Equibands

 I've been slack-a-lacking on this blog. Mostly because TC has JUST started doing the tiniest bit of trotting and all we've been working on is that engagement stuff I was talking about last week. Super boring. 

We're on a pretty regular schedule right now and I'm happy that I've been able to go down every day, even if the commute does wear on me, at some point I'll start giving him a day or two off a week again. Every day I take him out and brush him, we go for a hand walk with the nebulizer, then I tack him up and walk him for 30-45 minutes or so, with our added small amount of trot. He'll be back in full work by mid October and we have our first lesson back with Tanya at the end of October. 

Still going at it, he's still really enjoying
it so I figure as long as I have time,
we should do it!

Because we haven't had any lessons or clinics since July, I took that money and not only bought the nebulizer, but I snagged the equibands that I first saw on Jen's blog. 

It's been absolutely perfect timing because they advise you to work up to a full ride with it. He's not doing a full ride, so I'm basically having him use them every day during our walking and he'll slowly build up work and muscle over time! 

My first ride was downright magical with them. He feels way more solid behind the saddle (lumbar area) and most importantly, I can literally feel his hind legs. If you remember, this horse is nearly impossible to feel his hind legs on for one reason or another (I think it's that gravity affects him far more than it seems to affect other horses). Feeling his hind legs makes it *so* obvious when they aren't doing their job, so it's immediately been helpful for me to catch him. 

All his supplements, I might have a problem

And catch him I have. Especially in the downward transitions from trot to walk, obviously. Any time you go to compress this horse, he drops his withers and shuts his hind legs down. INTERESTING it's almost like that's necessary for collection and the reason why he is struggling so much with it. 

So this weekend I figured that out and have been doing nonstop forward and back, asking him to move forward until I can feel his hind legs and then half halting, riding him as compressed as I can until I can't feel them anymore, then shooting him off again. Knowing that I CAN feel them when things are going properly gives me so much information, previously it was just a big guessing game. 

Again, all of this comes full circle to him looking and feeling amazing in Tanya lessons and never outside of them, she can get him to give me his hind legs and I can't feel when I have them really. Now I can, sorry TC! 

This is weird, I need to take more
pictures of TC, but we saw these ducks
at a house for sale and I need them

So I'm excited to see how he comes back to work now that we've got everything aligned. He's got a new bit, he got his teeth done, he got ulcerguard for a month, and now I think I've figured out what we've struggled with all year. All that's left is to go get him a bag of LMF Gold because I took him off of it when he got time off for the fires and I need to bring it back into our lives because it makes him more enthused about this kind of work. 

Eager for Pony Rides

So, my niece is 8 months old now and I'm totally digging aunt life. I didn't choose the child-free life because I entirely hate children, I chose it because I kept punting kids for "just another five years" and then realized that I'd never get to five years from that feeling. Ever. The SO feels similarly, I'd have kids if he was hell bent on it, he'd have kids if I were hell bent on it, we're both firmly in the "meh to no" place. So we're not having kids, which is fine because...

Eight months ago my niece was born! I've never been a baby person, but she's the coolest little human. She's obsessed with trees and has the cutest smile. Seeing her with my brother and SIL is just so special and fun, but no offense to them, seeing her ride ponies is going to be way better. She had her first official pony ride on Saturday (double with me on top, my brother walking next to us, and my mom leading her mostly asleep pony, Sunny). 

No baby human photos, how about baby cow?

I have NO idea what to do with her though, so I need help from the blogosphere:

When do kids usually start riding? Like most riding schools don't let kids in until 4 or 5 but I know kids start earlier. I want to get her riding ASAP obviously. She seemed to love her pony ride so I'm hoping to do that when we can. 

What is the smallest helmet available? When does that start fitting them? Luckily for her, she's got a massive head for her age I guess, so that bodes well for me. 

What about boots and breeches? What do tiny kids ride in clothing-wise?

What is the literal smallest saddle I could try to find for her? We have a small western saddle, but it's more for a 5 or 6 year old. I've taught some up-down lessons to my cousins' kids and it's tough to get the stirrups short enough.

How soon is it not horrifying for me to take her on a trail ride double with me on TC? Like, she can sit up now and hold her head up *mostly* but she also gets dramatic and flings herself around in a way that suggests she might not give a shit if she flings herself off a horse because she wants a nap or is hungry (understandable). 

Is there anything else I'm missing? Don't worry, I'm not going to force her to ride, just very much encourage her to. 

Meanwhile in my house...

As you can see, I'm way too eager. But I really just want to have an idea of when other kids start riding and what I can start stocking up on pony stuff. 

Thank you in advance for your help, I look forward to ruining my brother's life by getting his daughter unbelievably interested in horses. 

I think I've got my SIL interested in starting to ride for real too! Mother daughter riding will be so adorable. 

Just Walking

The smoke cleared on Wednesday and we were in the green for air quality for the first time in about a month! It even rained, which was really nice, just enough to moisturize the ground, not enough to make the roads really slippery or anything. 

Lots of people have been riding on and off this whole time but as you know, I just gave TC time off. From having to evacuate to me being on vacation, I couldn't be consistent anyway, and more vet articles are coming out about the importance of allowing the lungs to heal. As I've said before, with TC struggling a little after the 2018 fires AND the fact that I'm trying to have him perform at the highest levels one day, I want to give him that time. 

So we restarted the two weeks minimum of walking on Wednesday. In two weeks, we are going camping again for a few nights, so he will actually get almost three weeks of just walking before I start trotting again in October. 

Even though we are just walking, this
view can't be beat

I have been riding every day since Wednesday. I think it helps TC, he loves being ridden and was getting visibly annoyed with all the hand walking. And it helps me too, something about walking around on a horse that makes me feel better mentally and physically. 

So our routine is to brush him first, then hand walk with the nebulizer, which takes 20-30 minutes. Then I bring him back and tack him up and we walk in the covered arena for a while before I untack him. He even got a little sweaty yesterday, so I gave him a bath afterward. 

Walk work can be boring, but I think I've got some good things to work on. 

He loves to smush his face against the
mirror in this weird way

First, we've been continuing to work on TC's posture. He tends to fall through his thoracic sling and this is especially bad in the walk to halt transition, so we've been doing a lot of halting while both of us hold our tone and I encourage him to close up the hindquarters behind. The moment he falls through his thoracic sling, he gets pushed forward again. It's been fascinating and he has been much better about holding his body in that posture. 

Unfortunately, it's tough to remain forward and loose while holding that tone, so we are working on having a more normal collected walk rather than a creep walk while working on it. I think it'll be good for us to develop a more appropriate collected walk while we are stuck in the gait. 

Second, I've been disappointed in our half pass scores. They seem to cap at 7. Everything else, I've gotten an 8 on or see a clear pathway forward for an 8. But the half passes, especially in trot, just haven't scored as well (not that I don't appreciate 7s, don't get me wrong). Our ONE negative comment in the 3-3 test at our last show was that he doesn't wrap around my inside leg in the half passes. 

So what I've been doing is essentially restarting the half pass from scratch with an emphasis on the inside leg to outside rein connection, something I haven't been as obsessive over this year. It was the number one thing that helped Rico's half pass, so we've been doing 3-4 half passes each way with that in hopes that we'll both have that positioning down by the time we can go back to real work. 

Rico and I came a long way in our half pass work

It's crazy the progress here, about a year apart

It's boring and I'm envious of those who were able to mostly stay riding this last month. But it's okay, we will rebuild and come back, hopefully stronger than before. When we start trotting, I'll be restarting him on his LMF Gold and the muscle builder Tanya wanted him on and I'm currently working once a week with a personal trainer (so much cheaper than gym memberships are around here), so hopefully we will literally both be stronger than we were before. 

Fingers crossed he comes back well. He's been breathing okay, occasionally breathing a little fast and deep when the nebulizer is on, but I'm thinking that's because he's enjoying it. If it continues or if his breathing seems a little iffy, I'll call the vet to have a chat about it. 

Coat Improvement

So I'm rather bummed that TC is out of full work right now, but I am enjoying the little things. Brushing him, hand walking him, having him do tricks, feeding him too many cookies. 

One of the things I've noticed in doing this is how much softer TC's coat is now than it was over the summer. When we treated for ulcers, the two main complaints I had about the way TC was looking/going was that he just wasn't putting on muscle (in fact, when moving from Second to Third, he seemed to LOSE muscle, wth) and that his coat was extremely rough. We opted to treat for ulcers because my vet essentially ruled everything else out. 

I cannot wait to get back to riding

With no work for a month, I haven't been able to evaluate his muscle wasting, although he does seem to have filled back in a tiny bit? I don't know, my brain may be seeing things that it wants to see. 

But one thing I can definitely say is that his coat is looking really good! It's so much softer and shinier, even though he hasn't had a bath in a while. He's just on a normal hoof supplement (California Trace) and his normal grain/supplement regime. He hasn't even been brushed all that much because I was gone. 

That about confirms to me that he had ulcers and that now they're gone! 

Because of this major improvement, I've put him on SmartGI Ultra, which has the added bonus of coming with Smartpak's Colicare. I've heard great things about that! We just need to do a fecal and then he's qualified for it. So that'll be good for my peace of mind and hopefully he stays ulcer-free. He's never had these issues before and I think a lot of them stemmed from being at a barn he hated last year, then the uptick in work this year. He's now very happy at his barn and so we'll see if the supplement helps to offset the uptick in work as we come back. 

There's nothing I wouldn't do for this
absolute weirdo 

I'm happy to do shorter doses of ulcerguard every year or so if necessary... but I'm hoping he'll be a happy, healthy upper level horse who doesn't need to be managed as such. Still, I think I'm going to budget for 2 weeks in the spring when we start pushing for the pirouettes and putting the pressure on for piaffe and passage. It's going to be a hard couple of years making the jump toward schooling the Grand Prix, I want to make sure he's healthy, comfortable, and that his coat remains nice and soft! 

Five Years of Ownership

I can't believe it but as of today, I've owned TC for five years. I feel like we've been through so much together. And we have! In the last five years, we have done the following:

- gone through a year long rehab for a suspensory injury
- put up numerous fences to keep the horse contained
- been on a TON of trail rides all over
- competed at Training, First, Second, and now Third level
- earned some of the highest scores of my career at those levels
- participated in two bombproofing clinics
- participated in two working equitation clinics
- lived in four different counties
- taught me so much about rider biomechanics, horse training, and hard work
- helped me through the worst year of my personal life (2018) and the worst year for everyone (2020)
- made me laugh every single day

Best horse in the world

TC is such a light. He is always happy, always ready to work, always ready for the next adventure, be it a trail ride, a clinic, or a new movement to learn. He adores people so much, all people. He wins over everyone he meets - he has way more friends than I'm aware of, as people come up to me all the time saying that he's their buddy on the property.

I've learned so much from him. I love everything he's taught me, from being my biomechanics buddy to teaching me even more about the connection than I ever thought it was possible to know to now helping me understand collection in brand new ways.

While I am very driven to get him into the FEI ring and eventually do the Grand Prix on him, I feel like it's such a bonus that I deeply enjoy his company. I love taking him out on the trails and playing with ground work and just hand walking him around the property. He's just so fun to be around. I feel so lucky to have him in my life.

I love him so much

To five more years of ownership (and maybe many more), maybe for our ten year post, I'll have a Grand Prix horse to talk about.

Withdrawing

I'm really bummed to write this down.

So, in March, the L program was due to begin literally three days before SIP took place. At the time, I was game to go, we didn't know much about the virus and I didn't think it'd affect me, even though in that moment, every member of my immediate family actually had the disease. At the last minute, like, the day before it was to start, we cancelled because there's just no way to do an L program without being in a group of people. We thought to just begin with the second show in May and obviously that got cancelled too, so we postponed the whole program indefinitely.

Pictures from Part 1

Back in June or July, we got a list of dates for the L program Part 2 set to start this fall. All of them were in Arizona because that's where the organizer lives and shows occur all winter long there. We had one date at the end of October, one in January, and one in March (I think, or April, can't remember).

I remember seeing those dates and thinking "oh, those will work, and we should have a vaccine or at least the whole thing under control by then" right? That's how we all felt in June.

I've had it on my calendar but now in early September, I am not thinking the same thing. I was pretty certain that I'd be getting an email soon.

And I did! Confirming that... the L program part 2 was a go?

Driving this golf at my last time there made me want an e-golf
as my next car!

I was rather surprised that it's a go, but then realized that, if it were in California, I probably wouldn't be as worried.

Being that it's a state away, I'm a bit more nervous. This means that I have to fly, which is risky. I have to fly a scribe, which is risky. I have to stay in a hotel, risky. Rent a car, risky. Pick up food to eat, risky. All that to just get me there, regardless of where there is.

There being an area that I'm not familiar with though. The SO and I have noticed in our driving around that there are certain areas where mask wearing is more common than others. In the bay area, where we live, pretty much every single person wears a mask. The only places I've seen non-compliance have been in the outskirts. We drove south to the big fruit stand about a half hour further than my barn and it started seeming a bit questionable. When I drove out to Sacramento and stopped at a random grocery store in a "middle of nowhere" kind of place, it got a bit iffy.

We feel comfortable traveling a little, heading out to Napa and Tahoe, but mostly because we can do all our grocery shopping in safer areas, bring our own disinfectant, and avoid humans at all costs if necessary.

I stayed at the same airbnb two of three times

Um, no offense to Arizona, but it doesn't scream mask compliance to me. I'm sure the show and my organizers are going to be taking it seriously, I have no doubt. I'm not worried about them. I'm not even as worried about the airport/airplane. I'm worried about Maskless McHoax in the coffee shop I'll be stopping at on my way to the show, or at the airport.

I also just could never ever forgive myself if I brought the virus home to my SO or if my scribe got sick and brought the virus home too. What if it turns out that you can get it again and I bring it home and infect my parents again? I'd be horrified.

I started thinking, why am I doing this? Why do the L program now versus wait. The reason is that, you only get a couple of years to go from Part 1 to Part 2 and I have already done Part 1 so I need to get into a Part 2 ASAP or I'll have to do Part 1 over again. What is the big deal for that? Well, time and money. It means giving up three additional weekends and it means paying for it and lodging and everything again.

That SUCKS but what also sucks is wanting to put myself and my family and friends and scribe and scribe's family and friends at risk to save a few thousand dollars and a few weekends.

It was such an amazing program

So I'm drafting an email to the organizer to say that if October is a go, please give my spot away to someone else or I'd be happy to eat the cost. I don't want to, I'm already about $5k deep in the whole program, but I feel like I've been backed into a corner and I want to hold my spot in the program if it is delayed again, not give it up only to have a vaccine come out and feel safe going in the spring.

Again, not the organizer's fault, I'd be bummed if it were happening here and was cancelled because people didn't want to fly. Unfortunately for this part, I just happen to live a bit too far away for my own comfort.

I guess the plan will be to try to find another Part 2 within the time limit, to appeal to USDF to extend it, or to just redo Part 1 (maybe I can just audit, it's cheaper) later, when I feel safe.

Thanks for ruining another thing in my life, COVID/2020/worst year ever, should have seen this coming though!

Evacuation Orders Lifted

Well, TC got a whirlwind hangout at the ranch for a week and a half, we got our evacuation orders finally lifted this last weekend and we got to return to his home barn. And the air quality is definitely getting better.

I'm so happy that TC is home, it was a lot of work having him at the ranch, especially because he doesn't like the facility very much. He tolerated being in his stall and paddock as well as in the wash rack, but any time he was in the regular cross ties, he'd rear himself quiet, which is normally fine except the air was so bad. He also tolerated walking down to the lawn to eat grass, but was fairly nervous down there.

So it's nice to have him home! Now he gets to go on nice long walks each day with the nebulizer on him so we can start repairing those lungs and I don't have to clean paddocks or do too many barn chores.

My parents use the mountain range in the background (that you
can barely see) to determine air quality lol it was not visible
for a while, now you can see it okay

Now that the air is good again (well, it's not perfect but it's under 100), we can start looking at my plan to bring him back with actual dates. Luckily one of the weeks that we're on very light/no work, I'm gone anyway! So that works out well.

Week of August 31st: hand walk for the most part, I might get on him at the walk and ride him around the ranch a couple of times, maybe work on some halt and rein backs, the connection, some squares, or I might just stick to hand walking

Week of September 7th: hand walk while I'm gone

Week of September 14th: light trot work with lots of breaks, keeping an eye on his breathing, he'll get nebulized every day before work.

Week of September 21st: light canter work with lots of breaks, again same thing

Week of September 28th: basically back to full work, but still being a bit careful

So we're looking at being back to full work by early October, which is great timing. Let's all keep our fingers crossed that we don't get any more fires nearby in September or October, which is our actual fire season.

TC learning to not hate his nebulizer

Not everyone is being as conservative as I am about bringing TC back into work, and that's totally fine. I have a client riding already (although their air was way better than ours and her horse has shown zero signs of coughing/respiratory distress so I think they avoided any issues) and friends/barnmates already back in work or riding with some being careful to not do too much. That's great!

I've had great conversations with people about it, some people saying that they'd love to give their horses the time off but that their horses would be explosive and probably breathe harder blowing off steam in their paddocks than riding at the walk and trot. Totally get it, I rehabbed a 4 year old from a suspensory injury in a round pen, okay? We can't always do what may be considered "best" for our horses because we can't explain to them.

For me, TC handles vacations well and I'm just always a bit conservative with my horses. I don't take many risks with health and soundness. Would TC be fine to go back to work immediately? Probably? Maybe? I could try it and just back off if he started showing signs of respiratory distress. But why put either of us through that when I don't mind taking the time off? I was honestly going to take a few light weeks anyway right about now because if all had gone well, we'd have finished up at Third level last weekend and would be relaxing for September before potentially gearing up for fall shows to try the 4-1 or to qualify for CDS Championships at Third or whatever.

The neighbor cows at my parents' place are going home for the
winter, they will be back in the spring to eat down the grass!

So while the only thing different about this week after the smoke is that I won't be trail riding him, for some reason, my conservative decision making was the subject of someone else's disappointment in me the other day. Their claim is that the UC Davis article, which I'm using as a benchmark for the 4-6 weeks that it takes for lungs to heal, is only meant for horses who were right near the fires and that our AQI of 150+++ for over a week is not enough to harm our horses' lungs, despite there being ash on TC's back (and therefore in his lungs) during that time.

I responded by just explaining the above (although I don't feel like I should have to explain my decisions to another person) that I'd rather play it safe and not risk any lung issues than put him back to work for no reason. We have no shows coming up, nothing to do anyway, probably would have taken a short break this fall. They did back off and go ride while I walked TC in his nebulizer, so that was good.

Still, it rubbed me the wrong way. This is not the first time this person has had more than their fair share of opinions about my decision making. Oh well, it's not going to change what I do with TC, his health is obviously my first priority. COVID has made it harder for me to roll my eyes and immediately move on from interactions like this, I think I have too much time on my hands. Maybe this is why there's so much drama in those real housewives shows (which I've never watched but I figure if they weren't dramatic, they wouldn't be on television).