A Good Day Goes Bad

Yesterday morning I went to my trainer’s barn to help her with a class. She has one little seven year old girl who is a beginner beginner. My trainer doesn’t usually take them that young, but this little girl’s first word was probably “horse.” We quickly learned to never ask her if she has had enough riding, because she is never ready to get off the pony on her own.

Usually I work with the beginner while my trainer works with the other kids. However, yesterday morning she handed me the megaphone and took the little girl into the center of the arena to work with her. I had to figure out what to do with five students of varying ability without using the center of the arena. There was one advanced teenager on a fiery Thoroughbred named Cappy; a not very advanced teenager on my trainer’s old show hunter Havoc; the perfect kid on the grulla Indy; the kid who is a pretty decent rider but doesn’t get out much on Danny, the small Arab cross; and the kid who wants to show on Major, the impressive looking Percheron cross.

Of these the hardest kid to coach was the perfect kid. Her parents are gymnastics coaches, and if she wasn’t a natural athlete by birth, she sure looked like one when I first met her. My method of coaching, such as it is, is to compare what I see to an ideal version in my mind, and then try to make suggestions to turn the former into the latter. It is tough to make suggestions when you can’t see anything wrong. Indy was acting like little Mr Perfect as well, so I was limited to telling her she looked great, and should stop leaning through her corners.

The second hardest to coach was the not very advanced teenager, because I didn’t want to overwhelm her with too much correction. She isn’t obviously athletic, but she does have a much better feel for horses than most students at her stage, and will be a fine rider and horsewoman if she sticks with it. Since Havoc has more hours under saddle than I do in the saddle, I mainly watched for when he was going correctly, and told her to take note of that feeling. And, of course, to keep her heels down.

With the advanced teenager, I was just a traffic director, and pleased that my trainer would be taking over by the time the horses did the jumping part of the session. If I had her to myself for some time, I would work on seeing if she could get him to relax and stretch out a bit, but the two ring circus atmosphere didn’t lend itself to doing so yesterday. Cappy will never look like a show hunter, but he doesn’t have to look like an open jumper headed towards his first fence.

Adding to the challenge, Danny was his usual lazy self so I had to keep asking his rider to move him up, and Major was uncharacteristically enthusiastic, so I had to keep asking his rider to slow him down, or at least circle if she couldn’t do so. Danny’s rider main equitation fault is wanting to curl up a bit, and I felt like a hypocrite each time I told her to stretch up, since that is my main fault as well. The kid riding Major looks nice on horses, and just needs to generally become more effective all around.

Mainly, it was a lot of fun, since they were all well past the initial stage when you worry about the rider staying on, as well as the stage when you feel awfully sorry for the horse. Afterward, my trainer said I worked the kids pretty hard. I replied that they didn’t complain. She answered that these kids never complain. Oops.

For the jumping portion, my trainer had set a weird sort of lane along one edge of the arena: bounce, three stride, bounce. Starting with just poles on the ground, we started sending horses through. Major, who has done lots of odd exercises at the clinics his owner takes him to, figured it out pretty quickly. Havoc, who has seen almost everything in his time, figured it out about the same time. Cappy, also highly experienced, thought we were crazy, and attacked it each time. Indy doesn’t have tons of experience, but is naturally athletic, and didn’t seem to realize it was strange. Danny is so short strided that he can get through just about anything by adding steps.

I was most impressed by the teenager on Havoc. She has just started jumping, and this was perhaps the first time that she felt a horse really jumping. The jumps were set low, but because of the spacing Havoc was really having to use himself, which is a much different feeling than when horses are just hopping over single cross rails. She didn’t back off at all, and only got jumped up once or twice.

After lunch, the perfect kid and I started to work with my horse Lily. Indy doesn’t longe well, and Lily does, so I was going to use Lily to show the perfect kid how to longe a horse. Lily seemed fine as I led her out of the mare field. I bridled Lily as I told the perfect kid all my safety tips for longing. (These were mainly acquired the hard way when I got hurt doing stuff, though I didn’t get hurt the time Hap’s right hind foot passed close enough to my face that I felt the breeze. This is why I never send a strange horse out from me on a longe line, but always back away before I ask them to move.) Lily walked quietly on the circle as the perfect kid stood at my left shoulder. I showed her how I ask the horse to move away from me by pointing the whip at her shoulder, and Lily obediently moved out.

I asked Lily to trot and managed not to say what I thought since I try not to swear around the kids. Lily was dead lame. I sent the perfect kid for my trainer and a hoof pick. My trainer couldn’t come but the kid brought back a hoof pick. The minute I touched behind Lily’s left cannon bone to ask her to pick up her hoof I suspected it was very bad. In twelve years of examining horses legs for heat and swelling, I had never felt anything like it before, not even when Hap had the suspensory tear. I consulted with my trainer on how to describe the injury to the vet clinic, and she said, “tell them it looks like a high bowed tendon, but let’s hope it isn’t.”

I carefully led Lily to an unused paddock. She could walk normally, except when turning suddenly to the left when that front leg would almost buckle. There was some grass growing in the paddock, and Lily dived right in.

Fortunately, since I was feeling rather panicked, the vet was there within forty minutes. She walked back with me to the paddock, and spent a long time examining Lily’s leg, finally deciding it was probably the superficial tendon, or a bowed tendon in traditional terms. (She has seen cases where cellulitis mimics bowed tendons. This would have been a good thing, since horses recover a lot faster.) She said she had seen much worse, which was some comfort. We started discussing treatment and the first steps in what will be a long convalescence.

Yesterday, I did hydrotherapy twice and put a sweat wrap on it overnight. This morning, I will do hydrotherapy again and the vet will come back to put a gel cast on this afternoon. This cast will stay on two weeks, and when it comes off, she will need to be evaluated for whether she needs another gel cast at that time.

Since we will need to restrict Lily’s activity for some time, my trainer and I decided to subdivide one of the paddocks into a smaller area that still has a shelter. She will be able to see other horses from there, which she wouldn’t be able to do in her stall in the barn, since all the barn horses get turned out during the day. We did most of the work of setting up the paddock yesterday, and will finish today when I take one of our corral panels over to complete the enclosure.

I may eventually bring her home, but it is critical to keep her quiet and unstressed so she doesn’t pound her leg during this initial phase, so I want her in familiar (to her) surroundings. Besides, I want my trainer’s moral support and practical experience as I tend to Lily.