Topaz Dreams

I’ve mentioned to a few local folks that ‘Fetti may well be done with endurance.  It’s certainly not definitive, but the horse I have right now is not one I’d feel comfortable taking down a brisk trail for miles on end.  Oddly enough, I am 100% okay with that.

There is, instead, nothing but gratitude that this pony has let me grow and learn and change as she’s gotten older.

At fourteen and fifteen, I rode her 6-7 days a week, some in the arena, some in the trail.  We jumped and learned to do trails.

At sixteen – I think! – we learned that we could go out alone.  It was still scary, but it could be done sometimes.  I still rode 5-6 days a week. We flailed our way through our first LD with Funder and Dixie.
At seventeen I increased her workload and we did two more LDs.

and we bought a new saddle

At eighteen I increased her workload again and we did two more LDs and a NATRC ride.
At nineteen we finished another NATRC ride, her first multiday, her first 50 with Cyd and Bugsy, and another LD with Nilla and Olivia.

we also sunk in the river once or twice

At twenty we.. aborted the entire first half of the season when everything got cancelled, and then oh-so-politely finished her second 50 complete with breathing issues that were present for a good chunk of the year.

Twenty-one?  Our trail access is unexpectedly limited still.  We’re riding 10 miles a week instead of 25. Our evening rides consist of walks around the barn, then standing still. Sometimes we trot, often we don’t.

occasionally we take lessons and try to flail less

My goals were first to get her to a more well-rounded place (hah, like I knew enough to do that!) so she’d be a more marketable horse.  Then we became a permanent team, and refocused our goals on trails, specifically endurance.  New goal: trail fitness for 25s.  Goal after-that: trail confidence, and building trail fitness for more 25s and maybe 50s.  Current goal?  Rideability, being the Experienced Trail Horse and all that entails, and teaching the baby pony all the things.

Friends!

So, I suppose, to me it is about the journey with the individual horse.  I still identity as an endurance rider and a trail rider.  I still love trails.  I am casually putting my mind to what the theoretical Next Horse will be: good brain. More woah than go (but a good bit of go, too). Willing to dabble at all the things and put up with my crazy ideas. Short. Young-ish.  If it can be done, the ideal would be training up the second horse while I still have Fetti.

Getting rid of Fetti is not an option.  If and when I can financially manage a second horse, I will do so.  The wheels are turning (slowly, slowly).  But she and I are a partnership and that trumps my individual riding goals.

Partners.

I ride to find zen and peace and happiness.  I do want goals. I still have goals for us, even if they’re not competition-goals.  I want her to be fitter than she is now.  We both enjoy galloping up a few good hills.  I value a horse that I can relax on at the end of the day, hacking around the barn bareback and in a halter at a mellow walk, ponying or catching a two year old on the trail. Trot a bunch of miles with friends at a maybe-halfway-respectable pace. Wander on the beach. Cross rivers. Chase ducks.

Why Fetti?  Because she makes me happy.  I grew up and got a pony. Damn right, I can have my pony decked out in pink and glitter and hearts if I want.  This is my princess pony and I love her dearly.

photo by Gore/Baylor

Alternate title: I ride two mustangs and a pony

If you’re a non-local horse blogger coming to the Bay Area, expect to meet up with a whole bunch of people when you get here. Possibly all at once. Possibly also while on not much sleep and still jetlagged.  Sorry, Jen!

Cobjockey was flying into town, so Olivia set up a trail ride and picnic and wine tasting for whoever wanted to go.  Which, it turned out? Was everyone.  Not everyone could make it, but there were still eight of us.  This involved Olivia’s three horses, borrowing three horses at her barn, and Kate trailering in two ponies.

Nilla, of course, got lots of cuddles and hugs and I’m pretty sure thought she was the star of the show. I’m not sure she was wrong.

I had already met Nilla (once at Fireworks, before I knew about the blog – that may or may not have resulted in an awkward comment a few weeks later when I stumbled on the blog and went “oh hey I remember you” – and once at Quicksilver in 2015) and Eugene (when he was clearly in better shape than my pony at QS ’16), but Levi was a new face.  And a very adorable one.  I’m still a sucker for palominos.

Levi and Kate’s pony Ginger.

Eventually everyone arrived, we got all the horses tacked up with appropriately sized tack, and we all sorted out our steeds for the trail rides.  Olivia already ran down the list, so let me just say: Eugene is still in better shape than my pony.  Holy cow.  He’s also definitely gaited and that was fun to ride occasionally, but OMG the uphill power makes me super jealous and inspired to work more hills with Confetti!

I am not quite sure about you yet, human.

My stirrups were super long and functioned mainly as footrests/aids to get on the horse. That said, Eugene is super trustworthy and I spent the whole ride pretending I was riding bareback. I was completely unbothered. Giant cliff on one side? Meh, he does these all the time and so do I.  I was riding on a loose rein with no pressure on the stirrups and taking photos with one hand.  It’s probably the fastest I’ve ever gotten over my “new horse, new saddle” anxieties.  Gold stars all around.  Would totally do again.

We moseyed our way up to the winery, tied the horses.. to trees! .. and half the group wandered on in for a wine tasting.  I’m not usually one for wine, but why not?  I found one I liked, and two that were sort of “meh,” which for me is still pretty good.  Then: food.  Olivia was not kidding when she said she had lots of food.  We also all failed spectacularly at getting photos of food or thinking to take a group photo at the picnic table.  Much food! Much chatting! Much more food!  Much amazing setup by Olivia!

Eventually we wandered our way back down the hill on the ponies horses. I may or may not have needed someone to hold Eugene and the other stirrup to help me get back on. Mounting confidence: needs work.  Still not used to using stirrups to get on very often.

Back at the barn, we pulled tack from most horses, then took Kate’s ponies, Levi, and Nilla back up to the arena for more pony playtime.

I took a lot of photos, and WordPress isn’t uploading them.. so I’m just going to actually finish this post rather than waiting forever for them to upload.  Alas.

I hopped on Levi.  He’s like a giant couch, and has the most comfortable trot, and sometimes questionable steering, but he’s green and has a great trot so that was totally fine!  Could trot that horse forever, although he might get tired eventually.  Also, he’s really tall.  This may be a recurring theme.

Finally I hopped on Ginger, Kate’s little pony.  Stirrups not needed to mount.  Now this felt like home!  Cantered a few laps, even cantered a jump, felt super accomplished with myself and sat in the center watching everyone else play with Levi and Nilla.  Yessss, pony-size.

It was an excellent day.  Three horses, no migraine, and I contemplated as I left whether I wanted to get on ‘Fetti in the moonlight at home.

Cay was our best trail riding partner. For several years, we’d ride out with her and her rider every summer evening that I was there.  We’d go exploring, park Fetti behind her, and trust that the four of us could handle anything that came our way.

If I’m being totally honest, there are a few different reasons Fetti lost some conditioning last year.  Part of it was that my boyfriend moved in with me and my routines shifted around – after five(?) years of doing things one way, now I needed to make it work for another person involved too who was around all the time and not just on occasion.  Part of it was that I got bucked off in June and took some time recovering from that.  Part of it was that I didn’t 100% trust her breathing.  But.. a big part of it was that my favorite trail partner needed to go slower and shorter, and we opted to do those slower and shorter rides with her.  We knew something was Not Right last year, even if we didn’t know what it was all along.

I started out with Fetti in 2010, the middling pony, the one who needed to be sandwiched between two experienced Haflingers on the trail.  Her sister was barely starting to come back into the equation as a trail pony.  We’ve now lost those two worth-their-weight-in-gold experienced Haffies.  Confetti is the experienced trail pony.  Her sister has been well-started on trail and holds her own with us (and, frankly, with the age difference? is in much better shape). There’s a little Gypsy pony that I’m hoping we’ll be the Experienced Pony on trails for this year.  It has come to be more important to me that ‘Fetti fill that role right now than that she be able to finish a LD.. so there we have it.  We’ll take this year as Trail Horses and work on our conditioning too.

There’s also the part where my migraines have started running rampant across my life again, lasting days or a week rather than my usual hours and then a break.  I’m not impressed.  Poor pony has gotten some extra days off when I just can’t muster the energy to get on and work her, too.

We’re a work in progress, both of us.  Some days are better than others.

Hug your ponies extra-tight today. Fetti’s mother was put to sleep yesterday. She was worth her weight in gold, brilliant with kids, fabulous smooth trot. Mellow and relaxed, always the most reliable trail partner we could ask for no matter what crazy things we encountered or how feisty Fetti was. And absolutely the best mane. 

Cancer sucks. 

One of the perks of blogging regularly is supposed to be that I have a good baseline of health issues and when they presented themselves, etc.  This one, however, I seem to have largely skipped over.

Way back around May of last year, Fetti came down with a bit of a cough.  I panicked a bit (as one does) and then decided to give it a few weeks to clear up.  I distinctly remember riding over to the local showgrounds, hacking a bit midway over, and then working in the arena.  We got a few funny looks as she coughed intermittently in the canter but happily kept going.  Alright, pony, your call.  That would have been mid-May.

It pretty well cleared up at some point after that before the disastrous June gymkhana we rode over to.  On a complete side note, I’m now pretty well convinced that when she dumped me she was reacting to a horsefly: I’ve recently seen her do that and it matches what she did at the show.  Sorry, pony.  A light cough persisted intermittently throughout the summer and fall, but nothing like what she’d had in May.

I believe it flared back up again for a week or two in the fall.  I thought then: seasonal allergies?  Allergies can definitely be a thing in Haflingers.  She recovered from that well enough I didn’t stress about the cough for Quicksilver in October – but we did have terrible air quality in September-October due to all the fires.

We did QS50 at the end of October.  She struggled hard on the hills and sounded like a freight train for 80-90% of the ride.  Hindsight says that some of the hill issues were caused by her hocks, and I felt that towards the end.  Probably we didn’t condition enough hills.  But I have never had her struggle that hard on a ride.  She was happy and willing to go, she just sounded awful.  I had clipped, but the theory was that she was overheating.  I bought it, sort of, but again: I have never needed ice water to cool her down, and we’ve done hotter rides.  Her breathing did not 100% recover until after we made it back home that night.

post-Quicksilver assessment

I worked her lightly after QS, mostly to assess soundness and breathing and to get her moving.  Instead of a feisty pony, I had a forwards pony who sounded like a freight train after a few minutes of cantering in the round pen.  Look, I know she was out of shape, but.. that feels excessive.  We did one 6-mile trail ride with a friend.  Fetti looked and sounded worse than my friend’s less-conditioned endurance horse.

When the vet did fall shots, I also had her assess Fetti, with a short version of history and trying to convey my concerns.  Apparently her lungs sounded fine, so she drew blood when I wasn’t satisfied with that answer.  The results came back “normal”.

very bored pony in winter mud

Then the rain kicked in.  Poor pony got a bunch of months off, and I let it go.  Maybe we were underconditioned.  Maybe it was a fluke thing and it would improve with time off.  Maybe I’d start her back up this year and she’d be fine.

Our conditioning started slow and we’ve gradually worked our way up.  I’ve added in canter work to see if that helps with fitness.  The trails are a little different now, so our times aren’t a straight comparison, but on the flat? She’s doing fine.  On the hills.. when she starts being asked to work.. things go to shit.  I put a heart monitor on her for a short ride, we worked our way out on the flat, pushed our way up the big hill, walked down.  At the bottom of the hill it still took several minutes for her heart rate to drop to 60-something, and she was clearly breathing hard/panting.  This is not a hard section.  This is a small loop we used to do where we would come down the hill and then trot our way back towards home.  Instead, it feels like she just can’t get her breath back once she starts breathing hard/heart rate goes way up.

riding through ravine-trails

My gut feeling says that something is still not right.  We can’t condition our way out of this one.  I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that this is not a horse right now that I would take to Fireworks even for the LD.