The First Step Of A Fabulous Adventure

Not exactly Solo related (although I wish I could take him), but it's horse related so I'm posting it because I am TOTALLY FREAKING EXCITED!  I just sent in my deposit for the following trip this fall:

A hacienda to hacienda ride through the high country of Ecuador.  Galloping through the high volcanic peaks & valleys of the Andes & experiencing the unique culture of the Cordillera for seven glorious days.

 

This shall be me!!

My mother & I will be undertaking this adventure together (and yes, those who know me, I have already sent her links on where to purchase her helmet, LOL) in grand style.  Ok, maybe I will be undertaking it in my usual dorky style, but still....

T - ....uhhh, however many days are between here & September 4th!!!!!

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Some Things Work, Some Things Don't

For some reason, the subtitle of the blog is not showing up correctly in IE but works fine in Firefox. Blog template settings are correct, it just goes black on a whim when you view it in IE. Grrrrrrr.....any IT gurus want to offer hints? Make it work!!!

But on to things that work!

It has been 15 days since the hock injections. I have not seen a huge difference in our dressage work. There seems to be a little more evenness in the bridle and the left lead canter (our yucky one) is more balanced though. Much as I would have loved for there to have been magic, all Solo's muscle memory has to be retrained now -- a process neither fun nor magical, sigh. This will take time and patience...

BUT, Sunday was a sunny, clear day and I decided to try our first post-injection jump school. I set everything up from about 2'11" to 3'3" and warmed up.

Oh. My. God.

Suddenly, my horse can approach a jump in a slow, balanced rhythm, come right up to the base and curl up and around the jump with ease. He can land in a rhythm (unless his silly rider loses body control and falls on his neck) and sit back immediately for the next jump.

Suddenly, 3'3" is not a huge effort with hooves barely scraping over the top rail, but rather a simple spring from a nice bouncy canter.

Suddenly, my horse who used to throw himself on the forehand in front of the jump and hurl himself over, then land in a heap and scramble on the other side has been replaced by Gem Twist.

Ok, I might be exaggerating a tiny bit on that last part, but really, it was totally awesome. Solo sprang through our gymnastic line of Xrail/bounce/vertical/one stride/vertical/one stride/vertical with nary a hesitation about rocking back on those hocks. And I wanted to jump all day long, it was just so much fun to feel the comfort and ease beneath me.

So today, yes, I am THRILLED with the results and can't wait to see how things develop. Our lovely chiro is out on Thursday to make sure everything is lined up and ready to go for competition season.

Suddenly, I am feeling a wee bit excited about this competition season...

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My First, My Best Teachers

At that point, I had already been enrolled in lessons for about four years. When we moved to Kentucky in 1987, my mother had found a local barn where I could learn to ride. Once a week for the next seven years, I met with my instructor and occasionally her German trainer and learned about dressage, a smattering of jumping, and perhaps most importantly, how to adapt to the horse of the day.





Like Lucky, this shiny bay who carted me around for many a lesson. Note my awesome dressage attire; even then I flaunted the DQ's. I loved my cowboy boots, dammit, and wear them I WOULD! The school horses were just boarders who wanted a half price discount, hence the permission to use them in lessons, or my instructor's horses over the years. Which meant I could be riding a TB who had just come back from a three-day event or there might be a 4-year-old Arab just learning the ropes or I might be riding a one-sided kid's QH who liked to buck at the canter.



A blurry capture of one of my first jumps. It appears to have been ridiculously cold. Northern Kentucky sits in the Ohio River valley and it was not unusual for us to see winter days 10, even 20 degrees below zero.

I grew up in this beautiful barn and it was more like home to me than anywhere else. I rode in it as a kid and worked in it in high school. I can still hear the sweet rumble of its stall doors, the soft, heavy footfalls of horses in the arena, the sound muffled by sand and bouncing gently off of heavy wood stall fronts, the soft munching of the horses in the stalls at their hay while I rode, and the rustle of the sparrows in the hay loft. I will always carry it with me in my heart, unchanged and undimmed by time and distance. These were the sounds I lived for every week and that hasn't changed two decades later.

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Blast From The Past

Today is a nasty, snow-ridden, mucky day so in order to entertain myself in lieu of going outside and getting cold, I start instead shuffling through the stack of old photographs I brought home at Christmas.

Growing up, I never had my own horse. The closest I got was the Welsh Mountain Pony X we leased for a while in California. So I eagerly pounced on any opportunity to ride anything remotely horselike and counted it as a good day. Ah, 80's fashion was so unkind to all of us...





I am in the back, my little brother sits up front. Two childhood friends smile at the camera. I am turned away, peering around to see, fixated on the wonder of this magical, living, breathing, powerful, beautiful animal that carries us. She was a little Asian elephant at the Cincinnati Zoo -- with four legs and a tail, close enough to a horse to count as riding!

If, perchance I found myself near ACTUAL horses, I was fixated. Occasionally I would find myself reduced to paroxysms of ecstasy, like over the Christmas holidays of 1991. I was 12 and we vacationed at Tanque Verde Ranch, a luxurious place nestled in the mountains near Tuscon, AZ. You got to hang out with other kids away from your parents all day -- and you got to ride every day. Twice. Cantering on sandy trails winding through the washes and peaks of the beautiful Saguaro National Monument. It was heaven.



I wish I could remember this little bay gelding's name that I am riding (sans helmet, gasp!). He had a respiratory problem when he loped, so I could only ride him in their arena. When we went out on our rides, I had to switch to a big freckled grey.



I remember a clear desert afternoon as we rode through a wash, my little brother, myself, and our chaperone who led, we encountered a wide patch of quicksand. The leader's horse stumbled in and bounded through. Next, my little brother, 9 at the time, clung tightly as his smaller horse leapfrogged across. He dissolved into tears as the saddle horn pummeled his crotch repeatedly. In true big sister fashion, I giggled at his plight.

As I kicked the grey forward to cross the sand, he took two steps and plummeted to his belly in the muck. The gelding froze, unwilling to thrash with me on his back, but uncertain of his ability to escape. I immediately hopped off. Since I was a tiny beanpole of a kid, I stood easily on the surface of the quicksand that had swallowed my horse. I stepped forward and clucked gently and calmly to my grey friend, calling, "C'mon, buddy, you can do it." In two leaps, he popped right out and shook himself up. I scaled back on with a grin.

I believe our guide's eyes nearly popped out of her face at my calm problem solving and for the rest of the day, she told our story around the ranch. My mother heard the story third hand before we rejoined her for dinner and instantly realized, "Yep, that's my daughter." I always was good in a crisis, LOL.

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Hoof And Mouth II

Since Dr. Bob was already at the farm to do Solo's hock injections last week, I had him take a look at our ongoing foot rehab and took the opportunity to ask a few questions. Because I ALWAYS have questions. And I am trying not to drive my wonderful farrier completely insane by asking 40,000 questions. So Dr. Bob = new victim.

Dr. Bob was the one who helped us get the feet back on track so he has seen their progression over time. Overall, he gave the farrier's work a thumbs up and said things were looking good (woohoo!). I need to get some new pictures...

I had several questions about the hind feet though. I freely admit I hate (HATE HATE HATE) having Solo in shoes, but as I told Dr. Bob, they are working and he is so obviously more comfortable, I have a hard time arguing with their usefulness for the time being. He still has some sensitivity in his rear heels. I wasn't sure if that was residual from the removal of heel by ex-farrier or if it could be caused by something else, even the shoe itself. I wanted to pull the hind shoes but couldn't in good conscience do so KNOWING those heels were still sore to the poking. I also had been staring cross-eyed at his hind frogs. Barefoot, his frogs had gotten VERY wide behind and since reapplication of a shoe, had narrowed back up some. Not so much that they looked cramped or smooshed, though. So was this bad, good, indifferent??? I had to know...and fortunately, Dr. Bob's most favouritest thing is talking to people so he was happy to answer as follows:

The heel issue: residual soreness can last for six months to a year after the heels are compressed in constant contact with the ground. Don't pull the shoes until that bulb sensitivity is no longer there. (Which seems like a big duh, but ya know, sometimes you just need to hear from someone qualified that yes, you are doing what you need to be doing.)

The frog issue: yes, all the barefoot literature constantly talks about the frog being wide. But much more important is the fact that frog have depth/height to it so it can actually function as the pump it needs to be. When it gets super wide and flattened and smooshed down as you see with barefoot horses who are low heeled, it can't do anything. So, no, I do not need to worry about the width as it is nowhere near constricted at this point.

So I guess now, I get to find something new to worry about, hmmmm....

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