Insults and Injuries

Touch A Prince had a rough weekend.  When I went out to feed him Sunday morning I found him injured.  I don't know for sure what happened but we think he was probably kicked.  He has a smaller wound on his left shoulder and a more impressive wound on the left front knee. The veterinarian came out right away despite it being Sunday morning before the superbowl (thank you Dr. Landes).  We took x-rays which showed the injury on Touch A Prince's leg did not go into the joint, which is great news.  This means he should make a full recovery.  The vet cleaned him up and sewed him back together, and now I have him wrapped and on stall rest with his medicine.

I had to get a little creative with his blanket, because the shoulder wound would be rubbed and irritated by the fabric.  Leaving him naked wasn't an option because he doesn't have much at all for hair.  I dug through my vast collection of horse blankets, and I found a serviceable old Weatherbeeta (those things last forever) that now has a startling resemblance to a patchwork quilt.  I sacrificed it to the cause by cutting off the front left corner of the blanket.  I left the top chest buckle in tact but removed enough fabric that the sutures won't be rubbed or snagged by clothes.  It turned out pretty well, and Touch A Prince is comfortable in it.

Although he only injured his left front, I put supportive wraps on his other legs as well.  He is carrying more weight than usual on the good legs, because the injured one can't hold normal weight.  These additional wraps give the tendons and ligaments in his good legs a little more support while they work overtime.  A horse would normally walk around, and that would prevent the blood and lymph from pooling in his lower extremities, but since he is just standing in the stall the wraps also prevent stocking up.  I take them off during the day to let the skin breathe, and rewrap at night.

I took a moment this evening to notice and take pride in my nearly perfect wrap job.  I love to see the results of so many years of careful wrapping when I look at precisely placed crisp white puffy fabric, with smooth standing wraps making a perfect bandage.  When the following morning the wraps are still in the exact form as I left them the night before, I'm extra pleased and proud of my job because it stayed put.

Currently my plan is to keep Touch A Prince here, get him healed up, and then market and sell him later in the spring.  In the meantime he is keeping busy at the hay bags and lip wrestling with Dewey over the stall door.  Because of the injury, Touch A Prince won't be able to go to the horse expo, which is very disappointing.  A big bummer.  I was really looking forward to showing him off in such a fun setting.

However, as an Equine Comeback Challenge Alumnus, fortunately Dewey is still in my barn.  The folks in charge at A Home for Every Horse who organize the challenge said I'm more than welcome to bring Dewey and show him in the exhibition as an encore performance showing off "Where Are They Now?"  So there will still be an OTTB from Bit of Honey there to represent how athletic and marketable a horse from a rescue can be, even though Dewey has found his forever home with one of my clients.  This also means I will still be able to perform the very fun freestyle I've been planning while laid up in the house.  Brace yourself, there will be costumes!

First Riding Lessons for the New Teams

This weekend I was able to teach a couple riding lessons, and my guinea pigs for the first lessons of the new year were Alex and Mark.  This wonderful couple has been very dedicated to their horsemanship instruction, and have made great progress with my lesson horses over the last year and a half.  Now that they have their beautiful loafing shed and paddocks nearly ready at their house just east of Bit of Honey Training, they were ready to buy their horses.  It made things so simple and smooth when Alex and Mark assigned me the responsibility of finding and selecting their first horses.  I was fortunate to have two ideal horses waiting in the wings, ready to be sold by other clients of mine.

First was Dancer.  I've known Dancer since she was a yearling, and she's about eleven now.  I did all her early training, and then my hay supplier in Wyoming purchased her.  He hasn't needed her recently as he was able to handle the ranch work load with his other horses, so I asked if we could purchase her and bring her back to Bit of Honey.  She returned in December, and I got two rides on her just before I started having back problems.  Alex adores her.  They have spent the last six weeks getting to know each other, grooming, and doing ground work in preparation for their first ride together.

Second we have Rush.  I had him in mind for some time, and when I contacted my client in Denver who owned him, she said that she wasn't using him much and she would be willing to sell him to us.  Rush came home with me from a horse show in Denver just before Christmas, and I got one schooling ride on him just days before my back quit on me.  Mark gets along with Rush wonderfully, and has also been grooming and doing ground work with him while he and Alex have patiently waited for me to be able to do some riding instruction.

I'm finally mobile and able to work a little, thanks to the acupuncture and e-stim treatments I've had.  Saturday we planned to do two private lessons, one each for Mark and Alex with their new mounts.  They were private lessons in that they were riding one at a time, but we had a good group of Bit of Honey folks here cheering.  It's so fun to ride with the crew commenting on how nicely you fit your new horse, how well suited you are to each other, and what a nice moving animal you bought!   The lessons went really smoothly.  Alex and Dancer make a great pair, and Mark and Rush's temperaments fit together so well.  I look forward to many more fun lessons and eventually trail rides with this group, and I feel like patting myself on the back for yet again making a nice match!  As a bonus, I didn't have any leg pain after standing and teaching for two hours, so I'm calling this a rollicking success.

Snow Day Animal Photos

Training with PB&J

I stood in a good sized paddock adjacent to the riding arena.  There were trees in the paddock and some small patches of grass beginning to show through the New England spring mud.  A five year old paint mare was loose and had not let anyone catch her for more than a week.  We were keeping her water full and throwing hay to her a few times daily but she wouldn't approach the feed until all humans had backed away from the fence line.  She had just returned from a new trainer who had been very rough with her.  When things climaxed and she purposefully reared, throwing herself over backwards in an attempt to crush him in the saddle he declared her "untrainable" and sent her back to the breeding farm where I worked.  She had been in this paddock since her return, and she wanted nothing to do with anyone on two legs.

For several days I had been watching this mare, quietly following her at a distance around the paddock trying to get her to allow me to approach.  She was very intelligent and would use the trees to cut me off and to turn around, thus avoiding me.  When others had attempted to catch her by force she would attack with teeth and front hooves, and if cornered would double-barrel kick at whoever held the halter.  No amount of chasing, whips, or yelling did anything except magnify her angry "I'll get you before you get me" behavior.  I was spending my lunch hours at the farm trying to figure her out, but so far had not had too much luck.  After the first week she was at least tolerating my presence on her side of the fence, and she wasn't coming after me which was nice.  I was willing to settle for polite indifference.

This lunch hour I had given up trying to make progress with her.  I had my orange, my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and my big plastic cup of water, so I sat down on a tree stump with my napkin to just eat my food and ignore her.  She stood in the far corner of the paddock, watching me.  As I ate my orange, she turned towards me and took just a few steps.  I finished my lunch, she retreated to a different corner, and we adjourned for the day.  But this episode planted a seed in my mind.  Since approaching her and attempting to control the interactions had been completely ineffective, why not see what she was willing to do when I asked for absolutely nothing?  Doing things hadn't worked, so I would try NOT doing things.

The next day I returned to the paddock with my routine lunch of orange, PB&J, and plastic cup of water.  The mare was in the far corner of the paddock as usual.  I went in and returned to my seat on the tree stump and began to eat my lunch again.  This time over the course of my meal she approached, coming about halfway to me.  Then she wandered around the paddock, always keeping her distance and keeping one eye on me.  When I was done eating I left again without attempting to interact with her.

I continued in this fashion for probably three weeks, eating lunch while the mare watched me.  One day as I sat eating my sandwich she meandered around and then came all the way up to me, approaching from behind.  Though of course I knew she was there, I refrained from turning around to look at her or trying to touch her.  I saw a pink nose very slowly, ever so slowly, creep up from behind me past my forearm towards my sandwich.  A couple times the nose retreated with a snap, but then it would gradually reemerge into my view.  I held very still, breathing deeply to avoid disturbing the nose with sudden noise.  The nostrils grew a little larger as she sniffed the sandwich, then became smaller as she exhaled.  I held very still as the velvety lips almost grazed my hand.  The long whiskers of her chin brushed my thumb, then her lips opened very slowly and she gently grasped my PB&J.  I let go of the sandwich, and the nose retreated with it.  I then turned and looked at her and she of course backed further away from me, but she held onto the sandwich and ate it.

That day started my friendship with Docs Bit of Honey.  Many years later I named my stable after her, Bit of Honey Training, because she is the horse who taught me to listen to the horse's opinion. I was eventually able to catch her, and before long she would come when I called her by name out of the larger broodmare herd.  She let me put her under saddle, and though she would not let anyone else handle her for several years, with time other people were allowed to ride her.  We jumped, won a lot at competitive trail riding, and rode on the beach with friends and in the ocean.  One of my favorite memories is galloping her bareback on the beach.  We knew there was a wash up ahead where the waves had carved out a pool in the sand, since we had ridden around it before. It was a several foot drop into the ocean water, but good footing up to and then in the water.  As we ran towards the drop I sat tight, and I figured Honey would stop and then step down the ledge.  Honey had other ideas.  We galloped right up to the edge, then launched into the air and landed in water at least three feet deep, causing huge waves to gush out to either side of us in a giant splash.  We rode/swam to the other side, all smiles.  Many of my favorite memories with Honey involve galloping on trails, on the beach, and jumping logs.  I suspect this is when my love of cross-country jumping began.

Eventually Honey became a solid riding horse, and I sold her to a lovely family whose young daughter grew up with her.  That family has kept her ever since, though after their daughter outgrew Honey she became a riding lesson horse.  I have since lost touch with them, but my memories of Honey and the PB&J that broke the ice have stayed with me. 

Touch A Prince and Miles with Tablecloths

Tablecloths were the order of the day for horse training skills with Touch A Prince.  I expose my horses to all kinds of bizarre things in the name of The Bit of Honey Circus, including tarps and tablecloths.  I had three handy in the tack room.  One was black plastic, one was white plastic, and one was fabric in yellow and black plaid. These three things appear very different to a horse.  Because horses see through their eyes on the sides of their heads, they don't have much depth perception.  A horse would see the black tablecloth as a dark hole.  The white one is usually less scary, they don't perceive it as a step down but sometimes a step up.  The busy pattern of the plaid can be jolting to a horse, since they see black, white, and shades of green and yellow.  The bright yellow with the contrasting black lines will often startle a horse.

I commonly see all types of reactions with horses who have not been tablecloth-proofed.  Because it's critical for picnics that a horse learn to stand on tablecloths I went through this routine with Touch A Prince.  I jest, I doubt in his trail riding future Touch A Prince will need to work on tablecloths.  But it does serve the purpose of determining how nervous he will be with new things.  I am in the throes of planning a wonderfully fun freestyle to be performed at the Rocky Mountain Horse Expo in March as part of the 2016 Equine Comeback Challenge.  Part of this freestyle will require that he is completely comfortable walking on things like these tablecloths. 

Fortunately, I have Miles the border collie.  He is completely accustomed to working on different surfaces, including tablecloths.  He goes first, walking then sitting, and sometimes lying down on the items to show the horses that they are safe.  Miles also has an elaborate history of stealing food from picnics at the table outside, so he is more than happy to work with this food presentation decor'. 

When Miles was a pup, just big enough to hop onto the bench at the picnic table and just smart enough to reason his way through things, he commenced his reign of edible thievery.  One of my working students, who was about twelve years old at the time, was eating a sandwich outside at the picnic table with me and several of my clients.  She had one half of her sandwich in her hand, the other half sitting on the table in front of her.  Miles came up behind her, and tapped her on her left shoulder with his wet dog nose.  When she turned her head to look at him, he quickly dove to her other side, stealing the unattended sandwich in a flash of fur and doggies smiles.  He then merrily bolted for the barn with his prize.  His various attempts at procuring human food extend to pizza slices, cupcakes, chips and dip, and his favorites: coffee and diet sodas.  Because everyone loves a caffeinated border collie!

Touch A Prince was not phased by the new stuff at all.  In fact he walked all over the tablecloths even before Miles did.  This bodes well for the freestyle I'm planning.  I did ride him in the plastic mullen mouth bit today, and he was ok as long as there was absolutely no contact with his mouth.  If I tried to cue him with the reins at all he got tense and stressed.  Once I realized he had decided he didn't want this bit I removed it and put his hackamore back on.  It was like hitting a switch, he instantly became the quiet relaxed horse I normally work with.  I feel fortunate that he trusts me enough to tell me when he has changed his mind about a piece of equipment, and happy that he is so confident around new things like a variety of tablecloths!