Post-Bayfield, Pre-Roebke's Run Madness

I will have a longer Bayfield-related post in a few days. Yes, we went in June this year, and it was EPIC, Royal-wise. I just don't have the time or energy to write a befitting post right now. So, here's all the other things that we/I've been up to.

Royal's been mostly good. We had a couple sessions on the ground this week where he seemed really calm and connected. I've been using the strategy of letting him run out his adrenaline using the "Let Me Help You" technique. It works really well for Right Brain Extroverts. Basically, if your horse is just full to the brim of adrenaline like Royal tends to be, you send them out on the circle, and encourage them to speed up for a full circle by smacking the ground with your stick and string. Not in a harsh or mad way, just in a "c'mon, you got get the tickle out of your feet" sort of way. Let them run for three laps, and if they don't slow down or try to connect with you, encourage them again for a lap, and repeat until they connect. Now it only takes one or two times for Royal to stop and look at me like "now what?" So, that's encouraging.

Today, it was a bit of a different story. I wanted to ride in the back pasture where the horses have been for the past few weeks, figuring that he'd been okay with everything. It was very hot and humid and I wanted to keep things simple. Royal, however, was of the very strong opinion that the tree and the cows in the neighboring pasture were GOING TO EAT HIM. And I was off the very strong opinion that NO, THEY WERE NOT. And we had a very spirited discussion about that, with Royal wanting to channel his inner llama and gambol about with his head in the air, and me insisting that he travel around like a sane horse. So we mostly followed the rail, which the occasional-partial-disengagement-spiraling-into-full-disengagement circle when he started to ignore me. It took a while and both of us got pretty sweaty, but in the end, he stretched out and trotted around smoothy, rhythmically, and relaxed. Which makes me feel good about Roebke's Run next weekend. It'll be our first year there, and I have no idea what to expect. So, being able to help Royal get out of a RB fit at home makes me feel better about doing it there.

In other news:

(Sorry about the Spanish subtitles. I couldn't find a version without them) I've been running! I've almost completed week 3 (of 10) of the Couch to 5K program, and so far it's gone (mostly) well. I actually started back in May, but when I got sick, I had to stop for a few weeks, and then I had to start all over again. But, despite the bumps, the programs working well. What helped was finally joining a gym and using a treadmill to pace myself. My problem when I tried running before was that I would run too fast during the run intervals and burn myself out too quickly into it. But using the treadmill and jogging at 4 mph helps me to pace myself and not get too tired. So far I'm up to 3 continuous minutes of running with walk breaks in between, and next week is 5 minutes of running. Eep, Eventually I have to run for 20 whole minutes. Double Eep.

But if other people can run marathons, I can do this.

Returning To The Land Of The Living

Well, 2013 got off to a terrible start didn't it?

I'm moving on as best I can for now. I'm not entirely sure if I'll try applying for vet school again this year or not. There's a very teeny-tiny chance that Wisconsin could come through for me, but I highly doubt it. In the meantime, I'm making plans for the coming year and trying to get back to normal.

It's been a nice week, weather wise. Mid-to-high thirties all week, so Royal and I have been out doing stuff.

Playing and riding in the snow has been good for him, I think. Instead of schlepping around like he normally wants to do, he has to pick up his feet and start using some different muscles than he's used to. I've tried to be very careful in how we're going about this; given that he had so much time off, I'm trying to slowly increase our time spent in the snow, other than when he decides to go running around on his own time. So far we're up to about 15 minutes walking and 5 minutes trotting at a time. We've also gone for walks on the dirt road, which is exciting and hair-raising. The road close to the house is fine, but turns into glare ice when we start to go up the hill, so we have to stick really close to the side and occasionally go tramping through the snow in the shoulder. I imagine that's what a passage feels like.

But Royal would often act cold on our rides, so I went down to Dover Saddlery on Tuesday and got a light blue quarter sheet. It was a hit with the cats.

Royal also seemed to like it too, after I go it all figured out. At first it was really moving around, and being blown around by the wind, but the best configuration appears to be having it between my legs and the saddle (holding the front in place) and having the tail cord under the tail (holding the back in place). 

Sorry about the crappy quality. One day I will have a cell phone that takes good video.

Anyway, he apparently felt so good about the sheet that he turned into Philosopher Royal. Philosopher Royal likes to stop and stare into the distance for no reason, but is happy to be gently nudged on again. Except for the time he took off briefly, but he was easy to stop and we resumed our walk.

Now of course, it's cold again, so I may not be able to do stuff with Royal for a while until it warms up later in the week. 2+ months to go until spring.

Oddness

We've had an easy time the past couple of weeks. The first bit of good news is that Operation Reverse Weight Watchers is working! Royal has been gaining weight very nicely for the past month, and is looking a lot better. I switched him to the Senior Glo (and the recently, Cool Calories) and he is doing well on that. Right now, he's on 3 lbs a day, and he absolutely loves it. His hindquarters have filled in really well and his barrel looks a lot better. I would still like to see him add at least 50 lbs before winter hits, but that seems very doable. He knows the sound of the pellets going into the bucket and licks it clean. The weather has been gorgeous and the horses have been basking in the sun.

We've been playing with the figure-8 pattern both OnLine and Freestyle, and working on advancing it with flying lead changes on the ground. It took him a couple sessions, but he's getting better. He switches front consistently, but not always behind. If he's fully focused on the task, everything switches in one clean stride, but if he gets fast and emotional, only the front switches. So, my task was to keep him from getting too emotional, and everything would work.

Until Thursday. I went up Thursday evening and Royal was... odd. Not lame or sick, but not himself. We tried playing OnLine and he was lazy. Really lazy. Until he wasn't. Then, all of a sudden, he would have these wild bursts of energy and almost rip the rope from my hands, and then go back to being lazy. Hmm. Nothing I did seemed to change anything, until I asked him to sideways towards and over one of the Bloks I was using as a marker. Which he did very well.

Still, he felt odd. No elevated temperature, heat in any of his legs, or loss of appetite (he ate all of his grain), so I couldn't quite figure it out.

Friday, he got really weird. He came right up to me in the pasture, but while I was grooming him, he very deliberately stepped on my foot. I say deliberately because he didn't put any weight on it and was looking straight at me while he did it, with an air of "What are you gonna do about it?" Well, I'll have you back up to the end of the line and not come back until you look at me all nice-like. Then he decided to be more of a moving target than usual, so he found himself tied to a tree.

He was less than happy.

I decided to try riding and it was more of the same. Laziness and herdboundness punctuated by really fast trotting and cantering. I couldn't quite get him focused and ended the session on kind of a "meh" note. Still no temp, heat in legs, and he wolfed down his grain. Hmm.

Saturday was pedicure day and he was crabby at first. He was tied close to Coco-pony and decided to try bullying him, to the point where he bit Coco hard. That meant that Coco got untied and was able to graze freely, while Royal stayed tied up. That miffed him very much. He behaved for the farrier and seemed very cheerful afterward.

Today he was still odd. He seemed very happy while I groomed and tacked him up, but riding was really erratic. He kept circling by the gate and again, I couldn't keep him focused. Again, we ended on a "meh" note.

One weird session is no big deal, but three is alarming. It feels like something's up, but I don't know what. The first thing to consider is physical issues, namely gastric ulcers. They seem to be the go-to cause for any "miscellaneous" problems, and he does have a few risk-factors. 1. He gets grain. A grain designed to be easy on the digestive system, but it's still grain. 2. He's active. Light-to-medium work, but part of that was showing. 3. We just did a lot of traveling. We trailed back and forth to Steepleview, which added up to 6 hours of trailering total, and that can take a tole on a horse. But on the other hand, he has a lot of mitigating factors: 24/7 turnout, lives with a bunch of horses, unlimited access to forage, fairly light riding schedule. In addition, he's not showing any overt symptoms, such as girthiness, unexplained weight-loss (quite the opposite, in fact), or frequent colics. So, it's hard to say. The only way I can know for sure is to trailer him to a specialty equine hospital ($$), have him scooped ($$$$), and do a course of Gastroguard and Ulcerguard ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$).

There are cheaper alternatives, such as omeprazole granules ("pop rocks") or a mixture of aloe juice and MSM powder, but I don't want to try anything right now. The horses will be on hay pretty soon, and we'll see what happens then. If it's just a weird blip, then no big deal. If it continues, that I'll start looking into treatment options.

I hope this is nothing serious.

Spring Break: Now With 73.6% More Spring!

Well, that was, surreal.

We had freakishly gorgeous weather all week. Even Monday (the "crappy" day) was amazing by March-in-Minnesota standards, and Royal molted all week. It's almost too nice, and I'm expecting the other shoe to fall soon...

Monday it was "cold" (60s) and rainy, and of course Royal took full advantage of that:

He looked so proud of himself when I got him out of the paddock. It's hard work finding the muddiest of the mud, I suppose. I managed to get him somewhat cleanier...

The dark patches are wet hair; apparently the mud was REALLY wet. After this we went ground-driving on the road, which he seemed to find interesting. We haven't done any ground driving in a while, and both of us were a little bit rusty. He still found the area by Needledick's house scary though. I can't say I blame him, since there are scary noises coming from there all the time. Other than that, he did very well.

Tuesday I attempted to do some one-rein riding/prep for bridleless, but that didn't turn out well. I was already in something of a bad mood, and Royal feeds of my moods like crazy. It didn't help that the birds had returned to the arena and were making a lot of noise. Eventually I gave up and took him out on the dirt road. He was a little jittery, so I asked for a trot which turned in a canter. I threw caution to the winds and asked for a hand gallop, and he obliged. He went for a while, before I asked him to slow down and turn around. And run like hell, which he did. Damn that horse is fast. After that, we were able to focus on some stuff in the arena.

Wednesday I decided to torture BJ with some grooming and mane-taming. Which turned out okay. He didn't shed as much as I thought he would, but he was fairly tolerant of my fussing around. Cutting his mane didn't look as good as I hoped (he was kinda squirmy) but it was alright.

I messed with Royal after that, cutting his mane as well. But I discovered a bit of a problem: his mane is REALLY thick in the middle of his neck, around three times as thick as the ends. So no pictures until I get done thinning that section out, which is a very slow process. I'm using the Lynn Palm method of "pulling" the mane, which doesn't seem to bother him too much. But it can't be done in just one session, so I'm going slowly and it's improving. But if I ever get in a financial jam, I could probably sell his hair for something.

Thursday was JUMPING DAY! I began with a lot of ground prep since we haven't done any jumping in the past couple of months. I also had an idea about helping Royal conquer his fear of tarps and stuff on the ground. I thought I was going pretty basic with the Blue Blanket, but it occurred to me that maybe I haven't gone basic enough. So I set up two poles about two feet apart to simulate a ditch. And even that got the hairy eyeball for a second before he hopped over it. For riding, I set up our favorite pole-to-crossrail and a 2-foot single. The actual fences went well (I think I'm getting over my initial nervousness that usually comes with jumping), and I recreated the "ditch," which got a halt with hairy eyeball. Back up, try again with a gargantuan leap over the teeny "ditch." It took a couple more times, before he skipped over it like it was barely there. I think we're getting there.

Friday I had to meet with someone for a while before I could go to the farm, so I only had a little time to play with Royal before I had to go to work. I tried to play with yielding to pressure on the hind legs. He's still pretty iffy on that, which he demonstrated with a lot of kicking and deer-in-the-hindlights expressions. He improved a bit and on Saturday we were able to play a bit with the Blue Blanket. This time the strategy was just to let him retreat as much as he needed and figure it out for himself. He still seems no more comfortable with it, but eventually he'll get it.

Sunday was more Game of Contact, and he is really improving. We're steadily progressing into Stage 3 and he's getting it. He still trying to yank the reins out of my hands at first, but I can really feel him start to hold the contact and drive from his hind end. My posture is also starting to improve, if I can remember everything. Another ride on the road in the sun to close out what has been the best Spring Break I've ever had. I wished it could have lasted forever, but all good things must come to an end.

It was fun while it lasted.