Crosstraining

I aim to swim three days a week as my out-of-saddle exercise [Spring Fitness]. However, a forecast of 71o for this evening is making me reluctant to dip my toes – much less the rest of me – into the outdoor pool. I know it will not be heated sufficiently. Nothing short of the whirlpool sauna ever is.

Plus, I should be doing more. One decent use of this enforced no-riding period would be to get in shape. Then I could get on and be ready to go. It would be ridiculous to start riding and then have to get fit at the same time.

What to do?

Swimming, exercise machines, other gym work – Driving to a workout seems a waste of resources. Then again, so is a horse show, which I would go to in a heartbeat.

Running – Popular with riders. Stop me if I’ve told you this one. At Rolex one year, I wanted to get a soundbite from David O’Connor. He said he was in a hurry but he could talk if I wanted to run back to the barn with him. He said run. I heard jog. He took off at a pace that left me standing still, notebook pages waving in the breeze. So, is running particularly suited to riding or just an adaptable exercise that one can do anywhere, anytime, with a low bar to entry?

Biking – Go with hubby on the weekends. Mostly leg power, unless one is willing to push one’s self into aerobic exercise. I’ll let you imagine how often that happens.

Karate – Plays to my strengths: tightness, control, legwork. I’ve even got the kiai down. I learned all about the value of sound helping strength when I worked at a bookstore and had to lift heavy box of books. OTOH, shouldn’t I be working on my weak areas?

Aikido – A more flowing marital art. All that dropping and rolling would be good fall protection. However, all that d&r is based on the ability to do a backwards somersault. I don’t roll. I am too stiff and tight through the back. Instead of curving into a ball and rolling over my shoulder onto my feet, I slam flat on my back and lie there like a distressed turtle.

Yoga – Way too motionless. Part of a firefighter’s turn-out gear is a PASS device (Personal Alert Safety System), a little black box attached to the airpack straps that goes off if the individual does not move for 30 seconds. If the person continues not to move the noise increases up the decibel scale to earshattering. Useful when one is looking for a downed FF. Less useful when one is standing around on air waiting to go into a training exercise. It is common to see folks having to shake their device every so often to shut it up. In that situation, my PASS never goes off. Never. I cannot be still for 30 seconds. Yoga is out.

Tai Chi – Yoga in motion. Again why drive to a class when I have Claire Hooten’s marvelous DVD, complete with reverse view? Two things I lack, a big enough living room & motivation. Add (very small) freeweights and stretching to the list of things I could do at home if only I was motivated.

Pilates – is, or was, the hot new thing for riders. Took one class. More accurately, started one class. All the exercises seem to me to be a variation on the sit-up. If you can’t do a sit-up, the rest of the exercises are moot.

Yes, I can’t even do one sit up. I am that out of shape. But more than that, I have baffled sports advisors and physical therapists with my inability to achieve even a baby, beginner sit-tup. Without a tiny start, I have no base from which to improve. I suspect it has to with my back, as above.

How do you crosstrain? What do you recommend?
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

Cat & mouse games in the 21st century.

Perseverating

And back to Mathilda. I feel the need to defend us. We weren’t ignoring her feet. We knew they were a problem. [Borrowing Trouble & More Mathilda]

In the past, Mathilda got shod for the summer. We finally learned to shoe her at the late May blacksmith appointment. Otherwise, she would get sore overnight when she suddenly decided it was summertime, necessitating an out-of-schedule blacksmith visit. In late May this year, she was still on the critical list. We were thinking day to day, or perhaps week to week, waiting for something to happen. Shoeing was too much forward planning. Plus she was having so much trouble with her feet, adding more weight to them did not seem wise. Now that she has stopped giving us fits on a daily basis, shoes are still out. It takes diligent file management to get her trimmed in the short amount of time she is willing to hold up each foot.

Sadly, we had even been congratulating ourselves on having gotten through to September with a barefoot mare. Yes, she was a little off on the rocky sections of the pasture but we tried to keep her off of those. We piled extra shavings in her pen. We put compost on the path to the water trough to make it softer underfoot. We painted her feet with Venice turpentine. It all helped a bit. Apparently not enough. Silly minions.

There is a lesson under all of this self-justification. For 20 years, we got used to thinking of Mathilda as a smart, tough old cow. A blacksmith in another state refuse to put shoes on her because her feet were so nice. In bad weather, she was the one to lead the herd to the safest place. She was the one on the easy-keeper diet. If any horse was a throw-back to the toughness of wild horses, it was she.

Now that she is not 100%, insults that she previously laughed off become serious. A simple cold can become pneumonia to someone who is already sick. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that a second mechanical issue, even a slight one, could be a problem. Damn hindsight.

So, lesson learned. I hope.

What was your most useful hindsight lesson?
(A productive lesson with a moderately happy ending, please. I don’t want to drown in a pool of borrowed regret. Got enough of my own.)
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

That Other Horse

I’ve been yapping on about Mathilda a good bit lately. How has the other party been faring? When last we saw Rodney, he had just acquired two front shoes to recover from an abscess.

He recovered immediately. He felt terrific. He immediately felt really, really terrific. As in what-hath-I-wrought terrific. Seriously, he bounced around the field with such enthusiasm and perkiness that I wondered how I would ever cope under saddle, should such a day arrive. No particular evilness, just ALERT! As in the old joke, Be alert. The world need more lerts. I’m happy to say he has calmed down to a tolerable level of Up Ears, Hello World!

Generally.

Just now incoming weather had him a little jumpy. He spooked and ran off when I went to catch him for his heating session. I was not amused. Sometimes, I am Zen itself. I am calm. I stop what I’m doing, move slowly, even backing off to give him space. Other times, I continue at my normal speed and tell him to deal with it. It depends on the legitimacy of his spook, the time since his last spook, and how ornery I’m feeling on the subject. Once the rain came thru, he longer had his knickers in a twist.

Whatever happens, no one will ever accuse Rodney of being boring.

His back continues to loosen up. The adhesion has shrunk to an area about the size of a fingertip. I want to be happy about this but it looks SO close to being all gone. However, when you progress in microns, a even tiny patch can take a frustratingly long time. Plus the softer area creates even more skin wrinkles when it butts up against the fixed part. How will that feel under a saddle?

Finally, I saw him cantering over the weekend. He was on an unknown, important horse mission that involved zipping from the water trough back to the barn. Gorgeous horse. Say what you will about the power and presence of a warmblood. For floating across the ground, there is nothing like a Thoroughbred.

You know how hard-working amateurs hate it when unemployed doctor’s wives spend their husband’s hard-earned money to buy over-qualified horses so that they can steal ribbons at the lower levels? I can’t wait.

[Illustration by Sara Light-Waller, Flying Pony Studios]
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

When you are a kitten, the world is your toy.

My Summer

My LEGO club issues a challenge for each meeting, a word or phrase for which we each build a small vignette. The challenge for September was What I Did Over My Summer Vacation.

Betcha never thought I could get this much mileage out of LEGO bricks & horses.

(Procedural note: While I’m not a stellar photographer, I am better than this. I promise, the pictures look sharper before I load them. I suspect WordPress has a compression algorithm to save space. A) That’s my story & I’m sticking to it. B) Can’t complain when I’m getting the hosting for free.)

More Mathilda

Hubby came up with a BRILLIANT theory. perhaps Mathilda’s two acute problems are linked. If she is slightly (I hope) sore on the front that might get magnified by her wonky hind-end. If you are walking crooked to start with, trying to tip-toe at the same time is not going to be pretty. Fix one, fix the other.

Last time I looked into removable shoes, Easy Boots were the only option. Now horses have a whole closetful of options, of various materials and technical abilities. Mathilda needed cushioning but the shoe didn’t have to stay on for nor stand up to exercise. Our local tack store, Carousel Tack Shoppe, recommended the Hoof Shoe. Blinking at the price, we bought two.

Her new booties have a thick pad at the base and come up to her fetlock. Hi-tops for horses. The above ground section is a combination of webbing for ventilation, stretchy material for fit, and hook-loop closure for security. We could see her relax as soon as she put her foot down and felt the cushion underfoot. She immediately moved better. Still appalling, but at least baseline appalling. She also looks a bit more foursquare and even a little plumper, as if she is standing more firmly and is more relaxed. Her minions finally came up with the right answer. Silly minions.

If she is more willing to move about, she may be less stiff in the morning as well. We shall see. So far so good. All my worries of yesterday are still valid. Just not today.

Your removable shoe experiences?

(BTW, Google “hoof shoe”, I dare you.)
(BTW, BTW, I keep typing ‘show’ instead of ‘shoe’ – just did it there as well. Partly Freudian, partly from typing inches upon inches of show coverage.)
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

“Oh mighty warrior of great fighting stock … “

Borrowing Trouble

Blogging at the 11th hour after a crappy day. Everyone is fine, I’m just fretting about the future.

Mathilda took a handful of very off steps on her bad hind leg at breakfast. When it was time for her morning walk, the day had warmed up & she had loosened up. She is also a bit footsore in the front from being barefoot all summer. She usually gets shod in late May for stomping season. Causing me to wonder:

a) If a cool, pleasant evening causes her to stiffen up to this extent, how will we keep her warm in seriously cold weather, or at least as seriously cold as we get? She was already wearing her bodyweight in blankets last winter. The stall would block the wind and therefore be warmer, but we have the issue of her getting stuck again [Debriefing].

b) I had assumed that the end would be either a catastrophic mechanical failure, i.e. she goes down and lacks the strength to get up, or systemic, i.e. hanging head, poor attitude, and a general feeling of No mas, boss. At that point our duty is clear, if terrible. What do we do if the feet/back end give out but the front end is still perky and absorbing carrots?

Yes, I should not look for trouble. There will be plenty without my inventing more. OTOH, perhaps it is good to think about such things dispassionately ahead of time. Then we are not randomly making critical decisions mid-crisis. Now, if I could only work on the dispassionately part.

From this we can derive two conclusions:

1) Old sucks.

2) I should rename this blog Mathilda’s Meanderings.