Not every ride is exciting or holds some great leap forward. Some days I just work on better. Perfection doesn't exist in riding - even in dressage the top mark of ten means "excellent" rather than perfect. When training a horse (or any animal) you can't expect to get the desired result performed correctly the first time round. We have to shape the response we want and start with rewarding any try in the correct direction. The pitfall is to accept that partial response as correct for too long, which leads to confusing the animal when we start to ask for better responses. Better can mean a quicker response, or one with greater energy, or a more specific response - whatever it is we are looking for. Rory's leg yield work is a good example. In the beginning all I wanted was for him to cross his inside hind foot in front of the outside hind foot, but this is only part of the leg yield. He also has to cross the front foot, maintain a straight line of travel, steady rhythm, consistent stride, and relaxed contact with the bit. All of which is far too much to explain at once.
Today was a looking for better day. I looked for better transitions, steadier rhythm, a little more reach to the bit, a little softer yield to the turning rein, a few more steps of leg yield, and so on. These sorts of rides make up the bulk of training a horse and have their own little rewards for the ride when the horse gives that little bit better response.
Rory tended to fall to the inside between E and K as we came down the long side in trot. To correct this I brought him back to the walk and leg yielded back out towards the wall before picking up the trot again. Each time we came down that long side I used the leg yield aids at the trot to keep him out, and if he didn't respond I repeated the transition to walk, leg yield out, and back to trot. After a couple of repetitions he began to stay out for longer before falling to the inside, as he started responding to the leg yield aids at the trot. I wasn't leg yielding at the trot, but the same aids can be used to stop a horse from falling in.
We didn't just go around the arena to work on the falling in issue, it was just something I paid attention to each time we went through that corner. I also used circles, serpentines and changes of rein to practice getting Rory going exactly where I wanted him to go. At the end we had a little canter. Rory was a little slow in the transition, but gave me a nice canter once we got there. Afterwards I rode him around on the grass outside to cool out. He likes to get out of the arena so the walk is a little bit of a reward on it's own.
After the usual quick longe, Rory gave me a very nice ride today. We worked at the walk and the trot looking for him to take a quiet contact on the bit and follow the turning rein without resistance. I used large circles and simple changes of rein to help keep the rhythm steady and avoid challenging his balance too much. We worked a little bit on the leg yield under saddle again today, and this time I managed to catch it on video.
Today we managed a more normal ride after the quick longe. Rory was very good though he does still tend to drift away from the wall. We trotted a fair bit today too. I set up the camera to record our first attempt at a leg yield under saddle, but I discovered afterwards there wasn't enough memory on the card. I was a bit mad at myself for that, but I was happier about how well Rory responded. He managed several steps at a time of a reasonable leg yield. Of course he still doesn't understand that the sideways movement is what I really want so he's experimenting a bit with forward and backwards and moving just his hindquarters. We went down the long side a couple of times. I asked him for a few steps at a time, and after he did a couple correctly I gave him a carrot and then rode a little circle away from the wall, setting up for the next leg yield as we returned.
I rode Rory this evening for the first time since our injuries. I longed for a couple of minutes first and Rory was very good. The ride itself was fairly short, only about ten or fifteen minutes. We were in the indoor arena and Rory got a bit distracted by people and horses going by outside. He still managed to listen to me, and I gave him the time he needed to think about what he heard and saw through the open doors. I usually ride earlier in the day when it's light and quieter so the whole ride was a bit unusual for Rory. We walked for most of the ride, with a little bit of trot. I decided not to push him out into the corners and close to the big open doors tonight, but just kept him on a rough oval around the middle of the arena. This was definitely a night to keep things simple and easy.
Totyo and Rory visiting with one of the barn cats.
I'm thinking about riding Rory again. His leg looks good, and while mine is at times still painful from getting kicked I have been able to ride my older horse. To prepare for riding I brought Rory out to do some work and remind him about the whole listening to me deal.
I longed for a few minutes and he was very good. Longeing is no challenge for Rory now. He understands what is expected and is very well behaved. To start giving him something new I decided to introduce the concept of leg yielding today. I stood beside him about level with the girth, took a rein in each hand and the dressage whip in my right hand. With the whip I could tap his side roughly where my leg will be making contact, and I had the reins short enough to be able to connect with his mouth.
Rory getting the idea of moving his legs sideways.
We walked towards the wall on a shallow angle, and just as we reached it I slowed him down with the outside rein, kept his head turned towards the wall with the inside rein, and tapped his side with my whip to get him to step a bit sideways. Timing is everything, and at this stage of training I can't use more than one aid at a time, or have them too close together. I chose to focus on his inside hind foot as the key response, looking for it to step across under his body in front of the outside hind foot. The key aid to influence that foot was the whip tapping his side as he lifted it into the air (because obviously he can't move the foot sideways if he's got his weight on it). The rein aids had to occur at different times from the whip and from each other. I needed to experiment a little bit to figure out what order of aids was most effective. The best results came from using first the whip when his inside hind leg came up off the ground and swung forward (and over), followed by the outside rein as his fore foot lifted (this checked the forward movement and encouraged a little sideways as well), followed by a touch on the inside rein to keep the inside bend (as the use of the outside rein had a straightening effect on his neck).
Rory didn't have any idea what I wanted and tried various things like stopping, backing up, swinging his haunches away, trying to walk straight along the wall, and the like. Without knowing exactly what action I wanted him to do it would have been very easy for me to get distracted in trying to correct all the various experiments and missed it when he gave me the desired response. So I watched his inside hind foot, and applied the aids in turn, and when he stepped across with his inside hind I praised him, stopped and gave him a carrot. By the fourth trip along the wall on Nov 1st he managed to do several leg yield steps in a row without stopping.
I only worked on the leg yield off the left leg to start. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but it is important to set the horse up to be successful and reward the little steps in the right direction. In the beginning the horse really doesn't have any idea what is wanted and he is fumbling through his responses to the various aids to put together the more complex action. It is to a certain extent an accident when he gets it right, and when we reward that accident the horse will try it again. If we introduce too many different new things at once the horse is spending too much time being uncertain about what we want. We build their confidence by asking them to do things they know and understand and praising their correct repsonses. I'm finding this really obvious with using the food rewards in Rory's training. Once he understands something, and is confident in responding to my aids he loses interest in the carrot reward - a "good boy" and pat are enough. But when he is just learning and is very uncertain, he seeks the carrots as reassurance that he did actually do what I wanted. I sort of understood the idea before, but not in a way to be able to put it into words.
Today I longed Rory in full gear in the arena. Rory seemed happy to get out and he bounced and half bucked a bit before settling down. I let him trot several circles before asking him to do any transitions, then got him to do transitions within the trot and to walk. He went to canter easily once and kept it going most of the way around the circle. After I changed direction he had a few bounces and a couple of attempts to change direction, before he settled and went very well. I set up two planks and a cavaletti and longed over that. At first he had trouble with it and his solution was to canter, then I brought him closer to my end where they were closer together and he got his feet organized, then was okay further out with a longer step. He did remember how it worked when we changed direction to the right rein.
I found a new halter for Rory in TSC last week. When I saw it I thought the colour would look fantastic on him. I didn't realize it matched his blanket!
Rory and Totyo's older buddy moved to a new barn at the end of last month. They were okay on their own, but we felt that young horses become better equine citizens when they have an older horse to make them mind their manners. With Rory's injury I was reluctant to get into horse introductions as they always involve a good bit of rough housing. In the end we kept Rory inside overnight and put the new buddy in with Totyo to let them get everything settled between them before Rory was added to the mix. Our first buddy plan wasn't a success - the mare was too submissive to Totyo. But the gelding worked. He's a good guy, not nasty in any way, but he doesn't take any crap either. In the morning Rory went out and let his pent up energy show.
Rory was feeling good and he bounced around the paddock the next morning too.
I got kicked by a horse, but it wasn't Rory. The horse is usually pretty good about moving when I send him off, but he was a little hyped up from running around, and was focused on the new round bale in the paddock. He can be a bit rude and pushy, and when I want the horse that he pushes around it's safer to move him away so I have a chance to see him coming if he decides to go for her. Unfortunately he was a bit slower to respond to me, which let me get closer, which put me in range when he flipped a kick at me.
Many years ago, before I had horses I spent a few summers working as a trail guide at one of those places that do one hour trail rides for Joe Everyman. One of the things that stuck with me was the demonstration the owner did for us to explain the safe distance to move around behind a horse. He showed us how if you are right up beside the horse their leg can't move very far before it connects which turns the kick into a simple (but strong) shove. If you are further away, the hoof can build up the power and transmit the full force to you when it connects. Obviously, the third option is to be well out of range - usually my choice with loose horses.
This lesson has stuck with me and made me very aware that I was lucky to have gotten far enough within the horse's range to have received less than the full force of the kick. Just a bit further away, and not only would he have hit me with greater force, but also high enough to have applied all that force to the point of my hip. As it was his hoof hit the thickest part of the big muscle masses near the top of my thigh. It hurt like nothing I've ever experienced. I managed to control the pain enough to limp back to the gate and get within sight of the barn owner to get help. A trip to the hospital Emergency for x-rays proved that nothing was broken, it was just badly bruised. A funny note - upon inspection we discovered that the impact actually broke the skin. The nurse told me it would need stitches - which puzzled me. I was thinking "If that was on my horse I'd just clean it and wrap it up." They didn't push stitches on me, but did give me a tetanus shot. And a prescription for heavy duty painkillers.
It was a couple of weeks before I tried riding again (not Rory), and much longer before I stopped limping. The injury made it very painful to bend that leg and crouch down, so I had to reduce the number of times a day I redid the wrap on Rory's leg. His injury looked like it was okay, and still wasn't bothering him.
So Rory's been having poop juice trouble this year. It started some time late winter or early spring, I'm not sure exactly. I didn't think much of it at the time. He has no other signs of anything amiss - no signs of ulcers, he's got a healthy coat, healthy appetite, willingness to work, no girthiness, nothing. Just poop juice.
Anyway it's gotten pretty nasty at times this summer with some thick crusty streaks down his butt cheeks all the way over the points of his hocks and inside his hind legs to the fetlocks. Nasty. I felt he was a bit gassy too, and the gas was usually accompanied by several tablespoons (or more) of juice. I took him off flax as an experiment and the gas does seem to be a lot less. His poops have been normal, well hydrated though solid enough to retain the turd shapes on landing - not cow patties by any stretch but they are also accompanied by what seemed to be a lot of juice.
In August the vet was out and I mentioned it. She gave me the "poop juice" term. We were changing his feed that week too, and the juice dried up and his bum and legs were clean (apart from a very few individual drops). I figured he'd been reacting to something in the old feed. The juice started getting worse again about 10-12 days later, and got progressively worse to the point of being more than I'd ever seen before drying up again. About 10-12 days messy. I started him on yeast during this messy period, and he got worse for several days before getting better again. Fortunately he was clean while we were at the Cup Qualifiers, but late last week he started again.
He did have a fecal done in August on one of his very juicy days - no significant egg load.
I discussed it with the vet again almost four weeks ago as it was getting bad again at that time and she said that a biopsy might be the next step as it would show encycsted worms (or holes), and the white blood cells (types/counts) could indicate if there's an allergic reaction. That was right after I started the yeast so we were going to see if that helped first. It hasn't, he's juicing again and even had what appeared to be a mini gas colic one day (20 min and he was fine) after I rode, so we're going to the next step. I just went through my notes and marked on a calendar his worst days and his clean days and it appears that it's about a three week cycle with 10-11 days clean and 11-12 days dirty.
One of the other vets at the clinic suggested trying a hindgut buffer before the biopsy. He's had some success in putting horses on the buffer for six months, and then they've stayed healthy after coming off it. He did say there were a couple that had to go back on the buffer, but it seems to work in most cases. The buffer is EquiShure made by Kentucky Equine Research, and is a top dress powder added to the horse's feed. Rory is starting on two scoops a day, and may be able to go back to half that in a couple of weeks (if it works).
On the first of October Rory came in with a bump just below the hock on the front of his left hind leg. I've seen similar injuries before and although I'm hoping it's just that he knocked himself on something, I suspect he's strained the extensor tendon. A strained extensor is relatively mild, and they do tend to heal well so it wasn't the end of the world, but it would mean not going to the second Cup Qualifier next weekend.
I treated the bump with the usual cold therapy and poulticing, but it wasn't really responding and by October fourth I was losing hope. Entries needed to be in by midnight on the fifth so I had to make the decision the next day. I'm not too worried about the extensor tendon. I've had to look after this injury several times before. They heal well when given a little time and gentle return to work. Rory's not lame, nor is he very sensitive or hot over the area so I think it is a minor strain. Just enough to keep him out of the second Cup qualifiers.
I'm disappointed. Even though the Cup classes weren't a major goal for Rory, I really felt he would do better at the next qualifier and was looking forward to it. But it's not important enough to risk further injury.
