How is the horse?
Apr. 10th, 2020 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickThe horse is fine. My work is non-life-sustaining or whatever, but what this does do is give me time off work to play horse nearly every day. Since my horse is boarded at my friend's house and since she stays inside while I'm there, I have the ability to play horse in this time of plague or whatever. And so I am playing horse.
The stuff we had planned to do for this year has been shut down. So, no hunter paces, no DLB clinic for me to bitch about, no saddle fitter that we desperately need. Regular lessons on Lesson Pony Mystic have also ceased to be.
It's just me doing my horse thing by myself in the hayfield across the road. This does lead to a "legend in my own mind" state of affairs, but it's all I can do right now.
Much of our work is currently being done in a bareback pad because the saddle fitter appointment -- covid-19. I did stand Birb up and take pix of him for the saddle fitter lady to look at via an e-consult. She suggested trying a larger size tree (it's a Thorowgood, so adjustable) and redoing the pix to see how that looks. Larger tree may increase front drop too much but I have a shimmable pad, so that's an option if need be. Here are the pix I sent her.
The new tree is supposed to get here in the mail today. I remain optimistic. It's UPS and not USPS so may actually have delivery today.
What work has there been? Well, since I'm now fifty years old (I have no idea how that happened) and I am a candyass wimp, mostly it's been walk and trot. We walk. We trot. We transition. We leg yield. We shoulder-in. We haunches-in. I'm trying to build some muscle in the horse so that he can sustain a better, more self-carriage-y canter... but I'm not all about the cantering in a bareback pad because old and also because hospitals are not places I want to be right now. We're doing SOME canter work (with a well-warmed-up horse, on gentle uphill slopes) but not as much as we might be doing if I had a saddle that fit my horse. (I realize that this is so much of a first world problem that it's laughable, but still.)
I've set up a line of cones (because we're in a hayfield and not a ring) to provide a sight line so that we can stay more straight and prevent drifting in our assorted *-in efforts. Shoulder-in and haunches-in when I do them tend to drift a little diagonally without a visual cue for straightness and that isn't what I want. If you have a ring and run your shoulder-ins up the long side, good for you. I do not have that sort of workspace so, cones.
All the lateral work we are doing seems to be having at least some effect on the horse. He's buffing his skills and maybe getting buffer in the process. Leastaways, his saddle doesn't fit, for realsies. (Update, 5-20-2020: He moved up a tree size. Saddle not fitting issue was not just in my mind.)
A note. This sort of lateral foolishness is physically demanding for horses learning it. Your n00b horse is going to tire VERY quickly and it will seem like not-really-very-much effort from him before he's wiped. You might be all like "WTF, horse, why you so tired?" As I have said previously, this shit is like chinups for your horse.
How many chinups can you do? (none)
How long would it take you to get good at chinups? (quite a while)
What level of fitness is required to bang out twenty chinups in one go? (more than I have)
And, MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, if your arms are too tired, is beating on you going to magically make more chinups happen? (no, but it might make me rather noncompliant and hostile)
So, you're asking your horse to do chinups. Don't be an ass about this. Just don't. Regular work is OK. Gently progressive practice is OK. Grinding the horse to pieces... nope. Beating on him when he's tired... nope. Make sure he gets days off. Give him days of work where there is no lateral stuff going on. Your job is to keep him in a place where he's "This is hard, but I can do it." and not "This is impossible, rider is never satisfied, I hate my life and want to die."
But which_chick, I cannot tell if my horse is tiring or not! It is so hard!
Firstly, you are an idiot.
Secondly, there are tiredness indicators that your horse cannot fake. Let us look at these.
1. Nose flares and blows red. You can see the pink parts inside the nose when horse is breathing. This is not a thing horses fake, it's a response to exertion.
2. Horse is warm, like all over. Muscles get quite warm, very quickly. Horse may be sweating. This is also not something horses fake. Warmer muscles are because of exertion, not "faking".
3. From side, you can see a diagonal line on the bottom half of the belly. This is the "abs working pretty hard" line. In the following picture, it's visible as a shaded line that runs from the rider's heel up and backward towards where the hind leg meets the body.
This is not a thing your horse can fake. If you can see the diagonal line of "abs working pretty hard" then your horse is probably getting tired. It's not immediately visible, but shows up when you've done a reasonable amount of work.
If you have all three indicators of "work being done", probably give your horse a loose-rein walk break... or do some stretchy jog. Give him a minute to get his breath back. Regroup and try again. If he's not got it (and particularly if the quality of his efforts degrades so as to be almost laughably bad) he's done. Cool him off and put him away. Tomorrow is another day.
The stuff we had planned to do for this year has been shut down. So, no hunter paces, no DLB clinic for me to bitch about, no saddle fitter that we desperately need. Regular lessons on Lesson Pony Mystic have also ceased to be.
It's just me doing my horse thing by myself in the hayfield across the road. This does lead to a "legend in my own mind" state of affairs, but it's all I can do right now.
Much of our work is currently being done in a bareback pad because the saddle fitter appointment -- covid-19. I did stand Birb up and take pix of him for the saddle fitter lady to look at via an e-consult. She suggested trying a larger size tree (it's a Thorowgood, so adjustable) and redoing the pix to see how that looks. Larger tree may increase front drop too much but I have a shimmable pad, so that's an option if need be. Here are the pix I sent her.
The new tree is supposed to get here in the mail today. I remain optimistic. It's UPS and not USPS so may actually have delivery today.
What work has there been? Well, since I'm now fifty years old (I have no idea how that happened) and I am a candyass wimp, mostly it's been walk and trot. We walk. We trot. We transition. We leg yield. We shoulder-in. We haunches-in. I'm trying to build some muscle in the horse so that he can sustain a better, more self-carriage-y canter... but I'm not all about the cantering in a bareback pad because old and also because hospitals are not places I want to be right now. We're doing SOME canter work (with a well-warmed-up horse, on gentle uphill slopes) but not as much as we might be doing if I had a saddle that fit my horse. (I realize that this is so much of a first world problem that it's laughable, but still.)
I've set up a line of cones (because we're in a hayfield and not a ring) to provide a sight line so that we can stay more straight and prevent drifting in our assorted *-in efforts. Shoulder-in and haunches-in when I do them tend to drift a little diagonally without a visual cue for straightness and that isn't what I want. If you have a ring and run your shoulder-ins up the long side, good for you. I do not have that sort of workspace so, cones.
All the lateral work we are doing seems to be having at least some effect on the horse. He's buffing his skills and maybe getting buffer in the process. Leastaways, his saddle doesn't fit, for realsies. (Update, 5-20-2020: He moved up a tree size. Saddle not fitting issue was not just in my mind.)
A note. This sort of lateral foolishness is physically demanding for horses learning it. Your n00b horse is going to tire VERY quickly and it will seem like not-really-very-much effort from him before he's wiped. You might be all like "WTF, horse, why you so tired?" As I have said previously, this shit is like chinups for your horse.
How many chinups can you do? (none)
How long would it take you to get good at chinups? (quite a while)
What level of fitness is required to bang out twenty chinups in one go? (more than I have)
And, MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, if your arms are too tired, is beating on you going to magically make more chinups happen? (no, but it might make me rather noncompliant and hostile)
So, you're asking your horse to do chinups. Don't be an ass about this. Just don't. Regular work is OK. Gently progressive practice is OK. Grinding the horse to pieces... nope. Beating on him when he's tired... nope. Make sure he gets days off. Give him days of work where there is no lateral stuff going on. Your job is to keep him in a place where he's "This is hard, but I can do it." and not "This is impossible, rider is never satisfied, I hate my life and want to die."
But which_chick, I cannot tell if my horse is tiring or not! It is so hard!
Firstly, you are an idiot.
Secondly, there are tiredness indicators that your horse cannot fake. Let us look at these.
1. Nose flares and blows red. You can see the pink parts inside the nose when horse is breathing. This is not a thing horses fake, it's a response to exertion.
2. Horse is warm, like all over. Muscles get quite warm, very quickly. Horse may be sweating. This is also not something horses fake. Warmer muscles are because of exertion, not "faking".
3. From side, you can see a diagonal line on the bottom half of the belly. This is the "abs working pretty hard" line. In the following picture, it's visible as a shaded line that runs from the rider's heel up and backward towards where the hind leg meets the body.
This is not a thing your horse can fake. If you can see the diagonal line of "abs working pretty hard" then your horse is probably getting tired. It's not immediately visible, but shows up when you've done a reasonable amount of work.
If you have all three indicators of "work being done", probably give your horse a loose-rein walk break... or do some stretchy jog. Give him a minute to get his breath back. Regroup and try again. If he's not got it (and particularly if the quality of his efforts degrades so as to be almost laughably bad) he's done. Cool him off and put him away. Tomorrow is another day.
