Escaping on the 101, Fungus and other glories of mares.

This week The Boy and I managed to make use of an otherwise moderately wretched business trip and pop down the Pacific Coast for a bit.  Work took us from Seattle down to the very bottom of Oregon, but when we had a couple days to kill without any obligations, we shot out to the coast and in order to enjoy some scenic, nausea inducing drives on the 199 and 101.

I love the 101.  Not being super prone to car sickness I enjoy the oscillating curves and roller-coaster climbs & falls every 30 feet that bring some sad saps to their knees.  But that's ok with me.  Stay on the 5, and leave the twisty roads to the road trip nerds.  :)

Ahhh, Northern Cal..

 Anyway, it was a good few days to be away from the barn.  P2's scratches are JUST now coming under control (ugh) while P1's are stubbornly refusing to go anywhere (except farther up her limbs).

One of the perks of living in the PNW is that unless you lock your horse inside for 8 months every year, you learn how to deal with scratches.  You learn how to avoid them, how to treat them, how to brew home made salves that smell worse than the barn porta-potty and you even learn names for all the subtle variations of it's different forms.

Not to pat myself on my back, but I am usually pretty darn good at keeping scratches off my horses. I haven't had a horse really come down with scratches since high school and I've had some seriously nasty mud to deal with since then.

Until now.

Yes, the girls had mud in their pasture.  And yes, Pia especially did a magnificent job of always standing in the mud instead of out where it was dry and rocky.  But daaaaaamn they came on fast, aggressive and unrelenting.

I pulled out my big guns, legs clipped, legs soaked, picked, and scrubbed 3x daily, my vets favorite goo (Nu-Stock, I like it too), and my hair dryer installed in my tack locker to make sure that the skin got nice and dry every night after treatment. 

Going through the motions with two mares could take up to 3 hours.  No bueno, but necessary.

When The Boy and I headed South on Sunday, Prairie's legs were on the road to recovery, all the nasty oozing sores were gone and she just had a few small lingering scabs on her pasterns.  Totally controlled.

Pia's legs were no longer swelling but the skin was still inflamed, irritated and harboring a few big scabby patches.  She was also no longer interested in anyone touching them, leading to either needing an assistant to hold up one of her front legs to keep her still or the administration of a nice cocktail to calm her down. 

This was exactly when I sent the "omg, have fun with the girls, see you in 4 days!!!!" text to S.

(note: thank god for competent people who help out when crap like this is infecting your horse).

Four days, three sweats and nearly all of my ace later, Pia is finally looking better.  I'm hoping that her recent objections under saddle have been due to her discomfort from the scratches, but we'll see. 

My Vet is back out tomorrow to follow up on her bodywork from a few weeks ago so we'll poke extra hard and make sure no other old soft tissue issues are cropping up.. it's always something with this one....

Prairie also had a hard few days with S, but for different reasons.  My last ride on Saturday consisted of jumping two verticals in the indoor set on the diagonals so I could figure eight forever.  Prairie was super braced in her jaw and I had almost zero control of her shoulder which led to me pulling her around the (tight) turns and nearly dislocating my shoulder(s).

It took nearly the entire lesson for me to get the mare back on her haunch and steering from my legs and outside rein.  When we got it, it was great, but it was painful getting there...

I recognize that no one made me pull her with my inside rein, and that I engaged in that tug of war all on my own but OMG the mare made me want to scream and shout and fight. (note to self, work on patience)

The silver lining is that we worked it out, got some good loops, clean simple changes and the jumps themselves were all calm, balanced and easy. 

Anyway, after that ride, S had a few days to school the mare and they worked changes.  Hard.  They even hauled out to the other trainer we've been working with for an intensive work session focusing on Prairie's straightness in the canter and her bend.  Lots of half pass in.... switch the bend, half pass out (in counter canter), straighten, etc. 

Poor mare.  I bet she's tired.

I think that's the update.  Lesson today to try to transfer some of the tools from the field trip to yours truly, then a day off, hack on sat and out to a schooling day on Sunday.  We're going back to the same place we went a month ago ($25, set the jumps to what you want and school for 20 minutes...).  It was a good outing away from home for us and good to work some courses in a different environment.  Should be fun!

Hitting Our Stride (literally)

I won't invoke "hitting our stride" in the figurative sense quite yet.  While I think Prairie and I have come so far in the last 10 months, we have a ways to go in achieving that magical-oneness still. 

But we are hitting our literal stride quite consistently these days.  This morning, after a pretty light (in terms of cardio) lesson last night I opted to set a few jumps and work on my eye and jumping from different distances (read - not always burying us to the base and jumping out from underneath every fence..).

I realized (as I was dragging jumps out) that this was the first time since high school that I was going to jump outside the structure of a lesson or clinic.  Growing up I schooled over fences alone all the time.  Such was the advantage of having my horses at home and only having a trainer out once or twice each week.  But then in college we rode at a barn that had a (reasonable) policy of no jumping without a trainer present and after college I veered off into Dressage never to look beyond the odd cavaletti here or there.

But our current barn doesn't mandate that you participate in a training program which means everyone can pretty much do whatever they want with their horses whenever they want.  Handy if you aren't writing checks for full training all the time...

Regardless, this was still the first time I felt confident enough in myself, and more importantly in Prairie, to think that it would be productive to work over fences on our own.  I didn't feel even a sliver of doubt or concern so I set my fences to 3'3" (with one warm up X) and tacked up. 

We warmed up focusing on our straightness and worked the spiral in/leg yield out exercise from our dressage lesson last week which also makes me focus on my own straightness (super needed)...

After a few transitions, which felt pretty crisp and clean we popped over the X a few times, reset it to a vertical and got to work. 

We started in my comfortable teeny, tiny canter and worked on adding strides and getting our leads. I had the jumps set such that I could figure-eight back and forth over them forever which helped us settle into a rhythm and keep working

After about 10 minutes I let the mare stop and breathe before stepping outside my comfort zone, and pushing the mare forward.  I even got my ass out of the saddle and rode her up to a bigger stride and maintained a two-point.  Getting myself totally out of the tack is one helpful way to restrict the amount of half-halting, driving, and jamming the stride that I like to do so much...

Miracle of miracles, Prairie didn't bat an eye.  Just fluid, relaxed jumps, followed by fluid relaxed turns, followed by more fluid relaxed jumps.

Then I REALLY pushed Prairie to open up to her "natural" stride and we bounded across the arena in very few strides, but maintained our balance and adjustability.  I love that Prairie is getting confident enough to take off from longer distances and she understands me when I give her the "yes, that distance" squeeze to move up. 

I'm proud to say that we only had one (minor) scoot that was the result of hitting some deep footing which caused the mare to slip a little.  Slipping still sends her into outer space, and rightfully so, but she did manage to recover and come back to me before the next fence. 

We still struggled with our left to right lead changes, but I opted to not fixate on them since I was succeeding at my task of working off my eye and increasing Prairie's stride. 

But, me being me, I just couldn't leave well enough alone.  Having totally rocked our initial goal/focus for the day I was starting to get really agitated by the "no right lead" thing and decided to pick at it a little bit. 

I pulled out of our never ending figure eight and worked singularly over one fence on the diagonal, which suggested that Prairie should switch to her right lead over the fence.  We rolled back to that fence probably 5 times before I got her straight enough to allow her to change, and when we got it she got huge pats and we quit for the day. 

"I can't reach the cookies in your pocket when you stand over there"

Things that I love:

1) this mare.
2) feeling comfortable schooling 3'3" on our own, totally no big deal
3) Prairie opening her stride without losing her mind.
4) quiet mornings at the barn.

It's so easy for me to get frustrated about her changes, because I know if we started nailing those every time we would have a very rewarding show season ahead of us.  But I also know that we are growing by leaps and bounds and my comfort and partnership with this mare is only just now starting to gel.  My timing is getting better, I'm tuning into her footfalls and better able to predict her reactions...

Aside from our changes, everything is feeling more consistent and reliable.  It's so rewarding to hit a training period where the hard work starts falling into place.  We've got to be coming to the end of our fun little plateau, or at least we should be.  I need to step it up and push us forward again.  But coasting for just a little, and basking in our small successes is just too much fun. 

Too fun.

Then This Happened...(swoon)

I can't believe how long it's taken me to post on this, but last Friday The Boy cut out of work early and joined me for an afternoon at the barn.  Admittedly, I didn't really disclose that most of the time would be spent picking scabs off the girls' totally disgusting fungus legs, but I wasn't about to submarine his enthusiasm about joining me. 

He ended up being totally helpful in the scab removal process - but he did request to operate the hose as opposed to squat down and pick at scabs.  (I did not begrudge him that preference at all).

Anyway, with the gross chores out of the way I managed to talk him into actually getting on a horse.  This is a rare occurrence and over the course of our relationship has happened only twice.  The first time was down at a Mountain Trail clinic when he asked if he could sit on Pia.  This was early in P's reeducation and I was leery, but couldn't say no.  So he sat on her...  For a total of like 10 seconds.

The second time was back down at another Mountain Trail clinic when he legged up on Pia's first boyfriend (a very sad looking, tiny odd little paint).  We went for a 30 minute ride out in a giant field, but The Boy was not exactly thrilled or pleased about it.

THEN, this happened.  We grabbed one of S's current lesson horses and he (willingly) got on.  He steered him all around. Trotted a little and even asked things like "what should my leg do when I'm asking him to turn?"

I mean really.  Even if this only happens once every five years, the photo ops are worth it.

Also- full disclaimer, I scoured the barn for a helmet that would fit his apparently abnormally giant head, but we found nothing.  So he's bare-headed. 

Biased as I am, this man cuts a nice line on a horse if I do say so myself.  And rest assured, I am already scheming ways to replicate the outing...

I am also pleased to see that horrifically long reins seem to run in our family.. Any future children with any future riding interests are doomed.

Tack Ex-plo-HO-sion

First off.  Rad comments.  Thank you for sharing collective experience.  I can assure you I have the motive and the drive to buy 800 pairs of boots and fastidiously try them all, but it's so much easier, and so much cheaper to listen to the wise people around me.

As such, I pulled the trigger on the new T-Boots. 

UGH, so expensive, but so pretty, and reviewed well enough that they were worth the gamble for me.  I'm still not sure if they'll fit the big mare since there is nothing "M/L" about her.  She's more of an L/XL (extra, extra looooong) sort of gal.. but we shall see.

I imagine this happening inside my bank account...

Then, because my visa had wiggled it's way out of my wallet, it was free to tap dance all over my keyboard and continue ordering stuff.  What stuff you wonder? Oh you know, new breeches (tap tap tap), another one of my favorite jump pads (it was on sale!) ***tap tap tap***, some all purpose boots that Supermom conned me into buying ***tappity, tap tap*** 

I thought I was safe, I really did.  Oh, did I mention last week I bought P1 another blankey because her favorite one was on clearance??? Cause I did (Visa card emits high pitched squeal and keeps tap dancing on my keyboard).

THEN, this morning, in some sort of spree induced hangover, and apparently not deterred in the slightest from writing a check to the farrier, I ventured onto SmartPak (why, god why) and saw that the new T-Boots are on sale..

And not like a cheesy $5-off-to-grab-your-attention-sale, a holy-crap-that's-75%-off sort of sale.

Mind you, only the ones in white were marked down, but I was so enamored with the $40 price tag I figured what the hell, and I put them in my cart.  Then my visa was taunted by the "qualify for free shipping with only $35 more in purchases" or whatever the number was.  It doesn't matter what the number was, because what I read was "find 3 more things you don't really need and you will "save" on shipping!"

So what did I do? I let my visa off it's leash (who are we kidding, it's not on a leash ever) and managed to find some brush cleaner (rather practical), replacement leg straps (VERY practical, I have no idea where Pia is putting all of her leg straps.  and some more of my favorite silver gunk for scratches. 

BAM! Free shipping.  Free shipping and $40 boots!? Amazing.

The sick thing is that my brain is actually convinced that it "saved" money. 

In reality, if I "like" the t-boots but don't "love" them, the $40 pair will stay and be functional, and the black set will go back to full price hell where they came from.

And that is what I consider a fairly rational conclusion to a rather irrational extended tack ho bender. 

I think I need a glass of wine...