I love lazy Friday afternoons.

Harumph

I feel so frustrated at the entire 'fireworks=horses escaping' scenario. It is not fair that my poor brand new, in-work fit horse is now out of work due to injury because of somebody else's gross negligence, somebody else's total failure to consider their neighbors and at least tell me that they were going to have fireworks. Allie was fat, glossy, shiny, (almost) scar free, she was just learning how to balance at the canter with a rider aboard, she had a lovely topline, lovely neck, and was just a picture of health.
Now, she won't eat properly, has dropped weight, lost most of her topline (especially over her loins and her neck), and her coat is covered in scars from cuts during the whole fiasco. Her leg is wounded, bandaged all the time, and she is only just now starting to go back to what she was.

I have another week and a half of wrapping to get through, then a re-assessment to see if it can be left open yet. Then, two weeks at least just on the lunge, mainly at walk with a chambon on to encourage long low topline building, THEN I hope to have a sit on to start the fitness building again, which will take about 3-4 weeks to get her back to where she was fit enough to cope with the schooling she needs. That will take me to mid March probably. I was hoping to have my first lesson with my chosen dressage trainer right about now! I probably won't get to a lesson until end March, early April. That is if I can keep her fitness up after daylight savings finish. Hum hum hum. It just shits me. I have these dreams for this horse and I, and I want to get started dammit!!!

She is sound, and I could possibly start the lunge walking now I think, but she can be a bit of a handful on the lunge and I don't know if I want to risk her chucking a spaz and hurting herself before she is ready for it. What to do? I could ace her for the lunging maybe? I just get really upset looking at her wasted muscles and I don't even want to take any pictures of her at the moment because (to me) she looks so crap, while in my care. I feel like I have failed her. She used to be one of 55 horses where I got her from, and she looked AMAZING. Now she is one of 3, and my only horse, and just to look at her breaks my heart. :(

Poor Allie. Gracie on the other hand is thoroughly enjoying the holiday, and is quickly becoming a menace. She kicked me the other day!! I saw it coming and got out of the way quick enough that I only copped the very end of it in the chest and arm, but still! It wasn't directed at me, but at the other two horses and I was in the way. She KNOWS that it is NOT OK to act like that when there is a person there. She needs to be back in work. Her injuries are fine now, just a little bit of surface healing to go. So Miss Trouble, be warned!!

Hmph.

This is Allie (with Savanna in the back ground) eating dinner under a blanket of threatening storm clouds. Note all the feed spilt all over the ground? Yeah... that's how she eats. Very annoying.

Goals

Hi January! Time to re-cap my December goals:

1. Get a dressage saddle that fits us both.
Well, I have decided which saddle I want - the KN Ouverture Victoria. At first I felt sore in the back because I felt it was tilting my hip too far forward, but after a couple of rides I found it so comfortable, super supportive and I don't even mind the knee rolls, which I thought I would hate. It puts me in a really nice position, and it fits Allie well. I even had about 3 or maybe 4 trail rides in that saddle, with rearing while out, and she put in a big buck while we were cantering the other day, and I was very secure.

The saddler said she was a very wide horse, and that 90% of the saddles he has wouldn't fit her!

The only problem is that brand new, this saddle retails at $4695. WAY over my $2000 max budget. So I am on the look out for a nice second hand, 17.5 inch black KN Ouverture Victoria. It's so pretty though.

So I guess this goal is half complete. I am not getting a saddle until my horse is healed, but I still have the loan saddle from the saddler, so hopefully he forgets about it for another month to 6 weeks (!!) so I can start Allie back in work with it without paying out money for a saddle yet. Wish me luck!

2. Borrow the neighbor's float and do some float practice with both of them.
So we never ended up borrowing any one's float in December, but as you know if you click back one post, we DID end up floating the both of them home when they escaped. Allie walked straight on, but was an impatient shit while we were loading Gracie. (Who could blame her though? It was 40 degrees, she was covered in blood and flies and has a hole in her leg!). Gracie was so good, even though she was terrified. It did take us about 10 minutes to coax her on, but she tried so hard to be a good girl, and that is the main point. Should I count that? They were super duper exhausted, so they didn't put up a fight. I think we call this partially complete. :)

3. Ride/work her on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday.
We had so.much.rain. But I did manage to ride/lunge her 3 times a week for most of December. We were just getting to canter under saddle (which is when she threw in the buck from built up impulsion she didn't know what to do with!) and then NYE happened and now she is out of work for at least another 4 weeks from today. Hmph. So this goal is a success, despite rain. I did have two weeks off work though, which helped!

4. Get her cantering under saddle confidently. See above point - not cantering confidently under saddle yet, but going very well on the lunge. She finds it harder going to the right, needs a bigger circle and more room. To the left she's great. I will have to start all over again though once she is back in work. :(

5. Take both girls out on a trail ride in the bush around my house. HUGE success! We rode out at least 3 times, I think maybe 4? In the bush. Casey brought her horse over and we all went for a ride for about 2 hours, and they were generally well behaved. Allie chucked a rearing hissy fit because she had to wait while the other two went through a big muddy puddle first, and Gracie lost it once the motor bikes got to her. But other than that, the other rides out went really well. Allie got in a couple of BIG trots, while Gracie cantered along behind or in front. We came across some roos to, and they handled that well. Gracie is the brave one. Allie needs to be pushed for her bravery, but will step up to the plate when asked. Very happy with this goal. :)
January Goals:

1. Keep Allie's wound infection-free. Help it heal 100%
2. Put some more weight back on her (she dropped A LOT of weight due to the trauma of NYE. They didn't settle and wouldn't eat their feeds until I brought Savanna back. So now I have 3 mares here. :P).
3. Teach Allie to lower her head on command. She is not bad about it, just she is a very tall horse when she wants to be!
4. Tie-up training with Allie. I am thinking of getting one of those Blocker Tie Rings to help.
5. Teach her to pick up her feet on cue. She is quite bad at actually picking up her feet. Once they are up, she is fine. She just plants them though, and it is hard to get her to budge.

So non-riding related, of-course.

Pics are from 27th November (before her coat was bleached by the sun and she got all cut up and lost weight and walked around tucked-up all the time).

LOL!

She may be super pretty, but she is a bit of an air-head. :P

The Worst, Crappest, Most Horrible Day Ever...

My poor horses....

I went out on New Years Eve against my better judgement. I arrived home at 2am to find (a darker version) of this:

My fences were down, and my horses were gone.

There was very little sign as to which way they went. Did they gallop into the hundreds of acres of bush around my house? Did they run down the road and get out on to the main road and get hit by a car? Did they jump in with another horse? I had no idea. I felt helpless. I felt hopeless. I honestly though we would never see them again. I remember screaming and crying, I was hysterical.

I called my sister to come help find them. She brought my Mum and her boyfriend. Dad came to drop off more torches too. My lovely neighbor and her husband came out of their house and proceeded to help me look for them. After about a half hour of looking for them, there was a very bad car accident around the corner from my place. There were cops and ambulance everywhere. We couldn't get close enough to see, and the cop I was asking couldn't tell me if there were horses involved or not. My mind was playing tricks on me, and I thought I could hear screaming horses. It took all I had to not run over to the scene of the accident to find out. Finally a more senior cop came over and told us that there was no evidence that horses were involved at all. Thank God!

We searched the bush, calling to them in the dark with massive spiders and webs all through the place. Just at daybreak, I didn't know what else to do... I put a status update on Facebook, asking for help. And help came!! Michelle, Peta, and Sima were the first to arrive. They went door knocking, making heaps of friends in the area!

Natalie and I went on a 2 hour long trek through the bush in daylight to see if there was any sign. There wasn't.

Through out the morning we had riders arrive to help search the bush - Casey and Jess, Linda and Celine, Tim, Tom and Veronica. My sister Erin and her family came in their 4WD and drove through the bush. Tracey came with as much moral support as a girl could wish for!! There were so many people that came to help, it was the most heart warming thing ever!!

In the end, at 12pm on the 1st, I broke down and cried again. Andrew couldn't stand watching me like that and took the car out again, determined to find them. And about 30 minutes later, I got THE call... They were safe!! Andrew had found them!! He was hysterically happy on the phone to me! We took Tom's float around the corner to get them. They had indeed run onto the main road as I feared, and had almost been hit by a truck. The truck driver has horses of his own, and so understood what to do with them. He got them safely into someone's paddock. They gave them food and water and I am forever grateful!!

We loaded them up (Gracie only digging her heels in for about 10 minutes! Good girl!) and brought them home.

When we got them home, the poor things looked like this:

Allie

Gracie

Gracie's wounds, while still very painful (as she keeps reminding us) are superficial, thank God. They will scar, but should not affect her in any way once she heals.

Allie on the other hand, stabbed herself with what looks like a star picket, and scratched/chipped the bone. 10 days antibiotics, and 4 weeks of wrapping. HOPEFULLY there will be no infection, because if there is, there could be some serious complications with the bone. Loss of use possible. Might I remind you this is my brand new bloody expensive future eventer?!?!

The reason they fled the paddock is fire works that our neighbors let off. I now HATE HATE HATE fireworks!

So that is the story of the worst day of my entire existence.

Never Forgotten

Wombat was my first pony. I got him when I was 12 years old. I have no idea how old he was then, but he still had some dappling on his bum that first summer, so I think below 15 yo. He was a little 14.1hh, flea bitten grey arab welsh cross. He taught me everything. He taught me about love, about trust. He taught me how to sit a buck, a rear, how to pull up a bolting horse. He taught me how to jump (he would pop over anything I had the guts to point him at). He taught me how to fall off, and how to get straight back on again. He gave me the confidence I have today. He gave me my sanity when the kids at school were being particularly cruel to me. He was my 'Pom', my boy, and it broke my heart when he died.

Six months or so after Pom died (put down due to colic), I went to look at a free OTTB. He was a friend of a friend of a friend's horse. His name was Gus. He was fat, had a chewed-out tail, and looked HUGE to me. He was 14 years old, and 16hh. I thought Pom was athletic, but Beckham (I re-named him of course), once he was fit, he was something else! Loved a good gallop, could pop over jumps (although I needed to hold him together and it wasn't something he enjoyed too much). He taught me what it meant to get a lazy, downhill TB to go in a frame, to step under, to give to the bit. He taught me that it is not always love at first sight with a horse, that it can take a while to form a bond with your horse. But once that bond was formed, it was very strong. I loved loved loved that horse. He had plenty of problems, from cancer on the third eye lid (which he went in to the clinic to have surgically removed), to repeated bouts of anemia, and too many colic episodes to count. He taught me what to look for in a colic, what a light gassy colic was, what a heavy-bubbly-guts colic was, when to call the vet and when to wait it out. Becks is the reason I listen to gut sounds almost every night after they have eaten their dinner. Just in case.

One of the best moments we had together was not long before he died, on our last ride out. We were cantering along the trail (we were by ourselves), and Becks as per usual, was being a bit herd-bound on our way back, being very strong. I was half halting, and then.... click. We connected, he became so light in the forehand and his ears flipped back to listen to me. It was that fairy-tale rocking horse canter you always hear people boasting about. It was perfect. I will always remember that moment when all the schooling, all the hours of coaxing him into a frame just came together, finally.

He was a horse that loved a quiet moment. I would be busy tacking up or brushing or something, and he would turn his head to me and put his nose right where I would cuddle it. And he would stay there, for minutes sometimes, seeming to stall me, prolong the moment. God I miss him. I lost him (put down due to colic, anyone see a pattern here?) in March this year.

Roughly six months after Becks died, I got Allie. Which was only about a month ago. She is quickly shaping up to be a very lovely horse. She is very loving, like Becks, always ready for a snuggle. :)

I will never forget my boys.

Lessons

When should I start lessons with Allie? We are just starting to canter under saddle now, albeit very awkwardly. I think I want stop, walk, trot and canter solid before I take her anywhere. I get the feeling that I look terrible on her at the moment. I guess this will improve as she becomes more balanced.

We set up a little 20x40m arena at the back of our property (where it is mostly sand) with dressage letters. I bought the cones with the letters from the saddlery, then we needed extra cones to mark out the corners and one long side (that is not next to the fence line). So we went and bought cheap plastic plant pots from Bunnings, then spray-painted them white, then used tent pegs to secure all the 'cones' into the ground. All up, cost me about $80. It helps so much with schooling, just because there is a track and we can concentrate on the horse and not so much where we will be going next. You should have seen the two of them snorting, shying and carrying on when we first rode them in the arena though! They got used to it quite quickly, and it was mainly Allie who was doing the shying. Nearly had me off a couple of times.

Allie is very very stiff to the right. When doing little exercises to loosen her up (small circles, playing 'noodle-horse' where I ask her to give to the bit to the right then the left and follow with her body like doing mini bending poles, serpentines, etc..) she is fine to the left, but is resistant to the right. She does this funny thing where she does a little skip, like she wants to go into trot, but she doesn't break gait, when going to the right. I guess that is her telling me 'it's too hard Mum!!!'. Yesterday I just persisted with it, and she did improve quite dramatically towards the end of the schooling session. I have worked with her every day this week while I have been on leave, she has been good. I did have to up both their feeds though.

Gracie is doing well too, she is starting to really give to the bit and step under herself well. It's nice to see some progress there, because she can be a massive handful. She is the brave one though. Gracie is the one who goes first when there is something scary. I think that is because she is curious, and we have encouraged it. Allie will be brave one day too, I just have to cultivate it in her.

So, any suggestions on exercises to help my one-sided green horse?

And when should I start lessons with a dressage trainer with her?