And the rains lifted…

Awoke to a downpour this morning and sent the email out – “Do not despair! I will be there!”. As it happened, the rains lifted (after a last-roar-thunderstorm at 4:30pm) and we had sun, damp footing (no dust!) and four horses in the arena. Didn’t quite make it there with Maya (hubby had to work a bit late to finish up something) but I was able to play a bit with a couple of the horses, there and help out a few of the people with some suggestions. Hooray!

Tomorrow I get to play with my horse, even if we go help Jai and Prowler – we’ll play up and back and some while we’re there, too.

I managed to trim Jasper’s back feet when I got back from playgroup. Thank goodness for the rains softening those hard little feet up for me!

Jasper is home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Played with Jasper at the grounds last night and her foot seems to be at 100% sound again. Mucked out her stall, put everything in the truck and said goodnight to Matthew & Murrin as he took her home to put her to bed – then played with Jasper for a bit while my friend rode her horse in the arena.

Jasper was back to her wild LBE self so we MOVED, MOVED, MOVED until she could stand still and think, then we played circling game with some upwards and downwards transitions and working on getting the disengagement light and consistent. Got some nice changes all around and then went up to the jump arena for a last jump round. She just loves it! She didn’t even go for the lowest part of the crossrail, just sprung over the jump which was part way up her neck, I think!

Then we loaded her in the trailer with Quinn (who is part draft – so it’s quite a funny sight to see their bums next to each other and the (at least) two foot difference in height. Once we got back to my friends’ house, we turned Jasper loose in the yard to graze and went inside to have a lovely chat. I walked her home in the dark and realized just how much I’ve gotten to know Jasper over the last few weeks. She’s a very confident little horse, LBE+ but gets unconfident with things moving in Zone 5. This will make learning to drive her challenging, but I know it can be done with lots of friendly and games from Zone 5. We’re working towards this, and it’s going well.

Playgroup fun.

Another amazing night at our new playgroup. People are certainly responding well to it. We have a new person and her lovely horse who has experience playing with Parelli – and we’re glad of it! Almost everyone who has been coming is pre-level 1 aside from three of us… so it’s wonderful to be able to bring people seeking Savvy together to inspire and learn from each other. We also have two young girls with their pony and a dressage horse and my 8 year old nephew with his new pony! One girl playing tonight had never played with horses before – and I couldn’t tell at all (except that she didn’t have any bad habits!) she was a total natural! Amazing releases, firm enough when necessary, soft hands on the rope – wonderful! It must be true what Pat says about kids being totally natural until they turn 12 – and become practicing adults!

It always impresses me how quickly even adults can learn. I feel like it’s taken me forever to get to where I am and I’m only a fraction of the way along this great journey. It’s inspiring to see the progress in everyone and I must remember to try and recognize it in myself, as well. Fascinating.

Speaking of fascinating, I was lucky enough to play with one of our playgroup members horses to try to help her with her fear of the trailer for the trip there and for the trip home. I was able to take a bit more time for the trip home, and she’s a cool little horse, goes from RBE to LBE DOMINANT in a blink. She would race past me in the squeeze, head up, body tense, eyes staring and just as soon as I would yield her HQ in the squeeze game she’d give me a snotty head toss. Hilarious! I helped her some with the trailer to the point that she really didn’t want to come out, but she’s not over it, yet. If only I were Pat, I could help her that much quicker. At any rate, her humans were impressed by the patience and the process and the progress! I think they’re becoming hooked on Parelli, too – yay! I ought to convince her to take the advanced Level 1. I think she’ll be ready for it at this rate.

Jasper is full of beans and feeling frisky – still not completely sound on that hind leg, but enough that she was putting on rodeo shows for everyone until she started thinking! LBEs are FUN. I had her put four feet on the pedestal tonight with confidence – it’s almost like cheating, she’s so small she can just stand on it normally.

But, though I’m tired, I’m happy – and I’ll be replaying that trailer loading over in my head until I fall asleep – what else could I have offered the horse to help her? Did I do the right thing there? What about when she? Did I read that right? How can I be better next time? …. and the analysis begins!

Friendly with the hose.

I highly recommend that you do this before you need to hose an injured leg. Makes you feel much less guilty about the dancing around that it may cause. Thankfully, I didn’t let my direct line need to hose her leg cause me to be predatory. Well, okay, I did at FIRST, then I realized that it wouldn’t do any of us any good if she danced around for hours. So, two days ago, I slowed waaay down and just flipped the water back and forth towards her until she could stand still (10 minutes). Quit for the day.

Next day, same thing, but waited until she could stand still when the water splashed a bit on her legs from a distance. Quit when she could stand still. (five minutes)

Yesterday, we got back to that so quickly that i knew it was the day to go all the way. I put my hand just in front of her wither and flipped the hose back and forth until she could stand still, then I rubbed her leg with the hose while it was on and gradually approached and retreated with the water until she could handle it pouring down her leg and just kept grazing. I had to keep a little rhythm in the water – moving it up and down her leg – but she accepted it very calmly and I’m certain that today will be even better. (five minutes of friendly – five minutes of hosing)

Now it’s time to start that with my five year old for some prior and proper preparation.

Injured Wee White Shite and contrite mom.

Due to a sorry lack of savvy, I left my halter and lead rope at home on Wednesday night. I did have a savvy string, so I used that to tie a bowline around Jasper’s neck and tied a nylon truck tie-down strap to that for a lead rope. We did some fun things, then we grazed and I tied her long to a rail so she could eat while I mucked out.

She got hurt by backing herself into the line attached to her neck and attached to the fence, and then fighting the pressure on her pastern and fetlock. A nice slice on her right hind pastern that isn’t healing up but isn’t festering, either. On a good note, I noticed her favouring it the following day and we’ve been hosing, ointmenting and chilling out ever since. She was more feisty today and resting her left (the good leg) hind when I came to check on her this morning – be that the cooler weather or her feeling better, I’m not sure – but I think she’s feeling better. I’ll just keep an eye and a hand on it over the next few days and leave her to rest until I can be sure she’s able to walk home with me one night.

Shimming experiments and Wee White Shite play.

On the way to the grounds to play with Jasper, I stopped to help give my friend another pair of eyes with regards to her shimming experiments with her new theraflex pad. Her horse is quite atrophied behind the wither due to being ridden in narrow fitting “custom” saddles his whole life – now that she has him, he gets to think for himself and develop his back muscles again! She even let me ride him a little bit and I loved the feeling. He is a big horse with BIG movement – at least compared to my Little Maya. The best part was that even though I learned to trot bareback on Maya’s little trot, I was able to use the same motion in my body, albeit a whole heckuvalot bigger motion, and I could sit to his trot with ease! Yay for fluidity and lots of passenger lessons and bareback riding this winter.

Played with Jasper again tonight and had a lot of fun. We did things in the dressage arena with obstacles to music and then moseyed up to the jump arena as the lessons were finishing up. All the jumps were set up so it was time to test out my teaching from the week before – 20 minutes to have her offer to go over that jump and then another few to have it happen with confidence. We quit on that note and now we had a chance to try it out again.

Jasper was so confident, it was lovely! She hopped over all of the verticals (set at about 1′ high) with ease and then with a little encouragement and a few approaches and retreats, she did all of the oxers, as well!  Wow! What an affirmation of our last session being good! We left on that great note and found a tree stump pedestal on the way back toward the barns – it took about 2 minutes to have her offer to stand on it and I scratched her confident little belly as a reward and headed back to the dressage arena for more circling game. Played with “wipe that look off your face” when she’d try to drive me on the send, the allow AND the bring back – love that LBE! Very soon we had some sweet faces instead of the sour ones we started with. Quit on that note and moseyd and grazed our way back to the pen. A great night, all in all.

Jasper learning to squeeze over a jump

Here it is, some photo documentation of Jasper learning to squeeze over a jump. Jai came and watched and took photos of nose, neck, maaaaybe and THE FEET! It took maybe about 20 minutes to 1/2 hour to have her jump it with confidence, then, of course, we quit. I don’t ever really know how long something takes – I’m too busy being there with the horse to pay attention to something as trivial as time. The funny thing is, the next time we do it, it always takes LESS time than I think it will. Hmm… Pat “Take the time it takes, and it’ll take less time”. I just realized  a new angle of Savvy around that.

Anyway, here are the pics…

Nose and neck…

Maybe…

The feet!