Didn't you used to have horses?
Feb. 25th, 2024 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI still have horses, Bird (the rideable) and Finn (the young sir). They've been standing around eating carbs for the last several months of fur, mud, and cold. But with the advent of snow melt and warmer weather, yesterday I fetched Bird out of his paddock and hopped aboard.
Too many months off makes Bird think that he's not really a riding horse anymore. Also, standing around eating and not working (even though he is in a three-acre paddock) is not great for his work ethic. So, ride 1 (Saturday) was not especially productive. In fairness, I did not expect it to be, either, so nobody was really disappointed there, except possibly Bird, who was maybe not thrilled with the results of his efforts.
We headed out over the hill into the holler because it is close to home and kind of... contained. It's not super muddy footing and it's got a pretty solid hill for marching down and back up. (You go down first, then up to come home.) Down the hill was not great -- back tight, kind of a high n tight affair but no airs above the ground. Coming back up the hill started off at jig and deteriorated from there.
Now, this is my 13 year old gelding. I've been riding him for nine years. I put the very first rides ever on him and I've done all the work from then onward to the now. I feel pretty confident stating that I know my boy at this juncture.
So, when he starts off jigging and escalates to cantering sideways at walking speed or hopping in place (not really a buck, just an... exhuberance), he's not... trying to put me off, he's fizzy as hell because his relatively steep paddock has been alternately muddy or icy or snowy for the last three months. This is not GTFO, BITCH so much as it's WHEE!. He is not normally like this -- it isn't his go-to. Bird is far more likely to be behind the leg than in front of it so I don't have a great toolkit for this.
Also, my boy is rockin' the behind-the-shoulderblades chub. He is a potato. Perhaps his middle-aged owner felt bad for him "in the cold" and kept putting hay in front of him so that he could eat himself warm. Who can say? Anyway, he does not have any reasonable fitness and his strings (ligaments, tendons) are all unfit. There are no abs. So asking for more... effortful work is not a great plan right now. He ain't got it.
What he NEEDS, right now, covered in inch-and-a-half hair and a layer of lard, is some several weeks of sensible marching walks up and down the local scenery, said walks spiced up with short jog sessions on level ground. He needs outings, gentle and progressive outings, to leg him up and slim him down so that he can start hammering the abs and shit. That stuff will come roaring back as soon as he gets a few weeks of walking under his belt. He is smart and he has not forgotten one bit of it. There will be a point, likely early in June, where I can just settle his effing hash by asking him to throw me some halfpass zig zags in trot and he'll be ... OOf, lady dis hard, can I just walk? but right now we are not there.
So I and my explosive potato head up out of the holler. He is still high and tight. My original plan was to do 3x of walk down and back up and then be done. My plan didn't make it past the "turn around to head back up" because at that point Bird's cup of enthusiasm overflowed and I had to solve the problem. See, he cannot be allowed to drive the bus. (He is not the bus driver. I am the bus driver. While a clever boy, he is also the sort who will put himself and his snack in the kitchen, right at the doorway, and them put the iPad on the floor in the living room. No iPad in the kitchen, no snacks in the living room. He is a rules lawyer and he does not get to drive the bus. That would be a disaster.) But, he's not got any evil intent behind him and he literally cannot contain himself any more than I can stop a garden hose by putting my thumb over the end. So... I can't beat him and I can't shut him down and I can't Let Him Run It Out (because flabby and weak and needs to be more fit and I would rather he not injure his dumb self). So what we did was turn back and head to the bottom of the holler. Halt. Breathe out. Turn toward home, loose rein, attempt walking. When failure, halt. Turn down hill. Go to bottom. Halt. Breathe out. Turn toward home. Loose rein. Attempt walking. Fail at walking.
Again. And again. So many again. There were a lot more reps than I wanted of this, some of which included cantering sideways at the walk and some of which included the aforementioned in-place exuberances. But with enough reps eventually he did get a handle on himself and finally we walked, flat walked like a good boy on a loose rein with a mobile back, out the holler and back to the barn. Nobody died. Nobody even close to died, but it was kind of fizzy and repetitive.
Because Saturday went so... well, I took him out again on Sunday. He was like a totally different horse. He was like my normal Bird. We did one trip down the holler and he was fine both down and back out so we trucked over to the covered bridge and did up the steeper hill over there. It's about a 4 mile outing, total, most of which was at the walk. There were two short, level jog sections which he handled with fantastic rhythm and aplomb. Good boy!
Finn, the young sir, has been out a few times for in-hand work. He is improving at that, which is good. Still needs practice with his emotions but you get better at that by doing it more often, so we'll work on fixing that.
Too many months off makes Bird think that he's not really a riding horse anymore. Also, standing around eating and not working (even though he is in a three-acre paddock) is not great for his work ethic. So, ride 1 (Saturday) was not especially productive. In fairness, I did not expect it to be, either, so nobody was really disappointed there, except possibly Bird, who was maybe not thrilled with the results of his efforts.
We headed out over the hill into the holler because it is close to home and kind of... contained. It's not super muddy footing and it's got a pretty solid hill for marching down and back up. (You go down first, then up to come home.) Down the hill was not great -- back tight, kind of a high n tight affair but no airs above the ground. Coming back up the hill started off at jig and deteriorated from there.
Now, this is my 13 year old gelding. I've been riding him for nine years. I put the very first rides ever on him and I've done all the work from then onward to the now. I feel pretty confident stating that I know my boy at this juncture.
So, when he starts off jigging and escalates to cantering sideways at walking speed or hopping in place (not really a buck, just an... exhuberance), he's not... trying to put me off, he's fizzy as hell because his relatively steep paddock has been alternately muddy or icy or snowy for the last three months. This is not GTFO, BITCH so much as it's WHEE!. He is not normally like this -- it isn't his go-to. Bird is far more likely to be behind the leg than in front of it so I don't have a great toolkit for this.
Also, my boy is rockin' the behind-the-shoulderblades chub. He is a potato. Perhaps his middle-aged owner felt bad for him "in the cold" and kept putting hay in front of him so that he could eat himself warm. Who can say? Anyway, he does not have any reasonable fitness and his strings (ligaments, tendons) are all unfit. There are no abs. So asking for more... effortful work is not a great plan right now. He ain't got it.
What he NEEDS, right now, covered in inch-and-a-half hair and a layer of lard, is some several weeks of sensible marching walks up and down the local scenery, said walks spiced up with short jog sessions on level ground. He needs outings, gentle and progressive outings, to leg him up and slim him down so that he can start hammering the abs and shit. That stuff will come roaring back as soon as he gets a few weeks of walking under his belt. He is smart and he has not forgotten one bit of it. There will be a point, likely early in June, where I can just settle his effing hash by asking him to throw me some halfpass zig zags in trot and he'll be ... OOf, lady dis hard, can I just walk? but right now we are not there.
So I and my explosive potato head up out of the holler. He is still high and tight. My original plan was to do 3x of walk down and back up and then be done. My plan didn't make it past the "turn around to head back up" because at that point Bird's cup of enthusiasm overflowed and I had to solve the problem. See, he cannot be allowed to drive the bus. (He is not the bus driver. I am the bus driver. While a clever boy, he is also the sort who will put himself and his snack in the kitchen, right at the doorway, and them put the iPad on the floor in the living room. No iPad in the kitchen, no snacks in the living room. He is a rules lawyer and he does not get to drive the bus. That would be a disaster.) But, he's not got any evil intent behind him and he literally cannot contain himself any more than I can stop a garden hose by putting my thumb over the end. So... I can't beat him and I can't shut him down and I can't Let Him Run It Out (because flabby and weak and needs to be more fit and I would rather he not injure his dumb self). So what we did was turn back and head to the bottom of the holler. Halt. Breathe out. Turn toward home, loose rein, attempt walking. When failure, halt. Turn down hill. Go to bottom. Halt. Breathe out. Turn toward home. Loose rein. Attempt walking. Fail at walking.
Again. And again. So many again. There were a lot more reps than I wanted of this, some of which included cantering sideways at the walk and some of which included the aforementioned in-place exuberances. But with enough reps eventually he did get a handle on himself and finally we walked, flat walked like a good boy on a loose rein with a mobile back, out the holler and back to the barn. Nobody died. Nobody even close to died, but it was kind of fizzy and repetitive.
Because Saturday went so... well, I took him out again on Sunday. He was like a totally different horse. He was like my normal Bird. We did one trip down the holler and he was fine both down and back out so we trucked over to the covered bridge and did up the steeper hill over there. It's about a 4 mile outing, total, most of which was at the walk. There were two short, level jog sections which he handled with fantastic rhythm and aplomb. Good boy!
Finn, the young sir, has been out a few times for in-hand work. He is improving at that, which is good. Still needs practice with his emotions but you get better at that by doing it more often, so we'll work on fixing that.
