Category: Horses

Hap is officially 20 years old today, since Thoroughbreds’ birthdays are considered to be January 1st of the year they were born. (He was actually foaled in May 1985.) I rode him yesterday, and he sure didn’t feel like an old horse after we jumped a little cross rail and in his enthusiasm he decided to run away on the backside. I had to use a pulley rein for the first time in a long while: not a very elegant solution, but it works. Most of the time. The rest of the session he was lovely: after twelve years together we have each other pretty well trained.

I was riding during a lesson being taught by my trainer. I was happy that I was able to keep up much better with the others than I expected, so I am gradually getting back into shape.

Considering the other horses the same way, Rags is also 20 today and Lily is eight. Smoke, born in 1977, is an increasingly creaky 28 years old.

I found Horsey Humor What Ralph Lauren Doesn’t Know, an anonymous equestrienne’s response to Ralph Lauren’s glamorous presentation of the equestrian lifestyle, at Horse Laughs via SeaShe. Also on that page is a link to “You Know You are a Horse Person” to which I contributed long ago on rec.equestrian.

About a month ago, I exclaimed to my trainer “I can ride!” This should not have come as a surprise since we have had horses for eleven years and I had been taking lessons before that, but I was beginning to wonder.

Looking back, I stopped riding consistently enough when I came off Lily in early June. I didn’t get back on a horse for two or three weeks, and then Lily injured herself immediately thereafter. Caring for her injury and rehabilitation took up most of my horse time, and I only occasionally rode Hap or my trainer’s horse Havoc. By the time I was ready to move Lily home to exchange with Hap, I had become very unfit.

However, with Hap back at my trainer’s, I have been riding more consistently. I was rather discouraged at first, since I always felt so weak while I rode, and very stiff and sore afterward. For me, balance on a horse is a given after all these years, and the muscle memory remains, but balance and memory need some strength to back them up, and I just didn’t have it. I tried to avoid thinking about what would happen if Hap performed one of his big spooks, which involves dropping his shoulder, pivoting and trying to bolt, because I knew there would be no chance of me staying on. Fortunately, Hap has been particularly lamblike this autumn, and his biggest spook has been an occasional flinch.

Today was the last nice day before a threatening storm front, and I decided to enjoy the mild autumn day by riding bareback. I rode Hap twice this week, so I decided to ride Havoc. From the bareback point of view Havoc is a wonderful horse because he is so well-trained, but he is a big mover, which makes it a bit of a challenge. And like many Thoroughbreds, he has a back bone that puts one strongly in mind of a stegasaurus.

I rode Havoc longer than I would have predicted, feeling the my muscles stretch and relax as I rode him. Havoc thought he was getting a good deal, because on my best day with the bareback pad, I ask for less from the horse than I do on my worst day with a saddle. I refused to think about how much this is going to hurt tomorrow, because even when I am in good shape, I get really sore after I ride a horse bareback.

I’ll pay tomorrow, but I had a great time today.

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Today, Hap did something that I have only once or twice observed before in our eleven years together. While he was rolling in the sand of the arena, he rolled completely over and did the other side. He has the sharp, high withers typical of many Thoroughbreds, and I have always supposed that they get in the way of turning completely over. However, the arena was damp and very soft after the precipitation a few days ago, and Hap had picked a deep area for his roll.

Usually, I turn him loose to roll, so I don’t have to follow him around for five minutes while he picks his place, but there were people handling other horses in the arena. Hap is very particular about where he rolls. He is even slow when he is at liberty to pick a place, but seems to spend far longer when he is on a lead rope. Perhaps he enjoys leading me for a change.

At least, in his comparatively sober old age, he no longer springs up from his roll ready to buck and bolt. In his early years, he was so explosive after he rolled that I wouldn’t let him do it if there was anyone else in the arena.

In my post about upgrading to Fedora Core 3, it sounds as though I did nothing else while it was happening. Although I spent a lot of time checking to see if the damn thing was done yet, I actually accomplished quite a lot since I couldn’t use the computer to distract myself as much while it was busy updating itself.

Today, I went and took a lesson from my trainer on Hap. Although my trainer works with me for short periods of time on a catch as can basis, it had been a while since I took a formal lesson. Working more or less on my own, I can feel good things happening, but have missed the input from a ground person.

Since I am so far out of shape (though not as much as I was a month ago) I didn’t do any jumping today. Mainly, we worked on dressage type stuff. I do most of my riding in a forward seat, and want to develop a better seat when I attempt dressage. I’ve been focussing on this a lot during the past month, and now no longer feel as though I am leaning backward when I am actually correct.

It was a good lesson: lots of trotting and cantering, trot to canter transitions without me leaning forward to get them, and downward transitions without me clutching at Hap’s face. Aside from my position, the main focus was on keeping Hap on the outside rein. This is not a problem going to the left, because Hap likes the right rein, but he is very disinclined to stay on the left rein when going to the right.

We took a break by learning to walk on the bit. Hap has a marvelous walk, but we are used to doing it as we would in a hunter under saddle class, on a very light contact where the horse should be round and forward and seeking the bit, but not on it. I only ask him to go on the bit at the trot and at the canter, and didn’t want to work on it by myself without help since I don’t have the feel for it and didn’t want to screw up. Since I have done it now in the lesson, I think I understand the feel well enough that I can start working on it by myself.

We finally finished up by working on leg yielding, shoulder-in and extended trot. Hap does the first two quite well when I don’t screw up and try to turn him into a pretzel. He did them quite well today. We also did some real extensions, which is something we have very little experience together. I’ve only really succeeded once or twice before today on my trainer’s horse, but Hap and I clicked and were doing quite well.

Afterward, I helped my trainer with a beginner lesson. She was expecting two little girls, and only one showed up. So I climbed up on the other pony Danny (despite a child’s saddle that did terrible things to parts of me not normally mentioned in polite company) and was the second “student” in the lesson. This gave the beginner someone to follow (and lead) and also inspired CJ, the little white Arab the child was riding. When he gives a beginner a lesson and there aren’t any other horses around, he spends all of his time trying to convince my trainer that the child is too little to be more than six feet away from her. Danny quickly figured out that we were baby-sitting, and that he wouldn’t have to work that hard, despite having me on his back. We even did some drills at a trot together, and then played a bit of walking tag. Tag was a challenge since I didn’t want to catch her too quickly, or be too obvious about getting caught myself.

Smokes entertains himself by fence fighting with the dogs. He used to canter up and down the fence line to drive the dogs into a frenzy, but has found that it works just as well to stand at the fence and make suggestive movements with his head.

I don’t enjoy this hobby of his, but am glad to see its return. For a while, a month or so ago, he had quit doing so. In fact, he was so shutdown and shrunk into himself that I though he might be starting the equine equivalent of turning his face to the wall. He had become very lame on his bad leg, probably due to stamping at flies, and had stopped moving around much, probably due to the pain of the abused knee. However, the flies are gone, and Smoke is back to his old, obnoxious self.

Smoke has a new stall, except that it isn’t new and isn’t even a stall. The barn we built seven or eight years ago has two very large stalls, which are open on the south side. Gates shut off the stalls when the horses are eating their concentrated feed, and are chained open the rest of the day so the horses can shelter at will. When I have two horses at home, they each get fed in their own stall. With three horses, one has to eat outside the barn. Smoke has panic attacks, and will break out of small enclosures when he feels trapped, so he has always been the outside horse. (When there are only two horses, I don’t have to shut the stall Smoke is in.)

Smoke, who is a very old 27 now, has grown noticeably frailer over the past year. I really hated the idea of feeding him out in the open this winter, when the weather might be very severe. About a week ago, I had a brainstorm. When we brought the property, the only existing outbuilding was an old shack with a small enclosed room and an adjacent stall. The previous owner had stored junk in this building, and we continued the tradition. However, since we had whittled down the junk over the years, I thought there might be room to build a small corral inside to make it safe for Smoke to eat in there. When he wasn’t eating, we could shut it off with a gate, since it would be too easy for a horse to trap another horse in there. Jack was dubious when I proposed the idea, but said he would think about it.

This morning, I had asked Jack to help me by doing some nailing out at the barn. Instead, he started taking things apart in the old shed. We cleared the area, raked it up, and used chain link panels to block off two sides of a corral, with the third side being the wall of the building. The fouth side is the opening to the barn. I raked and shoveled to clear the ground of many years of debris. I then went over the area thoroughly with a strong magnet to make sure we had picked up all the metal. To finish, we placed a gate across the opening to the “new” stall, which will be closed except when Smoke is using the stall to eat.

All three horses came over at one point or another to see what we were doing. Smoke watched us the longest, almost as if he knew we were doing it for him.

With considerable trepidation, I brought home Rags yesterday to join Smoke and Lily. I put Lily in a stall so she could meet Rags over the gate, and flinched when Lily squealed, struck and half reared to impress Rags. Rags seemed more intrigued than offended. Later, when I let Lily and Rags out of their stalls after their evening meal, heels flew in all directions, and I was only slightly relieved when I noticed that the two horses seemed to maintain at least one horse length between them when they kicked. Although the night was chilly, I left the bedroom window open so I could listen for sounds of fighting in the horse field.

This morning, they were still displaying enough snarkiness that I carried a whip as I handled the horses, to discourage them if they got carried away while they were next to me. A careful inspection showed no signs of impact injuries or injury caused lameness, so I decided they were adjusting. I saw almost no signs of aggression when I fed this evening. Jack let them out of their stalls when they were done eating their concentrate. I watched from the window and they all acted as if they had known each other for years.

It is probably too soon to be sure, but Lily may end up as the dominant horse. Without making a big deal of it, Rags drifted around her to get to a pile of hay, rather than driving her off from the one she was eating. I’ve never cared much how herd hierarchies work themselves out, as long as they are reasonably stable so the horses aren’t continually stressed. However Rags has run this field for quite a few years now, and I will feel slightly sorry if he is displaced by a redhead with an attitude.