Dahlia: the biggest miseventer of them all!

I apologize for being MIA for so long. To be totally honest I was afraid to blog there for a bit. You see, Dahlia, tried to cut her leg off and I was terrified that the injury was going to get infected and be really, really bad. So obviously, my logical decision was to just avoid talking about it all together.

So pretty…even if she does hate being in a stall

The injury was a fairly deep cut right over the back of her right front leg, directly over the tendon. Mare was walking on it alright, a little tender, until she would stand still for a bit and then she was 3 legged, knee buckling lame. Her tiny little toothpick leg also looked like a stovepipe it was so swollen. My mind immediately started leaping to all the grisly, gruesome possibilities of tendon involvement, infection, vet bills, etc….oh, and the fact that I don’t own this mare!

All wrapped up! We are now on to regular no bows and standing wraps

The vet came out and sedated her and we decided to inject fluid basically into the tendon sheath to see if it made a reappearance, indicating that the tendon sheath was involved. Apparently there is no foolproof way to test for that but that’s the best test. Luckily, no fluid reappeared, I was thrilled! The vet warned me though that it was not a definitive diagnosis of no tendon involvement but it was promising. The chunk out of her leg was large enough that he wanted to try and stitch it together, unfortunately, she had done such a number on herself that there was not enough skin to stitch it all the way together. Got a number of stitches in and wrapped her up good and tight and set an appointment for him to come back in 4 days to look at her leg.

Are you sure I can’t go outside and play?

4 days later she was still sound walking on it, was not a happy camper about being stalled, and when we unwrapped it it was looking more or less how he expected it to, a.k.a. not that great. Cue my anxiety levels increasing again. Did some more stuff, wrapped it back up again and set an appointment for him to come back in 6 more days. In the meantime I changed the wrap a couple times, did my best to keep her happy in the stall, and hoped and prayed that she would come through this alright.

Blurry face!

Well, we are now 2.5 weeks past the initial accident and she is sound (at a walk, although she did jump over the wheelbarrow while I was cleaning her stall one day and take off down the barn aisle…looked pretty sound then too!) but is still being kept wrapped and in a stall with very limited walking so that it has a chance to heal and grow skin back over the giant bald area. The vet said that her wound is approx. 22mm wide and that skin grows at a rate of approx 1mm every 10 days. So we are looking at around 100 days before her leg is hopefully all closed up and healed. My anxiety levels won’t drop until after that point, I can tell you that! I am trying really hard not to worry about her soundness, she is sound at the moment and hasn’t shown any signs of it slowing her down, even when it first happened she was still trucking around the field and yanking me around trying to graze while I called the vet but I can’t help but worry.

Oh HIII! Did you need help wrapping my leg at all?

STTA Blog Hop: It’s Ok to be Weird

I am almost 100% positive that this blog hop was made especially for me!

K over at Something to Talk About and I are good friends and I am new to blogging and blog hops so decided to use her idea as a test run to see if I could figure out how to do this. My understanding is that I missed out on the one Firn did of Everyday Wins so we’ll try this one instead! I swear, I am a decently intelligent person but sometimes the simplest things are stupidly difficult for me to figure out!

I don’t really have any of current horses I have been riding so we will start with my pride and joy, Ruby. I had to sell her right before moving to the East Coast and at some point I am sure I will do some posts about her because she really was my baby. She also had a marvelous sense of humor and was constantly getting herself into little spots of trouble and being weird (I think its why we got along so well…she made up for me not being weird at all….or something like that!)

She got the bucket stuck on her face after untying herself and like any good mother I had to take a picture of it when she came to find me to rescue her. She was spinning in circles trying to see if there was still any food left in the bucket. I laughed so hard at her!

Photobombing her boyfriend, Prince. I was trying to get a picture of him for his owner who was on vacation and Ruby decided she needed to be the center of attention. Always.

A “well timed” photo when she was on ‘restricted movement’ following her tendon injury. I allowed her to roll and she was shaking off all the snow. Two seconds later she was about 8 feet in the air doing the most impressive airs above the ground. Definitely NOT what the doctor ordered at the time!

I tried to get a nice couple of photos of Ruby before one of our last rides together. I was really having a hard time saying goodbye to her and I just wanted a couple normal pictures to remember her by. Instead I got this:

And this:

And this as well. Gee, thanks for that, Rubes.

Then of course there was this guy that I took to his first show. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. goes into his mouth. Always.

Oh Willie…

Then this lovely photo of one of my trainer’s horses the night before an event. I had gotten him all braided nicely, there was a rainbow in the background….and he did this:

One of my trainer’s other horses thought it was a great day to be alive one morning at 6am when I was feeding:

And a few that I know Cathryn from That Red Mare will enjoy if she reads this. Dahlia, (apparently its a recurring name in my horse life) was a little rescue filly that I helped save 2 years ago along with 24 other horses from the same property. I stayed up all night within the first couple of days literally holding her up while she got IV fluids in the barn viewing room because she was so dehydrated. She and I really clicked then and she would come running every time she saw me, and of course, I was completely smitten with her as well! She, and Blossom, her half (more like 3/4 or 7/8) sister were fostered by my parents over the winter of 2014-2015 and were Ruby’s pasture mates during that time. She helped teach them how to communicate like real horses, it was really quite funny to watch.

Dahlia thought something was pretty funny!

And this picture of Dahlia is both adorable and so goofy to me. Its adorable simply because I was like a proud mother with her, she was practically perfect as far as I was concerned…but I also am aware that the picture is a little bit laugh inducing and goofy to look at.

Can’t wait to see everyone else’s funny horse pictures!

Miseventing Monday

So I realize today is Tuesday but I am writing about yesterday so it still counts…right?

Anyway, yesterday was a whirlwind of a day at the barn. My trainer is out of town for a few days so asked me to work everyone for him. Nothing too serious or difficult, just basic walk, trot, canter just so they got a chance to stretch their legs but still, that meant I was riding 6 horses after work. I managed to procure a pair of “barn rats” to come help me tack up and hose off horses. The heat index yesterday was near 108 or something ridiculous like that. Having minions to help with tacking, untacking, grooming and hosing is a huge help. If you don’t have them on a regular basis, find some. Make friends with kids, smile at them, tell them they do a good job riding, bribe them with cookies, whatever you have to do. They are invaluable. I don’t get to the barn until almost 6 most days and with the heat and everything I never would have finished riding everyone if it weren’t for them.

Barn Rats pampering “The Hurricane”

Anyway, I jumped Dahlia again. We had some really nice moments and we had some real “misevents.” Although, to be honest, can they be considered misevents when I slightly expected at least some of them? We had a little bolting, we had a near crash and burn (both her and I), we had some really lovely jumps, we had some jumping the placing poles AND the jump in one fell swoop. You know, just a fairly average day for me. Sometimes I feel like the harder I work the more I end up screwing up but so far I have been able to laugh it off fairly easily and just keep going.

We warmed up over the little coops that he has set up. Just a nice, easy, slow, trot. I need to work on a) keeping my eyes up, b) not just planting my hands on her neck over the fence. I was really focusing on keeping my hands soft on the approach and not worrying myself too much with what she was doing. I did the preparation, got the slow, steady, pushing trot, and from there it was her job to maintain her balance and trot nicely over the fence. Definitely a success!

Nice little warm up fence

Then we had our first bad misevent. We trotted around to the roll tops and I had a little too slow and steady of a trot and didn’t add enough leg to keep her motor revving and we got this:

Oops! Look at her being so quiet after that though!

Ok, back to the drawing board, Miseventer, start riding your horse! Leg on, hind feet moving with power but not going super fast. More RPMs, not more MPH!

We did end up trotting and even cantering calmly over that jump though, no worries. She is quick to forgive, I will give her that! As you can see above, we are still working on figuring out the whole, soft hands and regulating tempo and speed with my body thing. It is a real work in progress. Trotting helps, but she is very enthusiastic and sometimes that means she just wants to run at the fence like a maniac…and using your hands (which is bad anyway, I know!) does NOT help the situation at all!

First time through the one stride was a little entertaining. The barn rats had set the placing poles and I didn’t check them as closely as I should have and they were a bit close. If Dahlia had a little more rateability I think they could have been doable but as it were…

We went through the grid like that. Who needs placing poles to make you jump up and over when you can just jump the whole thing, placing pole and fence, all in one leap! She can fly, she can fly, she can fly!

The two stride was just as easy as pie and calm as can be. At least the first two times we went through. I am discovering that she stays pretty chill (as chill as Dahlia gets, that is!) the first time or two through a line. After that she thinks she knows best and decides that faster is better. Let me let you in on a little secret here….faster is not always better!

I won’t share all our fails from the day, some have to be saved for the future…or for never sharing because I am horribly embarrassed and ashamed by them and hope they never happen again! We all know they will though, such is the nature of horses it seems….and being a miseventer of the top notch sort!

The Torture of Lessons

If you read my Partners in Crime page or my first post you have seen the cute little gray mare, Dahlia, mentioned. I am leasing her for the next 3 months minimum, possibly longer depending on how it goes and what her owner ends up doing. She is a sweetheart and a lot of fun to ride but she is killing me!

So far my lessons on her have been….rough to say the least. As in, hours later I will be sitting down at home or driving in the car and can feel just how fatigued my legs are. Not to mention the ride following a lesson I can barely use them, or my core, at all. They are kind of sore but its more that my whole body is fatigued. I mean, I rode in a clinic one time with a woman who is studying dressage in Germany and she said that she knows she is working hard and doing it right if she feels like she is going to vomit after a lesson from having used her core so much. I don’t necessarily feel on the brink of vomiting but its been close! I just like to think of the killer six-pack I am hopefully on my way to developing. Maybe? Something like that?

First lesson was after about 5 days of having her in my possession. We were struggling hardcore with connection and consistency and just about everything in general. The mare practically begged me to seesaw and my heart broke every time she begged because I didn’t want to do it. However, simply adding leg and keeping my hands steady also did not have the desired effect. Sure, she would put her head down but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted her back to lift, her to stretch into the contact without tensing and crossing her jaw, nice even rhythm controllable from my seat and core. You know, all the ideals when riding. D came walking out for the lesson, saw me walking around and promptly told me I wasn’t riding her. Oh….I’m not? He said that basically there was nothing going on behind her withers and she needed to move her feet. Aren’t they moving along while she’s walking? Here I thought I was moving around the arena… The solution was to add leg (as a sidenote, has anyone else noticed that this is the “cure-all” when it comes to riding? Horse behind your leg? More leg. Horse is running around like a maniac? Add leg. Horse is bucking? More leg. Rearing? More leg. It is pretty much the answer to everything I think). I added leg. He said more. I added more. He said even more. I added even more. He finally said, “Look, if you want her to change you have to make a change. Add more leg, start riding her, get those hind feet moving. I haven’t seen any difference.” What?! You haven’t?? How can that be? My legs are dying over here! So I dug down deep and found that tiny bit more to add. Thankfully she responded. Lesson progressed like that for the most part. He had me pushing her into a jig-trot to rev those hind legs and eventually we trotted along nice and slow with lovely contact and me squeezing her to death with my legs lol.

Not the best,, Lord only knows what I am doing with my body but look at those almost dead even diagonal pairs of hers!

So we worked all week and I thought we were making progress. I still was using more hand than I would have liked but kind of figured I had to meet her halfway so to speak. D came walking out for the second lesson, looked at us for about 2 seconds and said, “Way, way, WAY too much hand.” And just like that my world crumbled a little. Ok, maybe not really….but really, it did. So I struggled again at the walk for about 2 20m circles before he had me get off and he got on her. He had a bit of a hard time, nothing like I was but pretty quickly he succeeded in getting that slow, pushing trot that had her in front of the leg and therefor softening over her back and lifting, at least a little bit. Then I got on. Cue a repeat of the previous lesson but even harder. This time he wanted me to take her from a walk where she was satisfactorily in front of my leg and push her up into a trot. But he wanted the trot to be no faster than the walk basically. He also wanted me sitting, adding leg, driving her hind feet up under her with my seat and holding with my core so she didn’t go faster. Oh. My. God. I have never worked so hard in my life. I honestly thought my core was going to spontaneously combust at one point. So that was rough but I got some really good tools to continue working on and our next couple of rides went fabulously.

Still muddling our way through all this

Third lesson. I was really hoping that he was going to notice that we had been working hard and making improvements. I think he did because he finally let us canter. He won’t ever tell me that something is looking better so I have to divine meaning from him finally asking us to canter. I mean sure, he was still telling me to add more leg and keep her rhythm slower but I think the day he doesn’t tell me those things will be the day that…never mind, I don’t think he will ever  NOT tell me those things. But he let us canter. Little did he (or I!) know what we were getting into. We got about half a circle at the canter, Dahlia took offense to my outside leg still being slightly back continuing to cue for the lead and guarding the hindquarters and bucked. No big deal. It was a little one. That was, until we picked up the canter again. I have some video of it although it is very blurry but it does not look anywhere near as fast, nor as wild, as it felt. We started leaping and bolting through the air, all the while D is telling me, in this quiet, calm voice that I can barely hear over the thundering hooves and squeaking saddle, “keep that outside leg back, don’t let it off.” Way easier said than done, man. I tried though and by the end of the lesson we had progressed to no bucking and much less bolting but that was our homework for the week. Get her more broke to the leg at the canter and hopefully a little stronger too.

Anyone else have a trainer who seems quite content, or unaware, that they are killing their student?? Joking. I actually love the lessons and if I didn’t leave them tired and a tiny bit frustrated I would be slightly disappointed…most of the time. We’ll have to see how the next torture session lesson goes. Depending on how brave I am I may  even ask for a jump lesson. That really may be the death of me though, who knows.

After our early morning ride on Monday

Hello Blogland

I am a miseventer. There are no two ways about it, it is definitely the story of my life. Now, “miseventer” is not actually a word, that too fits right in with the theme of my life sometimes it seems, I always seem to be semi swimming upstream or going a little bit against the grain. “Misevent” is a noun, not a verb or an adjective or any of the other parts of speech I will likely form it into as I continue blogging. Ha!

The definition, as can be seen under the title of my blog, is: an event that does not take place as expected or planned. I am sure most everyone can relate to that feeling! Anyway, my interpretation of the definition is that a misevent is not always negative, it could be that the event is not as terrible as you thought it would be or that something better happens. Being an Eventer (of the equine sort…is there any other kind of eventer?) I thought myself pretty clever discovering a word that so perfectly describes working with horses that also contains a portion of the word for the sport that I participate in. Hence, “miseventer” was born. I know, I’m probably nowhere near as clever as I would like to think but let me have my moment of ‘glory’ here!

Working with horses means that you experience more than your fair share of misevents on a daily basis. For example:
1. The very green, incredibly tense mare that I was riding for a young girl put in a very steady dressage test and rockstar stadium round in the rain at her first event. Not what I was expecting.
2. Said mare also rocked around the cross country course like she was a seasoned pro after only ever schooling once in her life. Also, not what I was expecting.
3. Seasoned pro….until the water hazard appeared in front of her. Semi expected.
4. Leg on, wide hands, tap, tap, tap, kiss, kick, growl, jump left, jump right, jump left….thud. That thud was my body hitting the ground right on the edge of the water hazard, in case you were wondering. Definitely not expected.
5. I recently started leasing a new mare,Dahlia, who has ended up not being quite as I was thinking she would be. Unexpected.
6. I had a really tough first lesson on Dahlia but left feeling like I had some good things to work on. Had some really nice rides and some that were “eh” at best but overall felt like we had made some big progress together. Had a second lesson on her yesterday and instead of progress being seen it came to light that I had been simply continuing to mask the issue instead of really addressing it and figuring out a way to really fix it. Semi-unexpected.
7. Rode her today, after spending 9 hours at a horse show, and we picked up almost immediately where we left off yesterday at the end of the lesson (or at least I hope I am right on that this time!). Semi-unexpected…but in a good way.

As far as I am concerned all of those can be considered misevents. Some of them are good, some of them not so good but they sure seem to come with the territory when one works with horses. I could go on and on about why I decided to label myself a miseventer but for now I think I will just leave it at that. I am sure the more I continue to write the more obvious it will become, to me as much as anyone else, just how often things do not go according to our plans.