Month: October 2019

Beege tells me he's not at all confident when he runs around and whinnies when I take Odin out.  How to help a horse with arthritis find confidence?  1) Routine: take Odin out as many days in a row possible, even if just for 15 minutes.  Beege will eventually understand that Odin is coming back and that he does survive separation.  2) Practice some skills that Beege is good at: targeting, friendly game, backing up, moving forward, changing direction, sidepass over a log in both direction (left to right needs more practice), weave around cones, turn on the haunches and forehand.

Recently I mentioned a book by British trainer, Vanessa Bee, also founder of obstacle competitions for horses.  Her books explain very simple training methods to keep you and horse safe plus do some fun exercises.  Because this farm is a horse farm turned to chicken/pig farm and back to horse farm, there are a bunch of things around that make great obstacles: logs, trees from which to hang flags, a grown over sand round pen space.  Plus I have cones given to me from another horse person.

Two logs set in parallel can make a chute to walk forward in then back out and/or side pass over, turn on the forehand, sidepass in both directions facing the other way, walk around the mounting block to the first flag attached to the snowmobile trailer, weave around the cones, then target the flag hanging from the tree, reverse, turn on the forehand then stop in a bare sandy spot that will eventually be designated with a hula hoop on the ground.  Visual cues are good.

Beege and I practiced this pattern three times, not perfectly but pretty good really.  He even let me touch him with the flag, which he usually regards as a dangerous firebrand that is going pierce him through the heart.  What I think is that taking him through a few exercises that give him confidence, teaches him that he can be confident about other obstacles. Then I tried to take him through the course at liberty.

He obliged me for a little while, it was a little sloppy but after we targeted the final flag in the tree we were supposed to turn on the forehand and stop on the sandy spot.  Nope.  He wanted to be with Odin again who was in an adjacent pasture.  We will work on longevity.  Perhaps a little clicker training with treats as a reward to keep him with me for a little longer.  

This afternoon I will work a bit with Odin, maybe get on him again with the bareback pad.

When you work full time it's easy to get stuck in the routine of horse care and skip any training except for the "be polite at feeding time" training.  And "move when I'm mucking your stall with a pitchfork" training.  Plus there are a million chores to do to convert former horse barn to chicken/pig barn back to horse barn.  Most recently I shoveled 3 yards of pea gravel to make "porches" for each entrance of the horses' stalls.  That took two weekends of back-breaking work.  Then we had gutters installed on the barn.  So much better for managing mud!

Recently I was able to change my work schedule so that I have Wednesday afternoons off.  This gives me time in the middle of the week, in the daylight to do some real training.  But I needed a goal.  Coincidentally my favorite trainer announced that she was planning an obstacle clinic later in October.  I'm very interested but October weekends are basically full with visitors, a farrier appointment, and a scheduled weekend at work.  Still, what would I need to be able to do to take one or both horses to obstacle training?

They need to be able to be separate from each other, they need to focus on me, go where I ask them to go, and trailer load.  The first step was separation.  At first I wasn't psychologically ready for Beege to run around like a freak when I took Odin out of sight, possibly hurt himself because he has arthritis and not enough sense to walk quietly, and I'm not super excited about tearing up part of the pasture.  I've seen what kind of muddy mess he can create.

What to do?  Phone a friend, who advised "pull your hair out and cry, then go fetal", which she admitted was no help whatsoever.  Except that it was super helpful to know that my reservations were not unique and that I'm not a complete failure for not knowing how to address this very common problem.  Some horses are fine left by themselves but most are not.  I'm not ready for a third horse to be a companion horse to my companion horse.  Eventually perhaps but for now, I shovel enough poop every day.

That afternoon I put on Big Girl pants, plugged in the electric fence and took Odin for a walk down the trail to the back of the property.  Predictably Beege galloped and whinnied.  Odin and I explored the bridge over the "salmon" stream (dry all summer), and looked at giant stumps then went back.  Beege finally took a breathe when we returned but then Odin and I went up the driveway toward the house to check out the blue tarp over the weed wagon.  Randy was just about to leave for a mountain bike ride but took a couple laps around the driveway so that Odin could see that bicycles aren't scary at all.  Then we went back to a lathered Beege.  Such relief when I let Odin back in the pasture.

The next day I repeated the journey with Odin.  Beege was sweaty but not lathered.  The following day I didn't have time to repeat the exercise so Beege got a day off from terror.  Yesterday I repeated the exercise.  Beege whinnied and paced but by the time we returned, he was still dry.  That, to me, is progress.  Real progress.

Feel free to follow my horses' progress on Instagram or Facebook, search for cmeqnomad.