Is Horsemanship Creative

Hmmm, this one got me thinking… http://justanotherdayoutwest.com/is-horsemanship-creative/

Oh, and the picture has nothing to do with the post.  It’s just one I like of Kanak.

Trail Riding

New post today, about the rides I had yesterday.  I even got some pictures in.  http://justanotherdayoutwest.com/trail-riding/  Enjoy!

The role of body work in conditioning a horse.

Today I worked with Sierra again.  As I was going through doing my thing with her I was making mental notes of where we are at, where I would like for us to be and what might be getting in our way.  So that others might learn from what I have learned I figured I’d share.  Get comfy though, this is a lengthy one.

Ready to work... she is still showing some extra tummy that needs to slim down.

First a bit more background on what has happened with her.  Last summer she came down with Pigeon Fever.  No it’s not from Pigeons, the name comes from the typical ‘Pigeon Breast’ look that develops as an abscess forms on their chest.  Google it, there are some really yummy pictures out there!  It is caused by a common bacteria in the soil, Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis.  Typically they get a ugly lumpy puss filled spot, it breaks open, drains then heals up.  Aside from the overall nastiness of draining pints of puss out of a horse, it’s not a big deal.  Sierra got weird in her training, then went mildly lame, then her whole belly swelled up with edema, then she got a spot that broke open (on her left side, just behind where the cinch goes), then another and another right next to the original.  Then she got some other abscesses that opened up back by her right udder, and another and another.  The usual treatment consists of keeping the horse comfortable and letting the infection run it’s course.   After a few months (yes months!) of dealing with this and thinking it wasn’t right, that it wasn’t just a normal case of Pigeon Fever, one of the vets I use suggested a course of antibiotics.  It’s not a simple five to seven day run of penicillin or Uniprim.  This was thirty days of Rifampin and Sulfa drugs twice a day.  Cost was roughly $700 and they cut us a great deal.  Yes, that was a deal.  (BTW – Love these guys!)  Sierra was an angel with her treatment.  To get the right dosage of each drug she wound up getting three syringe fulls of medicine at each treatment.  In other words I was cramming crap down her throat six times a day, for a month.  Pretty sure none of it was cherry or peppermint flavored.  Personally I would probably have been biting or kicking at the end of the first week.  She took it all, very well.  Other than not really wanting to be caught, she never argued about getting her meds.

The end of the drug therapy was early in November.  She had lost a lot of muscle tone overall.  She was particularly atrophied in her left shoulder region.  In her lameness she would not extend her left front leg at all, she would bring it to neutral (straight up and down) but not place it out in front of her body.  This persisted for so long she apparently lost all tone in her triceps.  At one point I wondered if there had been permanent damage to the muscle.  Timeline wise, she was off by mid-July, first abscesses broke mid-August, meds ran October into November.  Five months of sick horsey.  Poor mare.  Luckily it didn’t appear to go internal, although that is a complication that can happen, similar to a case of bastard strangles.  It was definitely a systemic infection.  My guess is the main hangout for it was her axillary lymphocenter, just my guess though.  In my brain, it would best explain the persistent lameness.  There was also some residual swelling on her left side in her chest and down her pectorals.  No heat, and not really edema-ish, more squishy making me think there might be a lymph drainage issue.

The theory is that the drugs and her immune system beat the infection.  Although, in typing this all out I just got the weirdest deja vu feeling that I had shared this story and she got sick again.  Some altered form of Murphy’s Law, that once you think you are in the clear everything goes wonky again.  For now, I’m operating on the idea that the bacteria no longer poses a threat to Sierra’s health.

Figuring that even if the whole infection had been kicked that her body needed lots of recovery and recuperation time she had all of November off.  I really didn’t do anything with her until mid-December.  Six months off by that time.  With her body pretty well beaten up by the infection.

I started her back with light round-penning and some time on the hot-walker.   Then started saddling her and continuing the light work.  Currently I ride her lightly.  Working on going forward willingly, staying soft through her face and sides, and light lateral work.  About every other ride I push for a little more, taking her up to the edge of “do I have to”.   Hoping to find the balance between progressing and getting soured.  Today all we did was walk and trot with a bit of extra attention on soft willing upward transitions.  Although I didn’t time the ride, I might have been on her back for all of ten minutes.  Including a minute or two of just standing there petting on her after I stepped up on her.  She likes to have the backs of her ears scratched.

Willingly moving into a forward relaxed trot. I would not mind seeing her head drop to show a bit more relaxation. But, she had good rhythm and was more balanced than this picture shows. (The joys of action shots with a cell phone!)

The goal with her is to earn points and/or money in competition with her and ultimately breed her, maybe someday if the horse market comes back.  I would like to get her to the show pen sooner, rather than later to start proving her.  Of course I would be much happier and closer to that goal had we not lost six months training and conditioning time.   With that in mind, I’m gearing her more to reining than the cow horse events.  There’s less to learn.   She does have to be fit to show in reining, but not quite the ultra fit that is required in the cow horse.  Even in my eagerness to go do something with her we won’t go show until she is ready both in training and conditioning.

Where does the body work come in to it?  While she was sick, I didn’t do any massage.  Systemic infections + massage = bigger mess.  I did try some light touch (CranioSacral Therapy) and energy (Reiki) work with her.  The CranioSacral work just didn’t feel right while the infection was still cruising through her body.  Even though what I was doing wouldn’t stir up the tissues so much, I got kind of busy signal from her body.  Like it was overwhelmed with what it had to deal with and couldn’t process anything else.  Ok.  Her body seemed to welcome the Reiki work.  If nothing else it is usually comforting.

Now, I check her body every day that I work her.  I also pay attention to little things.  For instance, she acted flinchy if the back cinch was at all loose.  Typically I have the back cinch to where there isn’t a big gap between the belly and cinch, but not snug against the belly.  She seemed more comfortable if it’s really snug on her belly.  Odd.  I don’t remember her being that way before.  When I got done working her I checked and she had some tight spots in between her ribs.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  I checked her CranioSacral Rhythm, it’s solid.  She is tender in her muscles, body sore from getting back in shape.  To me it’s a good sign that her belly and ribs are where she is sore and not so much in her back.  It says we are working the right muscles.  If maybe telling me to back off a tad.  I am mindful that after a systemic illness of that nature it may be a year until she is fully back to herself.  Doubtless there are many instances of scar tissue to work through along with the effects of a long term course of antibiotics.  There is probably another three months of conditioning I have to do before she is mostly back to where she was.

A bit hard to see, but the left and right shoulders, the triceps in particular, are pretty even in development now. Still showing an ever so slight amount of swelling in the left pectoral region. Oh boy, can you see just how undeveloped her neck muscles are!?

Now I find myself using massage techniques and CranioSacral Therapy on her after every ride.  To a degree, I’m not even consciously looking for things to work on.  I just find myself spending time with my hands at certain places on her body, checking if any changes need to occur.

I’m toying with whether I should set aside one day a week as body work day, or keep going with work after every ride.  I’m sure riders and trainers who are not body workers make due with getting their horses help maybe once a week, maybe every other week, once a month…  Depending on what they can afford and what schedules allow for.  I like the idea of catching things that are not quite right before they become a larger problem for her.  For me.  Then again, the idea of devoting one of our working days to just making sure her body is feeling good strikes me as a more thorough way to help her.  Thinking it out like this, now I’m leaning towards doing both.  That should cover all the bases.  All I know is I would hate to be bringing her back into shape without my knowledge of body work.

Pictures

First I have to share with you that almost all my pictures here are taken with my cell phone.  A couple so far have been taken with a cheap-o digital camera.  So, if the photo quality seems to be lacking, it is.  Photoshop Elements can only do so much with a 5 megapixel image, particularly when it is slightly out of focus and with a weird color balance.  I have been shopping for a nice Digital SLR, but keep holding off.  You know that budget thing most of us try not to completely blow.  For now, that budget thing means I do without.

Anyways, today I got a gate on my pen!

shimmed up, waiting for the welder

Sparks a-flying!

Quigley is, er, supervising. Yeah, that's it, supervising.

Once the gate was up and functional I got rockin’ and rollin’ with the horses.  I really only got Ki ridden, but accomplished a lot with all the horses I pulled out today.

I ‘forgot’ to get a picture of Jr.  He rolled almost immediately and was just a weird mix of dust/dirt/palomino.  Not at all photogenic.

So, here's a picture of him with his momma, when he was all cute and cuddly. Being two and full of testosterone kind of rules out the cuddly thing. He's still cute though.

Ki. I am liking him more each ride.

He really is pretty green still.  Particularly (in my world) for being a four year old.  He is so dang good minded though.  The mares were wandering from one part of their pasture to another, which took them right by the back of the pen.  He wanted to be interested in what was going on with them.  I wanted his undivided attention.  Then, he could see the babies playing.  The pasture he lives in shares a fence line with them, so usually he runs along that while they are playing and they all race.  We spent about five minutes talking about how I would like to have his attention, distractions or not.  I let him watch what was going on, then asked him to get back to work.  He was a little more focused out side the pen for a minute or two, so I upped the ante on what I was asking him to do and he settled in and got to work.  No arguing, no silliness.  He started to step into the bridle more today at the lope, which made me happy.

Kanak. Does this saddle make me look fat?

Um, yeah, it’s not the saddle.  Kanak seems to put on weight pretty easy.  He’s also built so that any extra weight shows up on him.  He is short backed and wide through his barrel.  Even though he’s a year younger than Ki, he’s bigger around the middle than his older brother.  Notice where my stirrups hit him?  Yes Ki is more svelte, but even when this horse is at his fighting weight, I think his barrel will take up more of my leg.  Also, he feels taller.  Not when I’m on him, as we haven’t got that far.  I have to swing the saddle a little higher to get it on him.  He is totally a blonde surfer dude.  Tons of fun, lots of energy, absolutely concerned about everyone, but especially you.  And, he’s a little, um, well we’ll just leave it at blonde.

Sierra. Yay!!! I found a way to be taller!

Sierra is a bit vertically challenged, compared with the others.  She’s right around 14.2, the two boys above are probably 15 and 15.1.  She just happened to park her front end in a spot where some dirt is stilled piled high.  Right now though she’s making up for her lack of height with an increase in girth.  Today was the first day she’d been saddled since about the end of June.  She came down with a bad case of Pigeon Fever and we didn’t get it all licked until early November.  After that I let her have time to just recuperate.  These last few weeks I’ve been slowly getting her legged up on the hot walker and in the round pen.  That doesn’t seem to be taking any of her weight off yet.  She was working pretty good last summer before she got sick.  I’m excited to pick back up with her and see if we can get prepped for a show or two.

Can you see the moon coming up on the east side of the valley?

I snapped this as I was finishing up with Sierra.  It really looked prettier than this shows.  Oh, well.

A note about all the yellow horses.  There are these three (Jr, Kanak and Sierra) plus (!) Karat and the yearling filly out of her.  The thing of it is I don’t care that much for palominos.  If you want to split hairs you can call Sierra a dunalino, as she has lots of that dunny looking undertone to her color.  Kanak is a palomino roan.  The other three are run of the mill palominos.  Give me a nice sorrel (like Ki) any day and I am all sorts of happy.  Their coats get ultra shiny in the summer.  No white tails to try to keep clean.  A bit more chrome is ok, but (again like Ki) a small amount only is much easier to keep clean.

I find it funny that so many people just looove palominos, and I’m all, meh about them.  Any horse colors that you just don’t care for?  Share away, please.

And now, for something horsey…

In case you haven’t noticed I have a facebook like box on the left hand side now.  It doesn’t show up quite right, something about having a username on a facebook page.  Apparently the widget was expecting a straight up FB URL, so when I give it that and it tries to cross link with the username instead of a facebook/pages things look to get a bit strange.  Fear not though, the button appears to work.  Go ahead click it, I know you want to.  If the above explanation makes no sense, don’t worry I am completely bs’ing the reasons why the widget is not quite looking like it should.  And with that out of the way, on to stuff about horses.

My riding pen is almost ready to use.  We had to bring the dirt up so that it was relatively level, so the new/relocated dirt needed some encouragement to settle.  In other words when I tried to drag it the first time, I almost got the tractor stuck.  Twice.  After watering it and dragging it more (mostly I think it was driving over it a bunch and compacting that dirt some) it is just about ready to use.  Because of my schedule it may be Thursday before I have time to really get anyone worked.  One. more. day. Isn’t going to kill me right?

Like most DIY projects (at least for my life) this one seems to have taken a year.  Wait, I think it really did take a year from inception to completion usable.  It is not a big pen, just 72′ across.  Big enough to get lope decent sized circles in.  I can tie another horse to the wall so they get some exposure to traffic before I take them to town.  Would I have liked bigger?  Heck yeah!  However we would have been on top of the well for that piece of property or would have had to sacrifice pasture.  Really though, I’m excited about this.  Currently there is a small roundpen.  It is very useful for some situations.  But, I have measured it to be maybe 35′ across.  It’s great for broncy or wild ones, it is just too darn small to lope one in though.

Ultimately there will be two pens on one end of the riding area.  Cattle will go there.  Again, this isn’t a great big pen… but it will be plenty big to introduce the horses to working cattle.

The way I figure it, this pen will allow me to get these horses nice and broke.  Let them learn all the right answers to pressure all through their bodies.  Then, we can go ride out back or haul into the fairgrounds and use the big pens there.  They have good footing at the fairgrounds too.  Well, better than here anyhow.  Fewer rocks.  Not near as many big ones.  So far the biggest rock I have pulled out of the riding pen is the size of my head.

You see any fences here?

I like to have fences when I’m training the horses new ideas.  It seems to help their focus.  It makes the job of helping them learn new stuff much, much easier.  You can call me chicken-sh!t if you like, I am unlikely to argue with you there.   Why complicate things for the horse or me though?  One less thing to deal with (maintaining focus) when introducing new topics means the concept gets grasped quicker.  In other words, less arguing more learning.

Bottom line is there is a 4 and a 5 year old that both need a lot of time if they are going to be anywhere near ready to show this year.  That means I need to get a riding schedule going.  Good thing the days are starting to get longer.