Variety

What they lack in distance, they make up in variety.

(The trails, that is.) I've been riding the same two-ish mile loop around the Christmas trees because that's the part of the property that's familiar. But today Carla (Jake) and Melva (Echo) took me and Blue over the other trails, where things get interesting. So we did switchbacks and water crossings, and we pretty much survived it with only occasional bouts of mutiny. Blue and I will do it at a trot next time we have a dry day. He needs the work!

I am pleased that I did all my riding this weekend in the Kuda saddle. I finally got a fleece cover for it, and I'm pleased how secure I feel in it. The only problem I can see is that because it is treeless, it has a little more lateral play than I'm used to. Melva was riding behind me and telling me to sit up straight as I was curled hard to the left. The saddle had moved with me, so it felt like my left stirrup was about 3 inches shorter than the right, but it also felt like I was centered. By the time Melva said I was sitting straight, I felt like I was about to slide off sideways. Clearly, my sense of balance and muscle memory is crap. (To put it nicely.)

It's always something, isn't it? 

Exploring boundaries! Mutiny! Water obstacles!

As I mentioned in my last post, Blue and I have been having an ongoing conversation about who is really in charge under most circumstances. I was feeling encouraged and (to use a more touchy-feely word) empowered by his lightness and ease in the arena. So when Saturday dawned warm and sunny, I knew it was time to expand our comfort zone into the great outdoors again.

Up to this point it has been easy to make excuses for staying inside and doing gymnastic work. Rain! Mud! Potential tendon damage! But those excuses pretty much evaporate (pun very much intended) when it is a sparkling 60 degrees and everyone in their right mind is out enjoying it.

Also, what better weekend for the training equivalent of a “come-to-Jesus” moment than Easter?

The beginning was not auspicious. I took him to the arena for a quick warm-up before we really started working. I find he absorbs new information best after about 5 minutes of trotting, so I mounted up and asked for a walk to get us both situated. Full disclosure: I typically ride in the evening after work, when Blue has had several hours of turnout to burn off energy. On Saturday, he came straight from his stall after breakfast and had a little extra spring in his step anyway.

Now, just as my youthful farrier predicted, Blue’s walk is much faster and smoother now that he’s been relieved of all that extra toe. He was always a fast walker, but now he clocks a 4 mph walk easily. That’s pretty fast for stumpy little mustang legs! He feels pretty relaxed, but he is boogeying (boogie-ing?) around the arena with an air of determination.

Then Bob starts leading the other horses out to the turnouts. Typically at the time I ride he’s bringing them in for the evening, which presents its own challenges. Either way, it is tricky to hold Blue’s attention inside when he sees horses skittering past the arena door. It is just glimpses out of the corner of his eye as they go by, which in some ways is worse. His attention is starting to stray, so I push him into a trot to refocus him. The OHSET kids must have been doing work on the lunge line last night, because there are six circles in the arena footing, evenly spaced and perfectly round. So, after five fast loops of the arena perimeter, both directions, we head into the circles.

Blue’s circle abilities are improving—which is not to say that they are good. Circles really are the point at which his inborn stubborn streak and my poor riding are most likely to collide. I tend to be stiff and locked-down on the outside leg. When I concentrate to even myself out and relax at the hip, I inevitably drop the ball somewhere else. If I don’t set him up perfectly and enforce the rules, he will drop his shoulder and drift out of alignment.

So we spend perhaps 15 minutes figure-eighting through the circles with varying success. One thing is going well, though. I’m using Eric Hought’s advice and performing an SRS (single-rein stop) when Blue offers anything other than compliant effort. If at any time his doesn’t immediately respond to initial corrective guidance, such as changing leg pressure or a lift of the inside rein, SRS. SRS until the feet stop moving, then resume our circle as if nothing had happened. I tell myself, we are not fighting, only communicating.

Then Libby and her enormous warmblood arrive, and I decide that it is time to head outside and let her have the space to herself. We aren’t leaving just to get away from her. (Even though I do sometimes feel envious of accomplished dressage riders like Libby, who just makes it look so dang easy.) I tell Libby we are going to attempt to head up into the trees… and by the way please let Bob know if my horse comes back without me. All the ladies in the barn laugh at this, but I think they know that there is a nugget of truth here. Getting dumped, or bucked, or scraped off in the woods is absolutely a possibility today.

I remount out in the parking lot, and I can feel Blue’s immediate confusion. The parking lot is the very edge of his comfort zone. The arena is still visible, but we aren’t in it. The parking lot is also (in some ways) his private domain—a kingdom of independent naughtiness. Did I mention that he was out there again, loose with Sunny, on Friday afternoon? All the OHSET kids were tacking up at their trailers in the lot, and Blue is just moseying among them. None of the kids tried to catch the fugitives, either. I pulled up with my trailer (fresh back from the shop—yay!), and here’s my horse waiting for me. The OHSET kids got two shows in one: first they go to watch me try to back my trailer into a narrow space between two others, then they got to watch me try to catch my smartypants horse. Cue the Benny Hill music.

So anyway, we’re out in the parking lot. I mount and am just sitting for the moment, concentrating on how my horse feels.

The feeling is hard to describe to someone who doesn’t ride. It’s kind of like getting into your car when it is parked at the top of a steep hill. The car definitely has an agenda, and you have to decide how to balance steering and brakes to get safely to the bottom. You don’t want to ride your horse’s brakes, but steering gets trickier at high speed. Ideally, you switch to a lower gear. :) On a horse, this has to do with managing his level of excitement. The goal is that he will never offer more energy than you request… but also that he will always offer enough.

Blue is coiling up a bit in the parking lot, so I point him at the trail and give him feather-light instructions. Please go forward toward the trail and away from the barn. He moves with hesitation, and, dare I say it, skepticism. And, because he’s smart, he is going in the direction I ask but sort of leaning toward the barn. This is tricky because he isn’t *technically* disobeying. But I am in charge, dammit. So I give him just a little leg to keep him going forward… and I get all-out mutiny for my trouble. He turns against my leg and toward the barn, excitement level rising. So I SRS, holding until his feet stop moving. Then calmly turn him back the way I want to go and ask for forward. I get maybe four steps before he tries the same trick again. Fine. SRS the other direction, feet stop, we turn back to the trail and go a few more steps. He does this four times in the first 50 yards, then literally gives a heavy sigh—shades of myself at his age?— and grudgingly walks off in the correct direction without further argument.

Some might say that I anthropomorphize Blue too much when I describe this. They’d say horses’ brains aren’t complex enough structurally for skepticism, adolescent angst, or grudging acceptance. Clearly these people have never ridden mustangs.

Skeptical ears

We did less than 2 miles, I would guess. All at a cautious walk. I dismounted at one point and one point only: Turning back toward home on a steep, wet, muddy, downhill slope, he immediately wanted to go faster than the ground conditions would allow. In fact, it was so slick and steep that I was concerned about executing the SRS at all. As it turns out, I’m glad that I got down, because in leading him down that hill, I slipped and fell. Better me, alone, than Blue with me on him. I have never ridden a horse that fell. Stumbled, yes, but never a full-out fall of the type that breaks femurs or pins semiconscious riders under half a ton of struggling animal trying to right itself.

I remounted when the footing improved. Blue had a spring in his step going toward home, so we kept working the crescendo. Luckily, I only had to ask louder (louder as in the feel from my hands and body, not my voice) to get the same results as I got in the arena. There is a fork in the trail where one way goes down a steep-ish hill toward the barn and the other takes a flat gravel path away from the barn. I tried to turn Blue onto the latter path, and he was not amused. SRS, turn, step. SRS, turn, step. And then he was walking down the gravel path like a drunken sailor, bobbing and weaving and fooling around. SRS, turn, step.

This was a longer, scarier battle than the one down in the parking lot. The stakes are much higher out on the trails where the possibility and risks of falling are much increased. But I held my ground and insisted. And once he was walking down the path relaxed, with a level topline, I stopped him, turned around, and let him walk off toward home. As his head lifted, we crescendoed or SRSed as needed. We came to the fork again, and again, I turned him away from the path to the barn. SRS, turn, step, step step step. And once he relaxed again, I turned him toward home.

There is a bridge at the bottom of the hill before you get to the barn. I rode down over the bridge, then turned him around to go back up the hill away from home. I rode him toward the barn, then away. Mutiny! SRS! Mutiny! SRS! Grudging acceptance!

And basically that was our ride. I kept up the SRS routine until I knew that he would have gone all the way back out into the woods if I had asked. It wasn’t a physically taxing day for Blue, but here are my hard-earned words of wisdom on the subject: Not all conditioning is physical.

Here are some more photos from Saturday:

The escape artist in his new turnout, where the fences are more imposing. But, also, one side is bounded by a creek. Surely no horse would disrespect such an imposing natural barrier...

Oh, yeah. Right. Notice who jumps in with all four feet and is the instigator when it's time to depart.

Yet another containment system. Destined to fail?

I get by with a little help from my friends and total strangers

This has been an eventful week in the “burning through paychecks” aspect of being an endurance rider.

I took my horse trailer up to Newberg to Hitchin' Post to get some long-needed repairs. These repairs were supposed to be done at TheTrailer Place in Walla Walla back in February, but their service department leaves much to be desired. (Like, for instance, I desired them to put all of my requested fixes on the work order after I told them what I wanted done. And they apparently desired to guess about what I wanted instead of taking notes or calling me to ask.)

I will say this about the Hitchin' Post. Those are nice people. They answered every phone call and email I sent them, which turned out to be a lot. I had questions; they had answers. When I decided I wanted a new hitch to help my trailer sit level, they found one. When I asked about corral panels, they were more than happy to connect me with someone local who fabricates them. (Although they wouldn’t sell me the set of Silver Medals that were strapped to one of their consignment goosenecks—or rather, the owner wasn’t keen on selling the panels without the trailer. Aarene has a set, and I covet them increasingly. But not so much that I would buy a $17,000 trailer just to get them.)

I haven’t seen the official repair bill yet, but I’m guessing it’ll be in the $1500 ballpark… which is awfully close to what the trailer cost when I bought it a couple years ago. Please don’t tell Brian! Anyway, the fixes were for my comfort and safety. You can’t put a price on that. Right? Right?!

On Monday I met my new vet, a nice guy who used to do some endurance and was interested in how I thought a mustang compared to the competition. Since Blue has not actually competed yet, I have very few data points! But I did tell him a bit about Otto and the reasons I decided to switch horses 3 times in 5 years. (I told that story, right? In short: Otto was too hot, Topper was too cold, and all signs point to Blue being just right.)

And before you get alarmed, I should point out that I met the vet under normal-to-happy circumstances. I wanted Blue to get his spring vaccinations well before we start traveling. (Yay, traveling!) I was thinking of possibly going to the Grizzly Mountain ride on April 21. I think, looking out my window right now at the hail bouncing in the puddles, that Grizzly will be very much contingent on the weather report. I heard a rumor there was a winter storm warning for that part of the state this week. Either way, I wanted Blue to get his shots and have time to recover in case he has a reaction.

On Wednesday, I met my new farrier. I know I am getting old because I immediately wondered if they are letting elementary school kids shoe horses these days. Seriously, he might pass for 17. There are no signs that he can grow a beard or vote.  But since I don’t need him to do either of those things, I will settle for him knowing how to trim and shoe a horse. And trim and shoe he did!

Blue was overdue for hoof work. How overdue? I’m almost too ashamed to type it. His last farrier visit was Jan. 10. Moving threw everything out of whack, and I was a naughty horse owner not to find a way to take care of the problem sooner. I kid you not, the The Kid, whose name is Cody, probably took a good 2 inches of wall off Blue’s front feet. As it is, he says it will take 2 or 3 more sessions to undo the long toes and underslung heels to the point that he’s happy with them. Right now, he is merely satisfied that the problem isn’t likely to get worse before his next visit.

I am excited that he put Blue into fancy Natural Balance shoes, something that was a little too newfangled for my farrier in Walla. I’m doubly excited that The Kid was using words like medial, distal, deep flexor tendons, suspensory ligaments, and tubules. From the mouths of babes, dear reader.

He didn’t suggest transitioning to barefoot, which I appreciate. (Not that I’m totally unwilling, just that this would be the Worst Possible Time to try.) Nor did he seem too worried about the thrush. He says it pretty much comes with the territory here. I should do my best to control it but not sweat it too much.

So once I paid The Kid, I figured I might as well ride.

Blue and I have been working on control. I have read and re-read Eric Hought’s training articles on this topic. I even put one in the PNER Newsletter this month. I tried to use his techniques with Otto, but we had too many factors against us. With Blue, in western Oregon, the one thing I have is loads of arena time. So guess what? We practiced the crescendo. We’ve been practicing it since I moved to the new barn, and I think we have made huge, massive, thrilling progress.

In fact, Blue’s progress has outpaced my own, so that now I have to police myself constantly. He is so light and sensitive that every slight shift of my weight or movement of my pinkie MEANS SOMETHING. I know that is how riding is supposed to be, but Blue is literally the first horse I’ve owned for whom it was true. And so while my reflexes and I are used to kind of schlubbing our way into a lazy stop, Blue is now stopping hard. At which point I go flying forward and have to remind myself to STOP LOOKING DOWN and actually expect the horse to stop when I say stop.

He’s also rating his trot like a champ, even when there are other horses around. This too is a challenge for me because I am so used to having to haul on a horse to reduce speed. Right now, in the arena at least, all I have to do is lift my hand. I don’t even take the slack out of the rein. It’s kind of amazing.

I am hoping that the sun this weekend will allow us to take some of these skills into the real world, where I can get a better assessment of his fitness level. That, even more than the weather, will make the decision about Grizzly.


Postscript: In the hour or so since I wrote this post, I found a used corral to buy in Salem. It is a JB or HYH style setup, for a fraction of what it costs new. I have decided that it would be foolish NOT to buy it at this price, so now I will be well and truly broke until next Friday. Don't tell Brian!

Small thoughts on small things

As I was filling up the baggies of mixed supplements that Blue enjoys twice a day, it suddenly occurred to me: We must have really shiny mice. And they probably have wonderfully limber joints well into old age.

Also have a theory for you: The smaller the animal, the longer the attention span. A fly will buzz around my head all day unless I kill it, but my horse wanders off as soon as the cookies are gone.

Bluedini

One thing about boarding at a commercial stable—there are a lot more people around to give you guff about your horse's little foibles.

No, actually my new stablemates are too nice for that. But that doesn't mean they haven't noticed that Blue is a terrible influence.

To cause minimal waves in the local herd, Bob turned Blue out with a sweet old thing named Sunny. Sunny is 18 years old, and he is the first horse his young rider has ever owned. Sunny is absolutely the stereotypical "babysitter" senior horse; there isn't a mean bone in his body.

Blue, being a clever mustang, immediately began exploiting the trust everyone had in his pushover of a pasture buddy.

And that is how it was that I arrived out at the stable on Sunday to find my horse tucked into his stall in the middle of the afternoon. It turns out that Blue and Sunny were enjoying being out in the stableyard paddock (basically the awkward space between the the main barn and the arena). This paddock is used for gentle souls like Sunny, who would never dream of disrespecting a fence. One narrow, obscure offshoot between two outbuildings is blocked off with a single band of electric tape 18 inches off the ground. The tape isn't hot because it has never needed to be... until now.

Somebody figured out that he could step—or maybe hop?—over this piece of tape. And then, apparently, somebody else followed him out to do a little sightseeing. And that's how two horses ended up hiding among the Christmas trees on the back 40 and taking an hour to catch. They led Bob, and Sunny's young owner, and Sunny's young owner's beleaguered mom on a merry chase all over the property. The fugitives had just been caught when I arrived, in fact.

Embarrassing.

But Monday night I went out there feeling confident that the problem would be solved. Surely Bob had found a solution for the escape artist.

Imagine my surprise (and secret glee) when I pulled into the parking lot Monday night and my horse came trotting right up to the truck, followed by Sunny... and also by Echo, and Bob's two little sorrel arabs. As soon as Bob came out of the barn to investigate the commotion, Blue trotted off toward the blackberry bushes, and the whole herd followed him like a bunch of thousand-pound lemmings.

My horse is a trendsetter. Or something.

There really is a part of me that can't wait to see what the old trickster comes up with next. And another part of me that needs to figure out how to contain him in a ride camp this summer. It might finally be time to invest in solid corral panels. It's either that or leave the poor thing tied for two days. Clearly, he doesn't take the hint where electric tape is concerned.

Bob says that Blue has a wanderer's spirit. I can't think of a better personality trait for an endurance horse!

As the crow flies...

Fun fact: The ridecamp for Foothills of the Cascades is less than 8 miles from where I'm boarding. But if you drive it, it is roughly 1 hour away.

Can I ride it faster than I can drive it? Maybe we'll try it sometime and see!

It gets a little steep in the middle part.

Wet Side Story

Western Oregon resembles eastern Washington very, very, VERY little. You cross those mountains (or thunder down that gorge), and basically you’re in a different country. A very rainy country.

And sometimes snowy! Yay.

The West Side (AKA, the Wet Side) is home to people who have adapted perfectly to their environment. Store racks are laden with flannel shirts, cardigans and varying weights of raincoats because, dammit, sensible layering is the only way to win the battle with the weather. For example, on Sunday, we had rain. But we also had a period of warm sun. Then high winds. Then hail. Then rain. Then clear skies and plummeting temperatures. Either you layer, or you invent a self-heating shirt (I’m picturing the girl-on-fire costume in The Hunger Games).

Since I have arrived, I bought three more cardigans and a very spendy pair of muck boots. I would estimate that I wore muck boots in Walla Walla a total of twice a year. Now I wear them Every. Single. Day. I still need a “nice” raincoat for work. (For my birthday, before I left WW, Shana and Heather bought me a light raincoat for riding, but it stays too dirty for public wear… what with all the mud.)

This is the wet side. These people invented grunge. (Can you blame them?) They invented espresso stands and Starbucks because you need regular infusions of hot liquid to combat the cold, ever-gushing liquid from above. Their school playgrounds are covered—a phenomenon that my wet-sider husband finds perfectly normal, but which baffles me.What is the point of going outside to play if there's a roof over your head?

Horsekeeping in a perpetual swamp is a completely new experience for me.

I didn't take any pictures of the first place I boarded. But I kid you not, the mud was over my ankles in all the turnouts. It was slick and squishy and horrible. This new barn has a lot more gravel. It's still muddy but at least you don't sink in.

In Nebraska, we had plenty of precipitation (usually), but the sun and wind tended to burn the puddles off pretty quickly. The horses had free access to an old barn, but they hardly ever went in there when it was wet. They were a lot more likely to go inside on hot days to get into the shade and away from the flies. I didn’t blanket in winter because the horses could go inside if they were cold. And they were wooly. That was fine because I wasn’t interested in riding when it was 20 below outside.

When I moved to Washington, I was introduced to the idea of blanketing in winter for a couple reasons. For one thing, there wasn’t any shelter at Heather’s. Not even trees. For another, the winter weather was milder, so we were riding year-round. The blanket kept the worst of the winter wool away, so you could saddle up and ride without overheating the horse.

Now, on the wet side of Oregon, I still have Blue’s heavy turnout blanket for everyday. But I’ve been informed that I may want to buy a summer-weight rainproof turnout sheet soon because it is getting too warm and wet for a full blanket. 

With Blue’s history of skin problems, this is sure to be an uphill battle.

When in doubt, the answer is C. If you are a fan of the PNER Facebook page, you may have seen my post:

I think I already know the answer, but would you pick A or B?

Boarding option A:
• Full care $200/mo.
• 30-35 mins from home.
• Roughly 3 miles gravel trail on the property, multiple water crossings and lots of elevation in that space.
• Almost unlimited logging roads rideable from property.
• VERY muddy paddocks with hodgepodge fencing.
• 60 ft indoor round pen, no arena
• Owner is kind of old school on horse care. For instance, several of his horses have rain rot, which he says is OK because it always clears up in the summer. No frills here. :)

Boarding option B:
• Full care $375/mo.
• 20-25 mins from home.
• 1 mile of gravel trail on the property, water crossing, but property is pancake flat.
• 5 miles of dirt field roads rideable from property, also flat.
• VERY modern, well-run facility. Everything is clean, automatic, and top of the line.
• Two all-season outdoor arenas, one large indoor arena.
• Owner is very up to date and seems conscientious about supplementation and safety.

My initial boarding place in greater Salem—the place I "landed" when we moved—proved to be inappropriate for an endurance rider. I mean, I guess some intrepid person would find a way to make it work. But I was having a hard time doing anything but a few piddly minutes in a small, crowded arena. And then when I found that an important section of the "trail" I had been promised was paved and slick as snot from moss... well, there's only so much a girl can take.


So I decided to strike out for greener pastures, so to speak. I visited option A and option B a couple days apart. There were things I liked about both of them, but I wasn't sure. Of course, my PNER facebook friends identified my problems with both of them right away on and helped me see that I needed an option C.


And, indeed, that's where I ended up.


Option C is so great. It makes horses faster:

Whoosh!

 It makes horses taller:

Meet Blue's new friend, Chance. When I stand next to him, I can't see over his back. His muzzle is literally as big as my head.

 It improves the weather:

Trails as viewed from the bobcat.

It's scenic:

More photos are here.


The inside of the barn is bright and open:

This is just the indoor exercise pen. There's a huge arena off to the right.

Plus there are trails. Five miles of lovely, lightly graveled trails:

Let's just hope the honeymoon lasts!





PS for Shana: There are these decorative metal cutouts all over the property. I thought you'd get a kick out of them :)