We're Baaaack

Me and Starbuck and my Daddy

Well the last month or so has been pretty hectic for me and I haven't posted in a while - this is in part because I haven't been riding much, but also because my parents came to visit! :D :D :D  We had a really good time and I was so happy to be able to share a little part of my life with them, as well as pretty much pretend to be a tourist for two whole weeks.  So I guess it's all for the best that Starbuck wasn't quite up to snuff during their visit - that way she got a nice long rest and I was able to focus on spending time with my folks without worrying about not riding.  Let me rewind a little:

Shortly after my last post a month ago, Starbuck started to do her not-extending-her-right-hind-well thing enough that I could feel it at a trot, so I only rode her at a walk for a couple of days working on lots of stretching and extension (leg yielding, shoulder-in, walking over cavaletti and through tire obstacles and whatnot) hoping she just needed some rest.  But she didn't get better so I called in my vet, who recommended a massage session.  Out came Pascual to give her a massage, who said she definitely had some lower back pain and showed me some massage techniques to use in the future.  The first few days after the massage she was visibly sore and didn't want to trot at all, but the first day my parents got here and came out to see her she was apparently feeling much better since she bucked and farted her way around the roundpen at an all-out gallop when I asked her for canter - the expression "full of beans" comes to mind.

So there I was, all optimistic that I might be able to ride her and show off in front of my parents, when the next day I came out and saw that she hadn't finished her breakfast and seemed kind of down.  So I took out my trusty thermometer and sure enough, she had a light fever.  Panic ensued, since I was going to the other side of the island and knew I wouldn't be back for a few days.  But my vet calmed me down (it's SO nice to have a vet who always answers your calls on Sundays without any complaints) and after giving her some bran mash with EQZone (Spain's answer to bute), clearing the rest of her breakfast and her hay out of her paddock and asking Marina to not give her anything more than a little bran mash for dinner and re-check her temperature in the evening I was able to leave without feeling too bad.

When I finally was able to come back to see her after a few days, she hadn't had any more fever issues (I got a friend to check her temperature every day while I was gone) but she still had some residual leg-extending stuff, which I had hoped would clear up.  She was still a little gimpy a few days later after my parents left, so I asked my vet, who told me to give her another week of longeing with as much extension as possible to see if she improved or not.  The first few days were pretty un-promising but finally on Saturday she really started to move well and by yesterday she was nearly back to normal - she would put in a gimpy stride every now and then but when you asked her to extend she did it well.

To celebrate, since it had been a month since I last rode her and I've been seriously jonesing for some Starbuck, I saddled her up and rode her at a walk to cool her down from her longe session.  Man did that feel good! :D  Marina's suggestion (with vet's blessing) is to intersperse light riding (mostly walk, some trot) with longe work in the deep sand at the end of the arena and over cavalleti and tire obstacles to work on extension and picking her legs up.

In other news I will participate in my first show jumping contest on October 5 - not with Starbuck since I don't want to push her recovery, but with Marina's feisty little pony Vent.  And if all goes well, Starbuck will have her show jumping debut a month later at the beginning of November.  Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Wild Wild West

After getting shod on Tuesday Starbuck was slightly lame and shortstrided for a couple of days - she had some muscle cramps in her left croup probably from either overcompensating for being tenderfooted from the shoeing or possibly thanks to the "airs above the ground" she likes to practice in her paddock (which always remind me of the time I was "dancing" along to the Savannah St. Patrick's Day parade on TV as a child and threw my neck out so bad it got stuck there and my parents had to take me to the emergency room).  Anyhow she had Tuesday off because of her new shoes and then Wednesday when I realized she was lame I put her away without trotting or cantering and Thursday all I did was longe her for five minutes - yep, still lame - and then give her a long massage.

But by Friday I really was jonesing for some Starbuck, so I decided that if she was at all better, I'd try René's western saddle on her and just ride her at a walk.  On the longe she was really much better - hardly any lameness and tracking up much better than earlier in the week.  And when I mentioned my plan to my friend Toñi (short for Antonia), she said she'd been wanting to do the same thing!  So we hauled out René's big old cowboy saddles - boy are they heavy! - and after much puzzling over how to do things like fasten and tighten cinches, shorten stirrups, remove saddlebags and whatnot we finally felt confident enough in our saddling skills to mount up.

Starbuck was a little worried about it for the first 5 minutes but after me getting on and off about 5 times to adjust the cinch and stirrups and then walking around for a while she figured out that in fact the thing on her back wasn't a ravenous puma but basically just me with about 25 extra pounds.  Toñi's horse Twister also had no issues with the saddle, so instead of joining in the lesson, we just practiced "neck reining" around cones and whatnot in the dressage arena - one-handed riding is something we really need to work on.  But since we were only working at a walk, I had put her hackamore on her, and after a while she started catching on.  This is something I need to work on bit by bit when I'm warming up and cooling down, and on trail rides, being able to steer with a bottle of water (or ice cold beer, or wineskin) in your hand is really useful.

And just because I'm a child of the 90's (well, an adolescent of the '90s) here's some gratuitous Will Smith to go along with this post ;)

Status Report

We're starting to find the rhythm of things.  I think that for now we're averaging about 2 or 3 good rides for each time I fall off which I'm OK with.  I've reached my 7 falls and am finding it harder to have a sense of humour about it, but hopefully my body's learning its lesson and at some point will get better at staying on.  The other day I fell a little harder than normal and really didn't want to get back on, luckily my fabulous instructor insisted that I climb back up there and handwalked us around for a few minutes until my legs stopped shaking.  But the other day we had another terrific lesson walking over cavaletti and threading in and out of jump standard poles at the trot.  So on the one hand I see all the bruises and back pain in my future and cringe and on the other hand, I enjoy riding Starbuck more and more every day.  I'm also feeling more confident about the scary side of the arena, we've been doing all our longeing there lately and she's starting to get much more blasé about it.  When I longe her in her halter I try to let her graze there for a few minutes at the end for a reward, so she'll see it's really a nice place if she'll give it half a chance.

I've also bumped up the amount of time at the trot I ask her for while longeing or roundpenning, making her stick it out for at least three and working up to five minutes at a time.  It's interesting for me to watch for her rebellious moments which almost always pop up when we're doing groundwork, mostly right when she starts to get a little tired or when I'm asking her to challenge herself mentally.  She does some serious teenager head tosses and speeds up and in the roundpen sometimes even gives a little kick or buck, but as long as I wait it out and ask her to change directions a few times she calms right down.

Also, giving her those massages with long heavy strokes along her spine that the vet recommended is definitely having a beneficial effect!  Where she used to move away from the saddleblanket when I would go to put it on her she now stands still and doesn't try to avoid it, and she also moves around a lot less when I cinch her up.  I think it improves our relationship too and am taking advantage of her being relaxed after her massage to really get her sacked out in the areas where she's always been a little more sensitive - udders, mouth and nose.

At any rate yesterday I dewormed her (I'm a little late this time but have decided to do it once every 4 months instead of every 3 months) - she behaved really well even though this time the worming paste was pretty nasty smelling.  And for a reward I broke out the new hay net I bought her and stuffed it with oat hay, wild fennel sprigs, freshly sickled grass (yes, we have sickles at my barn to take advantage of those hard-to-graze spots) and carob beans (there are a lot of carob trees around here and carob beans are a frequent horse treat).  She absolutely loved it and I think she had as much fun swinging the net around as she did trying to get at the yummy stuff hidden among the hay.

I have another lesson this afternoon, we'll see how it goes!

Vet Check

Just a quick note to record Tuesday's (24/04) vet check:

• Flu and Tetanus vaccine given.  We're not sure if she had her standard vaccinations as a baby but Marta the vet says that as long as she's healthy there's no reason why at this stage we should give her any more than the annual vaccinations.
• Manual checkup shows her to have some TMJ, neck and lower back pain and tension, probably brought on in part by the fact that I've started riding her a lot more, for longer periods of time and with more rein contact lately.  Marta recommends lots of massages with long, heavy strokes along the tense areas and plenty of relaxed groundwork to build the muscles she needs to carry me well.  Apparently she still needs to build a lot of muscle in her lower back, croup and quarters.
• I mentioned her movement was a little wierd sometimes, so the vet took a look at her while she trotted around the roundpen and said that she had some intermittent irregularities in both back legs which she thinks is being caused by the back pain more than anything else.  So more of the same, building muscle and trying to relax all that tension with massage.
• As far as all external and vital signs go she's AOK and Marta also says her weight condition and feeding regimen is good (I always think she looks skinny and worry she's not getting enough to eat).  So my plan is to do at least a little work every day, even if it's only 20 minutes of walk and trot in the roundpen, and also do a little bodywork every time I groom her.  And start incorporating long trot sessions of at least 5 minutes into our longeing and roundpen routine to build up that muscle.

Hoovesies!!!

I realized the other day that I hadn't ridden in like three weeks because of the rain and snow, and I haven't been able to do much training with Starbuck either since the arena's been so soggy.  So I decided to take advantage of the crappy weather to do lots of bodywork with her, using the different techniques in my new Tellington Jones book.  I think that this is good for our relationship as she starts to see me as someone who can make her feel better, it's leading me to get to know her better, and above all rubbing on a warm fuzzy animal in her straw-lined stall is way more comfortable than running around the barnyard dodging puddles.

We've also been inadvertently working on leading since what we've done more than anything else is leading her to different fields and paddocks so she could at least stretch her legs and socialize with her horsey friends and wouldn't be so stir crazy when I could start working with her again.  So we've gone to the top of the barnyard, to the orange groves accross the street, to the field down the road, to the parking lot... you get the picture.  I've started carrying a short crop with me when we walk anywhere and I think both that and all this "practice" is making all the difference-- she's only run past me once in the past few days and today we led up and down the scary side of the arena several times without any problem!

The other change in our training is that I decided to start hand-feeding her treats every now and then, mainly when working on things like ground-tying and lowering her head, or after a particularly successful exercize.  I'm glad I spent time without using treats at first, but I think using them now may help motivate her and keep her more focused on me.  We'll see how it goes, if she gets pushy I'll have to re-think it.  But both yesterday and today she did really well and was much less bratty than she's been lately, it was really a pleasure to work with her and we learned something new-- trotting alongside me while I jog without getting ahead of me.

All the photos below are just because I'm so proud of how pretty her hooves are and want to make a record of it, so I can keep track of any changes.

Front hooves, side view:

Hind hooves, side view:

Front right hoof:

Left front hoof:

Right rear hoof:

Left rear hoof:

To Flex or Not To Flex

So after thinking a little more about the video I posted the yesterday and wondering a little about training Starbuck to flex laterally at the neck, I realized that I didn't exactly have an expressible reason for wanting to work on this.  I guess since yoga, pilates and other flexibility exercises make me feel better and have less muscle aches after working out it just seemed like a no-brainer to me that the same would be good for horses.  I also felt like it would be a good way to work on submission, being able to handle her head and getting her ready for work with the bit.

So I started reading a fair amount about flexing online and saw that there’s a little bit of a polemic as to whether flexion is safe, necessary and / or natural for a horse, especially regarding vertical flexion (lateral flexion is bending the neck to the right or left, vertical flexion is bending the neck downwards).  There’s even a practice called Rollkur once used by Olympic dressage riders but which is now banned by the International Federation for Equestrian Sports which basically refers to the use of force (vía harsh bits, double reins and similar mechanisms) to cause a horse to overflex vertically, like in this photo:

I’ve ridden horses who had previously suffered this type of systematic abuse and know that it takes a long time to rehabilitate them to where they are free from pain and at all comfortable being ridden and would definitely never want to cause this type of problem for Starbuck!  To soothe my worries, I found lots of articles and videos which praise lateral flexion techniques as helping horses to stay supple, including from the US Equestrian Team’s horse masseuse (see below).  But what most set my mind at ease were photos like these which show horses doing the exact same kind of movement in the wild when completely relaxed.  So I'm determined to keep working on lateral flexion from the ground and also when I start riding (for example with the one rein stop).  Enjoy the photos!

Resources on Lateral Flexing:
How to get your horse soft and light in the face (part 3) article
Lateral Flexion article
Flex your horse's neck from the Ground article
The Importance of Lateral Flexion with your Horse video
Horse Massage, Improving Lateral Flexion in the Horse: The Masterson Method video

Resources on Rollkur:
The "Rollkur" Debate from EveryRider article
Rollkur article from Wikipedia
Rollkur Explained video