwork that didn't show much improvement. He had also started laying down more often, like many more times per day than usual and at odd times for him. So on Tuesday we took him down to the internal medicine specialist. 

She warned us at the start of the appointment that we were unlikely to leave with real answers. Her theory, which was the same as our local vet's theory, was that he had protein-losing enteropathy, essentially that his gut was leaking protein and that's what was causing the topline loss and the loss of weight. It can be caused by a myriad of things, including inflammation due to chronic NSAID use (nope), infection, lymphatic issues, and even cancer (lymphoma). 

He was truly horrified to have cold
alcohol dumped over his shaved bits

She ultrasounded his gut on both sides, looking for thickening of the walls of his intestines. His small intestine was very active and was dropped, meaning she saw a lot more of it than she expected. That's a sign of colic/intestinal pain. But the actual walls seemed fine. She went back into the large intestine and that's where she found some thickening in the wall of the cecum. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, she normally sees them like 3-4x thicker than normal and his was only slightly thicker. So she was comfortable saying that lymphoma was unlikely at that point. PHEW because cancer has taken enough people/animals from me this year. 

We also did abdominal x-rays to look for sand and/or stones, just since he was there at the clinic and it was convenient. Nothing showed up, so that was good to rule out. 

He's been such a good kid's pony 
this year (hopefully not just because
he has been feeling bad)

Like she warned, it was kind of inconclusive. There's no clear reason why what is going on is happening and unfortunately because the only abnormalities are in the cecum, the only way to really biopsy that area is to send him to colic surgery, which would be ridiculous. 

The plan then is to just start treatment. He is going on an all pellet diet so that the cecum doesn't have to work as hard. He's also going to get a tapering dose of steroids for a month. And he is going to be started on an antihistamine since he does have some allergy issues that she thinks could have triggered the inflammation. 

Then we wait. He gets bloodwork done in two weeks to see whether anything has improved, and he gets a recheck on his ultrasound in about a month. 

The younger kiddo is going to be so much bolder
and scrappier a rider than the older one, trying to
convince her to hold on was a no go

We're hoping that just one round of steroids and taking the pressure off of his cecum will be enough to kind of reset his gut. Although some horses need to be on low dose steroids for the rest of their lives, and figuring out the dose is really tricky because if you dip too low, you kind of have to start over because the symptoms start back up again. 

I really feel terrible for the little guy. He's only 20 years old, and for a Morgan that's basically only middle aged. It's been really sad to watch him lose weight and topline this year. He was always a round little guy, we called him an air fern! 

Fingers crossed this all works out and he feels MUCH better soon!

Sundance's Recent Outings

Little Sundance has had three outings the last three weekends in a row. I've been riding him 2-3x per week all summer to give myself something else to do than TC's rehab stuff. And so I decided to bother him with some travel. 

Who is that tiny pony in the warmblood
sized trailer??

Three weeks ago I took him over to our local trail facility, mostly because I hadn't hauled my rig in a long time and didn't want my first haul in all that time to be hauling the four hours to the vet and back in one day. 

Sundance LOVED it and actually tried to delay getting into the trailer to go home. He and I just did this paved bottom loop which, because he's barefoot, he got to walk in the middle of. He was passed by joggers, cyclists, and even some people walking (he is the slowest walker) and didn't mind. He even let me bring my binoculars and look at birds while we were out there. 

Happy pony!

The following weekend, I decided to bring him over to my niece's riding lesson since I knew my mom would be there and I could bully her into riding him. I participated in the lesson on him ("racing" my niece from one end of the arena to the other) and then shoved my mom on him. She walked all over the property and trotted in every arena! Pretty good for a woman who has declared several times that she is DONE with riding. 

It was super cute to see my mom and my nieces riding together (the little one got to have a pony ride). Maybe next year I'll bring both TC and the pony over and we can have three generations riding at once. 

No pictures from that, so here is one
from this last weekend

Then this last weekend, I decided to stuff the pony in the trailer again and take him over to the ranch competition. Now, TC has done this competition several times and performed very well. It got to the point where I'd just arrive after the practice commenced, walk the course on foot, and then go get TC, do the course cold, and still win. 

If there's two things TC likes, it's people and obstacles. And playing with obstacles in front of a crowd of people, all ooing and ahhing over how large and impressive and bombproof you are? His ego has never been bigger than when he has done these ranch competitions. 

Meanwhile this is what we do at home

Sundance on the other hand... is still bothered by normal things. Like he didn't like the pool noodles touching him. And the plastic bags flapping wasn't his favorite thing. And the fact that the bridge was up on a pole so it thunked down as he crossed it caused him to leap off of it. 

I felt bad comparing him to TC because he genuinely did SUCH a good job for a pony who was pretty skeptical of my antics when we met. He made it through the noodles, and he survived the plastic bags. He did walk over the bridge with some clicker training help. And outside of those, he backed through the Z of poles, he let me carry a flag all over, he actually walked through the plastic bottles, and he even let me drag a bag of cans from his back which I was not expecting he'd tolerate. 

And we did it all bareback! 

All the plastic bottles, and he walked
over them!

Buuuut I opted not to compete. First, I had already been on him for an hour when practice was closed and we had to leave. And then it was going to be a full hour before we even started competing. I had other things I had to do that day so decided to pack up and head out. Plus I will admit, TC has completely spoiled me. 

It was a great day though! This weekend I'm out of town, but once I'm back, I think I might keep up the weekly travel sessions with the pony. It's been good to remind myself of what I'm working toward with TC. And it's great for the pony to get some outings in, he does seem to enjoy them even if this one wasn't his favorite. 

An Update on Sunny Horse

I gave the pony the winter off, which TC also had off, because of the crazy weather. In the spring when I started bringing TC back, my work schedule was a bit much to have two horses going. Sunny's feet had also taken a turn for the worse and I expressed that I wanted to yank his shoes and get him more comfortable over the course of a couple of trimming cycles. I didn't know if this was just due to the winter or something else, but he's looking WAY better. 

The many different things I've seen behind these
fluffy yellow ears

And so with that and work calming down a bit, I'm starting to get him out again. He's done a turnout and some longeing so far, with the goal being riding him 2-3x per week and keeping him fit enough to do things with but not prioritizing him over TC given that TC and I are surprisingly doing a lot of stuff this year. 

My primary goal for the year is to prep him for his inevitable kid-horse days. My niece is in somewhat consistent lessons over at Kate's barn to get her more comfortable riding on her own. But the goal will be to transition her back to her Sunny Horse probably in the next year or two and until she outgrows him/he retires or we have the capacity to get her another horse. I am not attached to her riding the pony, but my mom sure is. 

Cows!

Sunny doesn't... love the child. But I think I can get him more tolerant of her. This year, I'm going to focus on two things that will help with this: 

1. Getting him comfortable being ponied off of TC.

2. Getting him more tolerant of shenanigans. 

The ponying is so that I can exercise them both at the same time, take them places (such as trail facilities/obstacle shows/bombproofing clinics) at the same time, and general "you need to get on board with what the humans want" training. 

I want so much to respect my pony's feelings. But I also want him to just tell Riot how shit TC is rather than having to confront TC directly. He feels the need to REALLY drive home how much he hates TC. I think I've got a good plan to get him a little better about ponying, but we'll see. My priority is to keep TC safe of course, both from physical injuries and general bullying by a pipsqueak. 

The ranch from above

Shenanigan tolerance something I work on a ton with my personal horses. With TC, I've wanted him to feel confident in pretty much any situation and I do this by making sure that I subject expose him to things that are way beyond anything he'd be faced with in the real world. 

For example, I rode him with a pool noodle for a while, thwapping him with it randomly all over his body. When I started doing mounted archery, he had no problems with the arrows touching him or flying by his face. Not the first things to touch his butt or fly by his face while I've been riding him. So when he's ridden by a child and they drop their crop or they fling themselves onto his neck to hug him or anything children do, I know he won't care because I've both done it all and much worse on him. 

The pony is not tolerant of shenanigans and that plus the fact that he doesn't consider his rider's safety or comfort when shenanigans are going down, means that I don't super trust him with the kid. The kid is going to be the cause of many shenanigans and he is the only one of us who does not care about her safety. 

Back to the barn!

I saw a video of a person bombproofing a horse for children who would trip and fall in front of them and crawl under their legs and hang off of them and I thought, perfect. 

I tried it on TC and he doesn't care other than his one fatal flaw which is not feeling bad about stepping on squishy things, which we are working on. Do not step on humans (he didn't step on me, he just is not particularly careful with his giant feet). But you can do jumping jacks around him while leading him and fall on the ground and crawl all over him and he does not care. 

The pony cared SO MUCH. He spooked really hard at me when I "fell" to the ground leading him and was pretty scared of my jumping jacks. So that's our homework. And all the other shenanigans I have planned, which pretty much coincides with my obstacle training for TC anyway! 

The trails!

I'm excited to get the pony back and hopefully make some real changes in how he interacts with his world/the child/the gray horse he hates. He's not young, he's 18 or 19 now? But he's a Morgan and is unreasonably sound and spry despite still having silicosis. If he says no or is not doing well in my program, he'll happily retire. But I think he'll find that being a little more tolerant leads him to a much better existence. Or at least, that's what TC would say! Although according to the pony, he's been indoctrinated. 

Schedule Changes

As is apparent, I think, one thing I've been really considering for the last few years is what riding means to me. Like, what I love to do vs what I do because I feel like I should be doing it because I'm a Dressage Rider (TM). Honestly at this point, this is an ever evolving discussion I have with myself. I want to make sure that I'm doing what I want to do with my very time consuming and expensive hobby, not what I think I should be doing based on arbitrary rules I've given myself. I started jumping over a year ago as a way to break this cycle of me feeling stuck in dressage telling myself "this is what you're good at and who everyone sees you as, so it is what you should do." 

Now that work is picking up in the best possible (but still stressful and time consuming) way, I found myself feeling a little stretched thin riding both horses. 

But it's important to me to ride both because I really want to have my cake and eat it too, eventually. Meaning that I want to have TC as my dressage horse but I don't want to wait to retire him for me to get my jumping horse. There are a lot of reasons why: wanting to have a backup horse for clinics, wanting to jump but not wanting to give TC up, the ever looming dreaded middle age (is it weird to be planning my mid life crisis this early?) that might prevent me from wanting to jump the medium size sticks, and so on. 

But having two horses means fitting two horses into my schedule. That's tough when work is relentless and when I like riding in the middle of the day (over lunch and then right as people stop asking me questions) instead of before or after work like a normal person. I love that my company and my management chain trusts me to create a schedule that works best for me, but sometimes flexibility is so rigid! 

Accurate

I decided that I might want to do a schedule change to figure out how to get both done every day. My schedule was as such: 

Monday - off, work from the office

Tuesday - ride both horses in the arena

Wednesday - ride both horses in the arena

Thursday - off, work from the office

Friday - TC in the arena, Sunny with the kiddo

Saturday - TC on the trail, Sunny in the arena

Sunday - TC in the arena, Sunny on the trail

But what was happening is that I'd ride TC over lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday and then I'd be pressed for time with Sunny because it'd have to be after working hours or in between meetings. It was just too much and sometimes I'd just want to go home. 

The thing is, trail riding takes me half the time arena work does. I get on bareback in my tennis shoes, I go up the hills for 30-45 minutes, then I come back down, toss the bareback pad into the barn, hose the horse down real quick, and throw back in the stall. 

I love these trees!

With the arena work, I have to put on boots, put on a saddle, walk down the road to do a full warm up, ride for 30-45 minutes in the arena, cool down, untack, take my boots off, hose down, and then put back in stall. It takes way longer, an hour and a half for TC at least and an hour and fifteen for the pony (who I can ride bareback if I'm pressed for time vs TC absolutely not).

In addition, I found that I looked forward to trail riding so much on the weekends. All week I'd be glancing up into the hills waiting to go up there. I realized that I should change the schedule to allow me to trail ride during the week at the very least, but then I also decided to double my trail riding and see what happened.

So, this is what I changed to: 

Monday - off, work from the office

Tuesday - TC on the trail, Sunny in the arena

Wednesday - TC in the arena, Sunny on the trail

Thursday - off, work from the office

Friday - TC in the arena, Sunny with the kiddo

Saturday - TC on the trail, Sunny in the arena

Sunday - TC in the arena, Sunny on the trail

I love this view!

It feels kind of weird to only be doing dressage 3x per week with TC, but he's honestly thriving physically right now with less dressage and more hill climbing. I mean, I do put him in his good posture on the trails, I don't think he'd be as happy physically if I let him climb up and down the hills with his underneck rock hard and his back tight. I'm also having a GREAT time and feeling way less stressed with this schedule. 

First, it is SO FUN to be able to trail ride 4x per week. I adore the hills above the ranch so much. Trail riding up there gives me so many like... magical childhood feelings. Sometimes I bring a popsicle from the fridge! I listen to podcasts or music or a book and I just spend some time appreciating how amazing the ranch is and how lucky I feel to be able to have my horse there. It's the perfect way to destress in the middle of the day. 

Second, it's been way easier to get both horses out! Or on days like Tuesday of this week, where Sunny had to be booted out of my schedule, it allowed me to still get TC out despite the entire trail ride me having to be on my phone answering questions from stakeholders and writing code into Teams for my coworkers who needed help. Normally a day like Tuesday would have been stressful trying to fit an arena ride into, but now that I'm giving myself permission to trail ride more, I was able to appreciate the break from work, rather than feeling like I was pressed for time and "wasting" a ride by not getting enough done in the arena because we would have been starting and stopping so much.  

Best trail horse (Sunny is also great)

Hopefully this project is going to smooth out a bit so I can prioritize riding a bit more. The crazy part of it is now over, but I now have to catch up on all of my other work, so I'm expecting the rest of this week to be nuts! But luckily I am going to trail ride Sunny today, then I'll do as much as I can at the office tomorrow so that I can *actually* take our half day Friday half off and get both out. 

Aunt Mimi's Babysitting Services

As of a week ago, I now have two nieces! My newest niece was born and she is amazing. Soon though, I think it'll mean double the trouble and double the aunt duties once she's a bit less potato-like. I love being an aunt so much despite having 0 interest in having my own children. 

Every time I babysit my oldest niece (who I now have to specify), I wonder if I'm adding to her childhood trauma or just giving her interesting stories. Maybe both. But I figured I'd post about what is included in Aunt Mimi's babysitting services. 

She gets all the pony toys she wants,
especially when she finds one that
looks like Flounder (her words)

- Children WILL be used for child labor. Labor includes but is not limited to: tack cleaning, tack room reorganization, horse grooming, horse bathing, and making of grain. Children will be paid in as many popsicles as they ask for. Aunt Mimi is not responsible for child continuously asking for "popicals" when they return home. 

- Children will be allowed to run amok in Tractor Supply and will be bought pony toys if they ask for them.

- Children WILL be sprayed down with a hose if Aunt Mimi is hot and needs to distract children from endlessly eating popsicles. Children will not be returned clean. 

- Aunt Mimi does not guarantee that children will only eat food off of plates or out of bowls. Children are quick little things that snatch pieces of popsicles off of the barn floor to eat. Aunt Mimi aids in the development of your child's immune system. 

- Children will be provided with one (1) pony. Warning: ponies are highly addictive. Aunt Mimi is not responsible for any addictive pony behaviors demonstrated by children, but will provide more ponies for children if asked. 

- Exposure to horses may cause children to canter everywhere instead of run. Aunt Mimi is not responsible for child's dead end track career, but lead changes will be taught to ensure children canter on both leads. Aunt Mimi does not guarantee that your child will not scream LEAD CHANGE while cantering. 

She is learning to lead the pony right now and he
is so good to her given how often he could have
just mowed her down...

It was so fun to spend some time with her while her baby sister was being born! We went to Tractor Supply, rode her Sunny horse double with me a couple of times (she got in trouble for screaming at me while riding him... toddlers gotta toddler), and she even had her first group riding lesson at Kate's barn on Tommy. She is trotting with a side walker and learning to post at the walk and steer right now so she got to practice that. With other kids riding around her, she was even more motivated to practice. She kept watching the bigger kids and saying "I do that when I'm bigger" and it just... so adorable. 

Can't wait for her little sister to start riding! 

Five Years with the Pony

I was looking through my blog a bit ago and ran across some old posts about Sunny! I posted when we first saw him, when we bought him, and when he was diagnosed with silicosis. 

If you don't want to read, here's a quick summary of how we got him: 

My mom really wanted to get herself a really sweet, safe pony that she could share with her (future, at the time) grandchildren. She saw an ad for a little Morgan just an hour or so south of the ranch and we went to go try him. He was a literal unicorn, perfect on the trail, over fences, and giving longe lessons to children regularly. We loved him, he passed the vet check, and he came home with us. 

Just a week or two later though, he exhibited some odd symptoms. He wouldn't put his head down to graze, wouldn't go on the bit, and wouldn't do a carrot stretch. We had the vet out and he was diagnosed with silicosis. 

I definitely saw that lots of people were asking what silicosis is and what it's caused by, whoops. Five years later, here is some info: 

- it usually only affects horses along the central California coast

- it's caused by silica, which is in the soil and small enough to get deep into the lungs/body

- most of the cases attack the lungs, causing breathing problems

- Sunny has the rarer kind of silicosis that attacks the bones of the neck

- they have a treatment for the kind of silicosis that Sunny has, so he received that and was able to come off the previcox he went on when he started showing symptoms 

He's really adorable

For many years, he still struggled to go on the bit and seemed protective over his neck. My mom was always a bit nervous because his balance seemed off (I never felt this). But he was a happy, healthy enough pony who could absolutely do his job of going on the trails and being a very cute pasture puff. 

During the pandemic, my mom stopped riding. I haven't really processed it yet, but she is not interested in riding anymore. I'm still hoping that she might change her mind, but I'm not pressuring her. She does still love him and she loves seeing me work with him, which I started doing in August last year. It was part of my plan to see how having a second horse would feel to me. 

He's been such a fun horse to bring along and has actually taught me a lot! TC and I have been partners for so long and he has such a fun, confident personality. Being with TC gives me the feeling of having a conversation full of inside jokes with a really good friend. Riding him is like being in complete harmony with a horse, he gives me his entire self, both body and mind. I can literally imagine what I want him to do and he just does it (I know how insane that sounds, trust me). 

Sweet pony

The pony though, he's a more complicated, quirky type mentally and that has him really blocked off from me. He feels like talking to a brick wall a lot of the time and riding him, there's no connection to his mind. His primary emotions seemed to be grumpiness, disassociation, and perking up in the most adorable way if there are cookies around. 

I've slowly broken open his crusty shell though. Between training him using only positive reinforcement, implementing changes based on Dr Susan Fay's work, and riding him in a way that makes his body feel good, he has really changed. 

A few weeks ago, he was... silly. It really caught me off guard because he's always been SO serious with his work. But he bit a cavalletti block, which doesn't sound like much in writing, but he had this mischievous look on his face like he knew I didn't want him to eat my blocks. A few days later, I was talking to my mom about him while I was petting his forelock and he started yawning over and over again. My mom said "I don't think I've ever seen him yawn before" and ever since, he's yawned a ton. Then later that day, he was playing with the dog like TC does, sniffing her legs and wiggling his nose on her butt. 

Another silly moment, he has never
really bitten my whip before

Over the weekend for the first time, he very clearly gave me the feeling that he needed a turnout, so I turned him out. TC is really good at asking for turnouts in a kind and safe manor (he squeals and shakes his head at me), but the pony has been completely silent until he explodes. This was the first time he gave me the feeling that he needed a turnout and so I gave it to him and he ran and ran. 

I sat down in the middle of the arena to change the subject and he immediately drew into me, at first trotting around me snorting and then coming up and standing with me. We then actually played at liberty, the first time he's offered that with no clicker (I forgot it, oops)! Then he came in and stood under my arm getting pets while he licked, chewed, and yawned. 

He's never let me stand like this with
him, also lol my photo taking skills,
why Megan

I don't really know what my plan is with him, I think it's okay not to have one. I'm really enjoying solving this puzzle and improving his body and mind. He turned 17 years old yesterday and he seems really happy and confident. 

My timeline for my new horse is unknown due to a number of reasons, but I guess I'm hoping that I can get him going really well so that I can confidently hand him off to my niece in a few years and have him be happy and healthy so he can give her a lot of fun firsts. 

Mostly I'm just having fun with him! 

Mounted Archery!

As you know, I was supposed to take TC to this clinic and he would have LOVED it. But he hadn't been cleared to ride until after the clinic and he doesn't yet have his stitches out actually. I'll post an update on him next week!

Luckily this is one of the many reasons why I'm glad I have the pony going right now: he got to step up to be my ride for this clinic. 

I expected the pony to be... a little less into it than TC. I wasn't sure if that would mean that I was more likely to fall off or less likely. Luckily though, I had my neck strap that I'd bought in Kentucky and I was really excited to work on convincing myself it was there in times of trouble. Fortunately/unfortunately, I didn't need to use it! 

Ready to rock and roll

Saturday Morning

We began on Saturday morning without the horses. I opted to not bring Sunny over before the clinic given that it was just across town and we had an hour for lunch. This was definitely the right option because I have never shot a bow and arrow before and it would have been hard to focus on the task at hand if I was worrying that Sunny was watching me and deciding that I was completely off my rocker. 

There was a lot of safety talk in the beginning, which made me happy. I'm glad to say that no one shot at anyone and no one got hurt! We talked about how to use the bow and how to load an arrow. That was a surprising amount of information. Once we were comfortable loading an arrow standing still, we then practiced loading an arrow while walking. The loading part has to be super fast and you need to do it without having to think about it, because you've got to focus on your horse and on the target. It was tough to load it properly without moving, but the more we did it, the easier it got. 

We finally started shooting and I was immediately bad at it. I'm not particularly coordinated off of a horse and it's kind of weird! They call it intuitive archery for a reason and apparently I do not have much natural intuition for archery. Soon though, we all got pretty good at it and I managed to start hitting the targets pretty consistently standing still. 

Then, we had our world rocked as we started to walk and shoot. Just like loading the arrows while walking, this added some difficulty and I missed some targets. I think it was about then that I realized that mounted archery was going to be really hard, even if I could shoot a bow and arrow. 

Quivers on day 2!

Saturday Afternoon 

Our lunch break gave me the perfect amount of time to drive to the ranch and grab Sunny. 

I decided to take it VERY slow. The pony is a very good pony, but occasionally in the past he's decided he's HAD IT with my antics (I do weird shit with my horses, I don't blame him for questioning me lol) and things get bad quickly. My primary goal was to not set us back in how well he's doing these days. 

We started out by warming up and I opted to do so on the ground. I led Sunny around the arena, let him look at everything (the targets, barrels, the cones/poles for the lane), and clicked for curiosity. Then, we stood while our instructor walked by with arrows and he got clicks and treats for watching her. After that, I got some arrows and he got a lot of clicks and treats for putting up with me making noise with them all over his body. 

It was about this time that I realized that we weren't going to have any problems. Sunny thought this was the BEST GAME EVER. All he had to do was find arrows and he'd get clicks and treats. For the rest of the weekend, he checked in with anyone who had arrows and got a lot of attention and treats for that, which he thought was amazing. I think he cuddled with everyone at the clinic. 

Super stoked!

I got on and we repeated the process and aside from the pony HATING all the horses at the clinic (as per usual for him), Sunny had an amazing time. 

Soon, it was time to actually fire the arrows at the targets. By this point, I was pretty confident in the pony. Clicker training for the WIN always. And sure enough, the sound that the arrow made as it fired and the sound that it made when it hit the target didn't phase him one bit. He just put his eyes on our instructor with the arrows at the end and he marched right towards her while I fumbled with my bow. 

It is WAY harder to shoot on a horse, wow! But I did end up hitting one of the targets before we were done. 

Upon getting home, by the way, TC was BESIDE HIMSELF that Sunny had gone in his trailer to go do something fun (since his trailer always means fun to him). He shook his head a bunch and cantered around enough where I had to go get him from his pasture and put him in the cross ties, where he proceeded to throw a fit, pawing and threatening to rear. I did get on him and ride him down the road to make him feel better, but then back in his pasture he galloped away from me. So he got an early dinner and I scrambled off the property because he always behaves worse when I'm around. TC! Really?!

Happy pony with his arrows, unhappy
gray horse not realizing what he's missing

Sunday Morning

We began Sunday in the same way we did Saturday, sans horse. We reviewed what we learned the day before and then spoke about equipment. On the first day, we didn't use quivers, we just held arrows as we rode and were handed more when we were finished shooting. This time, we got to talk about the different types of quivers. I decided that I liked a hip/thigh quiver and got to try one on. 

I wrote down the bow that I liked and the quiver. They aren't the cheapest you can get, but I did some quick math and the bow, the quiver, some arrows, and a glove for my hand that I kept slicing up ended up coming out to about as much as I'd spend on a dressage show. So I figured that I'd treat myself and get the equipment I wanted so that I could have another fun hobby to do with TC (and a potential new sport to compete in if I decide to continue not doing dressage shows). 

When we had our bows and our arrows in a quiver, we learned how to take the arrows out of the quiver quickly and load them to shoot. That was WAY harder than our instructor made it look. Once we were old hands at that, we learned to do back shots and front shots on barrels. There is a specific way to weight your body so that you can still shoot accurately without flinging yourself off your horse. 

Ready for day 2!

Sunday Afternoon

The weather wasn't great on Sunday, it was cold and windy, so Sunny was a bit more on edge. I decided to not push it with him and to just find a really good note to end on. He ended up settling pretty well despite being a bit more grumpy about the fact that there were still other horses around him. 

We started with the same exercise we did the day before, walking down in a line, all shooting at the targets, but this time we all had our quivers on. It took a little bit of time to get the horses used to the quivers, and you had to be careful because the quiver could tilt if it wasn't tight enough and bop the horse on the butt. Pulling arrows out of quivers is trickier than just holding them in your hand, so we got to practice that. I actually got pretty decent and was able to shoot two arrows per line rather than just one. 

Next, we shifted the targets and did some front shots. This was super fun and Sunny agreed because it meant that we got to go ALONE down the line. Front shots mean you shoot kind of diagonally over the horse's shoulder to the front, so we had to be careful not to have horses too close because you could accidentally shoot someone in front of you. 

I finally got a really good go and decided to be done there. There was going to be an option to trot or even canter while shooting and that sounded really fun! But I'd already decided I was going to buy archery equipment and get myself some targets, so there was time to do that at home when the weather was better and when both of my horses know that they're now archery horses. No reason to push it on the second ever day of doing archery from Sunny's back. 

Back at the ranch, my brother, SIL, and niece were there to pick up their car from their weekend adventure. My niece positively screamed when I drove in and she came running up to the truck yelling at me about her "Sunny Horse," which she calls him. She'd been cleaning my tack for me (omg so nice of her! She dragged my brother to the barn and showed him where all the stuff was and asked to clean TC's bridle for me). She helped me unload her Sunny Horse and put him away, give him cookies, cleaned the trailer, and unloaded the tack room. So as you can tell, the indoctrination is going well. 

Such a good pony!

While I'm super bummed that TC couldn't do the clinic with me, I'm so glad I went! It was so much fun to learn a new skill and introduce Sunny to something fun. He was such a good boy and it gave me so much joy to see him having a good time with something brand new to him. The clicker training has really made him come out of his shell and be a lot more confident in himself, which has meant that we have more fun together because I know I can throw more stuff at him without him getting emotional. I have some theories on that emotional side of him that I have seen, but I'll post about that later, I find him really interesting to work with! 

I really can't wait to introduce this stuff to TC, I think he'll have a blast! There's a local club opening up just across town too, so we'll definitely join and go play on their range sometime. I'm already plotting where to put some targets at the ranch though... 

Free Jumping the Pony

The pony has been feeling great lately! Between the bitless bridle and clicker training, he really feels good. Over the winter with his anxiety spiking and him dumping me a bit, I was kind of getting done with trying to do anything with him. My priority for him right now is to use him as a stand-in for my future second horse and to have something going so that if a friend comes to ride with me, we can go into the hills together. But he's doing much better now! 

He's a really good trail pony

We kind of got into this odd little routine in our work where he'd be super lazy for a bit and then he'd wake up and immediately get anxious. Like his body needed some time to loosen up but then his brain couldn't handle being loose/forward/whatever? I don't know what was going on. When that would happen, after about fifteen minutes, I'd spend about five minutes having him do something basic (like turns on the forehand or something easy) and then we'd be done with the ride. 

Over the last few weeks though, he's been having this really pleasant time in between the laziness and the anxiety where he'd feel really damn good. But he'd still worry, so we'd end with some basic stuff and be done. Last week though, we had a really good ride where instead of worrying, he just got very ON. There was a confidence about the energy and looseness that hadn't been there before. I had to kind of talk myself into doing more given that every time he's felt like this, I've either fallen off or come close to it (not like he's far from the ground lol but he's quick!). But I was feeling really good about my ability to breathe and visualize him staying with me and he did. 

We saw a snake recently!

Last week, I decided to longe him and see if he wanted to do a little bit of jumping. I turned him loose in the ring while I put up the world's tiniest cross rail. Normally I don't work with him at liberty because he thinks that eating leaves is way more interesting than anything I want to do with him. But this time he was super into hanging out with me! 

He immediately walked over the jump and got clicks for that, then turned around and did it again for more clicks. I wanted him to warm up for real though, so I sent him around the arena a few times before actually pointing him at the jump.

He warmed up fairly quickly and got clicks for moving forward and releasing his under neck. Once he was warmed up, I sent him over the jump and he happily hunted it down for a click. We did that several times each way and he was so game that I decided to put the jump up to the second tiniest cross rail that has ever existed. 

I love these trails, it rained this weekend
so they are not usable for a bit

He did jump that one a few times, but I noticed that his jumping arc was starting to change. He'd fling himself over it and then land heavily, tossing his head. I can't adequately explain how tiny this jump is. We have those white cavalletti blocks and I made a crossrail out of them with them on their side (not standing up). The poles are actually pretty crappy (going to replace those) so they were sagging a bit. It was SO small. He was giving it more effort than required and I think it was because the actual apex of his jump was well after the jump. He was cutting down right after it too. 

One too many hard landings and he was super over it. He galloped by it kicking out at the jump, then started to spin hard away from it. 

Now, I don't care about jumping this horse. It'd be convenient to be able to jump tiny cross rails like I did last summer on him so that I could practice what I'm learning in my jumping lessons in between. But I also feel more confident jumping now so I don't think I necessarily need that. I've tried my best to emphasize to the pony that he is no longer expected to do anything. He is on an R+ ONLY training plan. Good things get rewarded and bad things get ignored. 

So instead of pushing the issue, I put the jump down to poles and had him end on a good note trotting over the poles. It definitely got me thinking about the jumping issue though. 

And a deer!

I'd like to try to clicker train him to jump a bit softer. He seems super into the jumps until he lands hard and then he's not as excited about it. I'm curious as to whether I could teach him to jump in a better way that has him rocking back and jumping rather than just flinging himself over his shoulder to do it. If I could teach him to land softer, would he enjoy jumping more?

So the plan is to have him jump at liberty once a week and to shape him with clicker training. I'm going to start with canter poles and slowly build him up into the world's tiniest grid with the world's tiniest cross rails. 

We'll stick with the R+ only training so if he decides that he'd rather not jump, oh well, we will stop. But I figure it'd be a fun project for me given that I'll probably want to free jump my next horse a bit and shape the way he jumps. Kate did that a ton with Flounder and I think that's a huge part of why I love riding him so much. 

Always game for trails

As much fun as I'm having with the pony, it's definitely showing me that I really want another horse with TC's personality. The pony is a bit on the quirky side personality-wise. He's kind of hot and cold. Super into what I'm doing and then not that interested. Standing super toned staring at me aggressively with his happy pony eyes and then totally ignoring me. 

I don't know how much of that is nature vs nurture, but I appreciate TC's constant happy-go-lucky attitude and how personable he is. The pony has pretty good conformation, like I think in his youth and mine, I could have done something pretty spectacular with him. Whereas TC's conformation makes him more challenging to ride. But he's always super game, which I really appreciate. 

I still love the pony, I just think that I'll be after a Flounder/TC type for my next horse! 

Bitless Experimentation

So, I've been taking my jumping lessons with Kate every week for a while now and they're going really well! I really ought to do a jumping lesson recap once a week because I'm learning so much and Flounder is the cutest, but if you haven't noticed, I'm incredibly busy. You probably have noticed given that 1) I haven't posted as much as I usually do, 2) I don't think I've even looked at comments in weeks, and 3) if you've messaged me, I've probably ignored you, felt guilty about it, promised myself I'll message you back, and then repeated that cycle indefinitely. I'll get around to the jumping lessons, I promise!

He's the best trail pony

Anyway, some of Kate's horses are going in bitless bridles now and I've been super curious about trying to go bitless at some point, especially with the pony. 

I don't really need the pony to go in a bit, he's not really going to be a dressage pony and I think you can do working equitation in a bitless bridle. He's always been a bit funny in the contact too. 

I'm also big into experimenting right now and until TC stops flinging himself joyfully at butterflies, I feel more comfortable riding him in a bit. We'll get there... Eventually. He has mostly stopped flinging himself at bird shadows at least. 

He looks cute in it I think!

I assume the pony has had some kind of bitless bridle before, but I chose to have the tiniest bit of leverage by using TC's flower hackamore. I figured I could always emergency dismount if things got out of hand (I mean, he's small and typically doesn't get that far away from the ground) but I also wanted to avoid that if possible given how many times I've had to text my SO saying "I fell off the pony again" this year. 

I was right, he actually took to it really well! 

And it's clear that some of his anxiety is definitely about the bit/connection/something for him!

Love these trails

See, it's been a bit funny getting to know him. At first I kind of met him on his own level and then when I started changing things, he was like "ehhh no, I built up all these barriers for a reason" so we had some tough times. He's definitely been better the last month or two after I introduced clicker training, but he's still been kind of anxious. 

Like, he stopped exploding so much and was more with me, but he seemed nervous about it. And he'd always hit this wall about 20 minutes into work where he was super done, he'd get a bit rigid and nervous about anything I was doing. So I kept our rides to 20 minutes and even added some longeing in afterwards. I dunno, I don't really care how much work he does. I'm still just using him as horse #2 to make sure that I can commit to having two horses. 

Anyways, when I put the bitless bridle on him, he still got a little anxious, but it was way easier to calm him back down (I still need to write about Dr Susan Fay's book but it's been really helpful with him!). He hit the 20 minute mark and I could feel the rigidity, but I sat with him for a moment and did some pillar work and then he was able to keep working for another 5 minutes (I didn't push it), which was huge! 

He's in a mylar comfort snaffle, not like he was in
a nasty bit or anything

I'm going to see how he likes it for a little while. My next step is to either book a 1:1 with Celeste (but like, no offense to the pony, I'd rather use that money for TC) or to give him some prevocox for a week and see if there's any response. He turns 17 this year so there could be some pain management that needs to happen for him, which is totally fine. But he's also a super hardy breed soooo we'll see. 

Or maybe it's just that the connection makes him anxious! That's what I'm going to run with and we'll just see. 

A Safe Horse is Quiet

...but quiet horses aren't safe.

The pony is being interesting right now. I decided to longe him for a bit after I rediscovered some good sized holes in his training. I've only really longed him with kids on him or to let him run around to buck.

He stared at my pivo and I thought it was so cute!

I haven't been cantering him lately because at his last acupuncture appointment, his neck was all screwed up. I think the trail ride + the clinic we went to the week after in January really screwed him up unfortunately. In both situations, his spinal integrity was compromised and I think that caused his neck to flare up. 

He got a light week and acupuncture and was feeling much better, but I decided to basically start over with the work we've been doing. Lots of abduction work at the walk and trot. I've also started all his rides with Celeste's three pillars on the ground and that's been HUGE to help him turn off his underneck. 

He's all about the clicker training

He's been WAY better since then, but I haven't been pushing it. 

On the longe, the issues he's long had undersaddle were present. Namely, he will give me the bare bare bare minimum response to my aids, so I make them a little louder, a little louder, a little louder... until he overreacts to them. 

Kate and I were talking about it and she said "a safe horse is quiet but quiet horses are never safe" and I think this is totally the pony. He's so safe and so quiet... until he's not. He's amazing for my niece because he ignores all her silly stuff, he stands stock still when she's near him, he quietly plods along as she puts her arms out and cheerfully screeches (her new thing is to say "aunt mimi trot" over and over again with each syllable being a beat of the trot). I mean, TC is not like that. TC would take in her joy and put it right back out toward her and probably accidentally step on her or launch her. 

But I feel 1000% safer on TC. It's not that TC is quieter, he is not. It's that he's right there with me every step of the way. He tells me when things are up that are suspicious, which almost always leads me to sing "don't be suspicious, don't be suspicious" at him as he snorts at stuff or spooks. He tells me when he needs to buck and run. He tells me when he's having a tough time with what I'm asking. He's very communicative and I respect his communication and do my best to give him what he's asking for. Unless what he's asking for is to pounce on squirrel balls (two squirrels, not sure if it's the same two or not, frequently roll into the arena on top of each other in front of us, this has caused hilarious pouncing akin to bird-shadow-pouncing as you can imagine), in which case, I am the fun police. 

Abduction work

The pony is quiet. Eerily quiet. He does not communicate with me. He yields to pressure, that's all I can really say about our communication. 

I really want him to be a bit more in tune with me, so starting on the ground with clicker training seemed like the best way to do that. He took to the clicker training very quickly (he loves food!), but was still very reluctant to trial behaviors. Over the next few weeks though, he got more and more comfortable, so I was able to get him to respond really well to voice commands for longeing. I figured either way, this will help when I'm longeing my niece on him. But it was also helpful in figuring out some of his issues. 

The main issues I've found with him that I wanted to address were this: 

- He is very reluctant to move forward for the first 10-15 minutes of work

- Once he's gotten through that though, then he's almost too sensitive/forward/reactive

- His trot to canter transitions are very difficult for him, he launches into the air to get them about 35% of the time

Such a good boy! There's definitely some good
training in there, I think the silicosis made him a bit
protective of his body

With the longeing, I was able to allow him to warm up slower without harassing him so much (we added pillar work for the first 5 minutes, which seemed to help him loosen up). This meant that he was less reactive when he did go forward, and I'm sure the clicker helped with that. 

Because I wasn't on him, when he'd launch into canter, he'd just canter on. I think undersaddle he thinks he might get told that he's a naughty pony, so a lot of the time a single launch will turn into panic. I was able to be completely unreactive, so he stopped panicking so much about the transitions. 

And in turn, the transitions got better! In our last longeing session, he didn't explode once into canter, just quietly picked it up. 

Slowly getting his shape back to normal

I'm still working through stuff with him, but he's starting to be more in tune with me and communicative. He has become more quietly observant about things happening around him. My cousin came by to pick something up and Sunny kept an eye on him while we were riding. Before, I feel like he would have ignored what was going on until it became too much for him to deal with, and then an explosion would have been imminent. He's also pointed out cars, squirrels, and a giant white egret that landed next to the arena. Just observing, no reactions. 

As of this post, I've started riding him again, mostly just at the walk and trot doing abduction work and transitions with the clicker. Last time, I hopped off of him and put him on the longe and he was SO good and so forward. I think we'll do that routine for a little bit until he's stronger/more comfortable, then we'll try cantering undersaddle again. 

I'm glad I've got a bit of a project, even though I'm bummed that we had such a big setback in January. I was looking through photos the other day and it made me sad that I was actually jumping him this last summer and now I'm not even cantering him undersaddle, but that sometimes happens. We have set backs and then we come back from them. TC and I were doing Third level two years ago and now I am stoked to get a canter to walk transition. In both horses' cases, these set backs will result in a much better future, even though it can feel annoying at times!