Aargh - long time, no post!  Again!

Well, for the second week running, I have actually been able to ride Marco!  Eeeeee!  We're still only walking - well, and will be for some time yet, I think - but J rode him yesterday and he was still sound and happy to trot up today, so it _finally_ feels like we might be getting somewhere.

He's been off work since about... April? I think?  And we've cycled through several different injuries and issues with his feet/legs, but eventually J decided that what he had was probably some kind of bone spavin in his hocks, so since then, he hasn't been ridden at all, and we also started him on a green-lipped mussel supplement called Pernamax, and it took a while to see a significant improvement, but certainly over the last eight weeks or so, he's been going from strength to strength! 

I've been hand-walking him out on the common, for the last month or so, keeping him moving and doing odd bits of trot in hand - which is a really good sign of how much better he must be feeling, because when he was really sore, he wouldn't trot at all.  And it just feels amazing to be back riding him again!

He's still a bit delicate - I got off today after about half an hour, when I could feel him struggling to work a bit harder with his hind legs - not uneven, but not the same kind of movement as I'd been getting up til then, and he stepped out fine the rest of the way home, so I'll check him again tomorrow before riding him.

Part of the thing for me as well, is learning to trust him again - not temperament wise, because he's a really steady, generous, lovely, safe horse, but when I was riding him back in the spring - before we really knew what was going with his legs - he was very clumsy with his feet, and would stumble a lot with his front legs, and one time he tripped on (I discovered months later) a half-covered over tree stump in the middle of the path as we were trotting round a corner, and just went down, throwing me off over his head - both of us ending flat on the ground!  Thankfully, we were both ok, just cuts and bruises, but it means that I'm still cautious about whether he's going to be able to keep his footing and stay upright!  He's barefoot at the moment though, and that seems to help with his footing on the roads, and the pernamax also seems to be helping with the stumbling too - he's not doing that any more.  I just have to re-learn that he really is capable of managing his feet!

If I'm honest, riding him again is also bittersweet,  because since Marco's been injured, I've been riding a couple of other different horses, and one of my friends at the yard keeps saying that if I want to progress my riding, I need to ride a horse with a bit more athletic ability, and I know that logically she's right - but I just really love Marco.  And I really wish that he was even five years younger, so that I could have longer riding him now...  Realistically, he's probably not going to be strong enough for me to start having lessons on again, even.  And I'm not looking for another share, because I don't want to give him up.  And I am trying just to enjoy the time I do have with him, but it's still... bittersweet.

 

Down to the yard this evening to sort out the monsters!

Diddi, bless his little zebra brindled socks, has learnt that humans mean dinner, and will come cheerfully up to the gate to have his head collar put on.  He is leading so much better now - he just has to get the hang of being able to move his head in one direction and his feet in another.  There is also still a LOT of work to do on being able to stand still, but that's quite a hard ask, I think.

Marco ate his supplement pills!  They were stuffed into chunks of apple mixed into his dinner and there wasn't even any head-shaking, so either he didn't know they were there, or he is now officially used to the taste.  I tried to get some video of him walking and trotting again, but I don't think it's possible to see much... 

I also tried a new tactic with the hosing.  It was really helpful writing up notes from Sunday, because it made me notice that although M was walking to the hose and standing while the water was over him, the actual moving towards the hose was reluctant in the extreme, and was getting more reluctant not less.  So, I decided to try a different tactic today.  Which was just marching past the hose, and then marching up to the hose and stopping.  I didn't do any actual hosing.  Didn't even turn the water on.  I just wanted to get him comfortable to walk smartly up to the hose and be relaxed standing next to it.  Gave him some treats while he was standing next to hose, and did lots of scratching and praising.  I think this was a good plan, because I could tell that he was waiting for the nasty water, and then it didn't come!  Hopefully, this way I'll be able to make a positive association with the water.  Well, that's the plan, anyway.  (All comments/suggestions gratefully received!)

Marco had pulses in his front feet again, so he was turned out with his grass muzzle on, which he was NOT happy about.  I fiddled about with the straps on his muzzle, as it looked like it was too short to me, the muzzle bit was touching his nose, so I adjusted so that there was a bit of a gap between the two - about a cm or so.  He is convinced that he cannot eat at all with his muzzle on - I have spent hours, trying to show him that he can eat the grass that pokes through the hole, but he just can't seem to get the hang of it.  :-(  Still, it's better than laminitis, so he just has to put up with it.  When I put Diddi out, Marco came rushing up, trying to get me to take the muzzle off, and so I spent about twenty minutes giving him a massage, watching his eye to see what he liked - when I hit the right spot, his eyelid would lower and half-shut!  And he loved it - at one point he did a little stretch, and then moved so that I could start massaging his butt!  He also did a couple of bits of licking and chewing when I had done some massaging and then stopped.  So, I was very pleased with that!

Had a lovely, lovely morning down the stables, just messing around with the horses!

J's new baby Icelandic, Diddi (the pony in the icon), has now been with us for a couple of weeks and he is sooooo good!  He's 3, so he hasn't been backed yet, though J's mum, who was looking after him, has been doing a lot of work with him, so he's very used to being handled and wearing a headcollar and bridle.  Last weekend, we took him and Marco out for a walk on the common and he behaved like a sedate old gentleman, rather than a 3 year old out for his FIRST walk!  The only time he had a bit of a fit was at a big grey tree stump, which obviously looked like it ate Icelandic horses for breakfast, but even then he just had a bit of a jump sideways, and once Marco led the way, he walked past it with no problems!

Today was the first day for having his saddle on and he was a STAR!  He looked completely unconcerned having the saddle on his back and even tightening up the girth.  J led him around the yard with it on, and he walked beautifully and seemed more concerned about the grass and the horses in the neighbouring fields!  Then we took his saddle off and J jumped up and just hung over his back for a few seconds.  He was a bit taken aback by the weight (not that she is heavy, lol!), and he turned his head to look at her and wanted to walk, but other than that he didn't seem upset or worried, and he stopped walking when I asked him, and J slid off and we all told him how clever he was!  He is an absolute poppet.

Luckily, he and Marco seem to get on quite well.  Diddi is quite a bossy horse, and Marco is the more submissive of the two; however, he's not averse to explaining things to Diddi when D gets on his nerves!  Marco is a bit concerned that D seems to have taken over his stable, and he sulks a bit when J spends time with D, but he gets more than enough fussing of his own to make up for it!  His leg is healing well, but is obviously itchy where the last bits of skin are healing over, so he keeps knocking off the scabs.  We put more cream on today, so hopefully that will help.  We also gave M his first dose of Pernamax, which is the new supplement we are going to try him on for his arthritis, so fingers crossed that it does a good job helping his mobility.  We fed it to him in bits of apple, having been warned that it has quite a strong taste that most horses don't like at first, and sure enough he spit a couple of pieces of apple out, but all of the pills went down in the end!

Today we took them out for a walk again, this time with J's greyhound, Sam, and despite J's mum having warned us that D liked to eat dogs, everyone was very well behaved!  D coped with two motorbikes and a HUGE motor-trike passing him on the road, plus bicycles, people doing LOTR style battle re-enactments (even M doesn't like them much - he's a bit wary of the swords!), and lots of dogs, and didn't turn a hair.  Sam wandered about quite happily, practically under D's feet, and D watched him a bit carefully to start with and was then totally unconcerned, and kept reaching down to slime Sam's back affectionately (or hungrily, we weren't sure which!).  At one point, he did take Sam's tail into his mouth and was nibbling it, but Sam didn't even notice.  Clearly he was checking whether greyhounds tasted good to eat!

After we got back, I showed J the work I had been doing with M in the dually halter - working on getting him happier about being hosed. 

Backstory: when M got caught in the barbed wire and cut his leg badly, the barn owner, who rescued him, tried to hose off his leg, and M freaked out and wouldn't go anywhere near.  Even when he was heavily sedated, he still refused to let himself be hosed.  Obviously, this isn't a great situation esp in cases of emergency - or even if we just wanted to give him a bath!  So, I wanted to try and work with him to get him happier about hoses and being hosed.  I've read a lot about natural horsemanship, and so I knew the basic principle of approach / retreat, and so I started off by finding a small piece of spare hose, and just getting M happy enough to touch it with his nose, and be touched by it.  I hung it over his stable door and moved it around a bit while scratching him, until he was happy to stand next to it, and not worried by it moving.  Then I went into his stable with him (this was when he was on box rest - so it was quite good to keep him occupied too) and got him used to it lying on the floor, moving about, up to the point where I could rub it all over him and he was happy.  This actually didn't take long.  I think it helped that in the stable, he could move his feet if he had to, but he was also pretty bored so was keen to come back and be near me.  That afternoon, I was helped by B at the stable, who has done some Monty Roberts training, and she showed me how to put on the dually halter and we worked with M getting used to a real hose that had water coming out of it. 

It was interesting, because he didn't look panicked at all, he just really didn't like it, and he was really determined that he wasn't having anything to do with the hose or the water.  The dually really helped because it meant that there wasn't any benefit to pulling strongly back, which is what he was doing previously.  And it made it really clear, that there was a benefit to moving forward towards the hose, which was the release of pressure on his nose. 

Since then, I've tried to practice this every time I'm down and we've got our routine pretty much down pat now!  He's not that enthusiastic about going near the hose, but I let him think about it, and release the pressure when he offers to move forwards, and we eventually make our way up to standing on top of the hose.  Then I turn the hose on and work up to hosing his legs, praising him lots when he stands still.  He's now pretty happy with having his front legs hosed (ie doesn't move), and will let me hose his shoulder, stomach and back without moving, but he's still pretty unhappy with having his back legs hosed.  However, we're slowly getting more and more moments of standing while the hose is on his back legs, though he does still try to lift them up out of the way.  But we've come a long way, and I'm really proud of him, and really pleased! 

And then we turned the boys out and spent some time poo-picking the fields!  It's really funny - I find poo-picking really peaceful!  There's something about the pleasure of seeing how quickly the field looks better, and something about the peace and quiet - although D thinks that wheelbarrows are really there for him to play with, so it's not _that_ peaceful!  It's just really satisfying!

All in all, a really lovely morning!

Is it wrong that I am completely addicted to Animal Cops Detroit?!

I love the Aussie Pet Rescue too - and I can't help noticing that, in contrast, the UK RSPCA and Pet Rescue programmes look like a lot of dithering about and hand-waving over nothing...  :-(  At least in the US and Oz versions, they get out there and actually HELP the animals.*

I also want to adopt most of the dogs from the ACD programme, so it's probably lucky that it isn't based in the UK!

* I have to confess to unhappy associations with UK RSPCA as my family rehomed a puppy from them which had to be put down after they failed to notice that it had sarcoptic mange.  The whole litter had been rehomed with this horrible skin condition, which the vet said was so severe that they must have had it from birth, and the centre had never picked it up.  It was a really traumatic experience for us, and the puppy never recovered.  So, not very impressed really.

Boy, has it snowed!

Yay!  SNOW!

Woke up at half six this morning, and it felt like Christmas Eve, peeking out of the window to see whether Santa the snow had come yet!  And it had!  No work today - trains into London are running a skeleton service at best, most of the tube lines are all or part suspended, there are no buses running in the whole of Greater London, and more snow is forecast for the afternoon!  I am so happy that I am reduced to bouncing on my toes going 'Eeeeeee!' a lot!  This is BETTER than Christmas!

Had breakfast with my sister, who had walked down to the railway station to go to work and been thwarted by the lack of trains, which was very nice - and am planning a walk on the common with other family later.

If only the roads were better, I would drive down to see M - who, as an Icelandic, LOVES the snow!  I would love to see him ploughing through the snow, all his mane flying!  Yesterday we had a short ride in the indoor school because it was SO cold that my face went numb just walking out across the field to bring him in.  He Does Not Like the indoor school - which has rubbish footing - sand over concrete - not nice at all.  But he was a good sport, and I had dragged out some poles to make it more interesting, so we practiced our turns - steering from the withers, and asking him to step sideways with his foreleg, rather than jack-knifing at the neck.  NB to self: he can turn beautifully, but it seems like he has to be going slow enough to do so...  Making sure that I had a good enough 'lid on the toothpaste' was helpful here, seemed to give him enough 'space' so that he could step sideways, otherwise he just surged forwards.  The poles were also helpful, because he understood the concept of steering towards them, so was more inclined to listen to my leg asking him to step sideways when he understood that we were aiming for the pole in front of us.  At one point we were trotting and ended up in front of a pole (when my steering had gone a bit pear-shaped) and he did a tiny little hop over the pole - so that was a good omen for possibly doing jumping on him at some point! 

We also practiced our walk-trot transitions.  I was trying to play around with how to get trot rather than pace (which is the lateral two-time Icelandic gait, I think), and also how to get from pace to trot, when he was offering the former rather than the latter.  This is still a work in progress, but I noticed the following (notes to self for future work) - he paces with his head held high, but it seems like he can only trot with his head held low.  There were a couple of points where I managed to ride through pace into trot, by sitting really 'deeply' into the pace, and asking him both to push on and reach down with his head.  This didn't always work, and it may be that what worked was some other thing I was doing that I haven't identified yet.  He seems to offer pace as the default, as it seems to require less effort than trot.  The typical riding school advice of 'shorten your reins and ask for trot' definitely Does Not Work for M.  He needs a longer rein if anything.  Shortening the rein just gets pace with the lifted head carriage. 

So, we have another lesson with S next Saturday, and I feel that we've conscientiously 'done our homework' - and, more to the point, have some things to discuss re both the steering and the walk-trot transitions.  So, I'm looking forward to that.

Right - I'm supposed to be making use of this time to write - so more posting later!

Happy Snow Day, everybody!

 

Post from 13^th Jan 2009

Right - I've been reading back through my copy of Mary Wanless's 'For the Good of the Rider', in order to respond to a post by here  - I'm going to come back to that, I think, because there was some other stuff that I wanted to round up here first.  Frustratingly, the internet access at the flat is painfully patchy - for no apparent reason, the connection will drop from the router and this means that accessing livejournal at home is a bit hit and miss...  At this rate, I'll be hitting up the local Starbucks for my internets...!

So, I got some riding time on Sunday!  Very happy.  And even happier because I went out solo.  Still only the second time that I have done that - but M was brilliant.  Just walking because the footing wasn't that great - one of the other horses down the yard had slipped and fallen while out hacking earlier in the day (mainly because he was being a prat, and throwing himself about), but thankfully was ok, just a little cut on his leg.  But it was just really nice to be out, and I was experimenting with my seat - just trying to be really conscious of my seatbones and what I was doing with my core and legs.  M seemed happy - he prefers going really fast, with all his hair flying, but was good-natured about the whole thing.  I've got another riding lesson on Sat (postponed from last week), so that will be interesting too.

The other thing I wanted to do was round up how the first week of my new writing target had gone - so that I have it to refer back to later.  The target was to write 2,500 words in the week - which was broken down as 3 days of 500 words and 4 days of 250 words.  I just failed to meet the target due to a wipe-out trying to write on Saturday.  I got 100 odd words, but the whole thing had gone sticky and I just couldn't bear the discomfort.  The error was in waiting to start until late afternoon, after a lot of busy-ness earlier in the day - by the time I got to the writing, I was just too tired, and the brain would not co-operate.  However, I met or exceeded my target all the other days, which I am really pleased with.  So I'm going to call that 2,400 - although, thinking about it, I'm certain that I exceeded the 2,500 target overall.

The other thing to note was that the last 1,000 words of the week (which were the first 1,000 words of a new chapter) were 1,000 words up a completely wrong alley, and I only realised this by the second writing session on Sun evening.  I wrote my quota for that session anyway, and then spent a bit of time trying to work out where I had gone wrong - which I managed to pin down before going to bed.  Monday morning's session then involved starting the chapter again with the new content/direction and it seems to be motoring along happily enough for the moment. 

This has of course derailed my timetable, but I'm not allowing myself to feel too stressed about that.  This is going to happen - either with days where I can't get the words done, sections where I write myself into a dead-end and have to back-track, and other sundry issues.  If I can maintain the schedule by and large, then I will be very pleased with myself!  I've also made myself a word-o-meter (paper version - so not v 20th C) but I've found that helpful in the past to help maintain momentum.  Right, the internet has vanished into the ether, so I'm going to save this to post later, and do the riding post at a later date...

buymeaclue

  which was 

buymeaclue

I'm only a few words off hitting my 500 target for today, but the well seems to have run dry, and everything has stalled, so I'm blogging instead!

A busy weekend, but almost no riding...  which was a bit sad, but not much to be done about the weather. 

Saturday, the ground was very icy in the morning and there is a fairly long section of road to cover before you get to the common, which slopes both up and down and winds quite sharply.  The general consensus was that nobody fancied the footing on that.  Which meant that I was all done and away in time to make a quick dash around Sainsburys and be home to eat lunch.  At that point, all my momentum deserted me and I watched most of The Colour of Magic on the TV, and noodled on the internets for most of the afternoon.  Still I did hit my 500 word target.

Today, I went down mid-morning for a ground-work lesson which had to be post-poned, due to a double-booking of the indoor school.  Instead M and I walked out again with J and her Norwegian horse.  We did a good hour this time, and R was very well behaved all things considered.  He took the lead some of the time, and took his time looking at everything, and smelling everything that looked interesting, and he got a little rushy at the end, but was sanguine about bikes, people, and even a dog carrying most of a tree-trunk in its mouth.  Afterwards, J came into the school with me and I rode M bareback for the first time!!  My first time bare-back riding ever, in fact!  It felt _very_ different.  I could balance myself while being led, but I couldn't balance and steer!  Still was v good fun and I will have to practice more. 

I also cleared some more space in my room, and have now just finished packing up the last of the stuff that was in my parents' house.  There are still boxes to be moved into storage, but just having reached this stage feels like a big achievement.  I've now got to negotiate when I can get it moved to the storage place and work out how I fit any more stuff into my cubby-hole of a bedroom...

Right.  Back to see whether I can get those last few words before bed.

• an office relocation at work;
• a personal relocation at home - moving into a new flatshare;
• having my eyes opened to completely new skills - attending two MW courses during the second half of the year, which made a huge difference to my riding;
• starting to horse-share and finding my current share, with an Icelandic horse who is a) a lovely, responsive, polite gelding, b) really fun to ride and c) almost bomb-proof;
• starting a new WIP and getting up to 50k by the end of the year - the original plan was to finish it by Sept, but was hopelessly unrealistic.
• making some new friends and keeping some old ones

• Attend some more MW courses - I've now found a RWYM instructor locally, so have started having lessons with her too, but the courses are invaluable - and a lot of fun!
• Complete the WIP and start sending out.  I did a bit of calculating and worked out, that I need to be writing at least 2,500 words a week in order to get the first draft done in time for rewrites etc, so that is another aim.
• Take another look at both work and living conditions - in that, I know that neither are actually where I want to be at the moment, and I keep putting off the process of trying to work out what would be more right.
• Be healthier - two bouts of flu and a heavy cold, just in the last few months - which is not fun or productive.
• Start dating again.
• Try to build the foundations for being able to have a dog of my own, probably not this year, but as soon as possible - which leads back to #3 above...

But, this time, all the work that I had done on my holiday with Lucinda, plus my realisation at the end of the previous weekend’s hack (that actually Sonnet felt more ‘collected’, when I used my legs more around her body, and thought in terms of trying to ‘gather her up’ underneath me), plus my lesson yesterday on the equine simulator (about which more below), and also all the work reading Mary Wanless’s book (‘For the Good of the Rider’), meant that I no longer got bounced off the saddle by her.  Next time I have to try and see whether I can get a better extension from her, and work on making sure that I don’t let her drop out of the canter (which she only did once, and given that the footing was getting stonier, I wasn’t too unhappy about that).  However, this felt like a quantum leap forward in my skill level – it was really hard work for muscles in my legs and pelvis that haven’t been used to doing much at all (I can really feel it in the core muscles around my gut) – but I felt SO much more stable in the saddle, and it was much easier to go with her movement, and feel like I was connected to the horse...  I am really, really chuffed with myself!

The other interesting bit was that Star kept dropping her head so that she was behind the bit, and then tossing her head upwards, and I wasn’t quick enough to brace against her at the start of the movement.  But right at the end, I suddenly remembered all the work that I had seen Lucinda do with getting the horses to stretch long and low and also to bend to the right and the left, and which I had done a little (very inexpertly) on Cloud.  So, in the hope that it would give her something else to think about other than tossing her head around, I was asking Star to bend to the left to start with (she didn’t really seem to be able to do the long and low bit, and I didn’t feel so confident about how I would ask for that), and then to the right, and interestingly she had a lot more trouble giving me a bend to the right...  I would get a nice bend to the left, and would then ask her for the bend to the right and she would start to move her head, and just right of centre it would come up into head tossing, so I kept asking really quietly, and took her back to the left bend, and praised her alot, and we did in the end get quite a nice right bend too.  And I was really proud of myself, both for having the inspiration to try that as a distraction technique and for the execution, which although it probably left a lot to be desired in many ways, at least did seem to work on some levels!! 

The equine simulator was one I had found through the miracle of the intarwebs, and was only about a half hour drive away.  It was not the most high-tech version that I’ve seen, but it still gave you all of the main gaits – walk, sitting trot, rising trot, canter – and would even do downward transitions when you half-halted with the reins!  The most useful things about the half-hour lesson, were firstly getting a refresher on my alignment – making sure that I was sitting properly upright, and getting my feet in the correct position – and secondly working on showing me how much I needed some core-strength, and more specifically, what I needed it for.  Watching myself in the mirror as I did sitting trot showed me quite how much I was moving at the waist, and also how badly my back was hollowing to absorb the motion.  I even did a bit of trying to rise to the trot without stirrups which made me realise the extent of the bracing needed in the inner thighs...  The worst bit was trying to get off, because the wretched thing had a dressage saddle, and try as I might, I could NOT get my leg over its back.  I’ve got a fairly significant bruise on my thigh now...  Still a really good weekend, and a feeling as though I’ve really locked in some learning!