Winter Musings

Luckily for us, fire season has been relatively chill. We are at the beginning of October and I've been able to keep TC in work. That's great! But fire season could absolutely pick up and ruin our fall and winter as I rehab TC's lungs. Fingers crossed that won't be the case. But either way, I'm wanting to keep riding through the winter given how things are going. 

But, without a covered arena, I've been trying to figure out what to do about the winter. The ranch will remain livable for TC, he'll have at least his 50 foot paddock off of his stall (12x12) and porch (12x12) and then he'll have the sacrifice pasture (probably another 50 feet out and 50 feet wide) when it's not too muddy. It's mostly how to keep him in work when it's raining. 

TC's paddock, this whole pad is mud free in the
winter!

The arena will hold up to some rain, but it gets sloppy quick and doesn't dry out too quickly. I don't mind riding in slop but not the whole winter. Plus, I don't have the gear to ride WHEN it's raining. I could certainly acquire rain clothes but I dunno, I'm not super interested in riding when it's pouring rain onto me. Plus I'll have just bought a new saddle. 

We are not scheduled to get a ton of rain, but I also don't want to assume that I'll be able to ride all winter and then realize too late that I should have made arrangements. 

These are my current options: 

Find a Haul In Barn

There are covered arenas in the area that I could probably haul into. The pros of this are obviously that TC can stay at home in his giant paddock and when it's not raining, it'll be great. If we end up traveling this winter (unsure if that will happen), it's easy to just take off and let him hang in his pasture with excellent care and a lot of room to roam around. 

The downside is that I'll have to haul to a barn and back to ride and wow doing that when working, that's going to be tough. I'm worried that we'll have a long storm that takes the ranch arena out of commission and I won't be able to make the time to haul him out. 

Move to Kate's Barn

Kate's new barn is great, TC and I have been there a few times and they have a huge covered arena. The paddocks will not be the size of what he has at the ranch, but it'll be just for the winter. The barn is the same distance from my house as the ranch, so that's helpful. My mom also said that she might want to put Sunny over there for a rider in Kate's program (or me if I can keep riding him with my new job) to keep going and for her to ride through the winter so she can get a head start on riding him next year. So that'd be cool to be able to ride together there. 

Downsides, I don't really see any other than having to share a covered arena and having TC in a smaller space. I don't know what spaces are available yet so it's hard to know what that is going to be like. I don't know how small of a paddock I'd be willing to put him in. We'll see! 

No matter what, we lose these trails to the rain
in the winter, boo!

Move to Local Trainer's Barn

Local trainer's barn is only 20 minutes from my house. They have an amazing covered arena and even have hills where we can climb in the winter. That's huge because TC's stifle usually gets iffy over the winter because we can't do any hill work on the trails. There's also local trainer! I could take two lessons a week and we would be so much better off! 

The major downside is that the paddocks are small and there aren't many of them. Most of the horses are in box stalls and turned out for a few hours a day. If we couldn't get a paddock, there's no way I'd put him through that. They do have a gelding pasture but I don't know how muddy those get and if it's just temporary, it seems silly to try to put him in a pasture. 

Buy a Giant Tarp

I've literally thought about investing in an arena tarp for the ranch. One of the barns in the area has had luck with theirs. I haven't looked into this to see how much it would cost or what the logistics would be. But this would be the ideal situation. Tarp the arena during storms and give him a day or two off when it's the worst rain. Then just roll the tarp off the arena to ride in it right after the rain. I've contacted a company for a quote just in case. It'll probably prove to be too expensive and too tedious but it sounds like the best of all worlds to me. 

By the way, covering the arena is not an option with permits and costs and things. I wish! 

Local trainer's arena is soooo nice, such good footing
and mirrors too!

I've ruled out all the other barns in the area just because they either have long waitlists for stalls with paddocks or they don't have good footing in their covered arenas. So we'll see what ends up happening! I need to contact both barns to see what paddocks they have. I'm thinking of moving him just for January and February. It usually doesn't rain here until mid December and the first few rains don't do much to the arena footing so it's no big deal. 

Part of me hopes that we will have a mild winter so I don't have to move him, but most of me hopes to get drenched because we are in a terrible drought. 

Holding It Together

Wednesday's ride was better but still not completely back to normal. TC was quieter in the cross ties, I could legit get my girth tight enough to ride him in what I consider a normal amount of time to tighten it, and he walked quietly down to the arena with all of his feet landing in the correct rhythm and on the ground itself.

He was still a bit on edge riding him, I think he's still adjusting to such a busy training barn. And even busy to describe the arena on Wednesday is laughable. There were four people, two in a lesson at one end, one in a lesson at the other (there wasn't much space in between), and one person riding around the private lesson. Still, it had him a little amped.

Walked through this little stream a few times

I started trotting him around in the ugly carriage trot that he handed me the day before too, and eventually I just cantered him. Around and around we went on the circle until he started to wear himself out a bit.

I had a funny conversation with the other rider riding on her own. She said "he looks so fat and lazy, I didn't realize he would be like this" and I explained that he's normally way quieter than this, that he's been having a rough week with the weather, but that yes, he can be quite buzzy. She told me that it looked like I had really strong abs, which was such a nice compliment (I think). He does take a lot of stabilization and without crossfit this year, I'd have probably already come off of him this winter. It made me feel good (and then bad because I haven't found a crossfit here yet ugh).

He did calm down though and we had some really great work.

His trot in that arena feels especially amazing, he loves the footing I think. I was able to ride him in shoulder-fore each way, working to get him to take more weight with his left hind leg and untwist himself. It was tricky to the right, but we got a really good feeling left. I think Tanya and Tracey (whoever I see first) are going to both think I'm riding him too over the ground. But to be honest, if he's willing to go from buzzy to loose but maybe a little out behind, I don't care how big his trot gets. I can compress it back to normal later.

Tuesday night my coworkers and I went to this really cool
restaurant that you take a trolley down to!

At the canter, after being kind of a tense mess of a horse, he settled into a right lead canter that I just adore. It's so soft and malleable, like I could put him anywhere. It still feels a biiit precarious, where I need to really make sure that I'm riding first from my seat because I can cause it to come crashing down if I don't. But it feels so good! I can add horse to it without losing him mentally it seems like.

The left lead IS getting better. First of all, the shoulder-fore is helping a ton to straighten him out and get him more steerable that way. I feel like I can really ride the outside of him and draw him in with my left thigh. It's definitely not yet the same quality of the canter to the right, as it's even more precarious, but it is getting so much more rideable.

No fucks given about water on the GROUND,
just when it falls from the sky

We actually got to end with some stretchy trot, which was so nice! Given that this has been a hard week for him, getting to feel him take a breath and stretch down was great. Hopefully today he's 100% back to normal but we'll see, the storm may make him really nervous. I'm thinking of bringing a rain sheet out to see if he wants to wear that as I'm wondering if he's afraid of his stall so doesn't want to stay in there when it's raining, he's always quite wet when I come to see him at this barn.

Born in the Long Summer

I always joke that TC is a Game of Thrones character in the winter. Every single winter it's like he's never seen any weather outside of 75+ degrees and sunny. This winter, he has been WAY BETTER than he's ever been. Last winter I was nervous about being nervous. This winter, I'm only nervous about... being stupid. As in, getting on the horse because I think I can sit anything he gives me and then realizing I can't when I hit the dirt. 

Um, my saddle normally comes way further down

Tuesday was one of those days where I worry about being stupid.

On Sunday, he was great! We worked hard, did some changes, and the only silliness was him getting a bit zippy about a horse in turnout galloping around. He's just not yet used to the turnouts being so close to the arena and for the most part, he's totally okay about it, but every now and then he'll kind of shake his head or scoot for a step or two. It's really very manageable and barely registers.

He got Monday off, and we went for a walk between the turnouts. The weather was changing and the horses were all nuts in turnout, so TC thought he might do his walk on his hind legs. I told him that this wasn't a good plan for him (it would involve a lot of backing up, which is harder to do on one's hind legs), and he came back down and relaxed about it. Again, super proud of him. Eliminating these kinds of responses take time, and the first step for him has been to be able to get him back mentally.

So Tuesday I got to him and I could sense that he was on edge. More so than he's been in a long time. He refused to come in the barn, was immediately scared of all the tack trunks (he's normally just very skeptical of the tack trunks). He was kind of snorting, but like... only breathing in.

Once I convinced him to get in the cross ties, he stood stock still on his tip toes, a line under his belly (engaging his abs) and a visible hump in his back. He was kind of wet, so I towel dried him a bit, which he normally doesn't care about. This time he was spooking away from the towel.

Way way way more relaxed on Sunday

I put the saddle on (really, Megan? why even bother?) and I could not get his girth on. I normally start at hole 2 on each side, which is quite loose, then work my way up to hole 4 and 5. I finally managed to get it on by putting it down to hole 1 and he stood there horrified, with a gap under the back of the saddle that is not normally there.

I bridled him and we managed to walk down to the covered arena, his front feet only just making contact with the ground. Once we were inside, I tried tightening his girth, no dice.

So we did ground work, lots of backing up, head shaking, being told not to bite me, and trying to corral him as he flung himself around me at times.


When I finally FINALLY managed to get the girth tightened almost to normal, I thought it might not bee the worst idea to ride him through it. So I went over to the mounting block. There are two kinds of standing still (maybe there are more): the polite kind and the crazy kind. This was the crazy kind. He stood stock still, kind of shivering here and there, but it wasn't cold.

Uh... so I had him walk around the mounting block, moved him away, toward, backwards, forwards. Smacked the saddle, his neck, his butt, shook the reins at him. Reflected that just two days ago I was schooling the flying changes on him, laughed, told him off for yanking me off the mounting block, and repeated until I felt like he would stand still in the good way, for me to get on.

He seemed to be more relaxed by my antics. Maybe he needs me to be crazier than the weather (it was lightly sprinkling) in order for him to chill out. Or maybe he was getting tired, I was. I grabbed mane and swung my leg over. He walked off. You know that feeling where you're like "heh, I'm not going to move my leg to put it in my stirrup juuuust yet" yeah so I walked around for a bit with one foot in the stirrup before slowly easing the other one into the stirrup.

A bit alive on Monday but only a bit

He does frequently come out with a hump in his back, so I did what I always do, smashed my seat bones into it and then clamped my thigh on. He started to slowly deflate, but not fast enough. He started trotting, which I also felt was a good idea. And off we went.

It was obviously the worst ride we've had in a long time, which was apparent from me going to get him in his paddock and finding him looking like he had seen a ghost (not the ghost of christmas past, which would probably show him that being crazy in the winter only delays him from his luxurious life being owned by an amateur).

Why I didn't leave him in the paddock, I don't know. Or just do ground work, or longe him (well, the longeing arena doesn't have great footing). Maybe I just wanted to see if I could get him back from the brink like this. It's not often that he comes out like this AND I'm up for risking an ejection, so I should take advantage of it when I can. He's such a good freaking horse 99% of the time, but every now and then he just loses it. Something puts him over the edge and he can't handle himself.

And I did ride him through it. It wasn't even all that bad. It was mostly a lot of him being all balled up, trotting in quick short steps, refusing to take larger steps unless it was in a fast canter, shaking his neck at me, falling over his shoulders, flinging his knees up, and a rock solid lumbar area. We had a lot of scoots but only two big bolts where he really vacated the area.

Focusing on my biomechanics, riding endless circles, nearly running a trainer over when he got away from me... and I slowly managed to chip away at the tension. Eventually I had him back under me, blowing his nose in a productive way (aka blowing it out instead of just in). We even got some really nice relaxed canter work. I was so proud of him being able to come back from that!

Remember just two days ago when I could ride
him around the property?

But it of course, wasn't a very fun ride. Hopefully today goes way better. What that ride was, was really good progress for his mental training. My main goal this year is to press through the remaining quirks in him and try to get him to be the sort of horse I can put just anyone on. But this ride shows me that he's not quite ready for his ammy just yet, which is okay because I want to keep him for a while, he's my jam.