Unwinding Ridden Work

As I mentioned yesterday, I bought a saddle and rode TC in it! Actually, I've ridden him in it twice now and I'm genuinely looking forward to riding him in it today. 

I was glad that on the first day, I was able to grab some video. And I was also grateful to be able to send those videos to Kate and get her opinion on them. It's really hard to see my own horse with fresh eyes and I am really struggling with looking at this situation objectively. It's been a mix of emotions where I feel really horrible that we got to this place, and really frustrated (both with me and with him a little), and because of that, I can't really break things down as easily just watching the video by myself.

I have no horse photos but I took a day off on
Tuesday to both go birding by the coast and to go
to TC's breeder's Celebration of Life

The few things I noticed were:

- We are both really defensive of each other, it's like I'm preparing for him to balk and he's preparing for me to stuff him forward. I look very hesitant in my riding, but in the same way you're hesitant when you're super frustrated but trying to remain calm. Like there's a hardness living inside of my hesitation. 

- He's not letting me in, I feel like I'm sitting outside of him and if I try to sit into him at all, he gives me a warning about balking. I described it as when I'm helping someone write code who doesn't have a basic understanding of the language, so I'm like, half asking them to write it and half literally spelling it out for them. And then I see what they've written and I'm like... I mean technically that will run but that's... just weird. 

Kate saw all of that as well, but also pointed out a mechanic he's fallen into with his hind end, where his right hind sweeps under his body but not in a carrying way, it stiffens straight and then his left hind kind of pole vaults over it. That was a really huge realization and I think will change things for us. But I've got to give it more thought and try to feel it a bit better before I write about it. 

His breeder was quite the character,
I will really miss her, I've had a few
losses recently and while this one
was not completely unexpected, it was
still a loss of a very influential person
in my (and TC's) life <3

There were good things too - for the most part, he had a pretty pleasant expression on his face! He looks sound and happy enough to do his work. And he hasn't been bolting or balking much. 

And while I've got some weird stuff going on in my pelvis, I still maintained quite a good mechanic! It's funny, I think the pelvis thing is the fact that I rehabbed my hip injury all this year. I feel great, I did physical therapy and now I work with a personal trainer who helped me come up with a very effective program that has allowed me to avoid surgery! But now my hips are quite a lot looser. Stronger yes, but much looser. And I think a lot of my riding mechanic depended on my hips being a little tight. So now there's this slightly odd twisty thing I'm doing with my hips in my posting mechanic. 

I see my trainer for a private session (I normally do groups with my gym buddies since it's more affordable and more fun that way!) soon, so I need to really take inventory of what is going on so that we can talk about it and get me a bit better stabilized for riding. But it's progress! Even if I'm a bit wonky right now, my hip hasn't hurt at all while riding and I'm really not as unfit as I thought I'd be.

It was a nice day to just wander along the coast
with friends and family, and then go celebrate her

On the second day, armed with some of Kate's exercises (who I am very thankful for, since I seem incapable of doing any critical thinking about the horse right now), I decided that I wanted to try to improve the connection. This is the purpose of me riding him - because I have more influence over it, so if I can't get him well connected, we may as well go back to long lining. 

Back in the day, this horse had the dreamiest connection, he was tough to get there, but once there it was like I could draw him into the work I wanted him to do. We lost that along the way, and I think I'd really like to get him back to that place. Especially since showing is not really a huge goal of mine (like obviously I will show him a little if he comes back since he loves it, but it's not the primary driver), so we can take things slow and we don't have to stick within the confines of a test. I do think that's what happened, slowly but surely he had to do a thing NOW and my trainers were in my ears making that very clear. I don't think that's bad, I just think that it caused a loss of trust. But now I get to do it my way!

Meanwhile Christmas exploded at my
workplace and I sat next to this festive
pillow the next morning for breakfast

The first half of the ride was me battling with the frustration of his warm up - he just takes longer these days and I'm trying to figure out what the right balance is between hustling him a little bit forward during it, and leaving him completely alone (which feels like reinforcing him being behind my leg). I do think it's probably better if I longe him through it, but I've been skipping that because I'm greedy and want to ride. 

Side bar- this reminds me of a client I had whose horse would take exactly twenty minutes to warm up, regardless of what you did. When I rode her, I'd get up in my half seat and just do trot sets, then she'd be ready to work. But my client would come to me each week with a new theory that if she just does X exercise (which took her twenty minutes to discover) it worked super well. Then she'd start with that exercise and wouldn't you know it, the horse wouldn't immediately warm up and the client would be frustrated. 

Then, the middle part of the ride was me fighting the urge to just put him on the damn bit. He was floating above and away from me and would give me his nose, tucked nicely like the little faker his friesian breeding encourages him to be, but I had zero access to his back or the base of his neck. I resorted to pulling on the face since that's a tried and true method (that doesn't work but it FEELS like it works. It's like using an AI assistant at work, feels like progress but at the end of the day, it just produces spaghetti code that sure, you've tested a lot, but still doesn't work - lots of work metaphors today). During this part, I was working on some shallow loops, and we were absolutely all over the place. 

And then finally I took a moment to use my brain (very hard right now) and decided to go back to something Tracey used to make me do - hold onto the tab on my saddle pad to give me an idea of how steady my hands are (or are not). I did it enough when TC was younger that it kind of puts us both in a better place. And I'm also so unbelievably out of riding shape and practice that the moment I did it, it made me realize how loose in the tack I had gotten over time, and with this new flexi-hip. 

We also had our year-end social and
they had this random candy bar

Slowly, over the course of a few trot sets, he started to really come onto the bit properly, not just faking it, but I could feel and see in his neck/back that he was much better connected. And I finally got that same feeling I'd had years and years ago, that I could just draw him through the exercises. We rode our shallow loops without them feeling so drunk, and I could feel him start to tune in like "oh this is interesting" for the first time at the very least since last winter, if not longer. And, when we went back to the barn, he had a little hypertrophy in his trapezius (both cervical, and I could convince myself thoracic too), which has only really happened on trail rides so far. 

I kind of couldn't believe it? Our second ride back and by the end of it, we got to a place where I'd be super happy to stay indefinitely? 

Anyway, we have a LONG way to go, this could have just been a fluke, we could still see the same pattern happen next summer where he begins to feel terrible again, I could just be making this up as I careen into the end of the year after a really stressful half... but I'm relishing in the fact that this is the first time I'm genuinely looking forward to riding my horse in quite a long time. 

I Bought a Saddle

I had a moment of weakness this weekend when Google Photo's memories thing decided to remind me that the best my horse ever really looked was in fall/winter 2021 and then I fucked it up somehow. That's not exactly what it told me, but it's the way I decided to interpret it so that I could spiral about it a bit. 

I actually rode my horse! I took his noseband off
a while back and tbh I have no idea where I put it

TC still looks unfortunate after three months of rehab and I'm ready to make a change between now and February when we do his next round of injections. I went through those pictures and some of my blog posts during that time to figure out what was I doing. 

1) the horse was WAY fitter, he had come off of 2020 doing Third level, he had just moved to the ranch in 2021 and had a lot more energy there which got us through the tough summer months, and then in the fall I had been able to maintain that momentum keeping him fit as the ground softened and it got cooler, he really didn't lose a ton of fitness until 2022

2) I had just gone through a program doing a lot of work strengthening his thoracic sling. That had happened right at the beginning of fall, so all that fitness and leftover muscle combined with a really targeted thoracic sling program built him up quite nicely

3) I was riding him in a pegasus butterfly saddle I had been borrowing from Kate

I ended up being real wishy washy about that saddle because while TC loved it, my back did not. I really couldn't sit the trot in it, so I decided to thank Kate for letting me borrow it (for quite a while, thanks Kate!) but I gave it back and got a custom saddle fit for TC then. And that really didn't work out. 

The right is much more unbalanced

I decided that I wanted to cherry pick some of the exercises I had been doing during that time out of that thoracic sling program to add to my current program. I don't think TC's TS is truly the main issue right now, but I have been noticing that he's quite narrow in the chest still, so I'd like to get him thinking more about lifting through his pectorals. 

And I also went on facebook marketplace and searched for a saddle like the one I'd borrowed. Kate had ended up selling it to one of her students a while back and WOULDN'T YOU KNOW, it was for sale. 

So I impulse purchased it. 

Which, I did defend myself to my friends, is kind of how I purchase saddles. I bought my favorite dressage saddle (the one I rode Rico in and the one I rode TC in until 2021) from a random tack shop for $600. I bought a jumping saddle last year randomly. And many many others.

But this one was the right price, and it fits Sundance at least, so if TC says "no thanks" to it, I'll at least have a use for it. 

In selective screenshots, he looks alright

I snagged it on Monday! It fit him well, although I did put a half pad between just for more cushion. He still really doesn't have enough topline to support a saddle, so I wanted to help him out a little bit. Like, it's kinda borderline, I see plenty of horses with toplines like this doing all kinds of impressive sport horse things, but for me and him, it's just not what I want. There's been part of me that has wondered whether getting back on would help him put on muscle faster too. So I figured I may as well try it if he'll tolerate it. 

And on Monday we rode in it! Like an entire ride. And I learned a LOT, even if it was more along the lines of painful realizations. I'll share those later. But essentially, we have a lot of work to do to rehabilitate the behavioral patterns. And separating those from the pain patterns is going to be really complicated. 

I'm still debating whether to ride him in it more, or go back to long lining, or do a combination of the two. Is it unkind to put him back to ridden work before he is looking better? Or does he need ridden work in order to look better? Even though I quite literally haven't posted the trot in like 6 months outside of the two rides I did on him in the TCS during this rehab, I do have quite a bit more influence over him when I'm on him vs on the long lines. 

Either way, I'm really glad I snagged the saddle and have something to ride in! Even just on the trails because he's gotten real spry out there and I want to be able to cling onto him when he zips after the deer. 

WW: Panama

I went to Panama this summer for a birding trip - nothing like jumping headfirst into a new hobby by traveling internationally to look at birds. It was so much fun and I figured I'd share pictures on this blog just for kicks. 

This is a Great-Tailed Grackle, they are so absurd

First night we stayed at this hotel by the water

Explored the city a bit

Then flew across the country and headed to our
destination in the Chiriqui Highlands

Our target bird for the trip was the Three-Wattled
Bellbird and we found it! It's a crazy bird

The lodge had a TON of hummingbirds

And other birds too

One day we went down to the lowlands to see
different species, like this giant tree chicken

And this beautiful tanager

Even more hummingbirds

It was so green and beautiful there!

The place we stayed grew coffee! So we did a
coffee tasting and it was great

I think I took the best hummingbird photos of my
life there

The last day we flew out somewhat early back to
PTY, so we went to this Canopy Tower

We saw a sloth there!

And obviously more hummingbirds

It was such a fun trip! My first international trip actually. I've spent so much of my life pouring all of my resources (time, money, blood/sweat/tears) into horses that it's been really fun to be able to do more with my life in the last year or so. I'm heading to Uruguay in about a month (!!!) for another birding trip. I really hope to be able to keep my resources well distributed when TC comes back to work. I want to ride more than I have been able to in the past few years, but I also want to keep traveling too! 

Letting Him Warm Up

TC is up to 16 minutes of work now! Which is not no work, so that's pretty cool. I don't think he's been this fit in a while, since he got the summer basically off and last winter I didn't do too much with him. 

The way I have it structured is to do 1:30 minute trot sets with 1 minute breaks in between. Then every 3 trot sets, we change direction which I give him 2 minutes to do. This works out to 4 overarching directional work sets. So left, then right, then left, then right. A total of about an hour in the arena (if you include the 12-15 minute walk before and after all of those trot sets, which I sometimes do on the tracks). 

My next goal is to collapse those into 2 minute work sets, except instead of 3 sets, we'll do 2 sets. That will keep us at 16 minutes but be lengthening the amount of time that he's trotting. 

From a recent trail ride

The reason why I'm doing it this way, and this slowly, is that the problem I've had with him is that he gets really balky about transitions and frequently slams on the brakes while I'm riding him. So I started him with 30 seconds of trot and we've slowly worked up to working longer, with plenty of breaks in between. 

I figured that this would help him mentally understand that he will never have to work forEVER and that he will get breaks, just not when he demands them. I think we both fell into this pattern where he'd slam on the brakes and I'd keep hustling him along and I'd probably work him longer than I would have if he hadn't slammed on the brakes, basically showing him why he should slam on the brakes in the first place. So having this schedule, and having it go super slowly, has been really good for us. It's us working together against the rehab schedule, not against each other. 

It also means that we do more transitions! So I've been able to watch the way he does transitions and encourage him when he does them well. When we started this rehab, he was kind of hopping into trot, like hurling himself into it with his neck. This still sometimes happens, but it's not happening nearly as much as it used to. I've also started doing some transitions within the gaits and transitions from walk to trot and trot to walk, as well as a few here and there adding some steps of canter. This has helped him stay more engaged mentally too! 

He's been a nut to trail ride recently

And finally, it's been really good for me to see him warm up and get better as he works more. I definitely think I'll be longeing him before riding him when I do start riding him. He starts out just kind of slow and a little stiff, not lame but not energetically moving forward. The other day, I was trying to convince myself to not work him because he looked so bad. Like why am I tormenting this poor horse. 

But I've told myself to blindly stick to my rehab plan until next summer when I confirm that it hasn't worked. And so I kept asking him to do his trot sets. And you KNOW WHAT? He worked out of it and looked the best he's looked in a while by the end of his work. 

I think his muscle wasting and his balking slowly led me to baby him a little (a lot). And for good reason -I do not want to beat my horse through a dressage test while he looks like a rescue case. But I think it softened me a little too much. I've noticed this in my personal training sessions, where my trainer has figured out when to really push me (when I am just complaining) and when to pull back and either change what I am doing or have me do some prehab exercises before continuing (when I mention my hip injury). But he never has me stop working out and go home. So I'm channeling that for TC too! 

Keeps hitting his deer threshold and
then using his new cardiovascular
fitness to have feelings about it lol

I think my goal is to get him up to about 20 minutes of work and try to have the work sets be something like 5 minutes each. I do want that to take time. The nice thing about this system is that I can notice when he starts to offer to walk and wait until he's not offering too early in the trot set before I move him up.

But really, I'm just winging this. My primary goal is to have him in completely full work by the end of the winter/spring (maybe 30 minutes total work? ideally with 6-8 minute work sets) so that we are going into the tougher summer days with him super fit and happy to work. Who knows if we'll actually make it there! I'll keep hoping and keep moving toward it though.

Draining Rico's Abscess

Well, on Friday, the vet came out for Rico's abscess and we were able to drain it! My vet was WAY faster than I was (I live 45 minutes away from the ranch + post Thanksgiving traffic) so by the time I got there, it had been drained already. That was actually great, because it was described as "like a geyser" and to be honest, I am not interested in watching something like that. 

The vet thinks that it was about the size of a tangerine on the inside, which is truly disgusting and enormous. I can't believe my poor boy was dealing with that for so long! He got his inoculations in October, so it was brewing for a while. Luckily, this explains any weirdness that he seemed to be exhibiting this fall, so as much as this was terrible for him to go through, I'm glad it was this and not him deteriorating. 

He and TC are so cute together, before
this he was nickering at TC but then after
this he bit TC, then whirled around and
threatened to kick at us (???)

Right away, Rico seemed to feel MUCH better, I actually caught him cantering around in his pasture riling TC up in the afternoon. He's very itchy still, and he kept inching the gross opening toward me as I scratched him. The protocol is antibiotics to keep it from getting infected, rinsing it out with antiseptic twice a day, and washing the skin under it. If it gets scabbed over, we'll have to soak the scab off, since we want it to heal from the inside. 

By the weekend, the swelling had gone WAY down and he was feeling more and more normal. He's actually really good about rinsing it out and getting all the nastiness washed out of his neck below it. He has been pretty nervous in the barn and wash rack though, so I've been relying on bribery. I think he's gotten more cookies in the past few weeks than he has got in the last year or two. 

We're expecting it to take about 1-2 weeks to become more normal and close up. I'm so glad that it's just cold and that there's no rain in the forecast for at least a week since it'd just be so much grosser to deal with if everything was wet. 

Two days before we drained it? I
won't post pictures of it now, it's gross

All in all, I'm happy that he's feeling MUCH better, and mostly happy that this was all that it was. Hopefully he has a very uneventful winter/year ahead since this is all the stress I can really take as we get closer and closer to his 30th birthday in February!

Rehab Rollercoaster

Things are going well and also not well at the same time for TC. I'm trying not to let myself get jerked around emotionally by this mystery lameness/problem too much. But sometimes it's hard! 

I took a couple of screenshots on the longe one day

I'm super pleased with how he looks when he's moving, especially after warm up. He definitely still has a slight unevenness in his left hind, so I'm considering that this could be his left stifle - I'm going to talk to the vet about injecting that when we go back in February. But he does seem to work out of it pretty well. 

He's lifting pretty well through his back, I can see his abs coming in, with a nice line from his girth all the way back to his flank. He's reaching nicely for the contact, even though it's just on the long lines. His withers are staying fairly well up and his neck is staying out. He's pretty forward at the trot - certainly more forward after he warms up. He's still a little reluctant to canter all that much, it's a bit stifled and slow, but I have seen improvement in that. He's still building strength. We're doing cavalletti, transitions, reining back, and he's on the bit the whole time he works. He's doing the work, it's just not showing in his body. 

Like I don't hate this at all

And at the same time, he still looks like garbage in the stall/paddock. I know he is a low tone horse, and this is why I'm being patient (or trying to be at least). I really hope things start to change in that department though. His back is still sunken and he's got minimal glutes, so he just looks... awful. 

But I have been able to get him burning enough calories to eat more hay, and now we're slowly switching him from Teff to Orchard (better nutrients). Once that is done, my next goal will be to add some alfalfa. He is getting enough protein because of the ration balancer, but I'd love for him to get alfalfa in his diet too! We had to take him off of it because it was so high calorie. 

Zero topline, I am aware

I'm starting to make a list of everything I want to do in February as well. Reminder that I'm waiting until February after the vet said that we should see a change in the topline by then if it was a limb-joint issue that we treated with the injections. Patience is hard!

The vet I saw for the injections had said that he'd recommend getting an internal medicine specialist on the case. So I'm considering bringing them both in for the appointment in February. Here's what I'm thinking about asking for:

- Lameness + neuro exam, see if he's improved since our November appointment, especially on the neuro exam (if he is better, that would give me a lot of hope that he was just out of shape vs actually neurological)

- Neck injections C5/6 + C6/7 both sides

- Left stifle injection

- Scope for ulcers

- Redo all blood tests (incl. for Selenium levels this time)

After this appointment, I'll also get the nutritionist involved. I wanted to call her this fall, but I realized that a) I didn't have all the bloodwork I wanted and b) he wasn't in enough work where I could even feed him enough. So I think by February, we'll be all set to check on that. 

I'm really hoping that we get to a point where things start to improve and I can get back on him. I really think that's going to be a big test! I'm still waiting for his back to look like, an ounce better (well, more than that). 

I dunno, he's at least not getting horrifically worse

In the meantime, I'm ordering him some things to help him out. I noticed that when I was trail riding him (which I do bareback), his bareback pad was putting a bit of pressure on his withers. So I ordered him a fancy one that hopefully won't. And I'm also going to change his girth and get him a nice fleece half pad in preparation for riding him. I want to get him as comfortable as I can, even just to rule out equipment as part of the problem. 

So we'll keep plugging away and hope that one day the before pictures are actually BEFORE and not just pictures of what he looks now only cleaner. 

Rico's Tough Weekend

Rico had quite the weekend! He's fine by the way, just had a tough time. 

Clipped part of his neck is an abscess

Last week I had to call the vet for Rico because he had a lump on the right side of his neck and was struggling to put his head down low enough to eat his food. The vet thought it was scar tissue from his vaccines and advised me to give him bute for 3-4 days to help with the pain as he worked through it. It worked, and then he went back on his normal equioxx. We thought his body would kind of break up that knot of scar tissue over time, but then on Friday morning it was ENORMOUS. 

The vet came back again. We clipped it and ultrasounded it, turns out it's a HUGE abscess. It was 2.5cm in from his skin, so we couldn't drain it yet. So I was advised to put him back on bute, keep his food higher off the ground, and then just wait. She told me what to look out for and so every day I've been squishing it lightly, waiting for there to be a softer part of it so that we can drain it. She thought it'd take 1-2 weeks. Hopefully it won't be too long. 

It was definitely caused by the flu/rhino vaccine that we gave him a while back, and this is only the second time in her whole career she's seen a vaccine do this. Of course it had to happen to my horse who is almost 30 years old, and who needs all the calories he can get so can't be not able to eat. 

Speaking of calories

Then on Saturday morning, I get a text saying to come down ASAP because Rico is fully losing his mind about something in the hills. 

Apparently he refused to eat or drink all night long and hadn't eaten his breakfast (although he'd gotten some water into him). By the time I got down there, we were debating taking him to the vet clinic to get him away from whatever was scaring him and maybe put him on an IV. Again he can't just NOT eat with this abscess and with the vet wanting him to gain a smidge of weight before winter. 

I pulled his haynet out of his stall and took it down to the part of the pasture he seemed to be happiest in. Then also brought out a bucket of water to hang for him. We were able to get him to eat soaked grain (so that he got some water into him) and eventually he did start to nibble at his hay and drink some water. 

TC says WHAT ABOUT ME, also yes he's muddy

Jealous

Throughout the day, we'd bring him more hay, grain, and water and he slowly started to calm down more and more. And probably felt better because he wasn't so hungry. 

TC stayed nearby, although it was because he thought that we were just having a super cool picnic in the pasture and he was mad that he wasn't invited to eat any of the food. I did end up bringing his lunch down for him to eat by Rico, as well as a bucket of water for him so that he'd be encouraged to stay with Rico. 

TC thought that was SUPER fun, even when Rico stole his hay.

TC's version of sneering is so wholesome

That night, we fed them both out there and filled the water buckets too. Rico slowly got more and more comfortable over the course of the weekend, he hasn't yet gotten into the stall except to eat a little bit of grain, but TC has kept him company in his picnic area with them both continuing to be fed and watered out there. He at least seems calmer now and TC is being a good companion for him, sticking close. I'm still not sure what he saw up the hill or what happened when he was last in his stall, we checked the cameras and there's nothing that makes it seem like anything serious happened.

Hopefully Rico continues to feel better and hopefully his abscess is getting ready to be drained soon. Poor guy deserves to feel his best! I'm at least glad that we don't have a lot of rain in the forecast, luckily he can hang out in the pasture for a while longer.