Rodney’s Holiday Rides

Training Journal

If you’re riding a horse, you’ve already won.

 


Chilling in the arena. Rodney has learned to stand in center ring at SSF. He’s gotten good at watching other horses work. Now he’s learning he can do the same in the sandbox. Who knew?

 
tldr: Going well, Lots of trailering. Lots of walking.

Rodney. Is. Exhausting.

Because of course he is.

Partly due to the enormous expectations I put on him from day one. Will this be the horse who takes me amazing places? Now I add, will we ever amount to anything? Will it all some day be worth it? So, no pressure.

Partly due to time spent trailering. Right now, riding means loading up and going to Full Circle Horse Park for lessons, more on this below, or to Stepping Stone Farm, for practice, ditto. Our footing is awful and Rodney isn’t focusing at home because he is fascinated by the cows next door.

Even if I were the ultimate Zen rider with Olympic facilities – and no cows – on my doorstep, Rodney would still be the most emotional, anxiety-ridden, complicated, hot mess of a horse in my experience. (Yes, yes, horse-rider similarities have been pointed out to me. I’ve suggested he write a blog post on the subject. End of digression one.) (Milton is a close second within horses I have know. How we ended up with two such fragile flowers is a frequent topic of discussion around here. End digression two.)

Because, mostly, the key to Rodney, at the moment, appears to be saddle time. Lots of long, slow saddle time.

All of this effort and exhaustion is paying off. We are making actual, legit progress in Rodney management. It arrive thusly.

We used the holiday break to ship horses hither and yon, as we do [Weekend Voyages].

Lesson 1, attempt 1. Fail. I forgot my bridle. ??!?!?! I do not forget things. I’m the one who always has everything. Extra halter? Spare show clothes? A string to tie up your sign? Ask the Pony Clubber. I checked everything. My boots. My hat. Rodney’s multiple saddle pads. I filled the treats bucket. I remembered the battery for his warming blanket. And yet I forget the blankity-blank bridle?!?!?

Lesson 1, attempt 2, two days later [Red and Green and Riding]. Success. Kinda. Lesson occurred; it was terrible. No relaxation on the horizon. At one point Coach Brian [1, 2] asked me to trot. I shook my head. Not happening. When we did trot, it was for short spurts. I didn’t avoid the issue. I made Rodney work, but at a walk. I deflected instead of confronted. I didn’t have it in me put my leg on and say trot d*mm*t.

Side note. The way I can tell Rodney is relaxed is that he will stand. If he pops out of gear, he is still anxious. So Coach Brian had me make tiny circles every time Rodney moved off without being asked. Don’t want to stand? Then make circles. Eventually Rodney stood. Although it worked, I don’t like the exercise. I could tell Rodney was standing because he didn’t want to do any more circles, not because he was relaxed.

I finally did something I have never done. I had someone else ride. I asked Coach Brian to get on. It wasn’t a miracle cure, but at least someone was willing to push him forward.

For lesson #2, attempt 1, five days later. Fail. Success. We changed everything. One. I took out the folded saddle blanket [Recent Changes], deciding that Rodney would prefer a more stable saddle over more padding [Not As Good]. Two. We decided he was old enough that “senior” might be a good word to add to his diet. Watching him from the ground, I thought he looked skinny. We think he may be spending so much time watching cow TV that he’s not getting his daily allotment of grazing. Really, he’s that obsessed. Three. We made sure to dose him with UlcerGard before. Four. We changed the warm-up plan.

We know Rodney needs to walk to get his body loose and his head in the game. To insure that he got as much time as he needed, we would warm up in another ring, away from the lessons. When he was ready, we would go over. If that mean we had a 30-minute lesson, so be it.

Five, out of our control but to our advantage. The day was warmer, which helps immensely when your horse is part lizard [Therapy].

It worked wonderfully.

Actually the lesson never happened. But the warm up plan worked great. We walked for 40 minutes, both in the dressage warm-up area and in the covered arena at FCHP. After, we did a few moderately decent trot circles in both directions. Huge improvement from five days earlier.

Lesson #2, attempt 2, one week later. Fail. I bailed. Not enough riding in between. That fine line between having lessons to improve and improving between lessons.

Lesson #2, attempt 3. Scheduled for next Saturday. We shall see,

In between lessons and lesson attempts, we took Rodney over to SSF. We walked. We walked in the covered. We walked in the ring. We walked around and around … and around the circular driveway. We walked through the barn. (This is an ASB thing. They use the aisle for straight-line practice. Took me years to be okay with riding into the barn. I was always taught that was verboten. End digression three.) After, we would do trot sets in the small, contained, covered arena with me using as little rein as possible consistent with maintain the trot and staying marginally straight.

We also took a trip back to FCHP to acclimate for lessons and for – maybe? possibly? – the 2020 show season. We walked the ring road, with Rodney choosing to curl sideways as if he intended to leg yield the length of it. He used to do this at home on our pasture walks. In the covered, he did some nice trotting, including going the length of the long side several times and doing big trots across the diagonal. Finally, we went over to the dressage ring to walk and stand and learn that the sandbox is not always a place of effort and crisis, see photo.

I’ve gone on long enough. That was Rodney’s holiday. How was yours?

Props to my groom, groundperson, & chauffeur, who finds this an acceptable way to spend his free time.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

New Equipment, Hoof Care

Horsekeeping

Lucky enough to have a horse.

 

 
We needed hoofpicks. All of our many, many hoofpicks had gone to live in the Land of Lost Socks. So, I thought I would try the fancy ones, The Ultimate HoofPick . I’ve never felt strongly about hoof picks, with the exception of not liking the homemade version from bent screwdrivers. Too easy to poke a hole in the sole with one of those, I found.

The brush is because Rodney grows gunk in what look to be clean hooves.

Sourcing. I tried to shop local or direct but without success in either case. Hoof brush originally from Jeffers, Legends Trotter (brush).

Have you tried The Ultimate HoofPick? Are you particular about your hoof gadgets?

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

What Does Success Mean To You?

Celebrating Art

 

 
What does winning mean to you? Awards? Money? Fame? Does it only count as a win if it is awarded by an outside source? If you award your own wins does that mean you are strong or that you are deluded?

Would you choose Van Gogh, hailed as a creative genius but unappreciated in your lifetime, or Fanny Fern, a popular author now forgotten by most of us, Fanny Fern in The New York Ledger?

Would you rather win with a bad ride or lose with a good ride?

Can you come in second & win? Can you come in first and lose?

Related to my New Years Day post [Onwards].

Wondering about my answers?

My love of horse show ribbons & my need for external validation is a matter of record, 2843 posts and counting.

Fanny Fern. Hands down.

I honestly do not have answer to win/bad ride vs lose/good ride. Winning with a good ride would be nice. I remember posing this question to a super-competitive friend. She looked at me like she could not understand why I bothered to ask.

Yup. “Coming second to her was like winning without the blue.” [Perspective, the first part, before I start fussing]

You?

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Quantum Truck, A Writing Sketch

Random Words

She looked out a front window. A three-quarter ton Ford truck was sitting in the driveway. Okay, it’s going to be one of those days. She put on jeans and made sure she had a pair of leather work gloves with her.

She liked truck days. It was hell on gas mileage, but she enjoyed sitting above the rest of the traffic. Later today, a friend would ask her to move an over-sized painting, or to pick up a few boxes out of storage. On one notable occasion, she hauled a horse trailer from a local rest stop after the owner’s truck suffered a debilitating internal crisis. The gooseneck hitch in the bed had been a give-away. People asked her because they knew she had a truck. She was fine with it. She usually got a pizza for her efforts.

No one ever seemed to notice that she drove different cars.

When a co-worker had surgery on their right knee, they couldn’t drive for a month. She offered to carpool and help run errands. She cruised around wrapped in the comfort and luxury of an Infiniti for the duration of the time she played chauffeur.

On an unexpected snow day, she was driving a Fiat 500. She thought a mistake until she felt how well the little car handled the conditions. It might be a short, squat toad of a car, but the low-slung shape hugged the road admirably.

Another time, when she was feeling kicked in the teeth by life, a Jeep showed up. She’d driven a Jeep in high school. That was a fun few days of flashback.

Most days, her ride was a mid-range economy car, a Honda Civic or a Toyota Corolla. Neither cheap nor fancy. Overall, a generic car that blended in with the rest of the cars on the road.

Except for the color. Oh my, the color. No matter what the model, the color was always the same, one that hovered on the border between hot pink and neon green. Her mother said it looked like a preppy at a disco. Once she looked up the terms, she agreed. At least the color made it easy to find her car in a parking lot when she forgot what she was driving.

The color was what had attracted her to the car in the used lot. It was a Volvo at that point. The color was also why it was still for sale. People raised their eyebrows at the color. The car could change from a Mini-Cooper to a BMW and no one said a word. But the color, that they noticed.

As the make and model shifted, the amenities also shifted around. She was always looking for the gas cap release. She quite liked when heated seats showed up. Technically a luxury, but one she was quite willing to put on her necessity list.

On maintenance or repair days, an America car always arrived. Cheaper to work on domestic cars. Her wallet appreciated that touch.

She had learned to accept what appeared. Thinking that perhaps the cars were manifestation of her psyche, she tried to game the system. Before going to sleep she watched several hours of the Barrett-Jackson car auction, hoping for classic Corvette or a mid-century Cadillac. She did get a car from the previous century. She spend a week belching smoke from a rusted-out 1999 Oldsmobile Cutlass with the exhaust pipe held on by a coat hanger. She could tell a reprimand when she drove it. She never tried that again.

Was she touched by the divine? Hardly likely. The tasks she ended up performing where so small. Deliver this. Pick up that. Take those people there. No racing the injured to a hospital. No last chance dashes to deliver serum to Nome.

An alien probing human culture for avenues of invasion? Again, the stakes were so small. What could they be learning?

She thought of it as the world’s least adventurous super power. Car Girl. Drive Lady. She didn’t need an secret identity. It was sitting right there in her driveway and no one noticed. No Clark Kent glasses needed.

It wasn’t something you told people about. She had asked friends a few times, but they had given vague answers, or seemed not to understand the question. “Don’t you know what kind of car you drive?”

She had tried to see the change. She’d stayed up late on several occasions. Most of the time, nothing changed and she’d gotten no sleep for no purpose. One time, it changed when she went to the rest room. So, she got hard core and brought a yogurt container for her stakeout. She still missed the change. You can’t keep your eyes on something at all times. If nothing else, you have to blink. She blinked. The car changed. It was like a benign version of the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who.

She didn’t feel threatened. She went about her day-to-day life and the car changed to suit her needs, or the needs of others. Weird. Deeply, deeply weird. But not scary.

Also not avoidable.

Once on a work trip, her plane was delayed. By the time she checked in, the rental car agency had one car left. A eight-passenger SUV. Guess what color it was. She ended up driving her team around for the duration of the convention. Everyone said how lucky it was that the rental agency had upgraded her. Funny color though.

Did she question it? Of course she did. The first time, she thought she’d lost her mind. It still bugged her if she thought about it, particularly how no one else noticed. On the whole, she got use to it. You get use to anything after a while.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Rodney, The Instagram Star

Foto Friday

 
Look who showed up in my Instagram feed.


 
Rodney before dressage at Full Circle Horse Park [Words]. The dual leadropes are a distinctive look [In Chains]. Prior photos of Milton by Kaitie Fitz Photography [Pix Are Always Amusing To Look Back On].

The title. How does 28 likes = stardom? Well, he’s on Instagram & I think he looks stellar. So there ya go.

Kaitie Fitz Photography

 
Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Mystery Wounds and Trailering Choices

Horsekeeping

Lucky enough to have a horse.

 

 
How did Rodney get what looks to be an overreach injury on a rear fetlock?

Turns out it has to do with the way he stands on the trailer. We have a slantload (prefer straightloads, small rant [not back]). Previous Horse used to park himself in the angle of the wall and the swinging gate. He’d brace himself there and go to sleep. Milton travels in a similar position. You can see the gray stripe across his butt when he gets off the trailer.

Rodney has worked out a different solution. Possibly because he’s four inches taller than Previous Horse and two inches taller than Milton and his butt doesn’t wedge in as well. Instead, he rests his left thigh against the swinging gate and braces his right hind foot against the side wall of the trailer. This drives the bell boot up into his fetlock. Oh well, at least he’s found a way to travel that makes him happy.

First remedy, lower the shipping boot to cover the foot and ship without a right hind bell boot. We’ll see how that goes. Shipping without bell boots was what they made us do back in the day. Or at least be able to demo it, eventhough we all shipped with bells.

I tried to get a photo showing how he stands on the trailer. He informed me that he was home, he had worked hard, and it was time for him to get out of the box. He had a point.

Horses. It’s always something.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott