Willie's Birthday

Today my wonderful old man turns 19.  His coat is the only thing implying his age, with even more gray hairs popping up all over his face, tail, and body this year, but he's still fat, shiny, and bright-eyed.  Yesterday he and Jabby decided to play by hitting their pasture at a dead run, bucking and leaping like idiots, and Willie had no problems staying in the lead.  He still loves having a job, and still makes my heart go a special kind of pitter-pat when he turns to me with pointed ears and his trademark whicker.  I hope I can keep him healthy and happy for many more birthdays to come.

I am unexpectedly (but happily!!) back to work this week, with a brand-new job that makes me appreciate Will's previous life from a whole new perspective.  I managed to get home early enough to throw together a batch of horse cookies, which is good because it looks like we may get rained out of our celebratory trail ride.  But hey, after all we've both been through, every trail ride is a celebratory trail ride!

It's still been pretty dreary around here -- or else I'm out before the sun! -- so no new pictures today, but have one from last spring.  (Mostly because I like the blue flowers.)

Happy Birthday, Willie!

Hey Look, Another Update!

It feels like forever since we've seen the sun!  Nearly all of the last week has been gloomy and gray with more rain than originally predicted -- it wasn't steady, but there had been at least a clear day or two in the forecast, and it wasn't until around lunchtime yesterday that the sun finally came out and stayed out, at least until last night's brief storm.

The boys both had Tuesday off, and then Wednesday was a joint hack around the nursery.  Thursday was a longeing day for each of them, and then yesterday I spent the morning grooming the bejeezus out of them until the sun came out.  At which point I got it into my head to play around bareback -- with Jabby, too.  The vet is coming out next week for shots, and I'm hoping to pick his brain about Jabby's back, so I've been holding off on riding.  But for some reason it seemed right, so I threw on my bareback pad and sidled him up to the fence, where I crept on as delicately as possible.  I did my best to sit up in a sort of half-seat and offer no resistance to his back at all.  I let the reins out to the buckle and we drifted around the pasture.  Slowly, he let out a big deep breath, and I was happy to find he refrained from grinding his teeth or jigging, and he was actually stretching his neck up, over, and down without prompting.  There was still a little bit of residual tension, but I can't say for sure if it was from discomfort, or just anticipation of something worse.  We walked once around the nursery, which took all of a few minutes, and he kept relaxing and moving forward.  At that point, I hopped off, pulled off all the tack, and turned him loose to graze again.   Poor Willie was standing nearby, waiting his turn, so without stopping for so much as a halter, I brought him over to the fence and shimmied up.  (Mounting blocks are for the unadventurous.) We proceeded to ride around the nursery with no tack at all.  Have I mentioned lately how much I love this horse?

After a fit of confidence in which we jogged up and down a few rows of trees, I swapped his flymask for his bridle, and we proceeded to do some very brief w/t/c work in the pasture.  Nothing serious, as we're both out of practice, though something possessed me to work on posting the trot while we were out there.  What can I say?  Left to my own devices, I'm apparently a glutton for punishment.

It was actually warm enough to warrant sponging him off in a few spots, and since it seemed like the sun was actually going to stick around for a few more hours, I broke out flysheets for the first time this year.  Jabby managed to go naked all last summer, mostly for lack of a suitable sheet that wouldn't broil him, but since our farm now is deeper in the woods and closer to a body of water, the bugs are shaping up to be more bothersome.  Thankfully, I found my favorite flysheet at half-price over the winter, and as luck would have it, the giant horse sizes were the last ones left.   So now I have two spoiled ponies decked out in shiny bubble wrap.

Speaking of spoiled... When I showed up for breakfast this morning, I was earlier than usual, and caught both boys lying flat out on their sides.  Willie, of course, was on his feet to greet me by the time I got to the gate, but even after I grabbed their breakfasts from the shed, Jabby was still down, though he had rolled up to sternal and was blinking sleepily at me.  I dumped Willie's food and went to poke at the Moose, to make sure he was feeling all right.  He greeted me with his normal nickers and tried to grab the bucket right from my hand.  I offered him a few pellets and he gobbled them up.   Nothing wrong with him except wanting breakfast in bed!

What a goof.  He was back on his feet and his usual moochy self as I continued with my morning puttering.  Sadly for him, all the sitting around on the nice spring grass meant he was packing on the pounds, so he got put on a major diet.  His current breakfast looks like this:

That's a handful of hay pellets (timothy/alfala), an ounce or two of whole flax, and two salt blocks to slow him down.  He's off grain completely now, and just gets enough to keep him busy while Willie eats his breakfast.  His dinner is not much better, with just a pound of soaked pellets, but between the diet and the slow increase in activity, some of the flub is starting to burn away.  I've actually been meaning to do an updated feed post, since I think the last one was more than six months ago, but I'm waiting for the sun to stick around long enough for some condition photos.

Not a lot more on the agenda... Next week we have the vet, and then I'll be spending time at my favorite event to watch/volunteer at -- Jersey Fresh!  And of course, still slowly building back up fitness for all three of us.

Moving Along

This week's agenda has largely been hacking Willie and longeing Jabby.  They have both had it pretty easy for a while, so my short-term goal is to just get them moving their feet again more than one or two days a week.

Since I'm not riding Jabby, it gives me a chance to work on refining his groundwork.  Some of you may recall that the first time I ever tried longeing him, he bombed along in a heedless "death trot" until I finally insisted on a downward transition, which ultimately just resulted in him barreling across the arena with the longe line flapping in the breeze.  A few months ago, I started long-lining him, and had much better luck getting him to settle down and pay attention.   Unfortunately, when I tried to pick up regular ol' longeing again in March, we had all the same communication issues, compounded by the neighbor's herd of mares that picked that week to simultaneously come into a raging heat.  To say Mr. McStuddypants was distracted is a bit of an understatement -- I even had to tie him over his bucket to get him to finish eating his meals, and I'm pretty sure this horse would eat his own hooves if he could fit them in his mouth.  (This is one Citizen Pony Life Skill we'll have to master one day, but thankfully, we no longer have mares living next door!)

Eventually I began to add some casual in-hand work to our morning grooming sessions.  We started out with what he knew -- walking, stopping, and trotting next to me -- and sharpened his listening skills, plus added cues to turn and back.  Once he had that down, I sent him out on a small circle around me, and worked up gradually to a normal longeing circle.  It took a lot of patient repetitions, but eventually he got it, and we were getting nice, solid sessions of walk, trot, and a very small amount of canter.

When I was scrambling to make arrangements for the big move that never happened, my horse time fell by the wayside.  Sitting idle apparently caused Jabby's brain to fizz out again, because we had to start back at the beginning.  This time around, at least, he was a much quicker study, and only destroyed one of my old, cheap longelines.  For the past two days in a row he's even calmly walked off on a large circle to start -- a pretty big deal for him.

I kept Sunday's session especially brief, and after only five or ten minutes of walk and trot, I saddled up Willie and set off across the farmlands next door, with Jabby still in tow. We made a loop just short of four miles, and threw in several little stretches of trot, where I was pleasantly surprised to find the boys matched each other's stride carefully with little more than a quiet "trot-trot" from me.  They made a few impolite faces on the way home, when I denied their requests for more speed, but were otherwise good company, for me and for each other.

The only surviving photo from our ride -- what gives, toughbutdumbphone?

More than giving me a way to condition both horses at once, I love ponying for all the extra dynamics we get to explore.  Both horses learn a valuable life skill, I see just how well I can ride with one hand, and in a way, it even forces them to re-evaluate their relationship with each other.  In the pasture, Jabby is the boss, and generally herds Willie around as he sees fit.  Willie tolerates it without much complaint because he can't be bothered to pick a fight.  On the trail, though, Jabby has to defer to me, and by proxy, to Willie.  Willie knows this, and seems to relish the opportunity to get snarky with the whippersnapper, reprimanding him if he tries to crowd us or pull ahead.

As an added bonus, Willie seems to find a new, deep well of motivation with another horse to keep him honest, and marches along at a much more ambitious pace.  Of course Jabby has the benefit of exploring at the hip of his fearless leader, so really, wins all around.

Lest we think I'm enabling my horses to become too co-dependent, fear not... I take Willie out for solo rides the majority of the time, and Jabby, too, goes for solitary walks around the farm at the end of our groundwork sessions.  I'm lucky they get along so well (they cram together into one shed, even though their new field has two) without also panicking the instant they get separated -- but then, I expect them to behave, so they do.

Today, Willie managed a backwards version of the weekend's loop, and I managed to extend it to just over five miles for a total ride time of about an hour.  He surprised me by offering to canter in a few spots, though I only acquiesced once -- he's not quite as fit as he thinks he is!  I am amazed at how rusty his dressage skills have gotten, though.  I don't ask for much on a trail ride, particularly not for a horse that hasn't been schooling, but he needed some persistent reminders for some really basic things like not using the bit for balance at the trot.  We're still in the process of legging back up, so I'm sure things will improve again once real work resumes.

Tomorrow -- a day of rest for Will, and probably a short workout for Jabby.  Beyond that, my plans are to wear the curry combs down to nubs in an attempt to scrape off the very last bits of winter coat.  A few bouts of cool, rainy weather have inspired a few stubborn patches to hold fast, and Willie especially looks a bit like a poorly-plucked chicken. (A shiny plucked chicken, but still.)

Then, maybe, just maybe -- back to blogging for May?

Soon

Still not much to report on, but I thought I would check in anyway.

Yesterday got to ride my first non-Standardbred in a while, the cheeky chestnut pony that Dom is currently working with. Even though I had a, ahem, minor gravitational incident, it was fun to hop on an unfamiliar mount, and great to help out someone who actually appreciates it, for once.

My boys are settled into a new home, where I thoroughly enjoy being the one and only boarder.  It's blissfully quiet when I go out to feed.  There's no contending with errant dogs, sticky-fingered children, yammering yentas, or squealing mares over the fence -- just me, my boys, and the occasional fox, disgruntled by their recent eviction from underneath the run-in sheds.  Before the weekend monsoons started, I even threw a saddle on and hacked out for the first time in about a month.  Well, Willie got ridden; Jabby is backsore despite weeks of sitting and doing nothing, so he got ponied around the nursery.

Willie, of course, was rock-steady as always, marching along like an old ranch horse with slack reins while I rated and soothed Jabby.  After a few minutes of initial fretting, the Moose finally took a deep breath and sighed, dropping his nose down near my boot and chewing thoughtfully.  He has more or less adopted the idea that he is tied to Willie when we go out, which is useful, because for one thing, Willie ground-ties.  Within fenced areas, I practice "parking" them both, giving Will his standard cue and tossing Jabby's lead rope over the front of the saddle.  If I could just get Jabby to stop chewing on the reins while he waits, we would be golden!

I mentioned that Jabby is sore, and indeed, with an almost non-existent workload and no recent weight-bearing or tack interference, it's clear that something is definitely going on with his back.  The next item on my list of experiments for him is sacroiliac injections, though it's out of my current price range and something that will take a lot more consideration.  He'll have some time off until I'm back in work myself, which should hopefully be soon.

More changes are in the works, but I'll mention them when they're a little bit closer to fruition.  For now I'm enjoying the chance at a little downtime -- spring cleaning the house and car, exploring new and old parks on foot, and, as always, relishing the company of the two best horses in the world.

Hiatus

I wasn't expecting to take such a big break from blogging, but a lot of unexpected things have been thrown my way lately.  I thought I was going to have some really great news to update with, but now I don't.   I'm not riding or showing or doing anything fun in the near future so there's no point in me posting.  Frankly, I'm starting to think there's no point in me doing a lot of things, but that's a whole different story.

I'll post again when I have some better news.

Splash

So I'm way behind on updates, but rest assured you guys have not missed anything exciting, at least when it comes to the horses.  Shedding season has finally picked up in earnest, and to [apparently] celebrate everyone's changing coats I dyed my own hair red for the second time in my life.  I have a few more rides on Sparrow the Project Pony to catch up on, but she is finally waiting for the vet's evaluation, which is both good and sad -- good because she's getting sorted out, but sad because I miss working with her spunky little self.  I picked up a new pet-sitting client to keep me busy, though, so things balance out.

If you missed the edit I tucked into the last post, I finally got the full results from Jabby's first show, and we ended up placing fifth in our small class of six -- an uninspiring start to our show career, but hey, at least I've got something to hang on the wall.  :)

The next show in the series is tomorrow, and I had originally signed us up for two more tests, but after stepping back and thinking about it I decided to opt out.  There's way too much going on right now outside of the barn, and I think we will get far more out of it if we wait until things settle down a bit.  For now, Jabby's getting a little downtime.

Willie's still being worked lightly.  He's done a few more trail "drives" in long lines, and loves it.  I wish I had the means to try lower-level combined driving with him because I think it would be right up his alley.

Wednesday, we went on a group ride/hike with Dom, Mike, and Herbie.  Willie hadn't been out to the park in a while, and it was such a gorgeous day that it would have been a shame not to take him.  We ambled along, letting him stop occasionally to test a clump of brand-new grass.  I alternated between riding and walking next to him.  Riding at the speed of plod takes only slightly more effort than sitting on the couch watching TV, so I thought I should at least stretch my own legs a little bit.  We stopped at the lake to let him "snorkel" to his heart's content before heading back home.

All photos via Dom, as usual.