WTF HORSE!

Memorial day meant a day off of work and more riding time. It was nice to have the extra time that day to spend time working on the bridling. Ezio decided to not bridle in the crosstie area so we went to the arena to deal with it. He accepted it better in the arena. I’d noticed that he is better when I hold the bridle up with my left hand and lay the bit on his mouth. He will then open his mouth and put the bit in himself.

He was kind of a turd muffin during the ride. Not bad for him but more of a normal horse bad ride feeling. It was a bit frustrating but I was able to let it roll off. I FINALLY got a decent look in his mouth. I noticed that his bottom outside baby teeth were falling out/coming in. That could be an indicator as to why he didn’t like bridling. His left side baby tooth had fallen out but the right side still have both baby and adult tooth.

The next day was the vet visit. And… wow. Did it not go in any right way.

The vet was there in the afternoon so I did a normal morning turnout and then went out to pull him out of his stall when the vet was there. I expected more people since it was clinic style but 2pm was apparently not a popular time. (Thank you BO for texting me that there was no one in line.) The vet was taking a call so I just waited with Ezio on the halter. He was browsing the ground and standing pretty nicely. Then the vet came over and reached his hand out.

I don’t know if Ezio just wasn’t paying attention or what but he. Freaked. Out. He spooked so hard. He’s never spooked this hard. He backed up and, unfortunately, we were in the middle of the cross ties. But its not crossties. They’re just a bunch of tie bars. So there’s a circle of tie bars. Ezio backed into one, jumped forward, missed me and pinged off another one. He basically ran in circles bumping off of tie bars until I managed to get him to stop and backed him out of the area.

He didn’t run over me and he didn’t murder the vet. So two very good things. But he was shaking scared when I got him to stop. It was a very odd reaction for him. The vet even asked if he sees okay. I’ve had him for over a year. I think I would have noticed if he had vision problems. He did a quick vision test (hand moving toward eye) and then stuck his hands up in his mouth. Other than the spook/panic attack, Ezio handled the vet checking him very well. He said that his teeth look fine. The baby tooth wasn’t loose so he didn’t think that would be a problem unless we banged him really hard in the mouth. So no need to do anything with his teeth.

But of course, we wouldn’t get off from that freakout with nothing.

This is about the size of my palm, quite large

Oh look, another fat leg.

Yup. That’s a large but superficial scratch on his leg and a huge puffy right hind. To be fair, I’m not sure the leg scratch is from that. I didn’t see either of these until the next day. The leg is 100% from him banging around.

Luckily, he was 0% lame on the leg at the walk. Nice over striding and even strides on both legs. I did give him some bute and hand walked him that day (Wednesday) as I wanted to be sure that he recovered. I do believe that he is one of those horses that puffs up from the slightest problems. I did cancel the farrier that was supposed to arrive the next day as it was pretty puffy and he’s already bad with the farrier.

Thursday I longed him to see if he was lame at the trot. He doesn’t move out well on the longe line but his strides were even and he didn’t seem to have any problems. He was on the longe at the walk and the trot for about 10 minutes and then I hand walked him for another 10 minutes. His leg was much less swollen after moving around but I gave him some more bute. Probably didn’t need the bute but it made me feel better so it wouldn’t hurt him to have it for a couple of days.

Given that he wasn’t lame at the walk and trot, I gave Trainer J the green light to ride him on Friday. I trust her to stop working if he feels off. I did check him early that morning and gave him a last dose of bute. His leg was very much less swollen that morning so I felt pretty good about it.

Saturday was my riding lesson and while his leg looked good, I think he’s body sore from all the banging about. He had major issues with turning during the ride. It felt like how he was before we got chiro started. So even though he just recently got it, I ended up scheduling him for the next week to get him re-adjusted. He also didn’t want to trot going to the right. I thought it might be due to his leg being puffy still so I didn’t force the issue. It wasn’t a great lesson. Sunday I tried the front arena but he was still to tense. We did some ground work and then did an easy walk ride in the back arena.

I’m glad he didn’t end up lame from his freak out. It was so unusual. I didn’t even put gloves on to hold his lead since I figured he would be just fine and drugged up if we ended up doing more. Luckily I just had a sore arm from holding onto him. Luckily he didn’t end up hurting himself worse. And I’m just going to have to deal with the minor heart attacks that happen whenever he so much as scratches himself now. Puffy legs incoming.

Never Bridle

Ezio decided he doesn’t bridle this week. At all.

It was a horrible day for him to decide this wasn’t going to happen. It was a Tuesday morning before work, so one of the days where I have the least amount of time. He had been being a bit bad about bridling for about a month but it was mostly just moving his mouth away for a minute. This time, he turned into a giraffe and turned his head away from me. He yanked my back a few times as he lifted his head while my hand was over his ears.

It ended up being a half an hour long fight that ended up transitioning to the arena since I needed space and a fence to deal with him. I finally got him bridled up and it was about 10 minutes before my first meeting of the day was going to start. I couldn’t just not work Ezio that day. He NEEDED to be worked because he couldn’t be allowed to throw a fit over bridling and then get out of it. So I messaged my team that I was going to be missing the meeting and rode him for about 20 minutes.

I honestly can’t recall the details of the ride. I even have notes on rides and there’s nothing about the ride part of this day. I was nearly at tears fighting him over the bridle. It was an incredibly difficult day. We’d gone from me thinking about improving the trot work to prep him for cantering and then I couldn’t get the flipping bridle on my horse. I had moments of wondering if I was ever going to be able to form a partnership with Ezio. Should I just sell him? Should I put him in full time training? I spiraled for the whole day. And I may have blown up my trainers phone.

I’d settled myself somewhat over the course of the day and found a bridling video from a youtube horse trainer I like and so I went out on Wed with a firm plan in my mind. I stripped down my bridle so it was only crown piece, brow band and bit. No reins, no nose band. Minimal parts to work with. Then I went out to the arena and we practiced the exercises from the bridling video. It took about 10 minutes before I could put the bridle on over his halter. I then let him wander for about 10 minutes before we did it two more times and then I called it good.

I don’t see any brat horses here. Nope, not me!

Trainer J rode on Thursday and she told me that she had the same issues with him. She ended up putting the bridle on about 8-10 times before she rode him.

Of course I considered if he was in pain as that was a huge overreaction when he’d been mostly fine before. He’d had chiro recently. Just the week before I think. And my vet had looked at his teeth when she did his vaccines but said that he was good without a float. I tried to look at his teeth a bit myself to see if I noticed anything. But he’s very difficult to look at his mouth since he likes to snap at your hand and try to put your fingers between his teeth.

Friday was a ride day for me and I had plenty of time so I was set to have it take as long as needed to get his bridle on. I was willing to even just ride with his halter if need be. But it went fairly well. I think it took about five minutes to get the bridle on without the halter. He was very good while riding. We even had another horse in the arena for a bit. Ezio was pretty interested in saying hi but wasn’t tense at all. The trotting went well too.

On our lesson on Saturday, Trainer J and I had planned on doing a bridling lesson but with my exercises, I was able to get the bridle on and get out to the arena right as our lesson started. The lesson went really well. There was a fun moment where I sat the trot for a few beats before the downward transition and he gave me a little hop like he was going to do the canter transition. I hope that when we end up doing it, he doesn’t get tense.

I discussed all the bridling issues with Trainer J during the lesson and while we both think that it’s likely attitude rather than pain, we figured we should get it checked just in case. There was a vet scheduled to stop by the barn for a few clinic days so I added Ezio to the schedule.

Small Improvements

My rides during this next week on the weekdays were pretty relaxed. Changing my focus to riding his energy definitely helped. I was able to do short and productive walk-trot rides. I have really been trying to focus on getting Ezio to work harder at the trot. He connects very nicely to the bridle while walking now. But during the trot, he still floats above the bit. Sometimes that’s by keeping his head in the air and sometimes that’s by ducking it against his chest. But its a process thing so I decided to talk to Trainer J during our next lesson to see what she would suggest for encouraging him to reach for the bit.

That Saturday, Ezio got ready quickly for our lesson so I was able to do more groundwork before it started. He generally does the groundwork well enough but I’ve recently tried to ensure that it’s prompt off my aid and correct. He’d love to be a C student all the time but on easy stuff, I think he needs to really work. It also gets him more focused on me before I hop on.

He warmed up pretty well. I didn’t have to circle him much to remind him to relax. We got to the trot and I talked to my trainer about the floating issue. She said she’d noticed that as well and said with an adult, fully trained horse, she would just push them into the bridle. But right now, that’s too much pressure for Ezio. So she wants me to emulate the feel of that but without fully asking. So lightly asking and praising for the correct actions.

I tried that a bit. I think it will take some time to really get the feel of it. Ezio was also tense at the trot that day so I couldn’t really get the feeling down. It was about 7 weeks from our last chiro and we had the chiro scheduled for after our ride. My trainer and I talked about it and planned for how I would ride if the chiro didn’t help the tenseness.

Once of the rare times he wanders across the arena from me during turnout.

He did very well for the chiro but he had lots of places he needed to be adjusted. Its lovely to watch him realize what is happening after that first adjustment and relax into it. His hips needed a lot of adjustment this time along with his lower back. He definitely worried about the lower back adjustments but he leaned into the hip one and I could see a difference in his hip height afterward.

Sunday, I wanted to have an easy workout for him. We’ve only been riding in the back arena since we started training. I want to try to get him used to the other arenas so we aren’t restricted to just one area. We tried on Sunday to go do groundwork and a walk ride in the front arena. But we ended up just doing groundwork. Ezio had just had a new neighbor move in less than 24 hours prior and there were a lot of people moving around. His other neighbor also left the arena just as we walked in so it wasn’t the best setup. We had a few explosions but we did manage to do some groundwork. I called it a day after that. It’s going to be more of a process than I would have liked to get him used to that arena again. But I’ll just have to keep working at it.

Morning Rides

The second week of May was a different sort of frustrating. We’d had two weeks of boot camp and a week of decent riding when the arenas were open after that. And then Ezio was frustrating again in the morning. I ride before work because that’s when I have time. And that’s when I’ve always ridden him. Our lessons are later in the morning, usually around 11ish. But all the other days we ride prior to 9am.

I rode Ezio on Monday morning and he had absolutely zero focus. I had to do so many small circles trying to get him to focus on me that morning. It was very frustrating. I don’t have much more than 20 minutes in the morning usually to ride. It’s not ideal, especially when he isn’t being great. I don’t usually have time to fully work through whatever it is. I did not that day.

Handsome butthead

I spoke to my trainer about it and asked her if she could possibly ride him early one morning since she would be riding him multiple times that week due to me being out of town. I wanted to see if it was me riding or the time of day. She did manage to get an early ride in on him and he was unfocused with her as well. She said that she had a horse that wasn’t able to focus before 10 am when it was younger so it could be that with Ezio. I was at least relieved that it wasn’t him trying to mess with me only.

I was able to ride that Friday morning before I left for the weekend. I changed my focus while riding to managing his tension rather than his attention in the morning. It led to a better ride. It’s not ideal as I need him to be focused on me during the rides. But its more productive to have a ride where we’re working together rather than fighting each other. So I’ll be doing that in the morning for a while. On the days I have more time, I’ll be working on the attention as well as him remaining relaxed.

Bday and Saddle Trial

I wanted to get a ride in on my birthday. It was unfortunately a weekday so I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked to ride. But I really wanted one. I got on and the guys at the barn just so happened to be weed wacking the ditch along the edge of the property. They were doing it near the arena we ride in. So I walked Ezio over to the edge of the arena so he could see them. He wasn’t focused on them at first as he was looking for a cookie from me. Then they moved and he spooked a bit as he saw them. But then he just settled in so I figured he was fine.

And he was. Until they stopped trimming and came up to refill the gas. Then they were HORSE MURDERING MONSTERS! He lost his absolute marbles. People have stood there before. Many people. But that was apparently not good that day. I ended up working him through it by doing small figure 8s on the far side of the arena. They were very small, very tense and I had his reins uber short. But we eventually got through it and did a small little bit of trotting at the end just to wrap things up. It wasn’t the ride I had wanted but I was very pleased with him for getting through it and regaining his brain.

We had a bunch of rain in a very short period of time that closed the arenas for a couple of days that week. I also found a local saddle I wanted to try out on Ezio. I brought it out on the weekend and was intending on trying to ride in it. But when I put it on him, I couldn’t even get two fingers under the gullet. So it did not fit at all. We had a very good ride with my trainer’s saddle. Lots of trotting with transitions, across the diagonals and figure 8s.

Our lesson that weekend was also very good. We did a lot of trotting and my trainer and I are in agreement that he’s at a place where we can start asking more at the trot in order to prep him for cantering and harder work.

I am not on board for harder work mom!

Some Scarlet Talk

Ezio is naturally easier to talk about on this blog because there’s new and interesting (sometimes terrible sometimes good) things to talk about with him. While Scarlet is basically in a holding pattern. He’s generally doing well and we just do the same thing pretty much every day. But he deserves some love on this blog from time to time.

While the flowering trees aren’t great for me (bee allergy), they make some great backgrounds for pictures.

He’s been doing well enough on his walks. I generally walk from 10-20 minutes depending on the amount of time I have. He really loves his scratches during grooming. Especially around the groin area. He rocks back and forth to try to spread his legs enough for me to get in all the cracks. I find it both funny and concerning. Funny because he’s just SO INTO IT. Concerning because he does NOT have the balance to be lifting a leg to give me better access. Please do not balance on a single hind leg.

He got his teeth done at the end of April. It always gives me a heart attack when that happens. It needs to happen but I don’t love it. He’s never been a good dental patient. He doesn’t stand still so they can’t use the stand. He’s not stable enough balance wise for us to feel like we can put him in the crossties. So he gets done in his stall. And that gives him plenty of room to back up. While drugged. With a neurological condition. He’s never fallen over. Nor, if I’m being honest, come close to it while moving. But I always panic as I see him lean waaaay too far. But he gets done and my vet does her best to keep him safe while keeping herself safe. I wish I had stocks and a sling to stick him in for it though.

Recently I’d been worrying that Scarlet wasn’t getting his equiox every day. He usually gets it by me just placing it on his feed. He eats generally pretty easily but he has a lot of food falling out of his mouth when eating. So I became concerned that he wasn’t actually eating his pill. He’d also been stumbling a bit more and having more trouble rolling over and getting up from his roll. It could have just been progression of his neurological issues but I wanted to try to make sure it wasn’t him not getting his pill.

I decided to make some soft treats to shove his pill into so that he had a better chance of eating it. I’ve been feeding him that for a couple of weeks now and I’m sure that he’s doing better. His movement has gotten smoother and he’s been regaining his feet easier. It was nearly instantaneous so I’m really happy that I decided to do this. The only thing I have to do is to make sure that I make treats when I run out.

Other than that, he’s been doing very good. He gets walks, he gets treats, he gets rolls and scratches. He seems to be a very happy senior horse. So we will keep moving and keep giving him his equiox and things will hopefully continue to be good for a long time.

More flowers for my boy.

Boot Camp Part 2

More catchup posts. Probably going to have a few of these. lol

So, the end of April was boot camp part two. And again, I’m very pleased that we ended up doing this as it was a really good jump start back to behaving for Ezio. Monday’s are usually turnout days based on my weekend work. Tuesday, I got to the barn a bit later than I would have preferred and Ezio didn’t want to let me lift his right front. It’s definitely his most stubborn problem.

He was very checked out of the ride. That was extremely frustrating to me as we’d ended on a really good note on Sunday. One day off shouldn’t be enough of a break for him to just completely forget how he was supposed to behave. He was soft, just not focused on me. So the ride was pretty frustrating for me.

He had another turnout on Wednesday and then Trainer J rode on Thursday and Friday. She said she needed to grab her spurs for the second day as he was trying to ignore her leg as well.

Saturday was a riding lesson. I made sure to put my spurs on for that ride as well as his new riding fly mask. The fly mask was a huge hit. He is very sensitive to bugs landing on him and would toss his head constantly prior to getting it. Once I put it on him, he almost completely stopped that behavior.

I only needed the spurs for the warm up part of the ride and ended up taking them off afterward. He’s still sensitive to the trot and I didn’t want any accidental pressure from me with the spurs to make him feel anxious. We did add a level up exercise at the trot for us. We’ve been trotting figure 8s for a while but we added trotting one, walking one. The transitions and anticipating changes has always been an anxiety point for Ezio so it was a really good step for him. We couldn’t get too many done before he started to get tense so we walked again until he relaxed and then finished with a nice trot circle.

Sunday he was a stellar boy. Just amazingly stellar. The lesson before us ended up getting extended quite a bit due to the rider being tossed in a dirty manner and them needing to address the issue with the horse. I should have just tossed Ezio back in his stall as I hadn’t tacked him up yet but I didn’t realize how long they were going to go. I get out about 30 minutes before my ride time and they ended up being on for an extra 30 minutes. So he stood waiting before the ride for a whole hour.

Being absolutely the most cutest and well behaved baby boy. ❤

I was truly proud of his behavior. The horse had been in the dressage arena directly behind where I groom and came trotting out about 8 feet behind Ezio. All he did was spook and stare for a bit and then relaxed quite nicely. And he stood with minimal fussiness while we waited to go ride. He did get his face stuffed with a few extra treats because he was so good.

The riding even went well. Ezio started off relaxed and willing to play. We did a lot of trotting with both continuous figure 8s and transitions. We worked quite a bit on to of him having already been out of his pen for an hour. For a baby horse, that was so much for his attention span. I was so pleased with him.

The boot camp really paid off with getting Ezio back on track. We had lovely lessons and I felt very confident after the confidence bruising first ride back in mid April.

Boot Camp

Oof. These posts have been sitting, titled but without words, in my drafts folder for a very long time. Thus, we’ve got some serious catchup to do. Let’s head back to mid April, post disaster ride.

I’d spoken with my trainer about the wild ride. I had a phone call with her about it actually. It was quite a thorough talk. We came to the conclusion that we needed to have a bit of a boot camp. We’d missed a lot of training rides and lessons due to him being swollen for a couple of weeks. We decided to pack the missing lessons into the last two weeks of April so that he can really have a brush up on his manners.

This turned out to be a very good thing as when I rode him that week on my own, he was really mentally checked out. It felt very similar to how he’d been acting before we added figures into our rides. He wanted to focus on anything but the inside of the arena. He was also quite spooky for him. He’s not one to be spooky like that. He was also quite spooky for his shoeing that week. I’m always mortified after his shoeing. It’s a hard thing to “practice” with him so he gets better. I’m hoping the work we’re doing on standing while grooming helps out with that in the future.

Trainer J rode Ezio on Thursday and Friday of that week. She said its a very good idea that we’re doing this bootcamp. He was sluggish and ignoring the aids. She had to pull out the spurs for the second ride to remind him that her leg actually means something. We talked about it and agreed that he was basically behaving like a C student. He wasn’t amazing but he wasn’t failing either. Just doing enough to pass through the ride.

A snoot

That Saturday was my first lesson in a long time. When I got on, Trainer J explained that she wants me to be extremely demanding on both relaxation and attention. If he gets tense, small yield circle. If his attention goes away, small yield circle. We basically need to temporarily go back to the basic basics in order to remind him what he should be doing.

I had a lesson on Sunday as well. I’m currently mounting Ezio from the fence and I stupidly stood in front of him while lining him up. He spooked at something and almost trampled me. Luckily, while he did surge forward, he caught himself and didn’t just run over me. He did catch my foot slightly with a hoof but not bad. I make him back and yield until he was soft. Spooking is not an excuse for forgetting humans being in the way. But I also am not making sure I’m not stupid enough to stand in front of him.

The ride itself was good. I continued to be insistent that he be relaxed and focused. He was good at that except for tossing his head at the bugs. He’s so offended by bugs being on him. I plan to get him a riding fly mask so that he will have less excuse to be stupid about his head. Despite that, we were able to get some good trotting work and have a transition back into the trot immediately after he broke on his own with no drama from him. It was quite the improvement.