March 2012

March 27, 2012: His Mother's Son

There is something irresistible about the bay colt. Perhaps it's the long, pitch-dark shadow of a mane that falls along his neck, or the forelock that half hides the black bright eyes. Maybe it's the lightning-shaped star between his eyes or the simple attractive sweetness of the gawky legs, long neck and gentle face. For me, the most charming thing about Thunder is the fact that Skye is so clearly in everything he does, while at the same time he is nobody but himself, the big, gentle, dreamy bay colt.

Working with Thunder is something completely new and different for me. It may be that I'm really the only person who has worked with him since he was a few hours old. Of course when we're away workers have cleaned his feet, and Kevin worked with him once or twice when I was at a bit of a loss (I often am), but nobody has consistently trained him except me. Hence the triumphs are mine and his, not his previous owner or trainer's; but I only have myself to blame for the failures.

He may be a colt but he acts like a docile little gelding. He's one of the gentlest horses I've ever had the priviledge to meet. He never bites or kicks or rears or runs away. He nibbled me in the back the other day, but I was currycombing furiously at a muddy spot on his back and he was merely trying to groom me back. Foals do that often, but Siobhan and Dancer outgrew it long before they were Thunder's age. At eighteen months, he's more sensible than a lot of adult horses, and with better manners.

Perhaps the novelty in working with Thunder is that he really is not difficult. Some horses appear to take a mischievous pleasure in making your job hard for you; others are simply more fearful, more intelligent, more challenging than most. Some horses are naturally tough cookies. Not Thunder. He's not the brightest horse I've ever come across; in fact it takes some time to hammer a message into his head but instead of blowing up he just stands there waiting for the world to make sense.

Getting him used to new things is pretty easy. With the exception of the terrible spray bottle and a hosepipe, which he only recently accepted, he takes new things in his stride. Walking over the ringing metal of the scale, entering the narrow crush, having an injection, being dewormed, seeing the farrier, being lunged, walking through water, jumping up banks - he's game for anything. This trait is pleasant now and will be a lifesaver when the time comes for backing: I expect - though you never can tell with horses - that he'll accept the saddle, bridle, and to a certain extent the rider with the same quiet fearlessness as he accepted his first halter or his first injection.

Thunder even ties up and none of my horses tie up without me wondering whether horse, headcollar and gate will be intact at the end of it. Skye never ties up because I never need her to; the others don't because they broke too much stuff and I decided that I was altogether too inexperienced to try it again. I tied Thun up one day because he kept on grazing while I was trying to brush his mane. He gave the lead rein one tug and then stood like a saint.

Yesterday I took the little guy for a walk. He has graduated to going for little out-walks; riding out alone has become a phobia for me - with the exception, of course, of Skye and to some degree Arwen - so I decided to deal with it on the ground before sitting on Thunder. We've gone for four or five out-walks and the sum total of Thunder's naughtiness is one small spook and two or three whinnies in my ear. He's like his mother: He spooks, then has a look, and then either calms down or freaks out depending on the nature of whatever it was he spooked at. I've met only a few horses who naturally spook and then look and then carry on. Others have to be trained to look first.

We walked all the way up to the Unchartered Territory; I decided to challenge him a little and led him through all the Scary Trees (at least, Arwen thinks they are scary). He didn't bat an eyelash. I had a bit of trouble preventing him from eating everything. He stepped over a few logs, ate some leaves, ate some grass, trotted a bit, ate some more leaves and then we headed for home. I spotted my cow, Bestie, with a newborn calf, and had to go and see what was happening. I didn't feel like turning Thunder out and then having to catch him again to groom him - not that catching him is much of an effort; he follows me around if I don't catch him - and wrapped his lead rein around a pole, loosely enough that he would pull himself free without breaking anything. Despite Dancer, who was running up and down just ten metres away and neighing, Thunder stood patiently and grazed while I checked the cow and calf. He accidentally pulled his lead rein free when he turned his head to bite at a fly, but he stayed right where he was, little angel.

Yes... I am quite in love with my little bay colt.

March 25, 2012: Back on my Own Horses

Yesterday was a hectic but very fun day. I always enjoy riding other horses, it makes a nice refreshing change, but it's also so nice to be working with horses that I know like back of my hand.

It started out with a bit of a crazy morning, I had a cow to A. I. (the lovely Debbie, who is our first cow to be A. I.'d for the second lactation in a row) and then after the horses and dogs had been seen to I helped Mom deal with a coughing heifer, a little ox calf who had gotten a needle in his hoof and needed a shot of phenylbutazone, a heifer with navel ill, another heifer with an abscess in her spine (prognosis is pretty good, though) and a blind cow with a stomach upset. (Yes, blind. See the Philosophies page.)

First, as usual, Skye and I went galloping about a bit. Skye is in heat, a fact displayed by the occasional buck and some whimsical staring into the distance and neighing in Achilles's direction. Sorry, girl - you've only ever had one foal and he was planned, let's keep it that way, shall we? Thankfully the mares are now well separated from Achilles by four gates, one being about as tall as I am and made of steel, so they have been apart for the past 13 months and hopefully we shouldn't have any more surprises this season. (Famous last words. Now watch it happen. Murphy's Law is a permanent resident around here).

She was superb as always, feisty, dependable and happy as a bird, tail up, ears up. She's so full of vim and vigour, always looking for a gallop and game for anything, the best friend on Earth. Skye rarely fails to make my day.

We returned from our outride to find Mom and a few workers moving heifers from paddock to paddock. We charged to help and it really is amazing what a difference a horse will make to herding cows. Jerseys are easy to herd because they plod off in whichever direction you want, but Frieslands are a bit more difficult and it's hard to stop an animal three times your size, speed, and agility. It's amazing how fast 350kg of cow can gallop. Not as fast as Skye, though, which is why herding on horseback is so cool.

The cavalry arrived and sped up operations by half. A heifer made a run for it and bolted off down her paddock, bucking, kicking up her heels and taunting the silly slow bipeds trying to catch her. Skye was off after her like a shot and in a few long, eager bounds she caught up. I turned her up a steep bank (atop which the heifer was running) to turn the errant beast and Skye thundered up a bit too eagerly, stumbled, nearly fell, regained her feet and leapt back down the bank to get the heifer who had taken advantage of the slip to veer off course. We got her back without further mishap and Skye and I were both pretty smug at catching up to the galloping heifer so quickly.

I think horseback herding can also be a little less stressful to the cattle. Horses are closer to their own kind than humans are, so I guess it feels more natural.

Skye was very sweaty when we were done and it was epically hot, so I washed her a bit to get the sweat off. She appreciated it enormously and demonstrated this by rolling in the dustiest part of her paddock.

They look so goofy and happy when they roll, more like big happy puppy dogs than horses.

I had two A. I.s in the afternoon as well; a Friesland named Mighty Cute, who was having her fourth A. I. (ugh, I hate it when they don't conceive like that, we haven't had a fourth for ages) and a Jersey heifer named Bruin Rokkie who was having her first A. I. Strangely enough, Jersey heifers are way the hardest to do. They're so tiny at 250-280kg that I can barely winkle the pistolette inside, and quite often, as unfortunately in this case, only get halfway.

Thunder and Dancer hadn't been lunged for weeks, so despite my lunge ring (which was in a state of advanced delipidation) I gave it a shot. Thunder is a good boy, he really doesn't do temper tantrums, in fact I don't think he's ever really bucked on the lunge, but he's rather lazy. I expected this, he really just has such a laid-back attitude that training that deep responsiveness into him is going to be more difficult than with a touchier type of horse. He walks and trots nicely, but his cantering really isn't too good, in fact I only got two strides out of him yesterday. The fact that I have to keep on pulling at his head to make sure he doesn't head for the hills doesn't help, it would be easier if the lunge ring actually had sides all the way round and I could chase him a bit to get the message into his head.

Admittedly, the little guy was having one of his on-a-different-planet days, too, so perhaps we'll do better next time. Thunder's absent-minded days usually don't go very well. He wasn't too absent-minded to beg for a carrot, though. (He never is.)

Dancer did very well. She's a dream to lunge, she has buckets and buckets of energy and likes to play, plus being very smart. Like Siobhan's, her intelligence of often misapplied (used for escaping from her paddock, teasing Thunder and Benjamin, stealing food, etc.) but when she does decide to use it she cottons on very, very quickly. She walks, trots, canters all in perfect balance, she's very supple and leads just as easily with her left leg as with her right leg, which is very cool. The first five minutes of a lunging session demand a bit of patience as she has a lot of excess energy and spends most of the time running about mindlessly, but if you're patient and quietly insist that she has to walk, she settles nicely and then behaves herself, even staying calmly in a walk while you cool her off.

She isn't handled as much as Thunder, though, and tends to fidget a lot whilst being groomed. I rub her down with paraffin and clean her feet every day, but to save time I do it while she's eating, so she doesn't go through the whole getting tied up and standing still thing a lot. I don't usually like to tie horses up (I tried with Siobhan when she was about two and she promptly pulled a gate off its hinges, breaking her lead rein and almost her neck) but Thun and Dancey understand pressure quite well, so I taught them, or at least tried to. Dancer tends to pull back, but Thunder is very quiet unless something else is upsetting him badly.

Last of all I saddled Arwen for a lunging session. Kevin recommended some lunging to help get her energy levels up. She was, in fact, very very good; I'm afraid I didn't concentrate on her as hard as I should have, since Rain was riding Siobhan at the same time and having some trouble so I kept peeking at them to make sure nobody was killing anybody else (when they don't have their tantrums in sync it can get ugly). She walks brilliantly on the lunge, stepping over her tracks by about two hoofprints and really looking like a horse. Trotting is better than under saddle, cantering is about the same, perhaps a bit better. If I wasn't around 5'2" and built like a toothpick, and she wasn't 14.1hh, I would wonder if my weight was the problem. I wondered about her back for a bit, but when we were working with a horse at Bushwillow Stables who had a sore back Kevin showed me how to test their backs for pain and I tried it on Arwen and she was fine. Besides, I think Arwen would buck or rear if she had a sore back.

Rain and Siobhan are coming along nicely. I think perhaps the heat and the young foals are draining Arwen and Siobhan's energy, because Siobhan, though not quite so bad as Arwen, has been pretty lazy too recently. She was very good yesterday, though, trotted beautifully and had one very nice canter with me. She wouldn't canter at all with Rain, but to be absolutely honest neither of them are incredibly good at cantering right now. Siobhan wants a bit more schooling, Rain wants a bit more practice, and then they'll be smashing, don't you think?

Rain's riding has really been progressing by leaps and bounds. This afternoon I convinced her to ride out with me, putting her on Arwen and myself on Skye because a) she has seen Skye prance and leap a few times too many for my "She's not like this with other people..." to work and b) why ride Arwen when I could ride Skye? So we set off in this fashion with Arwen plugging quietly along and Skye striding out with her neck arched and ears up, and d'you know what? It was awesome. Not boring or frustrating or frightening, just great. Rainy stayed on top, gave me no reason to strangle her, and was generally a superstar. Skye was superb of course and pranced all over the place having the time of her life. Arwen was brilliant, so quiet and calm even when we rode in the Woods, in fact mistress Arwen really is a very gentle soul. We trotted a lot, even in the Scary Places (sometimes when Rain moans that it's scary you have to just ignore her and she soon realises it isn't), and we rode in the Woods. I mean, the Woods. Rain wouldn't even ride her old thoroughbred, Rivr, in there and she fell off Arwen once there and wouldn't go near it since. And now she was riding. In the Woods. On Arwen. Without moaning. Laughing, in fact. It was wonderful.

We had a few good canters and then we GALLOPED. GALLOPED, people! Rain! On Arwen! Galloped! And she loved it! Her elbows were waving above her head, her toes were out and she was bent over her horse's mane like a jockey but she actually galloped and Arwen was great.

And Skye was just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. She pranced and pranced. We had a brilliant gallop and she was simply in a splendid mood, eyes shining, coat shining, head tossing, knees thrown up. There is not a single horse in the whole entire universe who is anything quite like my brilliant starlike friend, Skye. It was completely divine. She is such a majestic creature of flesh and fire.

She does have a cheeky streak in her, as vividly demonstrated when I was trying to get Rain to canter and said, "You just give her a little kick, like this, YEEHA!" and whacked my heels into Skye a bit too suddenly. She sailed into the air and gave a magnificent buck. I was shocked but still balanced and when she broke into an obedient canter burst out laughing. Drama queen. I do love these horses and this family.

March 23, 2012: Much Ado About... um... Everything

Yes, yes, you have the usual excuse: I Have Been Busy! Probably not too busy to update my blog, but possibly too busy to update my blog and do a million other little things, like sleep and answer the call of nature. <---- Exaggeration. But still.

At least it has been good busy which is better than not busy and much much better than bad busy. Horse-wise all is going well, everybody is healthy, Skye is SOOOOOO AWESOME (teenager moment, I know) and fills me with wonder every single day at the God Who can make a great hairy beast of flesh and bone perfectly engineered down to its every tendon, its every cell and make this half-ton of hide and muscle lift like a flame, glow like a star, fly like an eagle with thunder on its neck and lightning in its eyes (poet moment, I know). And the most marvellous of the marvellous race of horses is this wonderful golden creature who leaps in the air with the sheer exploding joy of her spirit, then lowers her head and presses a soft velvet nose against my ear, gentle and placid, glittering with life.

Oh, and here she is in her raincoat. She doesn't like it much, but she will like it if it rains in the middle of winter, like last year. It fits beautifully and is absolutely splendid. THANK YOU PARENTS!

She is such a lovely ride; she went through a stage where she could be quite unresponsive to the legs but now she is wonderfully obedient and improving every day. Her beautiful neck, which was sadly deprived of muscle during her illness last year (was it so long ago already?), has long since gotten back its strong crest. Now it seems to have grown even bigger until it's a great shining curve of muscle, soft and supple, bending like a bow when I ask her to bring her nose in with my hands. The best, though, is her temperament. So spirited when we ride out, she's brilliant with beginners. Arwen, whilst extremely steady and quiet (wow, I am talking about Arwen here, am I?), tends to dawdle off on her own business with the helpless beginner on her back. Skye goes about with her head in like a dressage horse. Next week we will be teaching Brandon to canter which should be lots of fun as three weeks ago they were playing Tag and Skye cantered off with him and he thought it was wonderful, so he should stay on, with any luck. Dylan is also ready to post as long as he manages to keep Arwen going.

On that subject, Arwen's apparent laziness has reached a dreadful peak. At least, I hope it is a peak because then it will have to decline sooner or later. It really puzzles me because Arwen has never been the world's liveliest horse but she is worse than before now, worse even than she was when she was pregnant with Secret. Getting her to trot/canter isn't the bad problem, getting her to keep trotting/cantering is a problem and getting her to move at anything approaching a decent pace is THE problem. I would think that she is in pain or uncomfortable if it wasn't for the fact that on outrides, when she may possibly be stressed about being away from Secret, she is much more awake and she still uncomplainingly jumps 90cm spreads or oxers or doubles or whatever it is that you call the wide jumps, provided she has enough momentum.

So I have gotten her micronised maize, AKA cornflakes, back and I'm giving her more feed, too. 900g of a 16% broodmare meal plus her 150g cornflakes each day should wake her up a little. On the up side, she's much calmer on outrides, so I scraped together the guts to take her into the Shuddering Woods and apart from one spook at a duiker she was brilliant. Even the spook was not an issue, anyone would spook at a duiker jumping out right under your nose, and whereas beforehand if she spooked she would stay spooked for the next ten minutes, this time she got a fright, saw it was nothing to be afraid of, and relaxed instantly. One battle won. Now we need to get her to MOVE and bring her nose in and then perhaps we can think about shows.

Siobhanny and Rain have lost some progress, Rain had flu on and off for quite some time and never really got around to riding Siobhan. I'm starting to think that the foals are draining their energy and possibly making them a bit dehydrated in this absolutely baking, dry weather. Siobhan is also pretty listless lately. She's been very good in other ways, though, and Rain is getting to trust her a lot more. She also lost a whole lot of weight and now looks like a horse instead of a four-legged barrel. I've been schooling her once a week or so, and Rain's been riding her once or twice a week, and hopefully with more riding and possibly more feed, and the colder weather, she'll wake up too.

The biggest hurdle with Siobhan now is riding out. Ever since Achilles my insides tie themselves in a knot at the prospect of taking Siobhan out, and especially with Copper I'm terribly nervous of it. I shouldn't be in the light of Arwen's recent reformation, but I am. Nervousness doesn't know about reasoning.

Speaking of foals, Copper and Secret are terribly wild.

NOT. Rain thinks Secret is the ideal height for a ballet barre. Secret thinks that as long as somebody will scratch him all is well with the world. Copper is really very tame and loves people. They both have their feet cleaned every day and they're very good about it; Secret wears his halter and is slowly beginning to understand what it means, though I haven't really had the time to work with him yet, so I do two minutes each morning and that's it. Copper has worn a halter once or twice and didn't mind, but he's just two months old, so I'm leaving him be for the moment.

Oh, the little dog with Rain in the pictures? That's Misha, who belongs to our great-aunt. Tannie Hennah sadly moved out. She left a big gap, though we can still phone her and so on, but tragically she had to leave Mishy and her parrot Bobo behind. Bobo went to Antoinette, parrot lover and Arwen, Siobhan and Achilles's previous owner (also the owner of Faeriewood Friesians, go look, they're lovely), but Rain has always wanted a little dog and Misha has become her little dog. (She had a papillon in mind, but the pug/sausage dog seems to do very well). Misha loves it and my horses are actually very good about her, even Secret, who chases dogs.

Thunder is doing soooo well! I haven't lunged him for a while (my lunge ring is in an even sadder state of disrepair than usual) but we go on walks quite often, the big gawky cold plodding along beside me like an unusually large and obedient dog. His manners are beautiful. You can touch him anywhere, pick up his feet, measure him, walk him through and under and over virtually anything, hose him off, tie him up, whatever. He's a darling. We recently started going for walks outside the big electric fence, only venturing a few hundred metres away, but he takes it all in his stride. He had one spook but like his mommy he spooks, has a look, and then calms down when he realises that nothing will hurt him instead of getting all worked up like the more highly-strung and skittish horses. The stiffness on his left side is probably still there - I won't be sure until I've lunged him again - but I've been making him stretch for his carrot and whereas he was much stiffer on his left than his right they're now about the same, he can touch his hip with his top lip. He nearly sits on his head when he stretches between his forelegs. As you may have deduced, he loves carrots.

The foals... uh... I suppose I could call them yearlings now... well, they're both growing very well. Both are still showing ribs but they're fatter on their backbones, bums and shoulders, and grew spectatularly this last month. Thunder picked up 31kg, Dancer picked up 21kg, and both shot up by two centimetres. At the age of barely eighteen months, Thunder stands 146cm or fourteen hands, one and a half inches tall. If he goes on at this rate I am going to have one HUGE colt on my hands. Not a colt for much longer, though. He needs to be gelded. He's not acting at all like a stallion, but I don't want Arwen's Little Secret to happen all over again. My greatest worry is the actual gelding operation. I know it's a minor op and everything but they'll still be cutting pieces off my poor little baby horsy and if I attend I may just faint on his neck halfway through. Poor little guy.

Today was lessons at Bushwillow Stables day. There are now 33 kids from 3-7 years old doing horse riding and it takes us about two hours to get through them all with three big old thoroughbreds, Pumpkin, Sunny, and my beloved Double Reef (who is not actually mine much as I may wish it so). Thankfully the trio are deeply patient, probably more patient than the human instructors. Afterwards I got to ride Reef, managing to yank him out from under the nose of Grethe (another student) much to her dismay (he is something of a favourite). Man that big bony dark creature can canter. He can slow down to a canter about as fast as a trot and he does the loveliest canter from a walk, although the first time round we shot off on the wrong leg and Bobby's owners yelled "WRONG LEG!", cue embarrassment. I spent most of the ride trying to figure out how to know which leg is in front without looking down like a beginner. Got it right in the end and we were doing figures of eight in canter afterwards (with a few steps of trot between circles to change legs, flying changes are frankly beyond me). Then we jumped a bit and Reef was much less explosive than usual and didn't throw himself at it from two metres away, he was brilliant, in fact, though I'm afraid I can't say the same for my riding.

After that I got to ride this VERY cool horse:

This is the magnificent Magic, a young thoroughbred gelding. He's 15.3hh (I am getting used to all these big horses - never rode anything bigger than 15.1hh for years) but somehow feels bigger when you're on him. He's only halfway schooled but I think he's brilliant. He's very muscular in his haunches and shoulders, the scrawny neck needs some work but that will come, and he jumps AMAZINGLY. Nothing like Arwen. He feels over a 40cm cross like Arwen feels over a 90cm jump on a very good day. The whole chest and shoulders and forelegs seem to come straight up into your face and he bends his whole body forward and over and it's such a beautiful feeling. Plus he is a lovely grey colour and has a kind face.

Next came my first ever paid horse training job, Romeo. He's so much bigger and more muscular than when I first rode him about six weeks ago, Kevin has been putting a lot of work into him. He has loads more energy too. For a horse who's not yet three years old, he's an amazing ride. His neck and loins are much better than they were, though he's still very narrow in his chest and it feels a bit like sitting on a coathanger for the first few minutes. He'll grow out and when he's all grown up he will be a splendid horse. I'm amazed and delighted at his temperament; he's just a baby really but so quiet, so calm and just a joy to be around. He looks for people to come and give him attention, even mean old me who makes him run around and do figures of eight and trot over poles and work in a frame all sorts of weird things.

Romeo: So are you gonna come and give me some attention now?