Ahhh, December

December seems to get crazier and crazier each year.  Between the holidays, my birthday, various other birthdays, and the fact that I work in marketing now, December ends up being a flurry of desperately trying to check things off my To Do list.  At least on the days that I remember to make a To Do list.  December is also the month of Fighting Off Every Illness Known to Man (or at least known to Elementary School Children).

This December brought with it an unusual few weeks of very cold weather.  Our barn just isn't set up for weeks and weeks of temperatures that don't ever get above freezing.  I know in the grand scheme of things, that's not that cold but we just aren't well equipped for it.

First, the last two months of rain turn our pastures into mud holes.  Add some horses and they churn all that mud up so that it's fetlock deep.  Then, everything froze.  And froze hard.  Which means the turnouts were all skating rinks of pocked mud.  And since it was so cold, all ponies had extra fizzy temperaments.  So, they couldn't get turned out because they would slip and fall and strain or worse, break something.

So, all the horses were being lunged in the arena and turned out in there to blow some steam off.  Until a few days ago when the arena (we just put in sand) finally froze solid.  The cold weather meant the sand was too solid to break up with the tractor and it couldn't be wet down.  So it was dusty and got increasingly packed over the last few weeks.  This week they cancelled lessons until later in the week when the temperatures will have been back to normal (40's) for a few days because the arena is rock hard.  Horses are limited to lungeing and light riding, no free turnout.

And of course, this is coinciding with a giant deadline at work for me and I seem to be 'off' every other day.  I haven't gotten entirely sick, but just that dead tired, sinus aching feeling when you're trying not to get sick.  So, I have only ridden once on Sunday.  Licorice got lunged on Saturday also, but he hasn't been out since.

I will be texting my trainer to see if I can pay someone to lunge Licorice this week.  I have a lesson scheduled for Friday, but I just don't see myself getting the time or the energy to go out there before then.

I'm excited for my lesson on Friday and look forward to more normal, rainy, cold-ish weather where I can resume my regular riding schedule.  Most likely though, this will be in January.  Next year, I may try to remember this and just gift myself the gift of full time training in December.  After all, it is my birthday month!

Learning to Work

Wednesdays lesson had a few themes.  The first was about bending and forward, two things I forget to focus on when it's just me and Licorice.  Plodding around with his head cocked at an angle is not the right way to warm up.  He must stay forward and I must not nag with my leg!

Then there was the outside rein, which I'm prone to just letting go of and Licorice is prone to just ignoring even if I am holding on to it.  Which means we did some really ugly circles with Licorice's head pointing to the middle of the circle while the rest of his body drifted out to the wall and my hands raised up and did something that looked like sign language.  Not pretty.

The overall theme of our lesson was about work.  Licorice isn't used to working like this.  I've now owned him two months.  One month we rode and had progress and learned stuff about each other.  Month two Licorice got sick.  Then he colicked.  Finally, at the beginning of Month Three, we are hoping to start work and keep going!

The kind of work Licorice is used to do is called 'Going Around The Rail' and 'Jump That'.  He does both of those with no problem.  He is a trotting machine.  Get him on the rail with no contact and he will trot (okay, it's almost a jog) forever.  Point him at a jump and he will keep his sad trot and heave himself over a jump.  Over.  And over.  Which is what makes him a great beginner/husband kind of horse.  He doesn't mind if you're up there flopping around, no rein contact, no leg contact.  In fact, he prefers it.  He spends most of his time looking around.

Oh, there's my buddy from outside.  Hey, are they watering horses out there?  Oooh, is that me in the mirror?  Hi Trainer, are you eating something?  Can I have a bite?  Oops, I'll catch you the next time I come around.  I'm trotting.  There's the goat!  I think I see a car driving in.  Hey, look at the baby horse.  How cute is that?

So Wednesday, when we started asking him to pay attention to me and work, Licorice was a bit confused.  We'd take two gorgeous steps of on the bit and then he'd lift his head up to look around and see what he missed.  Then he'd go back to work for another step.  Then he'd want to look around.

Being that I'm not the world's greatest rider, what was my first answer?  Yep, you got it.  Pull his head down.  I got away with that twice before my trainer stepped in and reminded me that I have legs and that if I would stop mindlessly thumping them against his sides to try and get more trot, I might actually have a chance at communicating with them.

Sometimes it's so hard to see improvement when you have to go back and make sure you're not asking with every stride and that you're riding back to front.  They seem like such basic things.  And yet I have to remind myself constantly.  Of course, my list is miles long and when I ride without my trainer I have huge internal external dialogue (yes, I totally talk under my breath) where I remind myself "Don't nag, don't give away the reins, ride back to front, head up, look through the ears, turn your shoulders and hips, not your head, use your core, shoulders back, look up, heels down, long legs."  The list is endless.

So while Licorice is working on not getting distracted by external things, my goal for myself is to be there with him.  To pick one or two things about myself to focus on and let everything else go.  If I'm working on not nagging with my leg, I'm going to focus on that.  And I will try to let go of the thousands of other things that we need to work on.  It's one of the things I love/hate about dressage.  It's a never ending journey and there's always something to work on.

Wintertime

December is not usually the coldest part of our winter around here.  December is usually pretty mild.  We get our crazy cold streaks in January and February.  However, this morning it was 24 degrees out and our high is supposed to only reach 33.  Brrrr.

Though it's cold, it's also sunny.  I have been really wanting to get Licorice out on the trails.  Unfortunately, I'm just not ready to go out all by myself and most people are riding in the afternoons and evenings, when there isn't much in the way of sun.  It's important to me that Licorice not get too burned out, so I put the word out to my trainer that if there was anyone wanting to go out on trails, they should take Licorice.

Nothing new on the riding front.  I have a lesson today.  My first one in over three weeks!  Yeah!

Last Sunday I had a super fun ride.  There was a lesson going on with Sarah (a trainer) and her student Ben, who has Autism (I'm not exactly sure that's what he has, but it's probably the easiest way to describe him quickly).  Her student was weaving through the cones.  Sarah then decided to pull a horse out and hop on bareback.  We were then joined by another rider, also riding bareback.  On the spur of the moment we decided to do a little drill team action.

We did figure eights.  Follow the leader.  Weaving the cones.  Threading the needle.  Another boarder was out and saw how much fun we were having and pulled her horse out and hopped on also.  Since Ben was challenged enough with steering and keeping up, we did everything at the walk.  It was so fun to do something different though!  I really wish there was more of that.

I still struggle with the question of what I want in a boarding barn and what my priorities are.  I like laughing a lot, but I also like working hard and progressing.  Dressage fills the need of working hard and progressing, but let's face it, there's not a lot of laughing going on.  Not that we don't have a sense of humor when working on dressage, there are smiles and some laughing but it's usually not flat out fun. It is incredibly satisfying though.

I'm not looking to move barns anytime soon, but the questions are still there.

Getting Better

Second ride on Licorice today.  I was told I could ride him, but not to let him work up a sweat.  We did a little of this and a little of that and had a pretty ugly ride, but both of us were just finding out feet again.  It was good to be back in the saddle.

I don't think Licorice shared my enthusiasm for this.  When I went to get him out of turnout (his second time getting out with friends in almost three weeks!) he gave me "Are you crazy?" look and turned and walked away.

Once under saddle, he tried looking back up at me a few times and stopping.  He just wasn't all that motivated to get back to work.  I think he enjoyed having a three week vacation with 24 hour room service.

I gifted Licorice with a new bridle that does not have a pink sparkly browband.  I forgot to take a specific close up of the bridle, but I'm pretty happy with it.  It's a Horze brand bridle and I think the stitching looks fancy.

See the white stitching?  I love how it looks on his big, black head.  I think he likes this better than bling.

It's a bit stiff though.  What do you use to soften up your leather?  Keep in mind, this is not an expensive leather bridle so it's not going to 'break in' the way a nice bridle would.  Still, I would like to soften it up some so it's easier to undo the buckles.  Any ideas would be appreciated.

Also, I would like to bitch a little about how hard it is to find a bridle without a flash AND a crank on it.  What happened to just nosebands?  Sheesh!!  Also, Licorice is wearing a Cob size bridle and the giant crank noseband is still too big.  He doesn't even have a delicate face so I find this surprising.  I don't want to crank his noseband down and put on his flash.  Sigh.  Stupid trends.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I'm hoping to catch up on my reading tomorrow somewhere in between oiling my new bridle and drinking wine and eating so much that I pop the button off my pants, which shouldn't take too much since I haven't ridden in three weeks and have been eating my way through Licorice's illness.

Keeping Fingers Crossed

Licorice seems to be doing alright.  He's eating and drinking like he should.  Because his hay is getting soaked before he eats it, he is drinking a little less but my vet said that's fine.

Someone asked about EPM (I think that was it) and we did have Licorice tested for everything.  All of his blood work came back normal.

At this point, we don't have any good idea about what happened.  It was probably a viral infection that gave him a fever and diarrhea.  Who knows what caused him to colic.

We are starting him on Succeed next week, which is supposed to help sensitive flowers like my new pony.

I have also been given the okay to lunge him lightly today.  I'm pretty nervous about that since the last time I did that, he ended up getting sicker.

It's been perfectly sunny (and cold) here.  I'm sad that Licorice has been sick because it's VERY unusual to see the sun this time of year and it would have been fun to be out exploring the trails.  Hopefully we'll see some more sunshine in December when we can actually get ourselves outside!

Pooooooooop!

Lots of poop.  Poop is good.  I love poop.  Poop. Poop. Poop.  I can breathe a sigh of relief now that we're seeing regular piles of good poop.

I don't have much else to say right now.  There will be lots of grazing and hand walking until Licorice can go out with his buddies and be back on a normal diet.  We're putting him on a supplement for ponies with sensitive hind guts and I know more about my ponies internal workings than I did before.  It's all part of getting to know him.

Hopefully this was an unusual event in his life and not a way of being for him.  But even if he does turn out to be a sensitive flower, I'll take it.

Look who's back to wearing a chain and dragging people to his favorite patch of grass!  Yeah for feeling well enough to have horrible manners!

Uphill Downhill Uphill

Well, I spoke too soon about Licorice.  I got a call yesterday from my trainer saying Licorice looked off.  She said she thought he might colic and his poop went from normal back to cow pie diarrhea to overly dry normal.  We called the vet who was 60 minutes out.  In vet speak, that means about two to three hours.  By the time the vet arrived, Licorice had tried to go down and roll twice.  His nostrils were flared from pain and he was pawing at his belly and swinging his head.

The vet listened to his gut.  One side sounded normal.  The other side sounded inconsistent, which is about what you'd expect from a horse that has had diarrhea for seven days.  So, he sedated Licorice and stuck his arm up his behind to find out what's what.

The good news:  he found nothing.  The frustrating news:  he found nothing.  There was some expected inflammation (again, after diarrhea for seven days that's not surprising) and a few slightly dryer than normal stools, but no red flags.

So, then he got a half dose of Banamine by injection.  Banamine acts an anti inflammatory and a pain medication to help keep Licorice uncomfortable.

Next up, Licorice got a tube up his nose and down to his stomach and was pumped full of water and mineral oil.  My vet said he normally uses milk of magnesia but he was concerned about the level of inflammation inside Licorice.  Especially since he went from cow pie diarrhea to normal to diarrhea to dry.  If there were some extra dry stools in there, he wanted to flush them out gently.

The vet said to keep him off dry foods entirely and give him warm mashes.  We were also cleared for grazing as long as he continued to look okay.

I went home and got my stuff for the long night ahead, had a hot dinner and a hot bath and came back ready.

The first thing we figured out is that Licorice doesn't like warm mashes, or cold mashes.  He does not like bran mashes.  Or oat mashes.  Or alfalfa pellets soaked in warm water.  He does not want beet pulp.  Licorice wants hay.  He was increasingly crabby as all the other horses got hay and he didn't.

It was pouring down rain when I took Licorice out for his first graze.  I let him graze for thirty minutes, then took him back to his stall to see how he fared.  He took a nap and a poop and I huddled under two down sleeping bags, failing at catching some sleep.

Two hours later, we were back out in the pouring rain and he was grazing again.  He was happy to graze but I was cold and tired.  After thirty minutes I called it good and put him back in his stall.

I didn't sleep at all last night.  Partly because I was cold and sleeping on a lawn chair and I'm just not good at that.  I would not make a good adventurer.  I don't like being cold and uncomfortable.  Partly I didn't sleep because the other horses were so loud.  I didn't realize that horses are like cats and like the have parties at 3am.  And the snoring.  Oh. My. God. The. Snoring.  Oxford was across the aisle from Licorice and I and I checked him three times before I realized he wasn't dying, he was snoring!

I ended up leaping out of my sleeping bags about every twenty minutes because one of the horses would shift, lay down, get up, kick something and I would be sure it was Licorice going down and rolling.  Every two hours, I took Licorice out for thirty minutes of grazing.  By this morning, he was looking much better and I was looking much worse.

At seven a.m. I rolled on home and into bed for a few hours.  Last update was that he was beginning to pass the mineral oil, and he ate his mash breakfast.  Will probably head back out this afternoon for more hand grazing.

So....lesson learned about horses.  It's not over until it's over.  I'm not calling this until it's been gone for a few weeks.

Also, despite my bone aching, head pounding, dry mouthed tiredness, I would do it again.  It's my pony and I'm starting to suspect he might be that heart horse everyone talks about (shhhhh...it's too early in our relationship to drop the HH phrase!).  He was worth every lost hour of sleep, every dollar spent on multiple vet visits (I haven't gotten the bill yet.  Merry Christmas family, we bought ourselves a well horse!) and every new worry line on my face.