Jumping Clinic With...Me

And it was finally time: here I had bought this horse to supposedly be a hunter, perhaps it would be fitting if I actually tried to jump him?  Ya think?  This is our first jump together -- (and to get the feel of what it was like to be there, you must envision me whooping, "He DOES jump, WOOHOO!!!"  I have no idea what I would have done had he tripped & fallen on his face or spun & run away.)



*AHEM* (I prepare my best crotchedy George Morris voice)

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This rider is pinching with her knee, raising her seat too far out of the saddle. She needs to shorten her stirrups several holes to achieve the perfect 110 degree angle & then drop her heel in the stirrup so she is not flung over her horse's head should he chip or stop. She should go back to jumping small crossrails...oh wait. Never mind, hope is probably lost. I also cannot tell if she has properly washed the soles of her boots -- I suspect they are dusty, at which point you might as well write "F@ck you, judge!" on the back of her shirt. Her back is flat & her eyes are up. She appears to be attempting some version of a long crest release to give her horse plenty of rein. 

Her big horse is...uh, shiny. His knees are even but he is so loose below he might as well be a marionette. With an unpulled, unbraided mane, unpolished hooves & unwiped butt, I'm not sure how he even dares appear in public?! Add to that this rider's mismatched tack, travesty of a green saddle pad, gloves the colour of the devil-who-hath-no-hairnets, I'd really rather gouge my eyes out then look at this picture.

Sorry, George, a full time job & poverty's a bitch.

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New Digs

Facilities! You name it -- we had it! Full jump course, stadium arena, TWO covered arenas, 15 miles of trails on 900 acres, even a little cross country course. Oh yes, I was in full honeymoon period. There could be no wrong and fairies and butterflies danced down the barn aisles. Solo even had the largest stall ever built by mankind!


And that's only about 2/3 of it!

Slowly slowly slowly we were beginning to make some progress. At that point in time, I was shooting for local hunter schooling shows. My last "real" riding had been IHSA hunter equitation in college, so that was where I felt most comfortable. A nice canter around the ring with some jumps added for fun: that didn't seem too bad. Solo's movement was improving; I stumbled upon a PHENOMENAL chiropractor at N's place and miracle upon miracles, she agreed to continue working with us even after we moved away. He had consistent soreness in his SI, although within the first few adjustments, the hock-buckling pain left him. He still required adjustments every few months though to keep him comfortable in work. The first picture below is his trot in early summer of '06. The second, four months later in October. Yeah, she was good and that was just the beginning. (Also note exciting reversal of neck muscle mass.)

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Moving On

I LOVED our farm.  We were the only boarders there aside from one retirement boardee.  N, the owner, took impeccable & customized care of Solo for me, adjusting his food as needed, giving him daily showers in hot weather, picking inappropriate weeds out of his paddock, & scratching his itchy spots.   It was a very satisfied horse who would canter up to the gate to meet me every day.

And I was in heaven. I couldn't brush/clean up/polish tack/comb mane/buy accessories fast enough to work out 25 years of pent-up horse possession.

I had new goals: (1) Teach Solo to longe without near-death experiences. I'm not addicted to longeing but I find a very useful tool both for strength & balance building & exercise on days that I am too tired or too hot to ride. (2) Rehab his feet. They were a flakey, cracky, nasty mess. We were loading him up on Super Bio-Zin & leaving him barefoot & N's farrier was a gifted worker of magic. (3) Create muscle tone. See previous description of hill work.


The two great loves of my life.

But nothing lasts forever. My job changed & I had to move three hours away. Much as it broke my heart to leave N's place behind, I was working for an agency I had spent years trying to get into & the new job was exactly what I wanted to do.

And it was the perfect opportunity to buy a truck & trailer! My current vehicle (2-door Explorer) was obviously not suitable for pulling a horse, so the search began.

Things I know now that I wish I had known then:

• You can get a clean title for ANYTHING in Georgia, no matter what has happened to it.
• When a truck is lifted, the wiring often gets majorly screwed up.
• People often lift trucks to hide front-end problems.
• You should always check to make sure the cloth pattern on all the seats matches, indicating original seats.
• Always check trailer hitch wiring BEFORE purchase.
• The overflow container for coolant should ALWAYS have some coolant in it.
• CARFAX is a joke. There's a LOT that doesn't show up on there.

Oh well.  It pulled great!  And I found an '88 WW 2-horse trailer that had just been reconditioned for a steal.  It had a full dressing room & was just what I needed.  It also happened to be 6'6" tall, but technically, Solo fit.  As long as he didn't want to raise his head very high.  I added some mats, did some patching on the inside lining with some plywood, fixed the window leaks with duct tape for that final redneck flourish...

And we were mobile!

And here is where I was going to post a picture of our first rig -- 98 Expedition in shockingly boring white with bright red little trailer behind.  But dammit if I can't find the picture, I swore I kept one. *sigh*  Well, if I can't find that, then you get the next best thing: Solo in his cute little outfit for riding IN said trailer:

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Circles of Doom

I had been told by the seller that Solo "didn't longe" because she had let another girl work with him and she had spun him in circles and hit him with the longe whip. How you could hit this horse, I had no idea.


(Sexy halter courtesy of Sunset Halters, you can make any colour you want!)

Ok, it's just a fear issue, I'll just take it slow then. This was my oh-so-confident assessment.

I merrily snapped the longe line onto our (awesome) new rope halter to keep things simple. We started out in a rough semblance of a circle-ish-like shape at a walk to the left. It was ugly, but it seemed ok.

"How about a little trot?" I asked.

"Mmmm, ok, I guess maybe, but I'm keeping my eye on you, lady," he replied.

"Ok, how about we switch directions and track right?"

"Unggghhh, I'm not so sure about this," he warned me with a look.

"It's ok, it's just going in a circle-ish-like oblong shape!" I assured him.

I asked him to trot. My calm, quiet, placid horse suddenly reared up and back at the same time, ripped the longe line out of my hands and ran off to the other side of the paddock, where he stopped, trembling, in the corner.

Oh shit. I had just discovered that we had our work cut out for us.

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With Great Power Comes Great Responsiblity

I hung on the fence for hours, my chin on the top board, just watching My Horse. He grazed, he rolled, he "talked" to his pasture neighbours (he was in his own paddock). And every second was mine.

And then it occurred to me: OMG, HE IS MINE! Like an anvil from the sky, the weight of that responsibility slammed into me so hard it left me reeling. I found myself slightly short of breath at the prospect of being completely in charge of this huge and complex life standing in front of me. Dear god, what had I gotten myself into?! I thought 20 years of riding, working, being around horses would pretty much prepare me but all of a sudden I felt like I knew nothing. What if he got sick? How would I know? I didn't even know what a horse's baseline vitals were supposed to be. Sure I could ride, but I had never learned MANAGEMENT. What was his weight supposed to be? What kind of wormer did I need? How often did he need shots? I was going to kill him, I just knew it....

After nearly giving myself an aneurysm out of sheer panic, I had to swallow it all -- there was no turning back now! At least I had that tool without which all horse people would be lost: Google. There I could get so much information that I was in danger of being paralyzed into inaction, but dammit, I WOULD educate myself!

So I got to work. And I rode.





And I rode and I rode and I rode. And then I rode some more. With glee. There was no arena, but it didn't matter at this point. We needed conditioning. So we trotted up hills and walked down them. We walked up hills and trotted down them. We cantered across hills and circled up them.



It wasn't pretty, we were both out of shape and I couldn't afford lessons. I had purchased him with the lofty goal of "some messing around and maybe some 2'6" hunters." Of course, first we had to be able to trot for more than five minutes without being out of breath... But it was all about saddle time and that, at least, I knew how to do!

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