Dressage at Triple Creek

Saturday's horse show morning dawned and we paused to appreciate the snow covered mountain views we have here at Bit of Honey.  Well, the humans paused, but Highboy had already kicked into high gear.  He was RACING up and down his paddock, winding up even mellow Fason into rearing, bucking, and sparring over the fence while we puny humans tried to get all the horses fed in the early morning light. 

As I watched Highboy catapult up and down his paddock, I decided I had no intentions of climbing on a horse who was that wound up.  While we waited for the elderly horses to eat their breakfast mash I took Highboy out to the round pen.  I set up the barrels on their tall ends with a vertical jump, and I turned Highboy loose.  He spent the next ten minutes launching himself over the jump at liberty, running around the round pen in pure joy. 

Eventually Highboy came down to a civilized trot and approached me in the center of the round pen.  When I could see he was ready to focus I took him back to the horse trailer, brushed the sand off of him, and got him dressed for the road.  He was so eager to get going!  I faced him to the back of the horse trailer and he jumped right in, then TROTTED to the front of the big trailer in eager anticipation of the fun day ahead.

We arrived at Triple Creek with enough time to hand walk the horses around in the show arena before they closed it to use for the competition.  I definitely wanted to get there in time to do this because Dewey and Rosie had never been to Triple Creek before, and a new indoor arena can be spooky to a horse seeing it for the first time.

When we were done hand walking we returned to the trailer to tack up.  Rosie the morgan took a little time to appreciate her dappled reflection in the mirrored trailer. 

Mirror mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

Warm up in the outdoor arena went well.  Dewey was his usual chill self, Rosie was a Marching Morgan, and Highboy was surprisingly calm.  Lynn, who owns Triple Creek, even approached me asking if this was the same horse I'd had there two weeks ago who had been such a pistol.  When I admitted that it was the same gelding, she was surprised to see him looking so relaxed.  I explained that with Highboy, I never know what horse I will have, so I just have to ride the horse that shows up that day. 

Dewey and Sara were the first from our barn to go into the dressage court to ride.  Dewey was a little looky, but when he and Sara went in to ride their second test he was much more forward and took longer strides.  They came away with positive comments and good scores, resulting in some fun ribbons and a great feeling of accomplishment!

Rosie and Sally were next.  This was their first real dressage show and they got some great positive feedback from the judge.  As I watched their tests from outside the arena, the other trainers, riders, and spectators were admiring Rosie and wondering what breed she was.  The judge thought she was an imported European warmblood of some type.  With great pride I claimed them as from my barn and declared she's a Morgan who is ALSO trained to drive!  Her stellar free walk was my favorite part of their tests.

Highboy was entered in three tests.  We were to ride eventing dressage Beginner Novice test A twice, then a 2'3" prix caprilli.  The first time we rode BN-A Highboy was a dork.  He bucked, he refused to bend, he flipped his head as high as he could in the air, he forgot he had front feet and stumbled going down on his knees.  It was a fiasco.  When we finished the test I approached the judge to thank her for her time, and she kindly tried to find ANYTHING to say about the test that wouldn't sound derogatory.  I expressed to her that this was our dress rehearsal of sorts, and the horse would get better as the day progressed.  She looked skeptical (a realistic reaction given his first performance), but ended with advising me to have him go more forward. 

The second time we rode BN-A Highboy was much better.  He was traveling more forward, he was lifting his back and looking for contact with my hands.  Still some unbalanced moments, but no bucking.  At the conclusion the judge expressed surprise at how differently he moved this time, and acknowledged that I did say he would get better, and turned out I was right.

The third test had 31 scored maneuvers in it, including jumping three fences in various directions.  This was compared to only 14 maneuvers in BN-A.  I was experimenting by giving Highboy a much longer, more difficult, and more complicated test to see if I could get him to try by making it harder.  When he's bored he causes mischief to amuse himself, so this was a try-and-see approach to getting his brain in gear.  

Thankfully, it worked!  He rode not only twenty meter and fifteen meter cantering circles, but changed rein at the canter over jumps with correct lead changes, did a ten meter sitting trot circle, performed trot and canter lengthenings, a stretchy trot circle, and trotted over the 2'3" verticals out of a leg yield.  When we had completed our last salute (scoring a 7!) I approached the judge a final time to thank her, and her eyebrows had shot up.  She said Highboy had been lovely and forward to the fences, more balanced overall, and looked like a horse that would be great fun to go galloping out in the field across country.  I smiled and nodded, and she then said, "That's it, isn't it?  You're an eventer.  That's why you're doing dressage with an obvious cross-country galloping and jumping horse."  I said indeed I am an eventer, and she said to enjoy him, clearly he was made for it. 

We were redeemed!  I've unlocked another door in his training, discovering that Highboy prefers a complicated dressage test to a simple one.  A great day overall, only made sweeter by the blue and red ribbons Highboy and I took home. 

Memorize a Prix Caprilli Test

I've been working on memorizing my prix caprilli dressage test for this Saturday's show at Triple Creek with Highboy​. A prix caprilli test is a dressage test with some jumps in it.  This one is longer than anything I've done with him so far in competition, with lots more canter work. 

I'm experimenting to see if a longer more complicated test gives him time and incentive to focus since he gets bored so easily and then causes trouble to entertain himself. We are also riding a quickie beginner novice eventing dressage test, so we'll see how he goes. He's an unconventional horse so I'm trying unconventional methods.

I have to memorize the test because if I have someone call it out to me while I'm riding I get distracted and have trouble focusing on my horse and riding the actual movements.  There are lots of ways to memorize a test, and since it's that time of year again here is an older blog post describing some ways to get the pattern to stick in your head.

http://bitofhoneytraining.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-to-learn-pattern.html

Baby Casper's Veterinary Adventure

Over the past nearly two months Baby Casper has had quite the veterinary adventure.  I went out to feed on March 18th, a Saturday morning, only to discover Casper hanging upside down, dangling by one front leg caught between two metal fence panels.  The panels had been secured by a chain, keeping them tight together in an effort to prevent such an accident, but somehow he still managed to get stuck.  I ran for the bolt cutters, cut the chain to free him, and he quickly popped up. 

When his regular veterinarian, Dr. Garrison from Waverly Equine Services, arrived to look at him we learned he had strained the joints and ligaments of the lower leg on his right front.  We also found a gigantic ulcer on his left eye from thrashing around while he was stuck, thus injuring it banging it on the ground and fencing. 

Diagnostics included xrays of the injured leg with clipping and cleaning the very small abrasions on the sides.  Dr. Garrison also stained the injured eye which is how we identified the large ulcer.  We proceeded to get him fixed up as best we could with a mud poultice on his leg with a pressure wrap.  In addition to his oral pain meds, Casper also began a four-times-a-day regimen of various eye ointments to keep the pupil dilated (and eye muscles relaxed) and prevent infection from entering the eye. 

Things were progressing smoothly.  It took a few weeks but the eye cleared up beautifully and he was walking around on the injured leg sound at the walk with the wrap on his leg being changed regularly.  On the morning of April 7th Casper marched up to me for breakfast completely sound.  Just two hours later Dr. Garrison came to recheck him, and when his owner went to halter him he was very lame.  Even though there was no significant visible trauma to the skin when he had been found hanging in the fence, we later learned the tissues had been stretched and damaged.  It took nearly two weeks for the skin to die and slough off, which then left an opening through which infection set into the pastern joint.

Dr. Garrison immediately recognized that the joint was infected, doing more radiographs and an ultrasound of the leg to try to confirm.  She then referred us to Colorado State University for joint surgery for Casper.

When we got to CSU with Casper and his septic joint the prognosis was grim.  The veterinarians there said if we had caught it soon enough potentially Casper would make it, but if the infection had been sitting for days to a week in the joint he likely would never be sound.  Casper's owner elected to do a smaller version of the surgery offered to us to give Casper a chance.

Casper was taken into the surgery area and laid down by being pressed up against the wall.  Once he was injected with induction medications he fell asleep and the people assisting guided him as he laid down in the surgery room. 

A veterinary resident ran anesthesia for Casper, you can see in this photo he has a purple towel over his eyes to keep things dark for him.  He has an IV in his vein in his neck for the drugs to enter his system and keep him asleep, and the tube in his nose is for oxygen.  On the clipboard the resident kept detailed notes on his vital signs and how deeply he was asleep.

In this video you can see the veterinarians flushing out the joint with saline solution to rinse it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPE3FC-cfMo

Once the saline had been poured through the joint the veterinarian injected antibiotic.  This was to hopefully kill any bacteria that remained after the lavage.

Lastly they put a cast on Casper's lower leg.  This was to keep it completely clean so no further infection could be introduced to the already compromised joint, as well as to stabilize the joint because the collateral ligaments were damaged. 

Casper came back to Bit of Honey on stall rest.  We were to look for any heat or moisture to appear in the cast, as well as any lameness or fever which would indicate the infection had returned.  This could have happened because of not getting every last bit of bacteria out of a difficult joint to flush, and if that was the case we would have had to euthanize Casper.

As an ongoing treatment, Dr. Garrison put additional antibiotic in the blood vessels descending down his leg into the cast in an effort to prevent the infection from coming back.  Unfortunately, when he was hauled to Dr. Garrison's for the first treatment after CSU, we discovered that the blood vessels had been compromised by hanging upside down in the initial trauma.  Because of that only a small amount of antibiotic could be injected into the leg at a time, otherwise the vein would blow because it was too fragile to be injected into.

Casper still needed these treatments, but it was determined that they needed to happen daily in smaller amounts rather than every two to three days in larger amounts.  To ease the stress on him (and the vet!) of traveling from Bit of Honey to the vet clinic and back so often, we decided to hospitalize him at Dr. Garrison's. 

This photo is of Casper with his lower leg in the cast, also wearing a tourniquet on his upper leg so the antibiotic could be injected.

 

This photo shows the line going into Casper's leg, and the antibiotic is going through it.  The human in the photo is the husband of Casper's owner.

The red wrap is covering the area where the antibiotic went in, to keep in clean and support the injured blood vessels.

Dr. Garrison is a very forward-thinking veterinarian and uses different modalities to help horses heal.  Here she is using laser therapy on Casper's leg to stimulate the blood vessels to heal.  It worked well, and she was able to do further antibiotic injections into the veins.

Casper was sedated for this work, here he is resting his head on a friendly chest.

Because we had caught the infection within a couple hours of it invading the joint and then addressed it quickly, Casper did well with his cast.  He didn't go lame, the infection didn't return, and on April 20th he went back to CSU to have his cast removed.  They found the wounds were healing well and after removing some proud flesh they bandaged him up again to return to Bit of Honey for more stall rest.

Since then I've been doing bandage changes for Casper.  He's gotten feisty because he's tired of people messing with that leg.  He isn't opposed to striking with it as well as aiming a swift kick in someone's direction with his hind leg on the same side.  He and I have had a few frank discussions about his behavior.  I carry a crop in my back pocket when I do bandage changes, and he's been swatted a few times as I protect myself and emphasize to him what is and is not acceptable behavior.  I also hearkened back to my small animal veterinary technician days, and got a little creative with his bandage change.  In light of his attitude, the devilish red and black smile seemed appropriate.

His leg does look good now that the cast is off.  The wounds are looking healthy and are healing well.

There is some residual swelling around the pastern on the injured leg, as you can see in this photo when compared to the right leg.  He is walking around sound on it, though, and is feeling plenty fresh.  The shenanigans in his stall are entertaining to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKF3fHOwapk

Casper is mentally ready to go back out to play with his friends.  We are waiting on one more recheck by Dr. Garrison, and we want the wounds completely closed on his leg before we turn him loose.  Casper really has turned out to be a miracle baby.  His odds were not very good, but youth and vigor were on his side and he's doing well.  Now to channel that youth and vigor towards good instead of evil!

Saddle Fitting - How to Know When the Horse Says No

Recently I've come across a bunch of online articles about saddle fitting.  Most of them focus on the long term effects of ill fitting saddles:  white hairs, muscle atrophy, soundness problems.

What if your horse could tell you from the very beginning whether the saddle and tack were right?  Surely the horse knows whether it hurts as soon as you put the saddle on, just like you know as soon as you put on a pair of ill fitting shoes.  Sometimes it takes a quick walk around the store to confirm a bad fit, but it certainly doesn't take years of foot pain to determine that your shoes hurt.

Over the years I've met many horses with saddle and tack fitting problems.  The first horse I had who insisted I learn what I was doing with saddle fit was Thai, a 17.1 hand OTTB with high withers and a wide, long back.  He got me into saddle fitting because he was SO particular.  To express his opinion, if a saddle wasn't EXACTLY right he would buck until the saddle came off.  I suspect this is why no one had ever owned him for more than a year before I bought him at age ten.  I quickly learned to lunge him with a new saddle before I got on to test ride it, and I found out exactly how far it was to the ground from that height many times.  Once I got the saddle right, however, he was a truly incredible ride, jumping 4'6" courses like they were nothing.

Thai, the OTTB that got me started with saddle fitting

Since Thai, I have developed a pretty thorough system for evaluating saddles.  However, despite what I may find with my measurements, a practiced eye, and years of experience, the MOST important aspect of saddle fitting is the horse's opinion.  Even if everything looks absolutely perfect to me, if the horse says no, that's a deal breaker. 

How do I know if the horse says no?  Here are several ways that horses have communicated this to me, and ways your horse might be trying to tell you that things aren't exactly right:

1 - Tensing up when you place the saddle on his back.
Especially if the horse has been ridden in the ill-fitting saddle before, he knows that one hurts.  I've met some stoic quarter horses who don't say ANYTHING about the saddle hurting, other than to tense up a little when it's placed on his back.

2 - Making faces at you when grooming or tacking up, "cinchy" or "girthy"
Sometimes if the horse thinks you weren't paying attention when he told you by tensing up, he will make faces at you when tacking.  Sometimes he will just raise his head high in the air.  Other more obvious signs are pinned ears and biting the air (or you) when you set the saddle on his back or try to girth it up.  These are hallmarks of "This saddle hurts me".  I VERY rarely find a horse who is girthy just to be contrary.  Those behaviors almost always indicate something hurts, whether it's the saddle, pad, girth, or he has a belly ache because of ulcers or parasites.

3 - Wiggling around when you place the saddle on his back
People often mistake this for disobedience and then focus on teaching the horse to stand still, when most of the time the horse is trying to escape something that hurts.

4 - Won't stand still for mounting
This is another one that gets mistaken for disobedience.  While it's true that a horse should be taught to stand quietly for mounting, if he really insists he CAN'T by always moving away from you I get suspicious of saddle fit.  When the rider puts weight in one stirrup to get on, it yanks the saddle to one side and can be dramatically painful to have a pressure point exaggerated by the weight of the rider entirely on one side.  A mounting block can alleviate some of this, which is why I always insist riders use one even when the saddle is a great fit.  Though the fact remains - if the saddle hurts, putting strong pressure on only one side of it is going to hurt, and your horse is trying to escape that pain.


5 - Horse won't lift his back/won't shift his weight to his haunches/won't rock back on his hocks.
These are different ways to express the same concept, depending on what style of riding you do.  Sometimes if a horse is struggling to do these things the saddle is to blame. To shift weight back on his hind end he must engage his abdominal muscles and core trunk muscles, which lifts his back.  If the saddle is uncomfortable, he isn't going to want to lift his back into something that is hurting him.  These can also manifest as trouble with jumping bascule, or shape of his back over jumps because he doesn't want to lift his back into the pain thus increasing it.  Flying lead changes, halts, backing, and sliding stops become problematic for the same reason, he must lift his back to do a clean flying change, halt squarely, back correctly, or slide to a stop.

6 - Horse is "high headed"
This is the foil of number 5.  The back comes up and the head goes down.  The back goes down and the head comes up.  This is another way for the horse to avoid the pain of a saddle poking him in the back.  By keeping his head up, his back stays down and farther away from the painful saddle.

7 - Bucking
This is one of the loudest ways a horse can protest his ill fitting saddle.  If previous efforts to get a human to listen and remove the pain haven't worked, bucking generally gets a human's attention.  Often the horse won't buck from saddle fit until he starts cantering.  This is along the same lines as sections 5 and 6.  When a horse is cantering with any kind of impulsion, due to the pattern in which his limbs move physics dictates his back has to come up.  If his back comes up and he hits something painful, instinct for a horse is to buck.  It fits really well with the species' natural tendencies.  If a horse is in the wild, a predator going after him will jump on his back.  Survival instincts kick in and he will buck and kick to try to remove the threat.  Ill fitting saddles slide right into this instinctual behavior, I'm surprised more horses don't do it!

8 - Tapping the equipment
Once horses realize that I'm trying to determine what tack they want, they start to help me out by becoming more expressive.  On multiple occasions I've had a horse turn his head around and tap the part of the saddle that is pinching him with his nose, sometimes even grasping a saddle flap and trying to pull it off.  I've had horses take a girth in their teeth and shake it gently while staring at me to say they wanted a different one.  When I replaced the girth with one that fit better they stood completely still facing forward.

It's amazing to me how much horses will try to communicate with us humans.  They generally start out subtle, and get louder with their opinions if we ignore them.  If your horse is showing you any of these signs, it would definitely serve you well to have the saddle fit checked.  A qualified and experienced saddle fitter will do the best job, and every good saddle fitter I know agrees that your horse is the one wearing the saddle, and so it's his opinion that matters the most.

Gwenyth Rides in a Group, Over Obstacles, and in the XC Field

Gwenyth the clydesdale continues to make good progress in her riding training.  Most recently we have been learning about riding with other horses, going over ground poles, and riding out in the back forty. 

Her first ride with another horse was with Beauty, a level headed quarter horse who rides like a sports car.  The second ride in the arena with other horses we had four total.  Beauty again, Dewey the OTTB, and Rain the paint.  Sweet Gwenyth is so thoughtful, if she's confused about what is going on her default is to stop and watch, then once she's done thinking about it we continue on.  Because everyone was working on different things and riding in different directions, we had a few moments where she had to deal with arena traffic. 

Gwenyth is just starting to get the hang of leg yielding.  While trotting along and as we approached another horse with shorter legs who was going slower, I pressed with my outside leg to get her to move over a little.  We would trot past the other horse, then we leg yield back to the rail.  The first time she was a little worried about going by another horse, because Gwenyth is pretty low in the herd hierarchy.  In fact, she's low enough that I needed to put her back in her own paddock so she would have more access to the big round hay bale.  Garmin, my small blind pony, had been ordering her around and not letting her have a turn at the ponies' bale! 

Even though Gwenyth was nervous about passing another horse who was higher than her on the totem pole, she was able to think her way through the task and accomplish it anyway.  Another tricky thing has been when other horses are trotting at her head-on.  Generally in this situation horse and rider pairs will pass with left shoulders nearest each other, like driving a car.  If there is additional maneuvering going on, someone will verbally call "inside" or "outside" to indicate whether they are going to go towards the inside of the arena or the outside of it.  The first couple times this happened, Gwenyth came to an abrupt halt and STARED at the horse approaching her.  When she realized that the other horse was going to calmly go by her, she decided she could continue after all. 

Another arena traffic challenge was watching the other horses begin jumping.  The first time Rain went over the cross rails Gwenyth slammed on the brakes and absolutely GAWKED at Rain, like she was sure this couldn't be possible.  Rain has plenty of experience doing this and so she just continued along, hopping over other cross rails in the arena while Gwenyth stared.  Eventually Gwenth sort of declared, "Well, ok, they do all kinds of weird things here!  I guess this is just one more strange behavior to add to the list."

Once Gwenyth had seen Rain going over the poles I then asked Gwenyth to do it.  I started with a jump that had a ground pole between the standards, so Gwenyth could start with something very simple.  She walked right up to it and then stopped, casually tossing me a look over her shoulder asking what exactly we were supposed to do now?  I told her to walk on, and she took tiny little shuffly steps until her toes were right up against the pole.  Then she put her nose all the way down to ground to examine this obstacle.  She had already experienced going over the bridge in the arena, but of course this pole looked different to her than a bridge.

Gwenyth proceeded to sniff at the pole, then touch it with her lips.  Starting in the center of the pole she investigated it all the way to the left and then all the way to the right.  Once she had confirmed its benign character she carefully took a first step over it, paused, then walked all the way over.  I praised her and told her how smart she was.  Because she was allowed to slowly process the idea on her own terms, I ended up with a brave mare who was then able to boldly walk and trot over the pole from both directions with no hesitation. 

Gwenyth with her mane braided and thinking deep thoughts

The last challenge from last week was riding out all the way to the back of the property.  We did this with Alice on Beauty, to help give Gwenyth a little courage by doing it in a small herd.  Normally the dogs would take on this role, but Gwenyth is still getting used to riding with my dogs.  Once horses are accustomed to the dogs they like to go out with them, because the dogs protect the horses and flush out any horse monsters.  Gwenyth isn't quite there yet, she still asks me why Mahzi, clearly a predator, is following so closely behind her looking so relaxed.  But when Beauty didn't seem to care about the dogs Gwenyth decided they were ok.  We started out by walking along the fenceline at the bottom of  the hill where the horses can't see the cross country jumps.  This way the jumps appear as the horse is headed towards home.  The horse is more likely to go by them if home is in sight, rather than thinking they are horse monsters lurking on the horizon as the horse is leaving the safety of home.

The first cluster of logs were lying ominously still, all in a row, in the same way a group of coyotes would on the hunt.  Gwenyth thought this was a dangerous scenario, and got a little worried.  Fortunately her "big spook" so far has been to stop and stare, then jog in place a little if she's truly concerned.  The way we work through things like this is to use Beauty, her buddy horse for the ride.  We all turned and headed towards the scary logs, but Alice kept Beauty between Gwenyth and the logs.  This works for Gwenyth psychologically for three reasons.  First, Beauty sets the example by showing Gwenyth that she isn't concerned (Beauty has jumped everything out in the field).  Second, if the monsters do pounce, Beauty will be the target not Gwenyth (and we all know you don't have to be the fastest horse, you just have to be faster than the slowest horse!).  Third, if Gwenyth did panic and run away from the logs, she would be running away from Beauty, and it's safer to stay with your herd.

All these factors worked in our favor and by the end of the ride Gwenyth was marching around the logs like an old pro.  Occasionally she gave them a second hard look, but really she was very brave.  I'm pleased with her progress, and I attribute a lot of her learning accomplishments to her age.  Gwenyth is eleven, which generally is late to start a horse under saddle.  However, personally I prefer starting adult horses to youngsters.  I find that they have the psychological maturity and the mental capacity to think their way through things, versus a typical three year old who has the attention span of a flea.  Adults are less reactive, more calculating, and when they understand I'm a reasonable human they generally are willing and able to do what I ask much with much less repetition than a youngster needs.  I really am enjoying Gwenyth!