Initial Trim & Starting Rehab

TC doesn't see my new forced dynamic duo farrier x vet until the 18th, but my farrier was kind enough to offer to come out on yesterday to at least trim and reset his front shoes further back to get him started/alleviate some of the discomfort. 

I don't go to a lot of TC's farrier appointments because he's a clown and thinks that I'm there to be his audience and he ignores his task (being good for the farrier) in order to focus on being entertaining to me (I am not entertained). He was super rude and she told me that he's normally very good for her. I apologized. 

But we did get the fronts done and while my farrier has some reservations about how drastic the vet wants his trim to be, I was super happy with the changes she made. It was a very good start and his feet look much more balanced! 

I know everyone is just here for the
feet pics

I don't have a before handy, but I'll
find one eventually, these are the afters

She did trim off a bit of his toe where the vet had said he had too much sole, then she set the shoes much further back, with the toe of the shoe back to his white line. She left the rolled toe rather than switching to a rocker toe, and she wanted to keep his pads on since she felt like he could use the extra support since we were taking off more sole. I'm honestly fine with him staying in pads, it's a lot easier to deal with over winter with our clay-like soil! 

TC seemed very happy with the changes, the moment the trim was done (before the shoes were put back on), he yawned three separate times. It's taken a long time for me to get TC to yawn in general, since his goal in life is to entertain people and not to focus on his own body. But now he's much happier expressing himself (after years of bodywork trying to fix his issues). Still, I think it's unusual during a farrier appointment to yawn. 

When she set the shoes back, he also yawned a few more times. I also obsessively watched the way he was standing and could absolutely convince myself he was standing better on his front feet. 

Again I don't have a before handy, but he used to
stand a lot more like an elephant on a ball

She headed out and I put TC back for a bit to eat lunch (Riot, my dad's now retired horse, needs antihistamines at lunch, so all the other horses get the tiniest bit of grain at lunch) and chill. I stared at him for about an hour just in his paddock while doing some barn chores. Again, I could convince myself he was standing better and that his shoulders were sitting better, but I'm really grasping at straws here. 

I got him out later and he was really good to groom. For years now, but especially in the last couple of years, TC has always twisted around and held his right hind leg (usually, sometimes also his left) up to try to get me to scratch his butt/leg/belly. I've never been able to quite get the spot he is asking for, and after doing a lot of reading, I had figured that he had sciatica or something similar. He shows some nerve stuff in both front (biting at his shoulders and legs) and hind (the aforementioned leg lifting). 

But he didn't give me any leg lifts! That's not *entirely* unusual, we do have good days where he doesn't do it, but it was a straw I was willing to snatch for my straw collection. 

He's such a ham

I took him out to the arena and he seemed fine walking on the hard ground, I couldn't remember exactly how he had walked the day before but I could convince myself it was better. In the arena we did our typical routine - I let him loose to roll, then I put the halter back on and we do his rehab. 

He yawned a bunch when he got up from rolling (unusual), then walked over to the longe whip and was wobbling his nose on it. Previously, his ground work included some liberty work, where I'd grab the whip and we'd do some basic exercises, mostly transitions but sometimes some of his tricks, which include a shockingly decent piaffe at liberty and his version of passage (which he only does in one direction and it's kinda bad, but I wouldn't tell him that). Anyway, it was cute that he went over to the longe whip, but we're doing the vet's boring rehab plan, sorry TC. 

The rehab is kind of a combination of some of the thoracic sling work that I'd done previously combined with the work I'd been doing all year. So we've been doing about 20 minutes in the arena (I'll work up to more now that his feet are a bit better) of just walking and some exercises:

- Figure-8 Bars (one of Jec's 55 corrective exercises)

- Straddle pole (another one of Jec's)

- Rein back over pole (Jec's)

- Reining back with neck down

- Walking with neck down

He wants us to also do some lateral work, but I'm uncertain I want to do that just yet, he has historically used the lateral work to get away from really moving through his back/body. It's just too easy for him to fold his noodly friesian neck in hand. Undersaddle I can at least keep him straighter. 

Endless rehab for this guy

Generally, I'm feeling WAY better. I'm a little concerned that my farrier has a little bit of a disagreement with the vet, but I'm also aware that they didn't speak, so there's a very good chance that what I relayed to her sounded much more drastic than it actually was. I figure that we'll see what my local vet thinks next Thursday, and then I'll send the final x-rays to my lameness vet and see what he thinks. I'm okay with it taking a little bit of time, especially with how TC responded to the trim yesterday. 

I don't think I'm going to be happy with getting him 80% of the way there by next year, but if we need to take things a tiny bit slower in the beginning to make sure that we aren't doing too much, I'm okay with that. I just want him to feel better!

Rebuilding

I mentioned a post or two ago that it was going to take a full year for TC to get back to schooling Third level under this new framework and I am counting on it (or trying to). Some days a year sounds like so much time given how amazing he feels, and other days are like the ride I had on Friday. 

Friday he felt so good in the canter. It's like he woke up a week ago and decided that cantering was great again and that we could do it forever. This from a horse who balked, especially to the left, felt like a massive win. 

Look at this fancy guy

Aaaand predictably, I got greedy. His canter just felt so damn rideable and soft and supple and forward that I put him across the diagonal and asked for a change. He gave it to me and it was straight and soft and probably the best quality change he'd ever done. 

I shouldn't have asked him to do it in the first place, and I certainly shouldn't have asked for several more after that, which slowly got worse and worse as I got more desperate to do the change instead of focusing on the quality of the gaits and realizing that what had made the first change so good was gone. Soon, we were back to our old habits and he balked in the canter once. That was a huge wakeup call and I backed way off and we ended on a great note getting the quality of canter back. But that day, which had started out so amazing, ended up... maybe not setting us back, but certainly not moving us forward. 

He's so coiled under himself

It got me thinking... what does rebuilding look like. Without a plan in place, I know that I will have more days like this and will end up delaying our rebuilding phase and no one wants that. 

I think rebuilding looks like always ending well before I think I should movement-wise. If I'd just taken that first change, been like OMG WOW and stopped asking after that, I think it would have been a much more positive experience. But a switch flipped in my head. That switch needs to be addressed. TC can't revert to old habits, but I can't either for this to work. And I think he's way more on board with the program than I am at this point. Human brains are the worrrrrst. 

It'll also take lots of days where I don't push forward at all. Being conservative in this department means that TC can let me know when he's ready for more instead of me always making that decision and risking a horse who gets sour and stops trusting me. Take the fancy gaits I got the other day, TC was the one who wanted to do those, not me, I was just along for the ride. I think I need to realize that TC wants to do the fun stuff too, it's not just me who wants to do changes and extensions and lateral work. He finds that stuff fun! If he isn't offering, it's probably because he can't do it in the posture he's in. At least, that's probably a good framework for me to focus on for now. 

I still can't believe this is my horse

I think I need to get it out of my head that TC is anything but a Training level horse right now. I keep thinking of him as a Third level horse, or as a future FEI horse (given those gaits he gave me, if I can develop those, the FEI levels won't be an issue for this horse), but I need to rebuild his strength in all the levels. That means not messing around with flying changes or extensions when he feels good, but instead nailing our simple changes through the trot and our lengthenings. It'll be a pain but it's honestly going to result in us getting where I want us to be faster than if I approach it as him being a Third level horse. 

So it's a bummer to ignore the fact that just year and a half ago, he was debuting at Third level with a 70%, but that's what needs to be done for the sake of this horse. To be able to not only go back to Third with scores like that, but to (hopefully) score better and be able to move beyond that level. And maybe to be able to watch the video without cringing. 

Such a good boy

I'm away right now but will be back to riding on Thursday (and then stopping again for a few days to start my new job, why is life in the way of me riding this amazing horse?!). I think if I make these mental changes, I'll be able to stay the course pretty easily. And on days I get impatient, I'll just go on a trail ride and try to remember that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. 

I Need a Seatbelt

I had what I think is probably the best ride of my life the other day on TC and it makes me so excited for the future. 

We started with our normal abduction exercises. He is still kind of struggling with his spinal integrity while tracking left, especially in the walk and early in the trot work. Getting him to put a leg at each corner and letting him warm up like that has been super helpful to keeping him in that state of spinal integrity for the rest of the ride. 

In our warm up, we stay in a little bit of a stretching, relaxed frame. I want to really make sure that he’s moving properly, reaching for contact, and is lifting through his core and pectorals. 

Really, TC?

There's so much sitting here, I'm so impressed

From there, I started our rein back exercise, where we take this correct posture and ask him to shift his weight back, then we hold that weight shift as much as possible into the walk from the rein back, then eventually the trot from the rein back, and the canter. 

It’d been a while since I’d done it because he had regressed a little with his balking a week or two ago. I thought that maybe asking for that much collection had sent us backwards. He needs to learn how to do everything from the correct posture and this is proving to be challenging for me as I am so used to feeling him in his incorrect posture. 

But he came out raring to go and ready to sit right down and do his work with that exercise. We had no balking incidents at all! 

If my body language makes you think I'm afraid of
him, that's true

Dude

I've never felt gaits like this out of him. His walk is like a wild cat's prowl, his trot is incredibly elevated in front, and his canter... wow. I had no idea these gaits were in there. He's always been a fairly correct mover and certainly a big mover, but he hasn't had too much of a wow factor. He primarily scores 7 on gaits and I saw that dip in 2020 where he was scoring more like 6.5. These gaits are more like what I'd expect to score in the 8 to 9 range. If I don't shut them down. 

That was a massive challenge that I mostly failed at in this ride. He feels incredible like this but it is completely unnerving. I had to keep talking to myself and to him the entire ride to get myself to let go and let him move. I feel bad that he's feeling so amazing and I'm up there like "that's great you're feeling good! Now take it down several hundred notches so I can ride it" so I need to get my shit together. 

There is so much more to do before these gaits become his norm. I obviously need to grow a pair and ride the horse forward and push my hands at him more often than not. He needs to gain strength and confidence in his body. All of that is going to take time. 

So much lift through his shoulder, damn

Who even is this horse?

What I loved the most about this ride was the amount of pure joy that both TC and I were feeling. He was so ecstatic to do his work and eagerly said YES I WILL whenever I asked him to do something else. I always carry a whip and I'll use it as an extension of my leg if I need to ask him to move his haunches over behind his shoulders, but once he was in this state of mind, I could have dropped it. I've ditched the spurs, on a horse who was broke to ride and then the next day ridden in spurs because he was so dead to the aids. I've never felt him like this. 

To be able to get gaits like those out of a horse without putting a ton of pressure on him, without chasing him into my hand or doing a ton of transitions to get him sharp off my aids, without spurs or a flash noseband. To basically just show him how he could use his body in a way that feels good to him and then... get out of his way and let him. I dunno, it was pretty freaking magical.

I'm so excited

He's a totally different horse

It really makes me think though... how many horses are actually spectacular movers but we don't know it because their shoulders are so messed up? If we could take the time to build up their thoracic slings for real (and I'll talk about that more later too since I think we get told that certain movements/pieces of equipment/training techniques work in a certain way when they don't), would we need to buy such freakishly talented horses for dressage? Or could we take a five thousand dollar friesian cross out of a pasture and just release his shoulders and build the proper muscle and get ourselves a crazy good mover?

Definitely makes me think about my next horse... I had a nice long list in mind for what I wanted because while I want this next horse to be a nice all around horse, I really want something I can still do the upper levels of dressage on just in case (in case the horse is injured and can only do dressage or if either of us don't want to jump). But now I'm kind of thinking that with the right training and bodywork, pretty much any horse with three okay gaits can be a spectacular mover. Or at least, good enough for the mid to upper levels of dressage. 

I try not to dwell though. At the end of the day, I'm so unbelievably excited about MY horse who is doing such great work right now. I can't wait for these to be his gaits all the time!

Trusting the Process

I'm ecstatic to say that going back to TC's walk/trot abduction work fixed his balking problem and I've got my horse back better than ever! I'm so excited to be able to just trust the process and to have people in my corner who are on a similar journey to give me confidence when we back track. 

I had an amazing ride on TC on Friday, then he got Saturday off because my niece's birthday party was going on. Then Sunday, we had probably the best ride of our entire career together. 

As an aside, I'd like to brag and say that I'm really good at indoctrinating children into riding horses despite not really being a kid person. There were four kids there including my niece and all got to ride Sunny. None of them wanted to get off the pony, one of them actually leaned away from my brother as he went to grab him off the pony and then he was grabbing at the saddle trying to get back on. You love to see it. 

LOOK AT THIS HORSE

Back to TC, who is not suitable for children's birthday parties only because of his complete and utter enthusiasm for life which, when combined with his size, is akin to a bull in a china shop. He got to watch from afar and got a few cookies. 

But the rides, wow. I am so impressed by the work that we are doing right now. He is absolutely stepping up to the plate and is the most uphill and collected I've ever felt him be. He's insanely powerful, this horse, I can't believe it. 

Is it mildly unnerving? Absolutely. But I've kind of tricked my brain by telling myself to imagine that I'm riding Rico at the Grand Prix. If a Grand Prix horse felt the way TC felt, especially Rico, I'd be excited, not scared! That helped a ton on Sunday and I was actually able to sit down and ride the horse rather than kind of sit up there while my brain is like SHUT IT DOWN, YOUR BLOCKS AREN'T BIG ENOUGH FOR THIS SHIT. 

It's still really hard to convince my brain to ride the horse though, so I'm mostly working on that while putting TC through the exercises we've been assigned. 

The moment your horse sees a bird and abandons
his task to pounce on it

The canter has been improving like crazy recently. I've noticed that as his canter gets better, he canters around in his pasture more. Whether he's feeling better with all the abduction work so he's cantering around in his pasture more so he's feeling more confident cantering undersaddle... or whether he's doing better undersaddle cantering so he's celebrating by cantering more in his pasture... who knows. But either way, the horse is cantering a ton right now. 

For a long time, we could get a half lap around the arena (a bit wider than a short court) to the right and 4-5 strides of canter to the left. Now we are up to a full lap around the arena to the right pretty consistently and on Sunday, he cantered all the way around to the left! 

I want to steadily increase the number of laps of canter we do until he's confident cantering in the new posture for however long he needs to. We are not going to show any time soon, but I still have that 3-3 canter pattern burned into my mind. He needs to do a lot of cantering this year. 

I love the split behind and how uphill he is

The trot is just fabulous. I've started to add in some lateral work occasionally and also some lengthenings. 

The lateral work is shockingly easy now that he's feeling really good. I haven't touched the half passes but everything else feels great. I can shift him into a leg yield or shoulder-in by just shifting my weight. The haunches-in is still a bit tricky but I struggle with that on every horse I ride, so that is likely my issue. 

The lengthenings are terrifying and we haven't even done them for real yet. The ring is too small to do any sort of actual extension so we've just played with some forward and back. He's a powerhouse. How in the world am I going to sit this shit eventually? 

If you're like "Megan, you look like you're in the
fetal position" you'd be correct, his gaits have gotten
really scary lately lol

I'm so over the moon with this work. He is the happiest and most comfortable he's ever been in his work. I took off his flash and the noseband is literally as loose as it will go (I am going to probably get an extender for it or just replace the crank strap to make it even looser just for kicks, I want it positively hanging off of him). He's full of joy and therefore still leaps into the air sometimes, but all kicking at my leg, balking, and general irritation at my aids is completely gone. He tries super hard at everything I ask for, there is not a hint of "no" in this horse anymore. 

Mostly, I'm just excited that I'm able to do it myself. I want to take lessons, and I have access to some amazing instructors through the work, but the pathway is so clear to me right now that I just don't feel the need. 

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

I do want to get another lesson with our main bodyworker clinician because she's going to take some time off to have a baby soon. After that, we'll try to ride with two other clinicians who work closely with her. One is an amazing clicker training trainer who I want to have help me with TC's emotional regulation, basically when he gets himself super amped, there's too much celebration and explosiveness for my preference. The other is a biomechanics expert! She's not a Mary person, but she's very very good.

I think those two trainers, who work alongside the bodyworker clinician, are going to be the key to really getting the most out of my horse. At this point, I feel like if I can get my shit together biomechanically and if I can reel in TC's expressions of joy without diminishing the feeling that goes along with it, this horse is going to be unstoppable. 

Well Lifted

TC and I are still in a bit of a holding pattern. Getting the tracings for the EQ Saddle Science people has proven to be a really tough thing to do for a variety of stupid reasons (mostly on my end). So that will eventually happen and then we'll try that saddle for two weeks and then hopefully all will be well and we'll be back to our regular programming and I'll just be a bit poor. 

In the meantime, I mentioned I've been long lining with the bands and riding him bareback. But this week I was feeling like I wouldn't be a crazy person if I rode him for "real" so I did! I used Rico's awful trail saddle, which is not much more than a bareback pad with stirrups. It makes my back sore and I'm sure does nothing for TC, so I don't like riding in it regularly. But it was fun to just hop on and kind of pretend that things were normal again. 

Lifting through his chest for sure!

Whenever I take a break from clicker training, I always forget how effective it is. So getting on him after really just long lining and clicking for good posture was a TRIP. I've essentially clicker trained myself out of having a rideable horse gaits-wise while simultaneously clicker trained myself out of needing to have a rideable horse because he just knows where to put himself and doesn't need my input to do it. 

I took videos for the first time in a while and it was surprisingly great. Previously, I'd been evaluating them to the point of making myself crazy, so I stopped videoing for a while. I told myself I wouldn't be disappointed if he looked terrible because he's out of shape and I'm out of shape and who even cares anymore. 

Turns out I was actually really pleased with how he both felt and looked! 

Getting a bit of fancy shoulder going on

He just feels... great! He feels confident reaching for the connection, he feels loose through his back, he feels up through his withers, there's not enough good words out there to describe it. The canter to the left was the only time where I felt some of his weird sucking back, but that's fine, it wasn't like the posture was bad, it was just tricky to ride. 

Obviously we are still very much at a Training or First level frame and we are still just trotting and cantering around a bit. I'm not quite sure how to structure the move back toward Third level. I mean, there's absolutely no rush. I put all my goals away this year and am focusing on making progress on some personal goals instead (and also just continuing to recover from the pandemic). 

The left is tough but that's okay

My thoughts are to stick with this work for a month after we get the new saddle to just make sure that nothing is going wrong with the saddle and pack some muscle on him. Some basic lateral and longitudinal suppleness work and transitions. The idea is to not let him go back to his old posture no matter what, so the work needs to be easy for him for a while so that I can reward the crap out of him for holding himself in the correct positioning. 

Then after that month, start to work back in the lateral work, especially the shoulder-in, which should help with the collection. 

At some point I'll do some lessons with... someone. Not sure if I'll try to find someone remotely or locally. I might go ride with some of the trainers I've ridden with who are local and see if me fixing TC's connection will allow them to help me more effectively. Or I might just try to find someone who can catch the connection issue early on. It may end up being a combination, have someone to work on the basics with and then someone who can push us along who may not notice a subtle connection issue starting (which is what I think happened previously). 

This kind of air time is plenty for good changes!

I'm trying not to get too ahead of myself. The EQ Saddle Science saddle is going to be the first one (I guess second if you count the butterfly saddle) on what could potentially be a long, painful saddle finding process. Then it's a long process to bring him back. Even with the right saddle, there's a lot of muscle that needs to be rebuilt and a lot of bad patterns in his body from the last year and a bit. 

At the end of the day, where we are at right now is really exciting and I'm hopeful that we will have a saddle soon(ish) that will allow us to continue the rebuilding process!

TC Gets Poked

To start out December with a bang, on the first, Kate and I held an acupuncture clinic for our horses! My fabulous friend and client runs Topline Vet Therapeutics and I've been dying to have her work on TC, Rico, and Sunny. And we coordinated to get a few horses at Kate's barn. 

It was such a fabulous experience! TC was first and this blog is mostly about him so we'll start there. I'll write about Rico and TC in my next post because that was also fascinating. 

Happy pony waits for acupuncture

I mostly communicated that I wanted TC to feel more comfortable lifting through the base of his neck and his thoracic sling. That's been a huge thing for this horse to overcome throughout his training, so any help on that would be great! 

She started by going over his body and seeing where she found restrictions. It was pretty amazing what she found with not very much information (mostly because I forgot to tell her some things). TC's old weak left stifle showed up in this exam and apparently his right shoulder is not nearly as flexible as his left, which is also not very flexible. The horse is NOT naturally flexible. 

Another place she found slight tightness/pain was in his left lumbar area. She says that most horses, due to riding them, have lumbar pain, so was happy that he only showed it on one side and it was fairly mild. He also was not restricted in the base of his neck like many horses are (especially warmbloods apparently), but WAS restricted in the first three vertebrae. He found it harder to flex those vertebrae to the right, which is exactly what it feels like undersaddle. 

She did some stretches and said that he lifted his back well with the belly lifts and that if I told her I did them twice a day, she'd believe me! I basically never do them though. But I'm glad he's so flexible back there! She also pulled each front leg out and he was a little more resistant on the right side than the left. But that stretch often shows pain in the base of his neck and based on what TC did, she didn't find any pain there (vs that's where Rico had his neck pain). 

TC's diagram

With all of that information, she started by working on him with a massage gun to loosen him up and then began with the needles. TC took it well until she got to the left stifle where he had a CRAZY negative reaction, popping forward in the cross ties and looking a bit shocked that she'd poke him (after he's been getting needles in the rest of his body). That surprised me because he has been super sound on that left stifle for a while now, it was mostly a problem as a five year old and he kind of grew out of it. She was able to go back to it later on and he was fine though, so that's good! But maybe we need to continue our stifle exercises forever even though he's totally sound. 

She mostly worked on his lumbar and his right shoulder though, which he seemed to appreciate. While the other horses (more on them next) relaxed with the acupuncture, TC wouldn't relax because he kept trying to help her out and wanting to be involved. She'd go by his butt and he'd lift his hind leg to see if she'd scratch his butt cheek. She'd go by his neck and he'd turn and stare at her (like he does when I braid him, it's not helpful). He's just ridiculous. 

The plan for TC

She wanted him to have a day off the next day, so I gave him that and took the day off myself. I was itching to find out how he felt, so I got up first thing on Thursday to go see how he was. 

HE. WAS. AMAZING. 

Wow what a freaking difference. First, his bolting has definitely gotten way easier for him and I found that hilarious. He positively dropped to the ground and ran off with me during our first ride. Apparently this is normal for horses! 

Too excited to be feeling so good

But outside the squealing and running away with me, he feels REALLY good. He felt way easier to connect, easier to keep straight, easier to get to lift through his thoracic sling, and easier to steer. I really couldn't believe it. 

It was just easy for him and he definitely felt better. More relaxed but also more powerful, like there wasn't such a blockage in his neck to get the power to connect to the bridle. Since then, I've really felt like I'm able to ride him more up and out than I used to now that his neck isn't so locked. 

I've obsessively looked back through pictures of him over the years and WOW lifting through his thoracic sling has not been his strong point ever. He has definitely struggled with it more this year and that's what's causing me to feel weird about how he's going, but looking back through pictures made me feel better that this is something he's always done, it's just more extreme this year. But the rides that have occurred since the acupuncture visit have definitely been better in that department. We have a long way to go and he may never look as "filled in" in front of the withers as Rico did (Rico still has a ridiculous cervical trapezius in retirement lol), but we can make sure he feels good enough to use the muscles when I set him up well for it. 

Lifting so nicely here!

So with this and the fitness schedule, he's feeling amazing as he's coming back into work. I've implemented a few changes in the way we are going and what our training situation is like. More to come later as he's getting back in shape. 

I'm so happy to have a fabulous acupuncturist now! Hopefully we can bring her out once a month so that we can continue working on TC, it's one of the best decisions I've made this year I think. 

Tomorrow we'll talk about Rico and Sunny! They enjoyed their visit VERY much and showed huge changes too.