dancing horses

dancing horses

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Not Much Going On

God, I just realized that it's been more than a week since I have blogged. Of course the title says most of it.

But of course that's not really true. That is just one perception. My son has left for his deployment and we have Ripley living with us. She's been with us off and on her whole life so it's not a huge adjustment.

Guinness doesn't understand why she'd rather roll in the
snow then play with the ball. 

Carmen's abscess is slowly getting better. I lunged her Friday and she seemed to be better with a possible a small amount of soreness. Or my imagination. Like 0.5/5 on the lameness scale. But it was a really good ground work session. I've been spending a lot of effort on working on my own inner calm and creating a safe bubble. She started off a bit tense and wanting to run but settled down nicely.

It snowed overnight and there was nice soft fluffy snow. I tacked her up and took her to the ring.  I usually have Guinness out with me when I ride so I decided to have them both out. That turned out to be a mistake because Ripley kept running in and out of the trees and brush and I could see that Carmen was getting overwhelmed. When Ripley came running out with a 10 foot long branch she kinda lost it. Which was fair. At the same time H showed up. H is the young woman learning to ride on Irish and I had totally forgot that we had set up a time for to come. I asked her to give me a few minutes to finish lunging Carmen while she went and got Irish prepared.

I then had an idea. I took Carmen back to the barn and threw her in the stall while I put the dogs in the house. I helped H get ready and then we all went back to the ring. I figured that Carmen could hang out with us and chill while I worked with H.
Carmen: what is this? 

At first she was a bit unsure but quickly settled into just hangout out looking really relaxed. it took about 15 minutes of me doing nothing with her for that to have an effect. I then took her over to the mounting block, hopped on and then had her stand in the middle of the ring while I gave instructions to H. At first she was tense but with me not asking much of anything she began to chill again. every now and then I would ask her to do something so I could show H. We even followed behind Irish and H so I could check her balance.

H is learning to trot and I introduced the concept of posting. She was struggling because as she lost balance Irish would stop. Which is good from a safety perspective but not so much for learning. I had her come behind us and I had Carmen pick up a really slow trot. That way she could have some time to figure it out. At first Irish was a bit frustrated by the slow trot and tried to pass us. Which was funny. Carmen, however, was getting into it.

This is weird but okay
I was quite happy with her and our ride.

The next morning was a lot colder but I was able to drag the ring.

love the difference that rubber makes

I started with lunging Carmen. At first she was fine but then began to be lame on her right fore. I put her away quite disappointed. But the ground was harder and it must have felt uncomfortable. She seems fine now but I have been unable to ride between work and weather. 

I console myself with baking
Yesterday was a very hectic day at work. I came home late and Ed had started to feed the horses. I took over and when I was done I stood between their stalls just standing and breathing. Both came over and hung out with me for a bit. There's something about stopping and just quietly breathing with horses that helped to settle me and calmed the noise in my head. 

It seems that there is always something to cause work and stress and it can begin to seem that the only answer is to do more and more and more.

 I think my big lesson this year is that sometimes the answer is to do less and less. Or, you know,  not much. 



20 comments:

  1. Love your pictures. I am doing less and less, frequently against my own will. But it appears to be working so I guess I should just embrace it!

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    1. It’s hard to embrace for sure. But it does seem to work.

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  2. Those cookies look delicious!!

    Also - Annie comes to a screeching halt if you so much as take your legs off. A clinician that rode her experienced that once and I died laughing, as he has competed regularly at Spruce Meadows and took his legs off during a canter and Annie slammed to a halt.

    I hope her abscess blows sooner rather than later - what a frustrating situation!! Maizey's took just over a week to blow, but I believe it had been festering for about 2.5 weeks time, a short time after being trimmed by the farrier. Coupling a freshly trimmed hoof (that had never been trimmed at all) with soggy weather was the perfect recipe for an abscess. Ugh.

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    1. Thanks. The cookies were good. That is so funny about Annie.

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  3. Not trying to be an annoying person, but I hate to see people driving a tractor with the bucket up in the air unnecessarily. I know the ground is flat there, but it is always safest to have the bucket as low as possible, as the bucket up high makes the tractor very tippy. Of course you probably just did this to get a good photograph, so excuse me if that was the reason! I don't want you to tip over. Just think how Carmen would react to that!!!

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    1. I agree about the bucket. I raise it when I approach the fence so I don’t knock it down trying to get close with the drag. And to take this picture. 😁😁

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  4. It’s nice of you to offer Irish to others to learn on

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  5. When we first got Tex, and he was still Brett’s horse, Brett had trouble getting the hang of Tex’s trot — he was so used to Flash, really the only horse he had ever ridden. So, Tex would do the same thing as Irish: stop.

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  6. Sounds like you found the perfect way to get carmen to unwind!

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    1. It worked well. Whatever it takes to get us out of our heads.

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  7. A good lesson for all of us, difficult to achieve sometimes.

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  8. Ha what a great idea to keep Carmen engaged in the action in a different way that forced her to reconsider her tension and reactiveness!

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  9. Sounds like a pretty nice ride helping H to learn! Sorry about the on again off again soundness. That is so frustrating! I hope Carmen is feeling 100% soon.

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    1. It is frustrating but hopefully it will be done soon.

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  10. Hope Carmen feels better soon. I always say less is more when working with horses. I love that you went to the barn and just hung out with the horses to calm down. We all need that sometimes.

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  11. It's so difficult this time of year. Do you have a recipe for horse cookies that aren't lumpy?

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