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December 30, 2021

A New Name For A New Life

Snuggleupagus in action
Mouse's registered Jockey Club name (Stephanopoulos) is rather unwieldy & a bit odd, so I've been pondering a fitting new title for him as he steps out into his second career.  Although, I did derive another fitting nickname from it, as I call him my Snuggleupagus.  I don't have too many name rules, other than I don't generally like giving human names to animals & I try to pick something that most people can pronounce without butchering.  

For Mouse, I also wanted to incorporate a tribute to his grandsire, the marvelous AP Indy, who passed away at the ripe age of 31 on my birthday last year (I, alas, passed 31 a looong time ago).  AP Indy has been in the pedigree of all three TB's I have owned & I will always view him as a positive on any set of papers.  

After a lengthy period of shuffling the letters A & P around & hunting for the right vibe, I finally arrived at a winner.  Mouse is now enrolled in the JC's Thoroughbred Incentive Program (TIP) as A Point Beyond.  I can only hope that we'll get to hear it announced somewhere, someday.

As a side note, I was pleasantly stunned to see how the popularity of the TIP has soared:  I signed up Encore at the very beginning of that program & his number was something like 228.  When I registered Mouse a couple weeks ago, his number is well over 34,000!  I'm so glad people have re-discovered how wonderful these horses can be!

December 21, 2021

Getting On With Getting On

Y'all.  This lil' Mousey...this is a Real Good Horse.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

I can't quite believe it's already been two months since Mouse moved into my life & set about gently re-expanding the boundaries of existence with a much-needed shot of hope.  The first order of business was to just relax & get to know each other while Mouse's body took a break.  

Despite a clean PPE, any horse in hard work, whether that is racing or jumping or prancing, is most likely carrying micro-injuries.  This is why we all need days off & why over-training & over-competing lead to disaster - you have to give tissues time to rest & recover periodically in order to stay healthy.  According to the vet, soft tissues need 6-8 weeks to heal micro-tears, while bone needs more like 8-10 weeks.  Mouse last raced in mid-September, so I wanted to be sure I gave his body space to re-solidify his base before we started to rebuild.

Many napzzzz needed
When I start out with a horse, it's really just a process of little things:  learning that association with me is positive, that I bring good things, good feelings, good noms, & am generally a trustworthy human.  I also cover the bases of Operation Farm Breaking, in which we cover all of the "life skills" that make a horse easy to handle & be around.  In Mouse's case, this went far more quickly than anticipated.

Because Echo had been such a big project in that respect, as you can read about in the link, I strapped on my metaphorical toolbelt & prepared to do it all again with Mouse.  Beginning with the most basic exercise of just hanging out with him in the pasture, scratching itchy spots for no reason, making no demands, not trying to catch him, just being a pal.  

Except Mouse already wanted to be my pal.  He politely arranged his body next to me, requesting scratches in various places, rotating to gently place his butt in my face because that is the best scratching of all (according to Mouse).  He already knew how to wear a blanket & hadn't a care in the world when I threw the noisy things over his back.  He already had excellent manners while leading, already waited politely while being fed, already stood patiently while tied or in a trailer.  He already was fine with Human Carrying Weird Objects & Tripping Over Things.

Well, ok then.  That was easy. 

In November, we started ponying out on the trails, my favourite low-impact way to show a horse the world, get their body moving a little, start conditioning, get them used to nature things, all while making Solo very happy to be out & in charge.  Mouse was...completely mellow & perfect & unfazed by all of it, even crunchy leaves that made us sound like elephants & splashy water crossings.

First water crossing

Well, ok then.  That was easy.  Which is becoming my theme for this horse & about which I am NOT complaining.

In late November, I got all toolbelt-ed up again & decided to teach him to stand at the mounting block while I got on & off.  Except he already knew how to do that & stood like a rock while I got on, messed with stirrups, leaned around, made Weird Human Noises.  Someone started this horse very thoroughly & very well & whoever you are -- THANK YOU!!!!  Oh dear cod, thank you so very, very much.  For anyone who is breeding & starting young horses, this is how you help ensure your horses find & keep good homes, because while I CAN teach all these skills, many people can't or don't want to, & a horse who is polite & easy to handle is a horse who is safe to do things with.  That just makes horse & human lives so much easier.  But I digress...  (But it was still easy!)

The cutest straight-A student
After I got over my initial thrill of finally getting to ride my own project for the first time in two years -- just kidding, I am still not over that -- we got to work on the basics.  Mouse has great balance & is regaining weight quickly, but the musculature to bolt down a racetrack is not the same as that used to trot in a rhythm in a grassy circle.  So we are learning about leg cues, about finding a rhythm at walk & trot, about ground poles, & about steering.  Unlike Echo at the same age, Mouse has a much better feel for his own body & better coordination of his leg-parts, so while I think he will be ready to do some canter work sooner, I am going to wait until he is stronger so it is easier for him.  A cadenced canter is harder than a flat gallop.

I've successfully introduced him to some basic longeing skills & he is very smart, having figured out the voice commands quickly, but he is struggling a bit with the whole "circle on his own" concept.  So recently, I introduced him to long-lining (which of course, he accepted completely uneventfully) so that I can actually control both sides of his body.  While our "circle" still resembles more of a drunken stagger (hey, we've only done it twice), I am able to communicate with him more clearly, so I will stick with the long-lines for a while.  He's just starting to figure out that he can stretch forward & down & it's exciting to see those discoveries, which will be the bridges to reshaping his body.

And perhaps most fun of all, if you missed it on our Insta-feed, I got to ride Mouse out on his first trail ride already!  A friend piloted Solo for me, so I could let the Mouser try out nature under saddle.  And it was the best kind of boring I could have asked for:  he ambled along in the sun on a loose rein, as relaxed as if he'd done it a thousand times.  Most of the time he led & in a couple of spots where he hesitated & glanced back, we let Solo pass by & Mouse happily fell in line.  I think I had that big dumb grin on my face a lot of the time.

Yes, his front feet are kind of in the ditch
So I got to skip a lot of steps, thanks to the delightful discovery that Mouse had a solid foundation already.  Right now, the hardest part, really, is not to try to do too much.  He's still a baby, at four years old.  I generally keep rides at 30 minutes or less for these young ones & I don't do high-impact work with still-growing bodies; he'll do some work maybe four days a week.  He's already learned how to work hard on the track, now it's time to go at HIS pace. 

I've pulled his shoes to let his feet strengthen & spread & he's had his first chiro adjustment to get out the starting gate kinks.  The focus will be just finding some consistent rhythms, learning some big, loopy figures, doing hill work & ground poles & trails to slowly build strength, building cues to control different body parts, & just having fun. 

But damn, it's tempting, sitting on this smart, balanced, quiet, capable, pleasant, willing horse who is always tuned in to me & who makes the most adorably earnest efforts to do anything I ask.  It would be so easy to throw him at some jumps, to push him into a frame, to jump ahead to the "fun stuff."  But I think I just may have found a little gem & with patience, I think he is going to be a really, really amazing partner.  To get there, however, & to keep him happy & sound in the long term, it requires the patience & time to be slow & methodical at the beginning.  Here is where we make the investments so that hopefully, if we can just catch some luck along the way, we get to enjoy the big payoffs in days to come.   

Just close your eyes & take a deep, patient breath

October 30, 2021

An Introduction Is In Order

Say hello to Mouse:  a new addition to Team Flying Solo!

Mouse surveys his new home
I feel very lucky to have found this little guy.  I'd been combing the listings for months, knowing I would need to find a new friend for Solo & a new project for me, & knowing that it was going to be even more difficult than usual to succeed within my financial constraints.  As anyone who has attempted to horse-shop recently knows, the horse market is just as nuts as everything else at the moment.  

My budget range means that I'm looking at the things that are thin or scruffy or very green or in need of training or outside of the box for some reason.  Or a combination of all those things.  But the turnover on sales is still happening so crazy fast these days that I got very, very discouraged after a few months of getting replies of "sorry, it sold yesterday" when sellers even bothered to reply at all (what usually happened).  

I didn't care too much about breed this time around as long as it was a gelding with a kind, sane brain (I'm not into unnecessary nonsense), who was not-grey (I'm way too twitchy to add worries of hidden melanomas to the mix), had proven he could stay sound in work, had non-disaster feet that were appropriately sized to his body, was big enough that I didn't have to buy all new tack, was not metabolic (my very grassy farm would kill them) & had parts attached in mostly the right order in mostly the right places.  It also had to be something close enough that I could go look at it, I wasn't up for the sight-unseen purchase again. 

Meeting Solo
A few weeks ago, I finally just threw the door wide open & sent a message with a basic list of what I was looking for to a seller I had been watching on the Instagrams for a while.  I had heard good things about Alice at Shenandoah Sporthorses from a friend's trainer & my Trainer Neighbour had also sold a horse to her circle for breeding & reported a positive experience.  Alice seemed to get a steady stream of OTTBs & I liked the look of quite a few, so it was worth a shot.

She responded right away (delightful change of pace) & pointed me towards a young OTTB she'd just gotten in.  I'd scrolled past his initial post because my brain incorrectly read "2017" as "17 hh" & that was bigger than I wanted.  When I went back & re-read his ad correctly, he was only 16.1 (perfect), did indeed sound promising & I loved his breeding - AP Indy (of course I must have!) combined with Not For Love (that will be its own post).  Lexington, VA isn't terribly far from me, so I went up to have a look.

Mouse immediately met the "Jimmy Wofford criterion" of horse purchasing:  I liked him as soon as I saw his wide blaze stick over the stall door.  I liked him even more when I got on him in a saddle that didn't really fit great, with a girth that we couldn't quite tighten all the way (don't try this at home, I had very carefully gauged his temperament & my own abilities), for only his second ride post-racing (his last race was mid-September) -- & his default when he didn't understand something was...stopping.

First day here - just a cute face
The PPE vet really liked him too, so I took a deep breath & handed Alice my quarters.  If I had any doubts about my read on his big, kind eye, they were reassured when we transferred him to my trailer in a random city park by a chain link fence covered with banners & he didn't care a lick.  Nor did he flinch when we got home in the dark & I led him across my yard into a strange shed.  He's a Very Good Boy.  And Alice was really fantastic, I would have no qualms about doing business with her again - so shout out & thanks to her!

The past week, I've just been letting him settle in & begin stuffing his face.  Solo has accepted him, although he is working through some initial jealousy.  As for his particulars:

He came with the name Mouse, but I rather like it.  His JC name, however, I will not be using -- "Stephanopoulos" is just a mouthful, so we'll figure out something more suitable for the future.  He didn't race as a two-yr-old, but had a steady two-year career racing once or twice a month in WV as a three- & four-yr-old.  It doesn't appear he was particularly impressive on the track, he only won one race, but he brought home a few checks now & again.  He originally raced off a farm, so he is excellent at trailers, but trainer scheduling forced him to move to the track, where he apparently did not like living full-time & lost a bunch of weight.  Hence the decision to retire him.  

Mouse has clean legs, his feet appear decent, he is extremely polite to work around, & he has NOT ONCE even offered to put his mouth on me, which I love.  During my limited test-ride, where I only did a little walk & trot because I didn't think it was very fair to ask much due to the tack situation, he felt balanced & willing, with a hint of some power & lift in his future.  So far, he's remained extremely level-headed, taking novel objects in stride & accepting human direction with equanimity.  

First pony around neighbourhood today
He was initially a little (understandably) cautiously watchful while he decided what type of human I might be.  But he has quickly warmed up as I readily dispense meals, massages, & itch-scratching, & he already walks over & follows me around in the pasture.

So we begin again.  I'm still trying to untangle the mess in my head, trying to remember how to look forward to positive things again.  It's going to be a slow process to unlearn the expectation of disaster at every turn, just like the slow process to rebuild & retrain Mouse to a new career.  We'll both just take it one step at a time & help each other (hopefully) figure out a better, happier rhythm to our days.    

October 10, 2021

We Hit A Dead End

 A few weeks ago, with a heavy heart, I took Echo to his new home.  

His foot just wasn't getting better.  When he first started having problems, I said I'd give him a year, trying to give myself some boundaries since I don't have unlimited resources.  I gave him a year & then I gave him more time after that.  The vet & farrier & I poked & prodded & tweaked & tried, but there didn't seem to be any real progress.  I found myself, emotionally & financially exhausted, at a crossroads.

I'll miss this face
There wasn't much more we could see down in that foot without doing an MRI, which was well beyond what I was financially capable of & even if I did it anyway, there were no guarantees it would even offer any information we could do anything about.  Echo wasn't comfortable doing work, but he didn't have any problems enjoying himself in the pasture.  He'd take a wonky step or two on a hard spot, but otherwise was perfectly happy to play with his friend, canter in for meals, & be his bright-eyed, goofy self.    

So after much agonizing over the spring & summer & finally admitting that denial wasn't going to magically become productive, I decided to try to find him a new place where he could just be himself & do what he was best at:  making friends & looking decorative.  He'd turned out to be a really good companion horse:  he submitted to authority, he didn't have an aggressive bone in his body, he loved to play so would be good to keep a senior horse active, & he loved human attention & was pretty easy to handle on the ground.  

I put my nose to the ground, in search of the right person, while making sure I was clear on what he needed & what his limitations were.  If I was unsuccessful, I'd have to re-examine my options, but it was worth a shot.  It took time, but we finally met a wonderful person who is exactly right for the Baby Monster.  He is living his best life with another TB-lover who adores his ridiculous personality & her older mare, who was going to lose her aged companion, is enamored with this flashy new boy-toy.

I feel so grateful & fortunate to have found a place where I know he will be safe & loved.  But this gratitude coexists with the inevitable sadness & my own frustration that my time with Echo ended this way.  Apparently, sometimes these foot injuries just don't resolve cleanly no matter what you do & it's difficult to predict when that will be the case.  I'm sure his physiology didn't necessarily do him a favor & I learned that I won't buy a small-footed horse again -- sometimes they do fine, but not this time.  It's just a bit gutting after working so hard.

It is possible that eventually, Echo's body will find a new equilibrium & heal or compensate successfully.  I hope that's the case for him, but even if it isn't, his new mom will still take great care of him.  If he does come riding sound, she got the horse bargain of a lifetime.  I had intended to sell him anyway once I'd realized he wasn't quite the right fit for me.  I certainly learned that one should immediately sell a horse upon discovering this & not wait for them to hurt themselves & lose all value.  Hindsight...

I do get some consolation in knowing that I improved Echo substantially.  I taught him to be a good farm horse, so you can throw blankets on him, handle him easily, do weird human things around him.  He definitely has a lot more skills under saddle.  His body condition finally blossomed - he grew to be a lovely horse, filling out his body, with a shiny, dapple-y coat, & I was finally able to reduce his feed a bit from "infinite."  I worked out the huge, deep knots in his hips & got his SI back where it belonged.  His back feet looked pretty darn good & even his mismatched fronts were vastly better than where they started.  All that took a very long time, but it's not nothing. 

Looking damn good this past June

Now it's time to try & look forward.  It's hard to do in my demographic of "fiscally challenged," but I'm keeping my ears open for a cheap, kind (sound, with proper feet!) gelding who is probably green but is looking for a good life.  Solo has the temporary company of our borrowed neighbour gelding, Gabe, but I  know he will be happy when he can be the boss again.  I'm trying not to get too frustrated with the crazy horse market right now, telling my stir-crazy brain to try & be patient while I find the project it desperately needs.  

Life would be easier if I could just care about something like knitting.  Doesn't make nearly as interesting stories though...    

February 20, 2021

A Different Perspective On Mouthy Horses

Since everything here is soup -- well, after 22F last night, it is chunky soup -- thanks to what I will generously call "excessive precipitation," I have taken to poking around for mental entertainment in places I don't usually look.  In the context of this blog, that means YouTube videos about horse handling.  In general, I don't personally find video to be an effective way for me to absorb information.  I prefer to either read or talk to a human in person; I also often find videos tedious, as I get fidgety waiting for people to get to the point.
 
Yes, for those of you who know me, I recognize the irony, in that I myself am incapable of getting directly to a point, however, I have not yet discovered a way for me to escape from myself, so we'll just accept that dissonance & move on, shall we?
Farm soup
I have made a pleasant discovery though, an exception to the norm; namely, Warwick Schiller's channel.  I know this is old news to many of you, but I like to stay true to my style of being either wayyyyy ahead of the curve or astonishingly far behind it.  Someone has to keep that bell graph interesting.  For the uninitiated, Schiller & his wife are both high-level reiners & have also created an enormous amount of educational material about handling & training horses. 
 
I'm going to try to avoid too much background discussion for the sake of relative brevity, I will just say that I do approach any trainer (or really, human) with a healthy of dose of skepticism while I explore whether they pass the sniff test:  are they ethical?  Do they do their research? Are they compassionate? Are they willing to admit & learn from mistakes?  Are they just another marketer who wants my imaginary money?  
 
In that light, things I am liking about Schiller:
  • He doesn't try to sell me any special crap in his videos.  He talks about his preferences, but treats a viewer like a responsible adult who can do whatever they want with that information.  THANK YOU!
  • His default approach to both horses & humans appears to be kindness, listening, & empathy.
  • He openly discusses how his approaches have changed over time as he has learned & made mistakes.  I have a huge amount of respect for people who are intellectually honest enough & brave enough to own that they are imperfect humans & are learning along the way like the rest of us.  I think this is something that is a win in just about any situation in life.
  • He talks about the importance of looking within himself & working on his own issues as an integral part of improving his interactions with other creatures.
We all have issues...
These points show me a person who puts a lot of thought into what they do & who also remains open to learning new things, which are both important to me.  And someone who embraces listening & empathy is exactly the type of person I want to hear more from.
 
Hot Topic
 
One topic in particular caught my eye like a flashing red light in the dark:  dealing with the mouthy horse.  As I have mentioned on here, Echo takes this role to a level I have never before encountered.  He seems to process the entire world with his mouth, nosing, licking, chewing, eating, sucking, & snuffling his way through everything he encounters.  I have successfully explained to him what the boundaries are (no teeth on the human) but he remains incredibly "mouth-curious."
 
I am intrigued by Schiller's unique approach.  You can watch a video here (there are multiples on this topic).  In essence, he states that this is generally just a horse who wants to engage with you, which I agree with.  His response is what is completely new to me.  He recommends that instead of discouraging, to go ahead & rub & handle the horse's muzzle whenever it reaches out to you.  The videos explain what the parameters for safety are (keep an eye on space, watch your fingers, etc).  This makes it a positive conversation:
 
Horse: "Hi, person, who are you? I am me. Would you like to be friends?"
Human: "Hi, horse.  I am also me.  I see you & reciprocate your recognition.  I am friendly & a source of pleasant things."
Horse: "Yay! This makes me feel safe & relaxed."
Human: "Everybody wins."
 
Do you see how that conversation is different than if we respond to the horse's initial greeting by rebuffing their gesture, saying, "I am not interested in recognizing you."  That's like when you go to shake someone's hand (in the Before Times) but they leave you hanging & then you awkwardly try to cover it up & spend the rest of the day worrying about it (No? Just me?).  Not a great feeling for anyone.
 
How Echo meets the world...
What should happen with the muzzle rubbing is that, as the horse recognizes that you are listening to him & you offer a positive experience, he expresses signs of relaxation:  licking lips, chewing motions, yawns, & sighs.  As we know, these are metaphorical clinks of coins being deposited in your "relationship equity" bank, which is the place where you store the trust & connection you need to carry your partnership through challenges in the future.  
 
Trying It Out
 
So I am going to experiment with this with Echo.  According to Schiller, he has seen dramatic cessations of mouthy behaviour when he does this every day.  Like anything else, it takes time, but it's easy to do & it doesn't cost me anything.  It makes intellectual sense to me:  I don't want to punish a horse just because he experiences the world differently than I do & has a different way of interacting with it.  I get very angry when humans do that to other humans, why would I do that to my horse?
 
And it's also obvious to me that for Echo, he is looking for something that remains unsatisfied.  I have handled him "normally" for several years now, so apparently that alone has not answered his need.  I tried out the new approach this morning, after he finished his breakfast, during which he'd gotten a little high-headed & snorty, suspicious of a flake of hay blowing in the wind.  He was, naturally, thrilled that I finally agreed to fully respond to the nose touching.  And lo & behold, within a few minutes, he started licking & chewing.  In a few more minutes, we got some big yawns & contented sighs.  After about five minutes, he wandered off with his head down, completely relaxed, to eat his hay.  Fascinating. 
 
It's not that his mouthiness is causing any unsafe situations, nor am I trying to change who he is.  I don't know for certain if it comes from tension or not.  But if I entertain the hypothetical, like a good scientist must - what if he IS expressing some latent anxiety or other form of mental unrest by compulsively grabbing every lead rope, rein, fence wire, tree, or other object he can nab at every possible opportunity?  Why WOULDN'T I take the chance to possibly release that tension & allow him to discover a little more mental peace?  
Cuddles should never have a limit
If it doesn't work, I have lost nothing -- it won't make him worse, I will still be clear with him about the boundaries, & time spent interacting with your horse is never a bad thing.  Echo lives in my yard & I have nowhere else to go, so rubbing my horse's nose for a few minutes every day is not going to unduly disrupt any schedules.  I don't have to take off my nice warm gloves.  I even get a little giggle, because I have the mental image of a horse laying on a therapy couch, being asked, "Awww, did your mommy not rub your nose enough when you were a foal?"

We shall see... 
Yes, that mental image