Topaz Dreams

Rider fitness; spoon management

Posted on May 11, 2016 by FigureMay 9, 2016 2

I’ve re-written this two or three times now. This is not the same post it was originally; this is not the same post it was two months ago.

Taking the winter off was not ideal for Confetti. It wasn’t ideal for me, either.

I was at a fairly good weight, for me, when I started with Fetti in 2010. I was riding 5-7 days a week and hiking across campus. Things went downhill a bit when I graduated, started at a desk job, and dropped to riding only 4 days a week. I promised myself that I’d lose at least a good chunk of that weight before asking my pony to do a 50. It’s enough of an uphill battle to manage her without asking her to carry an extra 20+ pounds!

September 2012

Tan breeches aren’t kind, but I think it’s pretty accurate. Also, I still regret having to sell that bridle, but it really did not fit. The new one just isn’t quite as awesome without all the sparkles. I need to sparkle-ify and find some pink hearts to glue on the halter the next time I’m feeling crafty.

The weight came off once I got serious about it. I tracked calories and watched what I ate. No fitness/workout plans, no meal shakes, no hitting the gym. I took up running a few times, and quit running a few times. For me, for where I was and the weight I had gained, I just needed to eat less.

photo by Boots and Bloomers

Slightly kinder angle, but still 20+ pounds lighter in September 2015.

But unlike the first time I wrote this, it doesn’t end there.

I am painfully out of shape right now. Taking the winter off of conditioning was not really a choice. I’ve been battling headaches and migraines almost non-stop since at least late December. My fitness has suffered. My mental health has suffered. My blogging has suffered. I just run out of spoons and can’t get it all done.

It used to be that on an average Tuesday, I could get up a bit early and get some stuff done at home, run an errand or two before work, put in my half-day at work feeling pretty productive, knock out at least half a blog post (sometimes a whole blog post!), head to the barn for a brisk 4-6 mile ride, maybe trim a hoof or two (or deal with her bale bag), clean the stall, finish brushing off the pony again, make dinner at home while reading blogs & commenting, and have an hour or so to de-stress before needing to head to sleep.

To be fair, I’m always out later with the light lasting longer in the summer, but that’s not nearly my average Tuesday now: get up just-on-time, run an errand before work if traffic is kind, put in my half-day at work feeling like I’m running terribly behind and super slow, head to the barn (now running late and hitting traffic) for a round pen session or hopefully 3-4 mile ride, refill bale bag when I have to, clean the stall, treat hooves for thrush, hope my boyfriend has dinner already at home, sleep. It doesn’t sound like a big difference, but the reality is several hours of difference and less getting done in that added time.

I’m running at maybe 60% of my normal with a headache, and 40% when the migraines hit, and I’ve been at this for four months. It’s a struggle to get my fitness back up to par when I never know how many spoons I’ll have on any given day. I feel like I’m barely making do with the spoons I have.

Today was a good day. I have no idea what tomorrow will look like.

How do the rest of you do it? Any tips for better spoon management?

Non-pony dressage lesson

Posted on May 9, 2016 by FigureMay 9, 2016 2

Before I went off to college and started riding ponies, I rode at a intro-type hunter barn. Not super competitive, but a great barn to learn at with a lot of well-trained lesson horses. I’ve been saying for a while that I should go back and visit. Many of my favorites have either retired or passed on by now.

When I found myself with a weekday off work and appointments that did not entirely preclude several more hours of driving, I called and scheduled myself in for a (flat, dressage) lesson. Horses over 15 hands feel big. It’s good for me to challenge myself! Can I actually ride? Are all of my pony-habits going to result in utter disaster?

Bless them, I rode a dressage schoolmaster that I remembered from several years back. Sixteen hand chestnut Thoroughbred gelding. Big! Trained! Tolerant!

TERRIBLE lighting! But lesson learned: selfies are so much easier when the horse is taller than you.

I’m short on media, but big on takeaways:

My ankles still do funny things in tall boots on big horses. Right more than left, if I’m remembering correctly, but it’s been more than a week now and I could have that backwards. I think I’m hyperflexing sideways to cue, there’s just enough space in the boot to let me do that, but it doesn’t actually work. I’m not sure why this isn’t an issue in my usual setup & tennis shoes; I need to experiment with more arena rides in tall boots on Fetti to see if I can narrow down what’s actually happening.
I felt super, super secure in the dressage saddle. I don’t know why. My position felt very supported. This is not a feeling that I get in my Thorowgood – or, frankly, in the Eurolight.
Big horses feel really weird after riding a pony. Pony legs move at warp speed, and Fetti’s engaged trot is significantly quicker than a hunter trot. It was difficult to get a good sense for what was ‘fast enough’ and what was ‘too slow’.
My trot-canter transitions are still atrocious. This is a Fig problem, not a horse problem.
My canter position was not terrible. It was better in one direction than the other, but it was not terrible in either direction. It was fixable. At a slow hunter canter, with a horse that maintained the canter, I could fix me. It did not feel like a total trainwreck or that I did not know how to ride. This was incredibly reassuring, after months of canter-flailing on and off with Fetti. I haven’t had a good, solid, confidence-boosting canter like this since Suds, and that’s been over a year now.
I am much more sensitive to one-sided horses than I used to be. It was immediately clear to me that he was weaker in one direction than the other, that he was falling in on the shoulder, not balancing back, etc. Big difference!

If time and finances permit, I’ll probably send myself back there in the fall or winter for another lesson or two when the rain starts again.

Twenty; the game plan

Posted on May 3, 2016 by FigureMay 3, 2016 4

On Saturday, Confetti turned twenty. We had a ~~delightful~~ mediocre ride in the woods during which she needed to pee but adamantly refused to do so. She was behind my leg for the majority of the ride. It wasn’t terrible, but we’ve done better.

On Sunday, Confetti turned twenty and one day and we had a positively lovely ride in the woods with a friend, where the pony was 100% adjustable, responsive to seat and leg, quiet, and a joy to ride.

A recent lesson with my trainer showed two things: she is dull to the leg and incredibly insensitive to the bit. I have homework that I am dutifully schooling to remedy both of these issues. These are pretty big rideability problems. Hopefully, getting a better handle on these will make her an easier ride, and an easier-to-condition horse.

Conditioning status: I am not happy with where we are right now. She’s breaking into a sweat easily (needs more salt/electrolytes?). It would be great to know what her pulse looks like, but the HRM and I are still in negotiations about correct placement for a reliable reading, argh!! We’re briskly trotting an eight-mile loop once weekly, “sprinting” our easy four-mile loop on at least one weekday, and varying work the other 1-2 days.

Currently “sprinting” that four-mile loop involves zero cantering. Hopefully we’ll be able to add in some canter work on the two miles out. It’s getting done in just about an hour even with schooling stops (in one ride, Confetti considered stopping to pee; in another, we detoured around a fallen tree and negotiated the detour by a very scary bush), so while not terrible, there’s room for improvement.

Ran a bit after detouring around tree. Felt like a real runner, if only briefly!

I’m also hoping to return to the Big Hill I mentioned a while back. Unfortunately that requires a twenty/thirty-minute hike through town. That makes it feel like an all-day project, so that one may be tabled until I get a weekday to head back over for a proper ride.

I have no idea what rides we’ll make it to this year, how, or when – so we’re conditioning and preparing on the theory that I’d like to be ready to take her in a 50 with just a few weeks of notice. Learning to roll with the punches and all that.. sometimes it really is the getting there that’s the hardest part!

Chiropractic

Posted on April 20, 2016 by FigureApril 20, 2016 1

In a final, last-ditch effort to throw all the things at the pony, I scheduled her first chiropractor visit. We’ve done massage and craniosacral, but somehow never pulled the trigger on a chiropractor. I will admit I wasn’t sure it would fix anything, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt, either.. so we went for the first available appointment and didn’t even inquire as to the cost.

Full disclosure here: this is the chiropractor that Olivia recommended, who also happens to be someone I’ve seen work on the hunter horses in my past life. I was convinced that he could do good things and wasn’t a sham. I just wasn’t sure Fetti would get anything out of it. I was, however, confident that he would tell me if she didn’t need it.

We made our introductions on a drizzly day, but were spared the rain. Middle-aged Haflinger, first chiro visit, left specifics to him.

not-so-patiently waiting

He adjusted her right shoulder. Since the adjustment, I’ve found the saddle tipping left. I suspect we shimmed to account for the imbalance and I need to see if I can pull that shim. (Editing later: actually, both saddles are tipping left, so I emailed the saddle fitters since I can’t figure out how to pull one shim and fix it and definitely cannot re-flock.)

Her back was out, right at the spot where the new white hair has appeared from the ill-fitting saddles last season. Both sides, T10.

Her SI joint was out on one side, and maybe t16 on the other? This may be the cause or the result of her imbalanced stance/ropewalking. I have not seen great improvement in this post-adjustment. (Editing later: still no improvement on this. Oh well.)

YES THAT SPOT HURTS

Adjustment.

oh wait. not hurting anymore?

Her neck was out. Her neck was out! I mentioned head-tossing, he checked her neck, and he got the exact same head-toss that I had been getting on trail. I have no idea how she did this one or when, but the head tossing has subsided to pony-being-obnoxious instead of pony-in-pain. Still a lot, but different now, and back to ‘normal’ for her.

Her poll was out too. Most people see a personality change. I definitely did not.

End result: pretty pleased. I did not get dramatic results aside from the head-tossing being largely eliminated, but I wasn’t looking for any. It feels like this should be a beneficial thing to keep up with long-term. It’s possible that this may have a very positive impact on her shoulder imbalance, but I’m still dealing with the saddle fitting possibilities there, so it’s too soon to tell on that.

Arena work

Posted on April 11, 2016 by FigureApril 10, 2016 3

A couple times a year it dawns on me that I have a lovely, well-trained horse who ought to be able to do moderately advanced things if I only ask her correctly.

Last month, I tried riding bareback and “bridleless” – using a neck rope while still keeping the halter & reins attached.

Fetti listened very politely to all my cues and proceeded to very politely ignore all the ones that didn’t work for her, such as ‘turn left’ or ‘quit blowing through that shoulder’. That ride concluded with a short ride in the round pen where we failed to stay on the rail for any substantial length of time – using the halter & reins, not the neck rope! – and I finally called it quits once we got a semi-polite trot circle mostly on the rail once in each direction.

OK. Nicely trained pony has apparently been broken by amateur rider. 🙁

This month, on a low-key day at the barn, I pulled out the dressage bridle & saddle and off we went to the arena to revisit the topic. I know that I am not a completely incompetent rider and we should be able to do at least really basic stuff in the arena without looking like complete drunken fools.

Fetti rewarded me with the absolute best canter we’ve had in probably over a year, and then replicated it a whole bunch of times just to make sure I knew it wasn’t a fluke.

It wasn’t all pretty – our upwards transitions are awful! – but the canter was there, it felt balanced, and she never threatened to leave. I sense there may be more canter circles in our future as we try to make this a more normal thing.

Trot to canter transitions, aka giraffe impressions

Time Management

Posted on April 6, 2016 by FigureApril 6, 2016 2

This weekend, I rode 18 miles! Only the first six of those count as real conditioning miles, but we were out and riding for another twelve, and that counts for something at least.

I make it to the barn four days a week, rain or shine. It’s self-care with no turnout and no covered arena. My commute to work is an hour each way (at least!), and Fetti needs to be worked consistently or she loses her brain. How do I do it? Sheer stubbornness, for one. Perpetual to-do lists running through my head.

Things I accomplished on Saturday:

Brisk conditioning ride (6 miles, 4+mph pace, solo) in dressage saddle.
Unbraided Fetti’s mane.
Shortened stirrups one hole on endurance saddle (complete with a battle with fuzzy leather covers).
Thorough billet cleaning, quick saddle cleaning with leather conditioner
30 minutes of staring, grumbling, and analyzing billet placement/angle and girth length/placement/angle
Leisurely trail ride with friends (7 miles) in endurance saddle
.. at which point I realized I had a migraine coming on..
Turned out ponies. Zoooom! Fetti is NOT tired!
Cleaned stall, stripped excess non-palatable hay

Sunday, a fairly leisurely barn day:

full bath! (minus tail)
Combed out tail with Equifuse Gleam – super impressed, this is usually a full-day process at best
Combed out mane with Equifuse & braided
Fussed at saddle placement again, eventually lengthened breastplate in every single direction to allow for trial run of saddle further back
Super-leisurely trail ride with friends (6 miles) with slight bonus drama at the end where Fetti politely kept her brain very intact. Good pony!
Cleaned stall. (Migraine probable but has not yet really hit.)
Dumped, scrubbed, refilled water bucket
Re-combed tail, applied Equifuse as needed
Fly sprayed liberally – ticks everywhere this year
No Thrush to all hooves
Reorganized tack room slightly to streamline process this week

On the agenda for this week:

Equifuse, fly spray, and No Thrush daily
4-6 miles daily, two rides if I’m not working and not migrained
Trim hooves. (Maybe on the day it’s supposed to rain?)
Refill bale bag as needed

March, the summary

Posted on March 28, 2016 by FigureMarch 28, 2016 5

I’m so far behind that if I don’t make some notes now, I’ll never get current again.

I’m still working on Fetti’s hooves. I have no idea if I blogged about that or not. Thrush got ugly in January, NoThrush powder cleared it up better than anything else I tried. It was impressive. It’s not entirely resolved yet, but it looks a heck of a lot better than it did.
Also, I’m getting more aggressive about trimming. I’d like to think it’s helping. Only time will tell? The boots still mostly fit, though, so that’s something. It’s becoming clear I need a lower hoof stand for the (short) pony so that is moving high up on the priority list. Or we just need to work on keeping her hoof on the stand because she’s learned she can be a brat about it. I’m not sure which.
The dam is still up. We’re riding anyway. This is going to be the oddest conditioning year we’ve done yet. I feel like she’s out of shape. Alternatively, we’re just working harder in the handful of rides we’ve managed.
2b. The dam is no longer up, now that I’ve taken so long to post this, but it’s not yet crossable. We tried and sunk. Someday there will be a non-Haflinger guinea pig to cross the river first.
Migraines and low-grade headaches have been making my life extra-difficult since December, but I’m now at a full week without a real migraine and that’s really awesome. I have a small pile of things in drafts that I start working on during my good days. I lose track of them on the other days. They may never get done.
Round pen vs turnout vs riding: mostly round pen still. I suspect she’s not working enough. Goal is to start more regular turnouts.. if I can get in the arena when it’s not a complete muddy mess.. in hopes of that making a difference.
Head tossing. She’s always done this occasionally as a snarky mare thing, a warning of attitude and things to come. Lately it’s become more common and for no apparent reason. Bugs, maybe? Tried fly mask. No difference. She’s doing it both in front and behind, while I’m riding and while I’m walking her under saddle on trail. It doesn’t feel like there’s any attitude associated with it (but I could be wrong).
I have not tried my dressage saddle to rule out saddle issues. I’ve been riding almost exclusively bareback since November, and I only got this endurance saddle in mid-October.
Super-short-summary-version: chiropractor seems to have resolved this and I hope to have a full post on this sometime.
Bucking. One-two bucks under saddle on multiple rides lately. I wasn’t holding her back, at least that I knew of, and that’s usually what has triggered it in the past.
Month-end conclusion: I’m pissed off. She’s not working enough and it’s entirely my fault. It is an attitude-buck, I’m not a good enough rider to deal with the behavior itself, so we did 22 miles in two days this weekend and by ride #4 she was back to her usual summer-Fetti, forward but not obnoxious, willing to go but not spooking at random stuff. Now that I have daylight, 25 miles a week just moved WAY UP on my priority list.
Historically, the reaction to her bucking was to make her run and work really hard. Which is exactly what she’d like to do when she bucks now! I have no idea how to appropriately handle that one in-the-moment, so I yell at her and do my best to stick it and then bail off and de-escalate. I’m in a bit over my head on this and I know it, unfortunately, but she’s stuck with me. I’ll take suggestions, y’all.

Bonus frustration: Fetti has lovely new white marks on her back this year, likely from the flocking I had done on the dressage saddle early in the season that did not work out very well for us. We did the NATRC ride and two days of Wild West (plus 3-4 months of conditioning) before getting it reflocked towards the end of the summer. We would probably have been better off staying in the saddle that put me in an unbalanced seat rather than the one I thought I had fitted to the horse. Argh!!!

Riding spring

Posted on February 29, 2016 by FigureFebruary 26, 2016

One loop in the back woods, solo, bareback. We’ve done pretty much no work back here this year, and no solo work since December. It’s maybe a third of a mile total? She went out without a fight (just a gentle push), trotted out beautifully, and reminded me why I don’t condition her bareback. I can ride a 5mph trot bareback without too much work. I suspect we were at 6-7. She’d break to walk periodically, not confident that she was really supposed to be trotting along at speed in the woods alone without a saddle on. When asked, she went back to it. Zoom!

The pony is not broken, has not requested immediate retirement, and still wants to do a big trot on the trails.

OK then. We’ll start our conditioning rides back up.

Update: Trails

Posted on February 26, 2016 by FigureFebruary 26, 2016 1

The dam went up at the beginning of January. Trees came down across our trail, too, so it almost didn’t matter. Not even our small trail ponies would fit through this.

We burned out on around-barn rides faster than usual and went promptly to jogging down the highway.

We’ve still managed a few rides with Funder around the barn, though!

My Haflinger trail partner and I had planned on a ride, but it was super windy. We stayed home and walked in circles, then got bored with that and went out.

A year ago, we would never have gone out in this. Gusts complete with a warning sign. That’s a first! We’d already made it down the highway so headed on in. Live dangerously and all that. Two of us bareback on the ponies. Ponies were good, riders got anxious and hiked most of the way home.

It’s been more than two years now since my major winter fall. I haven’t forgotten and it still affects my riding. Confetti is pretty out of shape right now. I’m sad about that. I’m not sad that I’m riding her bareback in the park and generally feeling good about it.

Maybe soon we’ll pick the conditioning back up. I have a long, long moderate hill in mind that we’ve ridden only once or twice. If we can get there alone reliably, I may aim to walk/trot up that once or twice a month. (Guessing off a map, I’m thinking it’s 3-4 miles of near-constant climb.) That’s the sort of thing that’s really hard for her, and it should get her heart rate up nicely too! We’ll see if that pans out or not.
We’ll go back to our regular loop shortly: it appears dry enough we can safely trot the six miles. We’ve been missing that.

I did hook up the heart monitor to the bareback pad. I’m not crazy about full tack just yet, but I like knowing a baseline. She’s recovering reasonably well from our tiny moseying rides. Not fast, but not terribly.

Incidentally, she is totally okay with full-size tour buses passing us three feet away on the highway. I braced for a spook, she dove for grass. I had the heart monitor hooked up – so when we got into the park a minute or two later and I turned it on, I was pleasantly surprised to find that she was super-low.

Time change in two weeks. Things will be better soon.

2016 Goals

Posted on February 22, 2016 by FigureFebruary 22, 2016 5

Last year, I set monthly goals in an attempt to focus on little things. Some of them got done, a lot of them didn’t – at least, not at the time. Here’s the updated version for 2016.

Off-side mounting. This was something we worked on inconsistently in 2015 through March or so. It has been partly a rider problem (I’m supposed to move how?) and partly a horse problem (getting on from the left is correct, let me fix it).
In January this year, I decided we should start working on it again. There’s now a (sturdy) mounting block right by my stall. It’s tall enough I can swing up bareback easily. I led her up to it on the right and hopped right up. Huh. Fetti’s default behavior is still to line up on the left if not requested otherwise, but so long as she gets her cookie and I line her up correctly, right-side mounting is not really a horse problem anymore. It may or may not still be a rider problem when the saddle gets added back into the equation.
This stays on the list for 2016. I want this to be solid.

2. Standing still for mounting. I should be clear: she’s never been terrible, she’s just never been great and I didn’t insist on it. Again, we worked on this inconsistently for part of the year, then fairly consistently for (I think?) the second half of the year. We did really terribly for my first mount at Cuneo in September (pony wouldn’t line up, rider couldn’t get balanced, pony wouldn’t stand still, rider lacked confidence). Otherwise, though, cookie-training has worked spectacularly.

3. Convincing the pony to pee on the trail/under saddle. This is another cookie-training item. I believe it was 2014 where I was able to shape this behavior: at home, I’d put her in her stall post-ride, walk away to get her grain, and as soon as I’d get to the tack room she’d go over to pee. I treat-rewarded that where I could in an attempt to capture the behavior as something that she was allowed and even supposed to do around humans. In 2015, we got to the point where she fairly reliably pees in the river on the way home. I dutifully gave her cookies and praise every time.
In the past few months, I’ve stepped it up a notch: I expect her to pee in the outside of her paddock (for a cookie, naturally) before she gets her post-ride grain. The first few times I asked for this it was a several-minute process. Now, sometimes it’s one circle before she remembers what she’s being asked.
In February she peed under-saddle in one of our walking-around-barn bareback jaunts. I was boggled and dutifully gave her the (expected) cookie. Smart mare! She also followed the gelding’s lead on a recent trail ride: he stopped and went before all the riders got on, she stopped right after and went as well. Gooood pony.
Stays on the list for 2016. May stay on the list indefinitely. This has been a major issue in the past and getting it resolved would be excellent.

4. Maintain Fetti’s hooves between trims. I did passably well at this in 2015. I need to do better in 2016.
4b. New for 2016: aim for at least monthly training rides with boots!

As life permits:

make it to one LD and one 50. Ideally complete both. (I don’t currently have any clue what rides those will be or how we’ll be getting there, which does complicate things.)
teach Fetti to back out of a slant-load trailer
once-quarterly lessons
financially, start saving for a truck/trailer. It’s unlikely to happen this year or even next year, but this is a Big Deal for me. I need to get my act together to make it a future possibility.