Topaz Dreams

After a week of prolonged inactivity and lazy rides, Confetti and I went out Saturday night and absolutely flew down the trail, at least by our standards!

For context.. on our three-mile fairly flat out-and-back rides, I think we’ve managed to log average speeds of 6.8mph.  It has been practically impossible to get a 5mph+ speed on anything with hills (aka: anything else we do).  On our 2-3 mile sprints, we can get to 6-7mph average, but that’s flat.
About a month ago, it looks like we did the same trail at a 5.4mph pace (4.53mi). 

Saturday night we added in some lovely polite canters (!) in the Specialized (!!) and came home with a 5.8mph average (!!!) even accounting for the fact that we opted to walk by several folks.  It doesn’t sound like much, and y’all out there doing longer faster rides are probably a bit appalled at how slow we’re going, but Pony Dearest has no motivation to keep up a pace solo, and we have only one or two riding friends who care to keep a true endurance pace for the whole ride.

 Good sweat marks and still energetic pony post-ride Saturday night:

Some folks sweep up fallen hay.  I bring my horse over and let her do the work for me.  Everyone wins!

I’ve been working on a few hard-to-define goals this year.
– sustained speed.  Fetti recovers quickly when she has walk breaks.  Can I get her to keep trotting at home as much as possible?  This should help me worry less at rides when she resents being asked to walk.  We did a lot of this in our handful of back woods rides this ‘winter’, and it’s still very much at the front of my mind.
– cantering.  My form when cantering is less than ideal.  Fetti has a lovely hand gallop, full gallop, and occasionally deigned to feel like less of a runaway.  She’s not bad – just very forwards!  In the past week she’s given me several rides with little polite canters, and it makes me so very happy to be able to canter on the trail without concern.
– trotting downhill.  Honestly, this is the one I’ve put the least work into and that probably is going to come back to bite me for Fireworks.  We can trot slight downhills no problem, but Real Hills frequently have her opting to walk down instead.  I think it’s a combination of balance issues (mostly mine, but a bit hers) and lack of belief that I really do want her to trot down. 

At this point, I am not looking to get in another truly long ride before Fireworks.  10 miles, sure, but I’m not likely to ask her for a brisk 14-to-18 miles.  Instead, I hope to keep working on the three above points and focus on trotting one or two downhill sections of trail that I know will be part of the ride.

I’m still totally over June, but at least at this point I am genuinely looking forwards to July.

Confetti acquired a new neighbor a few days into June.  My lovely, tolerant mare has turned into a beast from hell.  She would really prefer that the new mare go away – in all fairness, that stall has been empty since she moved in at the end of last summer! – and is not being particularly kind about it.

Snarky faces, squeals, snorts, pinned ears, charging the fence.  These are not big paddocks: 12 feet wide, 24 (new mare) or 36 feet (Fetti) in length.  I figured they’d settle in fairly quickly.

Instead, Fetti continues to instigate.  New Mare is not being particularly aggressive that I’ve seen, but Fetti will not leave it – new mare is also not being entirely submissive.  Saturday I arrived at the barn to find two scrapes on Confetti’s chest.  Our theory is that New Mare kicked her through the pipe corral fence.  New Mare is still unscathed.  Fetti was slightly off – tentatively left front but very uncertain – but thankfully no blood was involved, just took off some hair.

She recovered by Sunday, reinforcing my feeling that it was a very recent injury that she was just sore from.  Good good, carry on.  Ten-ish miles at a moderate-to-slow pace on Sunday with friends.  Tuesday we did a lazy few miles.

Yesterday, I turned her out with her sister.  I expected dramatic enthusiastic running from both of them.  It has been an exceptionally not-difficult week or two of rides for the pony.  Instead, she was mellow, even lazy.  Willing to run if asked, but totally content and almost preferring not to.  She also looked just the tiniest bit stiff to me.  We did a moderate-speed few miles with the other Haflingers, in which I rode bareback on a loose rein and got a polite tiny-trot.  It scares me when she starts to act like a lazy normal-horse.

Heading home, I concluded three things: she was definitely NQR, probably RF.  She was lazy/lethargic in part because she needed to poop and pee (both accomplished at the very end of the trail ride).  I’m still not convinced that was all of it.  Trot-circles reinforced the NQR belief.  Subtle, but yep, she’s off.

So.. there are a few things going on in my corner of the world.
1. She’s expending all her energy going after New Mare.
2. She’s insecure and currently physically aggressive towards other horses to a degree I’ve not seen before – kicking out at other horses walking behind her whose presence has never been a problem before.
3. She’s beating herself up going after New Mare.
It’s possible that the lameness(es) and new boarder are unrelated, but that seems awfully coincidental for a pony who generally stays quite sound and healthy.

I don’t know how long it takes horses to deal with their neighbors and quit trying to beat them up.  I do know that if this persists a few more weeks, I will probably opt out of our mid-July LD that is currently four weeks away.  If she’s not 100% at home, it’s not fair to ask her to cope physically and mentally with a 25.

Apparently she thought looking like her Appy neighbor might help things!

Around my barn, Memorial Day weekend doubles as one of the weekends with gunfire and cannons.  Civil War reenactment battles are held very close by, with 6-10 cannons and all the lovely cannon BOOMs to go with!

Friday, we went for a two-hour walking ride with a friend.  Lazy ride, loose rein, barely flicking an ear at the occasionally cannon-y noises (quieter ones, thank goodness).  Horse: reasonably cannonproof for the time being.  Human: jumpy!

Saturday, we opted to leave the barn after the day’s two battles had finished.  I rode with some other friends and ended up doing a moderate-paced nine miles with rather a lot of horse left.  Upon our return to the barn, it was discovered that we’d lost an item from a saddlebag.. somewhere on the 7-mile trail loop.  Yikes!  Naturally, two of us headed back out on the trail, jog-trotting along or walking as we scanned the trail and brush in hopes of finding it.  I’m guessing we made it three miles out before turning around due to impending darkness.  Our ride home was dark, dark, and darker to the point where the last half-mile was occasionally blind faith in Fetti’s trail skills and my knowledge of every single step on that trail.  Home safe, but we’d prefer not to repeat that again!  (Item was eventually found – another rider had picked it up and brought it over to our barn the next day.)

Sunday, we headed out between battles.  The goal: to be substantially far away by the time of the second battle.  The mares were actually quite good for most of the ride out and really didn’t care about battle noises – four days of listening will do that to them!  I opted to point the two of us on a relatively new trail in Pogonip, knowing we had time, and my riding partner didn’t object 🙂  It’s a multi-use trail, but we discovered quickly that it was heavily influenced by mountain bikers.  Lots of switchbacks, lots of ups and immediate downs, not an awful lot of flat or even gradually sloping sections.  I noted as we were most of the way out that we’d been parallel to the trail tracks for a while.  How bad can it be, right?

I’m pretty open about this – there are lots of things I think Fetti should be able to deal with.  Trains are not on the list.  We have Issues with trains.  She thinks they’re big, scary dragons and wants nothing to do with them.  However, I have come to learn that if I’m off and keep her on a line, she will stick with me (or at least won’t leave) while making it very clear she wants to get as far away as possible, please.

Doing her best high-strung Arabian impression.

The other horse we were riding with is less experienced on trails.  Her rider has less experience dealing with the horse and trains.  I made the mistake of thinking that the horse would stick with us, between the rider and Fetti.  We were both off when the train came by, making Big Train Noises, with Fetti going in fairly polite panicked circles around me.  The other mare seemed okay at first, then crashed through the brush with little warning and.. left.  Lucky for us, she redirected to the first visible trail and stopped waaaaaay off at the top of a hill with a handful of hikers.  Her rider was able to hike up after her and retrieve her, no harm done except for the emotional trauma to the four of us!

I normally make a point of not bringing others into the blog.  In this particular case, Fetti’s reaction made it very much My Problem, too.  First we thought that perhaps I could hop on and go after the other mare, but a quick half-second evaluation of the horse I had made it a very, very bad idea.  Pony was convinced that her friend had been eaten by the dragon-train.  Train was past.  Pony had maybe 5% of her brain, and that 5% was keeping her going in panicked circles around me.  She would have happily bolted off after her friend, something I have not experienced while on the ground.

Other horse is about halfway down the hill.. walking towards us. Embiggening suggested.

It is not thrilling to discover that a problem I thought primarily existed under saddle does, in fact, present itself on the ground in extreme situations as well.  That said, it was absolutely an extreme situation with some extraordinary circumstances I don’t care to repeat.  She needs to be able to cope with other horses leaving her – and we absolutely have to work on that.  Looking at it a week later, I think the other mare’s bolt reinforced Fetti’s train-fear.  Things might have been very different had she bolted for no apparent reason rather than doing what Fetti would have really liked to do.

Sunday ride total: 17 miles in 5h20min.  For a mostly-walking ride, not too bad.

Photo proof!  I thought once we’d never be able to do this.

Monday and Tuesday I was not feeling very motivated, so all we ended up doing was walking around the barn. But one major accomplishment nonetheless: bareback in a halter! It’s not something I’d do if she’s at all up or we’re going at speed, but for barn-meandering I’m happy to find that it is a viable option.

Heading home. This section of trail was cleared in the past six months; I’m still not used to the view!