Calvin doing Grid Work

Finally got to bring my boyfriend today and had him be the photographer to get some much needed updated riding pics! Hence, this post is picture heavy and remember that most of these pictures will expand if you click on them.

 Calvin has come a long ways in the year I've had him and is starting to become a really nice riding horse--listening to cues, taking contact, leg yielding, and stopping with just using my seat, etc. We practiced more grid-work this week--I talked about the benefits of grid work in my other post. One huge benefit being that it doesn't stress their joints like jumping, yet it has them use their minds and bodies in different ways.

Happy baby! He had to go in the cross ties today vs. being tied hard on a hitching post. I've learned to hate cross ties because it limits the horse's freedom so much--they can't move their head very well. Usually I tie him to a post, but they were all being used today, that way he can move around a little more and get flies/itch if he needs to. 

Bridling

Ready to work! Notice how loose my noseband is (the part over his nose)--I fit 2 fingers in there. I learned in h/j world to just crank it down pretty snug. But really it should just discourage his mouth opening, not completely prevent it. This way he can drink water or grab a snack pretty easily, yet still can't gape his mouth to avoid the bit. I still don't know how I feel about flash nosebands...so I don't use one. Also if any English snobs out there notice my reins don't match the dressage bridle, it's because he stepped on them during my last fall. Hence I had to switch to my trail reins, which are actually more comfortable anyway.

Walking over poles, he's learning to keep his head in the right place now that he's building up topline. 

Trotting over poles now, nice position his neck is in and I'm really happy with that.  My hands are out "wide" because I'm encouraging him to go straight, you'll see that in my pics

Here you'll see he's reaching with his legs as my poles are set wider to encourage him to extend his legs. Also, so much dust in this arena because they're cutting down on water usage due to the drought. 

 Stay straight baby!

I encourage him to drop his head like this as it really stretches his back nicely. Like I talked about in this post, eventually I'll bring him up into the dressage frame, but he needs to build up his back and hindquarters first. 

 long and low at the walk

 Canter poles

 Some of my bad habits showing from h/j land--perching! Ugh, sit up straight!

More perching ugh. I like this picture though because you can see his great barefoot hooves

 That's better! Calvin is going long and low here. 

I really enjoy bringing up a young horse without the pressure of competition. I can't believe I used to jump so high when the horses were so young! Then again, they have to start horses really young when they need to jump 4'+ by the time they're 6. Anyway, I can clearly see Calvin is still growing so I can't imagine jumping a 4 year old now. Although just because I'm not competing doesn't mean I don't want to improve, hence our dressage training :) 

Bonus shot: even the boyfriend got to ride. Here he is learning to post, he has really nice posture--a natural!

Weekday Trail

Every week I drive 200 miles to work and school. To go to Calvin is another 30 miles, and frankly some days I just don't have the desire to drive anymore. I end up heading out there about twice a week though, yet I wish I could see him more. I dream of being able to get up, go out back, and being able to pet a soft horsey nose when I'm feeling stressed. I guess I'm telling you this because that's why I don't post too frequently, because well, I don't go all that frequently.

He likes to stand by me when I clean his pasture, such a love-bug

However, I did get up and out to the ranch today and it was beautiful. I was up early and got to ride before the heat started. Going during the week is fabulous because it's so peaceful, there aren't hardly any campers on the trails or a bunch of people in the grooming area. Today was a trail day, Calvin has been stuck in his corral so I figured he needed to see the world some more. I love this time of year. He was very good, we worked on transitions (walk-trot, trot-walk, walk-halt, etc) which really get him paying attention to me and learning patience, a never ending struggle ;)

Nice shot of Calvin's brand, now that he's getting his summer coat you can see it again

"Keep off grass"--looking longingly at the park we can't ride in                      I got 4 ears in this picture!

Beautiful day! 

March Hooves and Pasture Paradise

Due to my location, land is at a premium and hence about 95% of horses in my area are kept in stalls. It was really amazing I could even find "pasture" boarding at all. However, people in other parts of the US and even the world are probably laughing at my idea of a pasture which is really just a small corral. However, it's better than a stall so we will take what we can get.

What most people think of when they hear pasture vs. where Calvin actually is

Anyway, because he's living in a small dirt pen with three other horses, his hooves aren't getting the work that the would in the wild. They're turning soft, both due to his diet, inactivity, and soft dirt footing. Without further ado, here are his feet after our "winter"

RF: Not growing as much sole, frogs softer, more white line

LH: The white stuff is for treating/preventing the bacteria growth in his hoof, I forgot to take pics before I treated his feet. 

RH: Better than fronts but still not enough growth

RF: his fronts are definitely worse than the hinds in terms of white line spacing. While his feet may not be what they once were, they're still looking pretty great.

My trimmer said that the best hooves are ones that are "in work" meaning, ones that are ridden or worked more frequently. I'm hitting the trails more now to get him back on the rocks/gravel to toughen them up again. My trimmer is very concerned about him being sensitive on gravel, so I'm wary that this is possible and am paying attention to times he may be acting tender on his feet. However, so far he crunches gravel just like he used to without acting tender in the slightest. We don't have the rocks that my last boarding place had, which helped his feet even more, but thanks to our dry terrain there is still enough hard footing to build his feet back up. If he does show tenderness though, I do have boots I can use :)

How do people combat this with the barefoot horse? Well, they either put horse shoes on (to hide the issue, still doesn't fix the hoof), change the feed or environment, or they create what's called a paddock paradise. One day when I actually have land, this is what I'm going to create. It mimics what horses do in the wild. Instead of having one big pen, you create "roads" which the horses travel on. The idea behind the roads is a number of reasons: 1) to limit how much green grass a horse can eat--limited amounts is okay, but too much high sugar grass leads to founder 2) horses travel in "roads" in the wild, using frequently traveled paths and sticking together. Ideally these roads would involve multiple terrain types: hills, ditches, water, rocks, etc. We can artificially create this by using gravel/rocks in certain parts, logs, or creating hills. Then you spread the food out throughout the pasture, forcing them to move around and eat, not just eat in one location.  All the different terrain types creates a fit horse and fit feet, hence why it's the ideal setting. But people are afraid of this: my horse will turn up lame, they'll hurt themselves on obstacles/rocks, etc. People forget that horses have grown up this way for millennia, just because humans are hell-bent on destroying good feet doesn't mean that their feet are ruined in this short amount of time we have been domesticating them. Anyway, as I talked about before, any horse can go barefoot...but it is a lifestyle change and people don't like change.

Here are different examples of paddock paradise:

Cordoning off parts of the pasture, gives a good example of the roads created

Rocky terrain, similar to how the mustangs live in the wild

Natural obstacles keeping them active

Oh and let's not forget the beautiful feet created by living on this terrain: 

This horse is 6 months without shoes (the paint horse from the above photo feat. rocky terrain)

Grid Work Monday

Calvin is shedding sooo much which means, he's itchy! I took a video of him enjoying a good scratchy session. Look at his little lip twitch, so cute!

Calvin had Sunday off, so Monday meant hard work. I set up some poles to practice grid work. I first set up trot poles that looked like so:

Trotting poles has many benefits, horses need to use their "hoof-eye" coordination. They also use their legs differently, whether it's lifting up higher or reaching over the poles. Even better is that there is not the impact on the joints that happens when jumping. Pole work has not been found to have any more impact than regular trotting.

This was his first time doing poles and he did very well. There were a couple of times where he hit a pole and realized he had to pick up his feet, but once he figured that out it was smooth sailing. He and I found some holes in his training though, for example he doesn't know how to extend and collect his gaits very well (a fancy way of saying slow trot, medium trot, fast trot, slow canter, etc). So we'll be practicing this for a while! 

He's also stiff on his left side and stronger on his right. This was evidenced by him having more of a right bend while traveling which meant he bulged to the left. When he bulges to the left, my left knee almost gets taken out by the awful arena fencing. To fix this, we practiced lateral work:

Today was the first time I rode him and thought wow, he's starting to feel like a "made" horse. He's more balanced and responsive to my subtle cues. Don't get me wrong, he's still very young and we still have a long way to go. Yet I couldn't help but get on and think wow, if I didn't know any better I'd think he was a young warmblood! 

Trail Riding Desensitizing and Remembering how to be Patient

This week has been the week from hell with midterms and work. All that stress paid off though, because it's spring break :D Which I will still spend working, but at least I can see Calvin a bit more.

Anyway, I treated myself to some quality Calvin time after work today. After being super discouraged about his feet after last weeks trim, I decided that we have to work harder. I've been going too soft on him! Well...mainly just his feet. No more cushy arena sand all the time, we need to get back to the gravel. With this in mind I get to the barn, the wind is howling, and I think I might be a little crazy to ride in this weather. But I already had my mind set, so we were going. We tried a new trail today because they are doing some kind of construction on my usual trail. This trail today was quite the adventure, neither of us had been on it and they were doing construction right next to the trail. I figured this would be a great time to get him used to tractors! 

Chasing tractors!

He didn't really mind them too much, such a brave baby. We rode on a trail that borders a park and there were campers there with a bonfire. He was so concerned about that fire, something in his little wild brain knew that it wasn't good. Anyway, we didn't go too far as it was getting dark, but he did really well. His training is paying off and he's starting to listen to leg yields without rein aids (i.e. steering with only legs vs. hands), so cool!

This shot came out blurry because he shook his head--hence the cool mane effect. He also didn't want to stand still, but after a few tries he realized that standing still is much easier than backing up.

The way home was a lesson in patience, he obviously knew we were going home so he amped up his walk to the horse equivalent of racewalking (By the way this video is absolutely hilarious to watch if you've never seen racewalking...or even if you have!). Every time he'd break into a jog (i.e. trying to get home faster) I would calmly stop, back him up 10 steps, and make him stand for a minute or so. This was probably the most irritating thing I could have done to him, but it worked and he learned that we're going to walk home :) It also didn't require a fight, just calmly saying "no, we aren't doing that, back up now please and wait." Horse training is a great lesson in patience, probably more so for me than the horse.

When I got back to the stable and looked at his feet...ah...much better! They were perfectly clean, dry, and a little bit tougher. He's looking really good now, filling out and his coat is really shiny, I might have to bathe him and take some glamor shots ;) (PS he hasn't had a bath with soap in almost a year....ew!). I need to get updated pictures of his feet too. So much to do, so little time!