It's Quarters for Me

The magic of stretching

2012-03-06T11:34:00.002-05:00

Have you ever looked at your horse and suddenly saw something you've never seen before that's been there the whole time? I had that moment over the winter, when the funkiness of Coriander's left shoulder suddenly appeared before my eyes. His left foot looks clubbed compared to his right and he nearly always stands with the left leg back, that's something I already knew- but I finally noticed that his left scapula and the muscles around it are much more prominent than on the right.

His typical stance, note the left leg back

A left leg forward miracle! Notice the funkiness in the shoulder up by the withers

See how the right shoulder looks different?

It made me wonder if it might be the muscles in his shoulder causing the club foot more than an issue with the actual bone (haven't gotten that foot x-rayed yet, that'll get done this spring). Maybe he's been in that habitual posture so long, possibly by copying his mother- Gwen does the same thing, that the muscles have knotted and shrunk until they pulled his left leg shorter than his right?

I felt that theory was worth testing, fortunately my Mom got me Jim Masterson's book of horse massage for Christmas so I had a place to start. I started out with the simplest exercises of dropping the knee down and back and pulling the leg forward and down to stretch the shoulder. Was I doing it quite right? I doubt it- yet after diligently doing the stretches every day for a week he started standing with his left leg straight down instead of angled back. Sometimes he even stood for minutes at a time with his left leg forward! Amazing.

It's much too soon to tell what the long-term benefits are going to be, I've only been doing these stretches for about two weeks, but so far it looks worthwhile. It certainly won't hurt him to do the stretches even if they don't smooth out his funky shoulder.

Here's another massage therapist to look at: This is April Battles, her technique is slightly different from the Masterson Method but I've been able to mix in a few of her stretches to my routine as well. Particularly the shoulder stretch forward and across.

Has anyone else incorporated stretching routines for their horses? Have you had any good results from it?

Cutting edge laminitis treatment?

2012-02-27T10:46:00.001-05:00

I'm borrowing this from Fran Jurga's blog. Is this the future of laminitis hoof care?

At least they didn't nail that thing on. What are the stem cells supposed to do exactly?

So many questions for you, Vern Dryden, so many questions...

Cogitating

2012-02-21T10:49:00.002-05:00

I've been getting busy on the exercises that Katie gave me for Coriander: I've been using circles and shoulder-fore to try to get a specific canter lead, the canter cue is good but getting the left lead is still a bear. I'll get him bent nicely to the left, cue the canter, and he sneaks that right shoulder out almost every time. I've seen this horse pick up the left lead canter fluidly without me on his back, so I don't think it's a physical issue- which would point to me being the issue except that when I'm on the friesian right lead canter is harder. Conundrums.

I've got some cones set up in my makeshift field ring to work on the square/turn on the forehand exercise. I took Gwen with me to set them up on Sunday, and for the first time ever she was fine going that far away from the herd by herself (squee!)! I'm so proud of her, she's been doing so well lately. Trotting under saddle has become her new favorite thing, which means that she's done a lot of "I'm going to trot now" transitions without me. I made the mistake of rewarding her the very first time she spontaneously offered trot so now she thinks she'll get rewarded for it every time. I'll have to remember not to click her for spontaneously offering canter. We've been doing a lot of trot/walk transitions lately, I don't want to squash her forward but I can't have her running off without me either. Horse training- not as easy as you'd think!

The other thing I've been working on with Coriander is jaw flexions. I've been merging info from a couple of different sources for this: Katie, Mark Russell, Mike Schaffer, and JME's excellent post here. We've been making progress at the halt, he's started softening and dropping his head as soon as I pick up the reins, but moving it's a different story- he immediately braces against me. We have a lot more work to do there.

It bothers me that there isn't more information available about jaw flexions, it seems like they're a basic tenet of classical dressage, Baucher was big on them, yet it's like no one talks about it, much less films it and puts it on YouTube. Seriously, this cruddy video is the only one I can find.

Plus, since no one is talking about it they don't tell you that weird stuff can happen. On Saturday I worked on flexions with Coriander and then asked him to walk off. Five strides later his front legs buckled like he was going to roll, I leaped off and kept him from going all the way down (no WAY is he rolling on my Ansur), but I couldn't get over how odd it was for him to do that. Then I found this video of a horse reacting to jaw flexions (the action starts at 19 seconds):

Was his attempt to roll a reaction to the jaw flexions? Poor boy, there I was mad at him for what might have been a neurological response.

I'll have some more information about these elusive flexions soon...

PS- please let me know if that obnoxious word verification thing comes up. I meant to get rid of that.

My new logo

2012-02-14T16:09:00.000-05:00

One of my talented coworkers made this up for me. The blue squigglies in the hoof are supposed to represent the NY Finger Lakes. I like them because not only do they represent the lakes, but they also kind of look like sole pigmentation. What do you think?

Update on the pathological hoof

2012-02-10T14:16:00.001-05:00

Do you remember that tall, contracted hoof I posted a few weeks ago? Well I took a risk and sent my mark-ups to the trimmer who posted them online.

Why a risk, you ask? Because you never know how people will react to advice from a stranger.

Fortunately AC welcomed my comments and has worked very hard to make improvements to these hooves. Just look at how good they look only a few trims later!

Good work AC!

KISS

2012-02-07T15:08:00.001-05:00

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

This is my new mantra. My local dressage instructor asked me after my lesson last night if I had any questions.

"Yeah, how am I supposed to go from riding this advanced horse to my guy who's barely at training level?"

You see, I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what I should be expecting my boy to be capable of right now. I'm having a hard time figuring out what exercises I can do that will make him work without trying to push him too far out of his capabilities. I'm feeling like I need a therapist instead of an instructor.

Fortunately for me, I have a multitude of riches when it comes to dressage instructors. You may know that in addition to my local trainer, I also do video lessons with Katie. This is an incredible service that she offers to people like me that don't have a horse trailer and live far, far away from her. So far she's been the only "eyes on the ground" to help me with Coriander's training.

I asked her about the exercise I wrote about in my last post- the walking shortening and extensions- and she instantly nixed the shortening, saying the risk of ruining his walk was too high, but that it was safe to try the extensions. Well, they haven't been going that well and I've been getting worried/frustrated. He doesn't understand the concept of extension, he just trots when I add leg (my local instructor thought that was great because it shows that he's responsive to my aids- she also reminded me that it takes a year to teach a horse to use his back correctly). So now I'm concerned that I'm just confusing the hell out of my horse. In other words, I've been freaking out.

What I normally do when I'm freaking out about horse related stuff is turn to Google, so I went looking for proper exercises for training level horses and I found this:

This image gave me a face-palm moment- of course we need to focus on rhythm, why am I trying to skip rhythm and relaxation to go straight to connection?

Oh yeah, because I'm learning about impulsion with the friesian right now. It made me realized that there's a huge gap in my education, Katie is busy trying to teach me about rhythm while the local instructor put me on a horse that's four steps up. I'm missing the bits about relaxation and connection. And thus my confusion.

This is good, that knowledge makes me feel a bit better about myself, but it doesn't really help me with where to go with Coriander. And then I remember (another face-palm moment) that Katie already told me exactly what to do, I just had to open up her last lesson and refresh my memory:

use cavaletti to encourage Coriander to stretch over his topline
ask from prompter departs and transitions, focusing on rhythm and not letting him peter out
fine tune the box exercise focusing on turn on the forehand in motion and keeping him straight between the corners
use circles to get him to pick up the correct canter lead
use gentle jaw flexions to get him to relax when I feel him brace his neck
take up stronger contact to help him balance
work on leg yield at the trot

Beautiful, sweet clarity. This is a plan I can stick to without fear, confusion begone!

Vacation is OVAH!

2012-02-03T13:35:00.001-05:00

Well, that was my intention at least, but more on that later.

My boy went on an extended vacation in November, part of that was to make myself focus on Gwen, the other part was that the time changed and it was simply too dark to ride after work anymore. Apart from a bare handful of rides, Coriander's had the last three months off. Not to say I haven't done anything with him in that time- we've worked quite a bit on head lowering and getting him to follow the rein aids sideways and down- but I did it all with my feet firmly on the ground.

Now I haven't had the last three months off, oh no. I've spent the last three months puttering around on a 2nd/3rd level friesian (I'm still training level- mind you), I've become accustomed to a certain standard of carriage and have become "discerning." Meaning that when Coriander starts to get sluggy and floppy I'm going to notice, and I'm going to want to do something about it.

First, my boy who was used to wandering around the trails on the buckle now has to contend with contact. Not much contact, but enough to have a feel of his face. Walking forward even into this gentle contact has totally blown his mind, he initially took some convincing to keep going forward.

Second, those leg yields that I thought he knew? Well he's got one to the left but going to the right? He immediately falls on his right shoulder with his hindquarters trailing out helplessly to the left. How did I never notice this before?

Third, I've now incorporated some equine pilates to the ride. Now when I throw in a halt I add the butt pinch to ask him to raise his back. Hopefully this will help him gain some of the back strength he needs to carry us better? Time will tell.

Fourth, forward! Last Monday I had a great lesson on the friesian where we worked on gait transitions within the walk and trot (working walk/trot, medium walk/trot, short/semi-collected walk/trot). I immediately thought of Coriander, the transitions within the walk could be a great exercise to help him get back in shape! Well, the next day I pulled out the bareback pad and gave it a try. The results were interesting.

Coriander has a fantastic walk, it's one of my favorite things about him. Sometimes, when he really gets going, it feels like he's actually doing a running walk- it's wicked smooth and it feels like his hind feet are landing directly below his sternum. That horse can move! Unless he doesn't want to, in which case he plugs around like a beginner school horse with his feet glued to the ground. My first task was to get him to actually move instead of plug around -while having a feel of his face. Trying for medium walk from that was also a little difficult, I'm not really sure there was any change in his stride length at all. But the worst was when I tried to get him to pull himself together and shorten his strides.

"Would you like to halt?" he said. "No, keep going forward."

"How about a leg yield?" "No, keep going forward."

"Shall I pop my shoulders out?" "No, keep going forward."

He did eventually get a few strides forward, for which he was promptly rewarded. After this I kept it up, changing the length of his strides until for one brief, shining step he actually lifted his back and stretched his face forward into my hands. Holy cow, click and treat for that one!

And of course, my brain was instantly flooded with images like this: of a quarter horse actually winning at PSG.

Hey, it's just one stride, but every journey starts with just one step. Then he did something else great: When I asked him to halt and lift his back again, he actually stretched down and stayed in that position on his own- which I thought was pretty danged cool. Coriander may have used his back for the very first time and now needed to stretch!

Unfortunately since Tuesday, my back has been on revolt and I haven't been able to ride. As soon as I can ride again I'm going to keep exploring this exercise and see where it takes us. Self carriage school has begun!

Gwen's first abscess

2012-01-30T10:50:00.001-05:00

Gwen tried to kill me this weekend. Seriously, I'm still trying to put my heart back together.

The footing here in NY has been awful this winter. We've gotten quite a bit of rain which turns the pasture to mud, which the horses then slog through and rut up. Then we get a hard, hard freeze and all those ruts get frozen solid, making it very difficult for the horses to get around. There were days when Butch, the belgian boss-hoss would just stand in the run-in all day waiting for me to bring hay to him because the ground was simply too difficult for him to walk on.

This brings me to last Saturday, I'd just spent the morning struggling with a draft horse who really didn't want her feet done, when I went out to spend a pleasant afternoon riding my two lovely horses. Unfortunately Gwen came up to the gate hobbling on three legs and acting like her left hind was broken (Kristen, I'm feeling ya right now). She stood around without any weight on it and when she walked she just stabbed her tippy-toe into the ground, holding as little weight as possible.

I immediately picked her foot up to see if something was horribly wrong with it, there was a small flap on her frog sticking out, it wasn't enough to cause her so much pain, but I cut it off anyway and stepped back to see her reaction. Just the same. Then she very carefully lifted her hind leg up and to the side, took her little muzzle and pointed to her hoof, "it hurts there, fix it please," she said.

My heart promptly broke and fell all over the ground.

I put some bute in her feed and went to text my vet. Vet said check her for scratches, put her in a stall, cold hose, feed her bute, and check her temperature, call back in two days if she hasn't improved.

Check for scratches: check, no scratches.
Put her in a stall: anti-check, not going to happen
Cold hose: anti-check, hose has been put away due to freezing winter temps
Feed her bute: check, already done
Check her temperature: anti-check, I don't have a thermometer- add buy a thermometer to my mental wishlist
Call back in two days if she hasn't improved: enthusiastic check!

Well guess what? On Sunday morning that darn mare was 70% better! At first sight, she was weighting the foot with only a slight limp. Upon hoof inspection I found the smallest drop of draining fluid coming from the tiniest hole in her medial heel bulb. All that drama over the most miniscule abscess ever?

Seriously, it's like she's taking up scaring me to death as a winter hobby...

Liebster Award

2012-01-24T10:56:00.000-05:00

Big thanks to Story at All Gear No Skill and Kristen at Sweet Horse's Breath for nominating me for the Liebster Award. Of course this means I have some work to do...

5 Up-and-Coming Blogs You Should Read:

Um... I've been a little busy at work and in my personal life (trying to buy land from my husband's family has turned into a major soap opera. Back taxes, unfinished mortgages, multiple lawyer visits- OH MY!) so I haven't been on the lookout for new blogs lately. I am well aware that new blogs that I'd love are being born everyday, just waiting for me to find them. Here is what I have found lately:

Adventures with Shyloh (I know you've already gotten this but...)
Just Horses
I Can Haz
Memoirs of a Horse Girl (your blog still counts as new, right?)
Reflections on Riding

If you've just started a blog you'd like me to read, please leave a comment and I'll come by for a visit :)

A mid-winter walk

2012-01-22T21:54:00.000-05:00

The worst part of winter is feeling cooped up, at least it seems that's what my horses think. They have almost 15 acres of pasture to roam all day every day and they are bored to tears of it.

Are we going to do something interesting today?

Without enough daylight to play with them during the week, and the last two weekends being bitter cold I really haven't done much with my Quarters lately. Last weekend they told me they'd like some more to do, thanks. You see on that beautiful 7F degree day, they decided that after they ate - while I was filling hay bags - they were going to go exploring. Cue me spending the next twenty minutes in the freezing cold chasing them around the fields at a fast walk while they took a looksie around the joint. Rotten beasties.

Gwen sporting her new marehawk, I kind of like this look

Fortunately, today the temps rose above 30F (gasp, heatwave) so I haltered them up and we went for a walk. It was cold, and a bit windy, but the sun was out and the skies were blue. For January, it was a beautiful day.

Coriander would like to know if my plans include food

So we went into the back fields, and it was such a nice day that I decided to sneak into the neighbor's back field (Coriander's favorite place) and let them graze a bit. As soon as he realized where we were heading he took off at a trot up the hill, eyes keenly trained for the little deer trail across the hedgerow. Have I mentioned that field is his favorite place?

Gwen made this eating dinner

There's nothing like spending some time with your horses in the snow to help you appreciate their cold weather adaptations: their hooves, totally impervious to the fetlock deep snow; and their clever lips, dusting the snow off the tender shoots of grass closer to the ground. If it weren't for how poorly I'm adapted to the cold, I'd probably still be out there with them now.

Someday, when I'm much older and much grayer, this is the kind of day I'm going to remember - companionably sharing time and space with my horses on a beautiful day. It doesn't get much better than that.

I oppose SOPA

2012-01-18T09:40:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry to bring in politics, but this is important. If you oppose Internet censorship then send a message to Congress. You can do it through Google here, through Wikipedia here, or Mozilla here.

Pathological hoof: What I see

2012-01-16T12:53:00.000-05:00

Good call everyone! All your comments about how long this hoof was, the state of the frog, and the atrocious angles were spot on. I saw a couple of other things on top of that I'd like to point out. Before I get started I do want to say one thing: I'm not telling you this with the expectation that you're going to go out and start trimming on your own, I want to give you some more tools to use in assessing hoof health so you can know that the person you're paying to take care of your horse's feet is doing a good job.

Okay then, let's get started. You can click on all of these photos to get a larger view.

I'll start as I would if this were a new client of mine: First of all, I'd look at the length of toe, in a healthy hoof the toe is 3 to 3.5 inches long. This foot looks much longer than that. Obviously I can't measure it, but in this case I feel I can trust my eyes. Now check out that crack, which is in a very odd spot. Typically, hooves crack in two places: if the quarters are long they will crack along the sides at the quarters, if the toe is long it will crack straight down the center of the hoof. But this crack doesn't correlate with either of those scenarios, it makes me suspicious that something sinister is happening inside that hoof. Let's look past the crack for now and look at the hairline- can you see that hump along the medial edge? That's excess hoof wall pressing up the flesh, notice how there isn't a hump on the outside. From the front of a healthy hoof, the hairline should form a line parallel to the ground.

Now check the hairline from the side. In healthy hooves the hairline is a straight line that angles down to the heel from the toe in a 30 degree angle. This hairline is nearly ground parallel and distinctly arches upwards in the quarters, showing that the hoof is much too long in that region. Now look at the heel purchase, can you see that the heel this horse is standing on is nearly in the middle of his foot? His heel purchase should be at least a half inch further back, he's got a pretty good case of forward foot syndrome going on. And by pretty good, I mean pretty bad. Fortunately his heels haven't collapsed, which says good things about the strength of his hoof wall. All overly long toes will show a toe crease like this guy, where the hoof wall gets too long and creases under pressure. In hindsight, I wish I'd put another arrow above that dip over his toe, that's where I think his foot should actually end.

Many of you mentioned looking at this horse's diet, I'm assuming you all thought that because of the rings in the hoof wall. Personally, I'm not sure this horse is laminitic (which doesn't mean he's not) because this hoof isn't flaring outward, it's contracting in, which says good things about the integrity of the hoof walls and laminae. Instead, I think the rings on the hoof wall are caused by concussion from the ground. The hoof wall is so long that most of the rings you see are actually past the lamina, since that excess material isn't really attached to anything it's much easier to distort. Think of the hoof wall as being closer to a liquid than stone, it's more malleable than you think.

Let's take a closer look at those heels now. You could all tell that those heels were WAY too long, so let's ignore that for now. What pops out at me is that his hairline isn't parallel from side to side- his heels are sheared. This photo also shows you that this hoof isn't just contracted in the heels, he's contracted all the way around. Look how his hoof is narrower at the ground than at the hairline. Because of that contraction all of the structures inside his hoof, like the coffin bone and corium, are being severely pinched. There's no way this horse has proper blood flow in there.

Here's another view of those sheared heels. What you can also see from this angle are his lateral cartilages- not only have they been pushed way up into the fetlock, they've been pushed up asymmetrically from the inside by this horse's badly overgrown bars.

Heel contraction in this hoof has two causes: 1.) thrush, 2.) badly overgrown bars. He also has a sole that is just jam-packed with at least a half inch of dead material. That's part of why his hoof is so long from the front and side. As anyone who lives in a desert will tell you, dry, hard ground tends to have this effect on hooves that have compromised hoof mechanism. If the hoof isn't flexing, it can't pop out the excess material. His hoof also gives a bit of an optical illusion, because the heels have pulled so far forward the toes don't look that long. But if the heels were trimmed down to where they below you'd see that toe is at least a half inch longer than it should be.

Thrice weekly oxine or white lightning soaks are necessary for this horse, but this hoof will not decontract until those bars come out. The thrush came first, shrinking the frog down to a slit, but then the bars grew around it like a concrete wall, holding that contraction in place. Removing those bars will take months, especially since they've jammed so far upward into the hoof.

So what would I do if this were my client?

First I would warn the owner that this horse is going to get worse before he gets better. All that pinching contraction had damaged the internal structures so much that, once this foot frees up and starts flexing again, he's probably going to start abscessing pretty badly. It sounds awful, but it's necessary, abscessing is the only way the body can get rid of dead and damaged tissue. I would also guess that this horse has some muscle and tendon issues from walking around like this, he's going to be quite stiff and lame for a while. I would say that this horse can be helped, but it will take time and patience.

Then I'd do my trim and hope for the best.

If you have questions, please ask. My brain isn't being very cooperative this morning and some of what I've written probably doesn't have the clarity I wish it would.

Pathological hoof: What do you see?

2012-01-13T11:21:00.000-05:00

Here's a fun exercise for a cruddy, stormy day: These pictures were posted online to one of the list serves I follow. I thought it might be fun for you to take a look and share what you see and what your trimming recommendations would be for this horse. I'll follow up with my thoughts in a few days.

Something's up with Gwen

2012-01-09T13:27:00.000-05:00

Gwen gave me a scare last night. I was almost through my nightly feeding routine: the Quarters had eaten their feed and supplements, I'd take a bale of hay out to the feeders, and I was busy filling the slow feed bags to hang in the run-in.Normally by the time I'm half done filling the bags, my horses come over and start grazing a bit on the hay I've got out. It keeps them occupied until I can get the bags hung and then I escort them back into the pasture.

Well last night, Gwen wandered over and started eating. I was bent over a bag, stuffing in hay, when suddenly flakes of hay started flying around me. Then a bale flew by! What the heck?

There was Gwen, madly pawing into the hay and flinging it behind her like a wake, looking TICKED OFF! I rushed over to her to see what was wrong and she opened her mouth and half chewed hay fell out. She reached down for another mouthful, and then angrily spit it back out. At that point, I freaked out a little- the only time I've seen that was with a 38 year old pony with no teeth. I was thinking, "OMG, my mare lost her teeth!"

Have I mentioned I'm dramatic?

I got her halter on and took her into the pasture so I could examine her head. There was no swelling, no heat on the outside. I reached inside her lips to feel her front teeth (she wasn't too keen on that) and they were all fine and I didn't see any evidence of blood. I reached in over her bars and felt the tongue and that was alright. At this point, I took her halter off and hung up one of the hay bags to see what she'd do. Of course she commenced eating normally, looking at me quizzically every once in a while as I hovered over her for the next ten minutes making sure she was okay. Apparently a big mouthful of hay was a problem, little bites from the slow feeder bag were okay. (Same bale of hay, btw, I did initially think that something could have been off with that bale.)

The only thing I could think was that she could have a sore inside her mouth that made big mouthfuls uncomfortable. I called my vet just in case and she agreed with me, saying to just keep an eye on her. Gwen was okay this morning but she'll be getting the raptor treatment for the next few days- I'll be watching her like a hawk.

Horses, the world experts on making your heart jump into your throat...

Hunka, hunka burnin' love

2012-01-06T11:35:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty sure that most, if not all, mare owners have wondered what would happen if they bred their girl. I have to admit I've wondered about that myself. Not seriously, of course. I'm NOT EVER, ever, ever breeding Gwen. I love her but she's not breeding quality. But in the land of make believe you can do whatever you want, like pair her with a thoroughbred stallion like this one standing oh so close by.

Pick Six

Isn't he a handsome gent? His L/S joint is perfect, he's fairly level balanced, and his front legs are slightly bucked- which could offset Gwen's calf knees. For a Dynaformer son, his cover fee of $2000 probably isn't that bad.

Or, since this really is just dreaming and never going to happen I might as well aim high. Like Quality Road high.

Quality Road

Not only is he eye-popping gorgeous, but I hear he's got a personality to match. My vet worked with Quality Road at the track and loves him to pieces, which says good things about him. His stud fee is $35K, I could swing that, right? Hahahahahaahhaha, moving on...

What about a warmblood?

Royal Prince

Compared to Quality Road, this hanoverian's cover fee is a steal at only $2200. He's got a super nice shoulder with a 90 degree angle and enough room to pull his scapula back to give him clearance over fences, not to mention a long humerus. I might get a jumper if I crossed him with my girl.

How about a warmblood with glitz and glamor- who lives about ten miles from where the Quarters were born?

Parcival

This KWPN is downright cheap at $1000 a cover. Between him and Gwen, I'd almost be guaranteed a copper chestnut with lots of white. I don't necessarily need the bling, but I'm a sucker for redheads.

You know, quarabs are generally thought of as a nice cross too. What about this arabian stallion?

Norphe

This is a racing stallion, apparently if you want an arabian with bone you should look into the racing lines, there's no flimsiness in this horse at all. He's $2000 a cover but he looks worth it, at least I think so.

Again, this is not going to happen, this is just stuff I daydream about when I'm bored at work and want to look at pretty horses. Rationally if I wanted to get a foal from one of these stallions I'd be much better off buying someone else's successful gamble than to try to breed my own mare. Especially one with legs like Gwen.

I decided to take a look at their get for sale, and guess what? Everything I could find from these boys started at $10K (This is Quality Road and Parcival's first year at stud, Quality Road's get might take millions at auction.). Most of us cannot afford to pay that much for a horse who could break down at any time. Think weddings: the more expensive the wedding the shorter the marriage lasts.

Which seems like the better deal at first glance? Two thousand a cover or $10K for an already existing horse? Looking at those numbers I can understand why some people would want to breed their own, despite the long range costs whether you get the foal you want or not. Personally, I'm not going to risk it. Maybe I'll start perusing the web for an OTA (off track arabian), the Quarters might be in need of a companion by the end of the year...

More fun with the friesian

2012-01-05T15:04:00.000-05:00

Here's the actual horse with his former owner on board. He looks bigger than this in person. Or maybe I'm just short.

I had an awesome lesson on the friesian this week. The trainer tacked up her own friesian, who's schooling grand prix, and brought her out as a lesson aid. Let me tell you, it helps a lot to see how things should be done before trying it yourself!

After warming up, I worked on shoulder-in. She demonstrated first, describing the aids and angle as she went, and then I got to try it. If you don't know already, let me tell you: it's surprisingly easy to ask for too much and get a four-track instead of three. But when you do it right- boy does it feel cool.

We spent most of the lesson working in canter though. I still have issues sometimes with the cue, part of the key is to get him organized and bent into shoulder fore with my inside leg at the girth and then add a "moment of stillness" before I give the aid with my outside leg. If I do it right he strikes off immediately, if I do it wrong I get extended trot. Anyway, after I got him into canter, we started preliminary work on collected vs. extended canter on the right lead. It was SO COOL! I could feel his hindquarters come down and his withers rise, his fore legs tucking in a little tighter. It probably wasn't exactly a collected canter but it felt brilliant anyway.

Then the trainer suggested extending the canter. Well, moving from collected to extended is harder than it looks, you can't just release the aids like I tried to do, that made him fall down to trot, you have to ease him into extension. I don't quite have the hang of it yet but I can't wait to try it again.

Unfortunately the left lead didn't go so well, left is his "bad" side and I spent too much effort just trying to keep him from cutting into the ring to really play with the gait. We'll get there. Still, it was a good ride. I'm happy I made the decision to take lessons at this barn for the winter, I'm learning exactly what I was hoping to learn.

On a slightly different note- I've noticed that my first post about riding the friesian has jumped to the top in my stats. Apparently there's a lot of people out there googling "friesian" and finding that post. I'm not sure how I feel about that, it's good that people are finding my blog, but I wish they hadn't landed on a post about failing and frustration.

So, for those of you who find my blog hoping for info about friesians here's a little I've learned:

they are gorgeous
they are very comfortable to ride
they have sweet, gentle personalities
they are terribly inbred and suffer from many health issues because of it

If I were looking to buy a friesian, I would not buy a pure bred. I would go for hybrid vigor and look for a cross instead. That way I'd get a healthier horse for (probably) half the price. At least that's my opinion, for whatever that's worth.

2011: The year of epiphanies

2012-01-01T14:30:00.002-05:00

What a year, eh? I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's end-of-the-year wrap-ups, but in the meantime here's mine.

In February I sucked up my courage and sat astride my mare for the first time since my ankle was broken.

In March I had my first epiphany of the year: A diet of hay and forage are not enough, Gwen and Coriander were showing signs of mineral deficiences. My hunt began to find a diet that would keep them at their best.

In April I got my first trimming client, Zippy, a horse whose hooves continue to fascinate me.

In May I had another epiphany, this one was about the sensitive nature of Gwen's eyes, explaining her fear of everything white and bright.

In June I realized that I had been letting Coriander get away with too much under saddle, resulting in a horse that decided he could run off at any time. We had two weeks of awful rides before we got the running off sorted out and I finally figured out that the real solution was to keep him on his toes- to be a rider instead of a passenger.

Later in June I made a bad decision and got bucked off of Gwen. Fortunately I wasn't hurt but it did make some holes in her training glaringly evident. We commenced with ground driving which turned out to be fantastic for both of us.

In July it was hot, hot, HOT and I did a lot of hand walking my horses, getting Gwen more comfortable with the outside world.

I also figured out that I had missed some things clicker training Coriander and set out to teach him some new skills and make sure he understood the process.

In August I went to trimming school and well and truly learned how to trim hooves the right way, it was an awesome experience. Plus- donkeys!

In September I received my beautiful Ansur saddle that I am completely in love with. It's been on five horses so far and they've all liked it. It is amazing.

Unfortunately it also showed me something I had been trying to ignore for months- that my old Crosby was hurting Coriander, which he tried to tell me by running away every time I went to put it on his back. He still tenses up to run sometimes when I bring out the Ansur, which makes me really sad, but once the saddle is on his back he breathes a sigh of relief. He'll never wear the Crosby again.

In September I also got back on Gwen after the bucking incident and reaped the rewards of all that ground driving. It made a huge difference!

In October, I made an interesting discovery about impacted bars and decided that I needed to further my education so I can teach Coriander to carry himself correctly.

In November I started taking dressage lessons on better educated horses than mine so I could learn about contact and how a horse in self-carriage should feel. This has contributed to my last and ongoing epiphany of 2011- contact is important, and I'm learning how to use it correctly.

Also in November, I made the decision to put Coriander on vacation and focus on Gwen. Unfortunately, them living on a Christmas tree farm put a bit of a damper on my plans to ride her on the weekends but in the past week we've made a ton of progress- she trots under saddle now!

Sure it took 11 months to get from mounting to trotting, but life is in the journey, not the destination right? And this year was quite the journey. I can't wait to see what happens in 2012!

Also- not a bone broken, that's an improvement on last year :)

I interrupt this Christmas vacation...

2011-12-26T15:44:00.000-05:00

To bring you this important announcement:

We have trot! Under saddle!

That is all. Now back to my regularly scheduled vacation...

Parelli...

2011-12-21T10:11:00.002-05:00

Something that I didn't fully consider when I took on my first trimming clients was how different their training methods would be from mine. My two clients both follow Parelli, a training regimen that I'm not terribly familiar with but have taken a quick look at and decided it's not for me. I detest the rope shaking (which I've been told is only used in the beginning levels), and from watching Linda Parelli's round pen work I can't say I'm much of a fan of that either.

Another thing I didn't really think about was that when I go to work underneath a strange horse, that horse doesn't know me from Eve.They have no reason to trust me and they have no reason to cooperate. Because of this I've found that it's sometimes helpful for me to take the lead rope and do some groundwork with the horse as an introduction- this is who I am, this is how I work, can we get along?

So I went out to trim the little arab mare that I started seeing in August, up till this point we haven't had any problems, she was happy with me just rubbing and scratching her and was pretty cooperative without me having to take the lead. But this last time it was different, she's had a bunch of time off (it is winter) and we were working in a strange spot. She just didn't want to cooperate, at one point she started sidling away from me every time I went to pick up a hoof. Hindsight being 20/20 I should have realized she was uncomfortable with the location and asked the owner to move her to the other side of the barn. Instead I took the lead rope to see if she was having an issue with me.

Now I like to think that between Alexandra Kurland and Gwen I've learned how to be pretty tactful with a lead rope. I don't tug, yank, or pull on the rope. I've also learned how to gently ask for something so I'll get a nice, calm reaction from the horse without tension. For example, if I want a hip yield I'll take a little more tension on the rope, look towards the horse's hip and step towards it. I might need to point a finger at the hip or touch the hip to initiate movement but as soon as the horse starts moving I back off and let them finish. One step is all I need.

Okay, back to my story.

I started out by leading her forward to see if she would start and stop with me, she was a little up but she did it. Then I turned and asked her to step backwards 2-3 steps, at this point she started getting pissed. I then went to her side to ask for a hip yield and then she just lost it. She started ripping around me, occasionally stopping to fling her hind legs around. I waited until she calmed then asked her to back up and yield her hips again. Again she took off around me, only this time she spun around to face me and struck with a front foot.

Now I don't know about any of you, but there are three things that I absolutely will not just stand there and take from a horse: rearing, kicking, and striking. When she did that, I'll admit I got a little bit mad, I growled at her and snapped the end of the lead rope at her. Of course she took off again, but I think the fact that I didn't back down made an impact on her because as soon as she slowed down, that was it. She didn't feel the need to take off again and I was able to ask her to walk and back with me again calmly with lots of praise.

The owner was quick to tell me this is how she's always been, and that this was a bad day because she hasn't been worked in so long. I think that's a plausible explanation for how hyper she was, and I wouldn't have thought anything of it if it weren't for her aggressiveness with the striking and kicking. It made me think of the other horse I trim, and that every time I see him lunged he's always turning toward his owner and aggressively double-barreling in her direction. Not to mention the first time I had to take his lead and asked for a hip yield he nearly fell over himself trying to do it as fast as he could, which kind of surprised me.

I know both these owners have learned Parelli techniques from the same trainer, so it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to me that their training might be causing both of their horses to act aggressive and protect themselves from perceived pressure. These are both very nice people who do their absolute best for their horses, I know there is no abuse going on here and yet I felt like both of their horses have overreacted every time I see them do any groundwork. From what I've seen of Parelli's program, I'm inclined to think that their training regimen can create tense, anxious horses.

So here's my question to the blogverse: Is there any grounds for my feeling that Parelli training can make horses aggressive or are they doing it wrong?

I took my human for a ride

2011-12-13T11:57:00.000-05:00

and I dids a good job!

I knew something was up when my human starting putting the leather things on me while I was eatings dinner. She got a new leather thingy for my back that I'm trying out from someone who lives a long ways away. I've never met the person who lent it, but I like her for sending me such a comfy leather thing to try! (Thank you, KK)

When I was done eatings, my human grabbed the metal steppy thing and took me up to the field with all the sharp green trees in it. She put the steppy thing next to me and stepped up, but the horses over there were making noises so I had to pay attention to them. I forgot my human was there until I noticed her scratching my withers and calling my name, then I remembered that I'm supposed to put my head down when the human is on the steppy thing. After the human sat on my back I had to wait while she bent over and did something with the leather thingy (It's SO nice having stirrups with her), and then we got to go!

I headed up to the top of the field but then I had to stop because the ground got all funny (deep, muddy ruts with ice), so I had to put my nose next to the ground so I could figure out how to walk over it. Once I got past the funny ground we got back in the grasses and I was happy. I wanted to stop and eat the grasses but my human made me keep going.

Then we turned down the hill between the sharp green trees and I had to be real careful, it's hard to walk down hill with a human on your back! Plus there were branches from the trees on the ground that I had to sniff. But I made it, all the way down the hill and I didn't have to trot once! (She's been having a hard time walking downhill without trotting, we've been working on her balance)

My human asked me to turn back towards the pasture where my herd is and then she let me eat a bunch of really yummy looking grasses before we headed back up the hill. I tried to take the shortcut back to the barn and jump the ditch but my human made me walk up along side it instead (I was not relishing the idea of eating driveway dirt). Then I wanted to stop and eat grasses again but my human made me keep going until we got back to the metal steppy thing.

Then my human said "whoa" so I stopped and she jumped off and gave me treats and told me I was wonderful. She might have been crying, my human is so dramatic sometimes.

You gives me treats now!

Holiday gift guide 2011

2011-12-07T11:02:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again, when many of us think of gift giving. If you're like me, and handmade art strikes your fancy, take a look at these offerings from Etsy.

Handpainted mug by Carole Koch

"All That Glitters" photography by Juliet Harrison

"Wild Mustang" ACEO print by AmyLyn Bihrle

PMC silver horse jewelry by Silver Wishes

If you'd like to give a gift for a cause,consider buying one of Sarah K. Andrews' calendars. All the profits go to One Horse at a Time, an organization that seeks to rescue horses from abuse and neglect. They have a weekly feature on the horses at Camelot Auction where they network on facebook to try to find homes for the horses that would otherwise be killed.

If you've got something more practical in mind, you couldn't go wrong with a bottle of No Thrush.

No Thrush is now available at ValleyVet.com, Horse Health USA, NT-DRY - Equus Imports, KVSupply.com, Jeffers, Farmvet.com, and The Horse's Hoof Store.

Or how about a pair of these?

Bates Webbers

Wintec Webbers

I bought a set of webbers for my Ansur and I love them. They are very easy to use and, best of all, they don't create a painful lump under your thigh like traditional leathers. The Bates webbers are a little more expensive as they are leather, but the synthetic Wintec webbers have gotten great reviews.

One of my favorites is the gift of books, here's a selection I've got my eye on:

"True Unity" by Tom Dorrance

"Old Men and Horses" by Ross Jacobs

"Nature in Horsemanship" by Mark Rashid

Of course the best gift of all is our horses, I hope everyone gets to enjoy them this holiday season!

Laminitis research

2011-12-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

As promised here are the links to my sources for the laminitis posts. You'll see a lot of Pollitt on this list, since he's considered the world expert on laminitis I went to his research first.

Microanatomy of the hoof wall (Pollitt)

Recent research into laminitis (Huntington et al)

Equine Laminitis: Current Concepts (Pollitt, 2008) This link sends you to an automatic pdf download

Cryotherapy Reduced the Severity of Laminitis Evaluated 7 Days After Induction With Oligofructose (van Eps and Pollitt, 2006)

Equine Laminitis (Pollitt et al, 2003)

Understanding Laminitis webinar with Jim Belknap and Rustin Moore.

Laminitis diagnosis and treatment webinar

The wooden shoe as an option for treating chronic laminitis (O'Grady and Steward, 2009)

Care and Rehabilitation of the Equine Foot (Pete Ramey, 2011) Specifically the chapters written by Robert Bowker, Eleanor Kellon, and Debra Taylor.

If you only look at one, I highly recommend "Equine Laminitis: Current Concepts." It's long but everything is in there.

*********************************************************************************

In the meantime, I thought you might be interested in the new developments in Zippy's feet. Look and see what I uncovered yesterday.

Big honking disease pockets where that massive wall separation was. The sole was just peeling off like a scab. Fascinating.

Laminitis: Hoof care

2011-12-02T15:46:00.000-05:00

This post is the hardest for me to write because I don't have any personal experience with laminitis. The previous posts were just reporting on research, this one will include some of my own opinions based on my hoof research. This opens me up to criticism, I know, so I will try to clearly label anything that is purely my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt.

Most farriers and vets believe that the hoof wall holds up the coffin bone. When a horse is afflicted with laminitis the connection of the hoof wall to the coffin bone via the laminae is totally lost, leaving the coffin bone floating around willy-nilly inside the capsule. Because of the lack of connection to the toe wall, the deep digital flexor tendon (DDFT) would then be able to pull the toe of the coffin bone downwards, where the bone can pierce the sole.

Severely foundered hoof (founder = chronic laminitis)

Because they believe that the pulley action of the DDFT pulls the toe downwards, they try to find a way to lessen that tension. To do this, they will often prescribe that farriers either let the heels of laminitic horses grow or add pads to lift the heel.

Here's the problem I see with that scenario: The heels are raised to prevent the coffin bone from being pulled down due to stress from the DDFT, yet raising the heels mechanically forces the coffin bone onto its tip, which will then descend straight towards the sole like a spear. They've created the problem they were trying to avoid.

Another option they'll turn to are heart bar shoes, these shoes are designed to contact the frog and make it bear some of the horse's weight. Heart bar shoes are tricky to make and even more tricky to put on, you need a very talented farrier to do it right. Not to mention that if the horse has thrush as well as laminitis this shoe might not be a very good option. Weighting a thrushy frog hurts, a lot.

Heart Bar Shoe

Personally, I cannot understand why you would put shoes on a laminitis horse at all. It simply does not make sense to me to make the horse put all its weight on a failed structure (the laminae). That's what shoes do, they force the weight of the horse onto the hoof wall, and since the hoof wall is connected to the internal structures by the laminae, that means all that weight is transferred from the wall to the laminae- which have either given way or are in the process of doing so. Not to mention that you have to pound nails through the laminae to get the shoes to stay on (how painful must that be to a laminitic horse?).

I think heart bar shoes are terribly ironic, they are designed to take some of the weight off the walls by loading the frogs. Guess what a properly trimmed bare hoof does? Takes the weight off the walls and distributes it between the sole and frogs. So why not just leave the hoof bare and keep the walls from weight bearing at all?

Now I know that farriers have helped laminitic horses, if you've had a horse with laminitis and your farrier has been able to help your horse with shoes (like Dusty), then you've probably got a rather brilliant farrier and you should keep them and never let them get away. The problem is, from what I've heard, those farriers are few and far between.

On a positive note, there is another solution that's been catching on bit by bit with farriers that I will endorse, it's called the Steward Clog. It was created by Dr. Michael Steward of Oklahoma by accident. He had a client come to him with a severely laminitic horse and not much money. At a loss for what to do for her he did the cheapest thing he could think of and screwed a wooden shoe onto the bottom of her foot. The horse came back a few weeks later, much more comfortable and with interesting wear patterns on the wood at the toe and heel. Based on his experience with that horse, Dr. Steward came up with the idea of his clogs and horses have been doing well with them ever since.

Steward Clog

I think the Steward Clog works well for a variety of reasons. For one, you don't have to nail it on- it can be screwed or glued onto the hoof which means no pounding from a hammer is involved; the breakover is under the foot, which greatly reduces the stress and tearing on the laminae at the toe; it covers the entire sole of the foot which allows for a greater dispersion of weight away from the laminae; and they allow the horse flexibility to find a more comfortable stance.

Nicholl's twist on the clog

Here's another good thing about the Steward Clog, the instructions are available for free online. You can make them yourself or you can buy the premade version here. The premade clogs can be nailed, screwed, or glued to the hoof. There's no reason not to try them.

At least that's my opinion, for what it's worth.

My first ride on a friesian

2011-11-30T12:52:00.001-05:00

I started taking dressage lessons at a local-ish barn a few weeks ago, I've been feeling like I need to get further along in my education before I get on Coriander again and start asking him for more. Fortunately the barn where I test rode an Ansur saddle offers lessons.

For the first three lessons I rode an appaloosa cross, the same horse I did the test ride on. All was going well, I enjoy riding that horse and his trot, I got to try a training level test, I got to feel what it was like to ride 'on the bit.' It was very cool.

For my last lesson though, I rode a different horse. A friesian. A friesian that is much more specially trained than the appy cross.

Now when you imagine riding a friesian you like to think it will go something like this: You are sitting on a magnificent black beast with flowing hair all over the place. You whisper to the horse with your legs and he strides boldly forward, long black mane caressing your face. You merely suggest a direction with the reins and he willingly follows. When you want to canter, all you do is think it and the horse lifts into the smoothest, roundest canter you've ever ridden. It's like riding a shiny, black dream.

Fairytales.

It was more like falling to pieces. We were fine until the trainer told me to ride him on the second track and that's the point when the steering went out. You know what that means- the steering was never there to begin with. Plus he was kind of lazy so I had to use a lot of leg, but I didn't keep my leg long like you're supposed to- no, I curled it towards my bum which the horse didn't understand at all. The worst was when she asked me to canter and I.Could.Not.Get.That.Horse.To.Canter. I just fell apart, lost the contact, lost my balance, and curled into the fetal position trying to get the leg aid as he just rushed into a faster and faster trot.

It was horrible and awesome at the same time. Horrible because the ride highlighted everything that is wrong with my riding. Awesome because it laid it all out there in front of the trainer. Here I am, here are my issues, help me learn.

Fortunately the trainer was very nice about it, she said most people who are good riders on lesson horses have this problem. Lesson horses will kindly fill in the gaps for you, the better trained horses won't because of their expanded repertoires- they can't guess what you're asking for because you could be asking for so many things. That's exactly the kind of horse I need to be riding right now, so I can learn finesse and balance and transfer that knowledge to the Quarters.

I feel like Humpty-Dumpty, now I just have to learn to like the feeling of being put back together again.

(no fear- I'll get back to the laminitis posts now)

Laminitis: Diagnosis and treatment

2011-11-29T18:48:00.001-05:00

Here's the hard part: How do you know that your horse has laminitis?

The first signs include:

shifting the weight from foot to foot
pounding digital pulse
heat in the hooves
reluctance to walk in a circle
lameness or stiffness of gait

Side comment: Some of you may remember that a while back Coriander went lame and a possible diagnosis was laminitis. Thank goodness it was just an abscess, but it presented much the same way, he was lame with heat and a pounding digital pulse. Sometimes different problems have very similar symptoms.

If you know the horse has had an event that would trigger laminitis, is displaying the signs, and you've caught it within 24 hours of onset you need to ice the hooves. I'm not talking about cold hosing the legs for 20 minutes 2 times a day, I'm talking fill a muck bucket or tank full of ice water and have the horse stand in it for 48 hours straight (keep replenishing the ice).

I'm not kidding.

Chris Pollitt did a lot of research with cryotherapy (ice) and proved that prolonged exposure to the cold works really well to stop laminitis in its tracks. The theory is that vasoconstriction caused by the cold slows down the activity in the hooves enough that it gives the body a chance to right itself before more damage is done.

Now for those of you worried about your horse getting frostbite, Dr. Pollitt says this, "fortunately, cold-induced pain is not a problem in horses; they seem to lack cold nociception in their distal limbs. Horses in the current study showed no cold-induced injury or any clinical signs attributable to cold-induced pain, despite extremely low ice boot and tissue temperatures. Continuous aplication of ice and water to the equine distal limb for 48 h seems safe, effective, and well tolerated by horses."

Fascinating.

I've also heard good things about For Love of the Horse's MMP Stop Solution, if given within 48 hours of the trigger it has also been known to lessen the damage from laminitis.

While you are icing or using something like MMP Stop you also need to treat the cause of the laminitis. If the horse is IR you need to restrict their access to sugar, that means putting the horse on a dry lot, using a muzzle on grass, and soaking your hay if you know it's high in sugar. If you don't know if your horse is IR but you suspect they might be, get them tested. It's a lot better to know now, before they have issues, than to find out later when they do.

If the laminitis was caused by SODS then the horse probably has an infection that will need to be treated with antibiotics and a bunch of other stuff that only a vet can help you with (Always feed probiotics if you have to put your horse on antibiotics- they kill the gut flora.)

Unfortunately if your horse looks like this:

classic laminitis stance

it's already too late to ice or use the MMP Stop, the damage is done. Now you'll need some heavy duty pain killers and anti-inflammatories along with a pretty strict maintenance regimen to get that horse feeling okay again.

At this point in time you'll start hearing about rehabilitative shoeing, but that's for the next post...

If you've seen any other laminitis symptoms please let me know in the comments, if I get enough I'll make another post putting your experiences together. For instance, Kristen said this about when her horse was affected: Laz's laminitis was caused by Potomac which lead to endotoxemia...his sheath was SWOLLEN too during his high fever which is a clue to look for fyi.

Laminitis: Three different paths

2011-11-27T22:33:00.001-05:00

One cause of laminitis is physical strain on the laminae due to trauma/injury leading to the horse's weight physically tearing the laminae. This is what happened to Barbaro, his laminae gave out due to excessive weight strain. Personally I think that horseshoes can lead to chronic low-level laminitis since they force all the horse's weight on the laminae (Remember when I said the laminae aren't designed to hold up the entire horse?). I think Dr. Bowker says it best, "any weight-bearing responsibilities the laminae have should be considered their secondary role."

There are two more mechanisms that are found in laminitis that I would call chemical based, one affects the anchoring filaments and the other affects the MMPs. Both have the same result but the causation behind them and how they work is completely different. (Refer to my last post if you don't know what these are.)

Glucose overload- most people know about this cause of laminitis, a lot of them think it is the only cause for laminitis. It isn't. Glucose induced laminitis only happens to horses that are insulin resistant (IR). The horse consumes too much sugar so the body freaks out and shuts down all its sugar uptake mechanisms (similar to diabetes in humans). Remember how I said anchoring filaments that attach the hemidesmosomes back onto the basement membrane are made of a glycoprotein molecule? Well the body can't make any if the uptake of sugar (glucose) has been inhibited. That means that the MMPs are still doing their job of popping off the hemidesmosomes but there aren't any anchoring filaments to glue them back on, resulting in the separation of the epidermal laminae from the dermal laminae.

There is another, much more sinister, mechanism for laminitis. This one can be caused by anything that results in an inflammatory response: colic, carbohydrate overload, endotoxemia, septicemia, prolapsed uterus, retained placentas, heat cycles in mares, potomac horse fever- basically anything that ends with -itis and messes with the balance of the hindgut can cause this other kind of laminitis. This can also be referred to as SODS- single organ dysfunction syndrome. When there are bacterial toxins in the bloodstream (which often begin in the hindgut) they activate white blood cells, these toxins and white blood cells eventually migrate down to the hooves and into the lamaella, where they cause the MMPs to go haywire and start popping off the hemidesmosomes at a rate too fast and furious for the anchoring filaments to keep up with, resulting in a separation of the laminae. This action can also result in the death of the secondary epidermal laminae cells. (It's a bit more complicated than this, but I'm trying to make it easier to understand.) Unfortunately, in this case, there is usually some pretty nasty damage done to the basement membrane.

In the case of IR, it's the failure of the anchoring filaments that lead to laminitis, in the case of SODS it's the MMPs that lead to laminitis. The important thing to remember is that even though they both have the same result they are not caused by the same thing so they cannot be treated the same way. If your horse has laminitis the first thing you need to find out is what caused it.

The hoof wall gives evidence of damage to the basement membrane. It might be the characteristic "rings" that most people think of, but it also looks like these two pictures below. In the case of founder (chronic laminitis) horses will often create a "founder ridge," a place where the hoof wall appears to bunch up. I think the cause of this is damage to the basement membrane, basically the hoof wall cannot be moved down because the foundation that it would attach to is non-functional.

References for this post include Chris Pollitt, Jim Belknap, Rustin Moore, Robert Bowker and Debra Taylor.

Laminitis: Hoof wall growth

2011-11-21T18:59:00.000-05:00

The first thing you need to know about the hoof wall is that it is actually composed of three different sections:

the distal hoof wall/pigmented wall/stratum medium,
the water line/unpigmented wall/stratum internum
the white line/epidermal lamellae

To understand hoof wall growth we also need to focus on the lamellae, of which there are four types:

Primary Epidermal Lamellae (PEL)
Secondary Epidermal Lamellae (SEL)
Primary Dermal Lamellae (PDL)
Secondary Dermal Lamellae (SDL)

The lamellae from the epidermis (outside of the hoof) interlock with the lamellae from the dermis (inside of the hoof) by means of a basement membrane. "The basement membrane is a thin, unbroken sheet of extracellular material, partitioning the dermis from the epidermis (Pollitt)."

Each one of the SEL (the little fingers hanging off each PEL) is attached to the basement membrane by a hemidesmosome through anchoring filaments. Anchoring filaments are composed of a glycoprotein molecule called laminin-5 and a protein called BP-180.

Following along so far? Okay...

The coronet band is constantly creating new cells for the hoof wall, which means there needs to be a mechanism to move the already existing wall down towards the ground to make room for the new cells. To do that, lamellar remodeling enzymes called matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) come through and pop the hemidesmosomes off the basement membrane (not all at once, mind you), tissue inhibitors called TIMPs then turn the MMPs off, and the loosened cells then move downward and reattach lower on the basement membrane by the anchoring filaments.

This process happens constantly in order to keep up with the growth from the coronet band. The MMPs, TIMPs, and anchoring filaments are always working in a very delicate balance to keep the hoof wall growing and replace material lost at ground level.

And that's hoof wall growth in a nutshell.

Upon further examination, Bowker's theory of hoof wall growth doesn't differ terribly from this, he just posits that the PELs actually contribute cells to the stratum internum to increase hoof wall thickness closer to the ground. For the purpose of understanding laminitis that isn't terribly important (just interesting).

All the info in this post I learned from reading the work of Chris Pollitt, I'll provide links later on. You'll notice that I've made a few words a little more "obvious." Try to remember those, they'll be important later.

Weekend update

2011-11-20T16:29:00.001-05:00

I'm working on the laminitis posts, here's a heads up that there will be multiple ones and some of them will be pretty technical, there's no way around that. I'm going to start with a post on how the hoof wall grows but I've still got to wrap my mind around Pollitt's theory vs. Bowker's theory. They aren't the same, not at all.

In the meantime, here's a video showing that bum squeeze I was telling you about a few weeks ago. The only thing I was doing was squeezing my cheeks, I wasn't doing anything with my hands or my legs except get him organized.

Gwen did some really good work today. I put two cones up and we worked on walking to a cone, turning around it and then walking to the other cone. She did pretty well, the steering got a bit wacky at times (she was very interested in the barn for some reason) but we eventually ended up where I wanted to be. We even finished up by walking in a circle around a cone, I was pretty pleased with that. She's getting to be a riding horse, by golly!

Writer's block

2011-11-17T14:14:00.000-05:00

I haz it. I can't think of anything I want to talk about that would be interesting. I just got Pete Ramey's very expensive new book and part of me wants to snark on that, but I just snarked on AQHA and too much snarking gets old fast.

I could talk about our latest nocturnal training sessions, but talking about training for ground tying, pose and leg lifts also gets mad boring without any visuals to explain what I'm doing.

I could talk about my last ride on Gwen on Saturday, where she was really good until she decided she'd rather graze than move forward and so decided backing up to stay in the grass was the better option. Unfortunately she backed my helmet right into a tree branch and scared herself when it made a sound (which only resulted in a 3-step spook, good for her!)

I could talk about my last lesson where we worked on leg yielding and I innocently pretended I didn't know what I was doing so I could pick her brain on the aids. But most of you know how to leg yield so that's not too interesting either.

I could talk about how I trimmed Zippy again last weekend and it looks like I've finally come to the end of his impacted bars. YAY! The owner lunged him before I worked on him and I was delighted to see that he was completely full of beans, bucking and kicking- horse felt good! Still lame, but a lot better than he has been. I did uncover some disease pockets in his right fore though, that was a little worrisome.

But nothing seemed to be entire post worthy all on its own. Anyone interested in what I have to say about laminitis? I've been meaning to do some more research on that anyway.

Ah well, I guess you'll just have to look at this strange photo of Coriander eating dinner last night. Hopefully I'll come up with something interesting to say soon.

In the dark

2011-11-11T20:48:00.000-05:00

Daylight Savings day is my least favorite day of the year, it marks the beginning of three months of darkness for me. Three months when I only see my horses in the light on the weekends or holidays. Ugh, winter.

Anyway, this year I'm going to try to make the most of it. I asked Mark to set up a light on the front of the barn so I'll have a place to work in the evenings and I plan to pick up all the projects that fell by the wayside this year. That means head lowering, pilates, standing on the mat, leg lifts, and working on balance in small circles (AKA picking the shoulders up and out instead of falling in on them).

I plan on trying to ride Gwen on the weekends, I'm hoping that when the snow covers the grass she'll be able to focus better, while Coriander is basically getting the winter off from riding. In the meantime I've started dressage lessons so that when Coriander and I get to work next spring I'll be better prepared for our next step in training.

Speaking of that: During my lesson we worked on walking and halting "on the bit." She had me squeeze my buttocks to get the horse to lower his head and lift his back, then I got him to go long and low by squeezing my cheeks while he walked. I went and tried it with Coriander later that day and it worked, he arched his neck down immediately.

Why does that work? Is it a pressure point on their backs? I would be afraid to rely on that trick though, does it teach the horse anything about carrying their bodies or is it just a physical response? I want a little more than just a reflex to get my horse stretching over his topline (not to mention that my tushy gets tired and it makes me feel like I'm perching on top of the horse). I'll have to ask her about that during my next lesson.

Dr. Kellon's nutrition course started this week too. I mentioned I'd give out little tidbits that I've learned along the way, so here's one for week 1: You almost never need to supplement vitamins A, D, K, B-12, and C in your horse's diet.

Wow, that seemed like an incredibly random post. Might as well keep adding to it then- I added another video to my last post. I'm really starting to wonder if the judges for AQHA are legally blind.

Really AQHA?

2011-11-08T15:20:00.001-05:00

Apparently I'm on a video kick, cause here's another one.

Some genius AQHA judge said this horse was world champion quality and they proudly declared this on facebook:

2011 AQHA Yearling Stallions World Champion

I'm no professional show judge, but I would have DQ'd this horse immediately. Anyone else agree? Already lame at one year old and fat as a slaughter-bound pig to boost. Wanna place bets on this horse's future?

PS- is the lip chain really necessary? I thought the ideal quarter horse was supposed to be calm and easy to handle (Gwen notwithstanding). Even the stallions.

Edited to add a video of AQHA naming yet another lame horse world champion, this time the performance halter champion. This is even worse, horses are supposed to earn points under saddle to qualify for performance halter. Was this horse lame for all his under-saddle classes too? What is wrong with these judges?

Always remember...

2011-11-04T08:11:00.000-04:00

It's about having fun!

A real ride

2011-11-02T19:39:00.000-04:00

Honest to goodness, I had an actual ride on Gwen today.

First of all, I took her over to the mounting block and got on without putting a flake of hay down first. She stood like a stone until I was mounted and she was rewarded. Brilliant.

Then walked up the hill around the barn, and she halted when I asked her to before turning into the Christmas tree field. Excellent.

We turned into the field and hit a bit of a snag- I wanted to turn around and head back, she wanted to graze. Grazing wasn't on my agenda, so we had to do some hip yielding until she decided to just stay in the direction I pointed her. Points for me on sticking to my guns.

Then she walked down the hill and turned toward the barn when I asked her, and halted again when I asked. Awesome.

Oh, and guess what? She backs under saddle! I asked her on Sunday and she just glided backwards- there was no pushing through the reins or trying to slide left and right, she just stepped back. So cool. I asked her again today with the same result, flowing backwards. All of our ground work has really paid off.

We've now got go forward, turn, halt, and back. The building blocks for making a riding horse.

It was a simple, short ride by most standards, but considering how far we've come I had to crow about it!

Impacted bars lead to toe-first landings?

2011-10-31T14:23:00.000-04:00

I think I've mentioned before that I sort of stumbled upon my first client last spring. This was the first horse I've ever trimmed that wasn't my own; wouldn't you know that he's proven the most difficult. He's been on and off lame for the past 6-7 years, with frequent bouts of hoof wall separation, thrush, and, when I first saw him, ridiculously long toes that I've had to back up at every trim.

His case has been daunting for me as a new trimmer, he became much sounder after my first trim, then not so sound after the second, improved again after the third and then went totally lame. I was a bit flabbergasted and, to be honest, scared. So I made plans with the owner to get photos and ask for help online. When I got there I found out the owner hadn't told me about the massive separation that had popped out since his last trim which explained the increased soreness, but I took the photos anyway because I wasn't sure exactly how to tackle that separation.

Long story slightly shortened: I got the help I was looking for with the wall separation. BUT I found out something else interesting as well. Looking at the photos (note, these are pre-trim) it looked like his bars had grown faster than his hoof walls, something I don't think is physically possible. I wondered if what I was seeing was something Cheryl had talked about while I was in Oregon, that his bars had been left untrimmed for so long that they'd impacted inside his hooves.

This would explain quite a bit, for instance why this horse continually lands toe first (follow this link to Rockley Farm to read a good post about why this is bad). If the bars had impacted into the back of the foot then landing heel first would become incredibly painful as he would have been stabbing himself with the bars at every step.

Left fore pre-trim

right fore pre-trim

Here's a picture from Ove Lind at the Swedish Hoof School that should help you visualize what I'm talking about. The impacted bar is on the left, shoving into the hoof and skewing the whole thing right. Can you see it? Now imagine how that must feel to the horse. Remember that the bar material is similar to hoof wall material, it is strong and stiff. If the bars are left to grow long enough they will begin to reach the hard, unyielding ground- forcing them upwards into the soft, yielding hoof of the horse where they pinch the bejeebers out of the inner structures of the hoof. Not to mention throw a wrench in the hoof mechanism.

Photo from the Swedish Hoof School

When I trimmed his bars down the impacted material finally had room to migrate back outside the hoof to where they belong- explaining why it looked like they were growing so fast. (If any of you have spent time on Pete Ramey's site you can probably guess by now that I've got some issues with this article.)

So here's what I did when I trimmed him- took those bars right back down and recessed the separated wall 1/4 inch off the ground. The horse was immensely relieved, he'd been shearing his heels trying to get off that outside hoof wall, poor guy. He's now getting No Thrush treatment every day and soaks twice a week- gotta keep the baddies at bay!

I know- medial bar needs to be straightened. This horse needs to stop yanking so I can do that.

I'm very interested to see how he feels after my next trim. If the bars stop popping out faster than the walls can grow I'll know I've gotten all the impacted material out. If, after that, I don't have to keep lopping excess toe off at each trim I'll know he's landing heel first and will finally be on the road to soundness.

Once again: If the walls aren't self-trimming, the bars aren't either.

First snow of the season

2011-10-28T10:58:00.000-04:00

We got our first snowfall yesterday, unfortunately it started as an all day rain shower that turned into snow which means that the horses were soaking wet before the snow started.

When Gwen got to me in the pasture I could immediately tell that she was too cold. I brought them up to the barn to eat and the poor girl was shivering so hard her teeth were almost chattering. So she got to wear my "turbo dry" cooler while she ate. I had some weird ideas in my head when I bought that cooler, like it should somehow rapidly dry whatever horse I put it upon, unfortunately it doesn't work like that but it did give her a little relief from the precipitation. After they ate their grain I spread out a bunch of hay piles under the barn so they could eat under cover and then I hung out until she'd stopped shivering and took the cooler off. Hopefully they stayed under there long enough to dry off a little bit so she could warm up.

She's such a sensitive little flower, all the other horses were just fine while she was shivering. Somehow she's always the one who gets cold, gets scratches, gets inflamed after vaccinations... Anyway, now I'm in the market for a mid-weight turnout, all I've got for her is a heavy-weight and I don't want to put something on her that will make her too hot right now. Anyone see any good sales lately?

Gwen looking miserable

Coriander looking like it's a beautiful day

Stretchy, stretchy

2011-10-25T19:52:00.002-04:00

First of all, thanks so much for your comments on my last post. There was a definite string of similarities between everyone's advice, adding to that jme put up a brilliant post on her blog, Glenshee Equestrian Centre, with detailed instructions here. If you haven't seen that post yet and you've been in the same position I am, I highly suggest you read it. She broke the initial steps down very clearly, making it easy for me to figure out how to teach this to Coriander using a bit of clicker training.

As she suggested we started at the halt and I asked him to bend his neck. If he started to walk off I asked him to stop and bend again (we did that a few times). Once he figured out I wanted him to bend and not move, I could then wait for him to drop his nose. He got that part, but then he decided what I really wanted him to do was stab his nose downward. Um... not so much, this is supposed to be relaxing. So then I had to wait him out a bit, ignoring his frustration, until he finally dropped his nose and held it there for a second.

That's as far as we've gotten so far. I tried to do a bit at the walk but it was much too soon, he'll need at least a day or two more of practicing at the halt before we move on. But at least now I know where to start, thanks jme!

Gwen got ridden on Sunday, we worked on "whoa." Of course we first had to work on maintaining a walk before we could stop- she was much more interested in grazing than moving. That was just fine with me though, we needed to work on that anyway. If you teach one thing you have to teach the opposite too, right? Funny how that works. I thought about riding her tonight but she was anxious about something. I had to take her with me when I worked with her brother because she was giving me the distinct impression that if I left her behind she was going to try the fence. That's the first time I really felt that way since they've been here so I decided I better heed my gut feeling. I'll have to see how she feels tomorrow, I'd like to ride her and do some head lowering with Coriander- hopefully my plans won't go awry. The weather has been depressing lately, rain and rain and rain.

Recent theme: Wet

An inverted western pleasure horse

2011-10-20T11:53:00.000-04:00

That's what I've succeeded in training. The first time I sent Katie a video to evaluate (last fall) she told me that Coriander was pokey and inverted; I've been trying to work on that ever since. We've gotten a little better on the pokey front, he's a more forward than he used to be, but he's still inverted.

The better-educated-than-me riders reading already know why this is a problem, but, in case you are emerging out of the tunnel of ignorance like I am, here's why riding an inverted horse is bad in a nutshell: It damages their body. Since I plan to ride this horse well into his twenties, I need to teach him how to carry himself better so his body doesn't get hurt carrying me around with poor posture.

This is how he looks under saddle right now: His back and neck are hollow, his weight is on the forehand, and his hindquarters trail out behind. You can watch us at work here if you feel like assaulting your eyes.

picture borrowed from http://www.classicaldressage.co.uk/

This is what I want him to be able to do when ridden: Pick his back up and stretch his neck down with the hind legs engaged.

pictured borrowed from Sustainable Dressage

Problem is, I have nary a clue how to achieve this. I've taken huntseat lessons for most of my life with instructors who didn't/don't seem to care that their horses run around inverted and hollow, so no one has ever taught me how to do this. Fortunately I found Katie who I know can teach me, but she lives awfully far away, essentially still leaving me on my own.

Yesterday I ran across this exercise at Sustainable Dressage, the shoulder-in volte. It's an in-hand exercise that's supposed to help horses learn to stretch over their backs. I introduced Coriander to this exercise last night, just the beginning part where you activate the inside hind to step up further, with dubious results. I made the mistake of trying to lump too many pieces together before he sufficiently understood what I wanted, now I'll need to spend a few days fixing that mistake. Anyway, I have high hopes that this exercise will help him to round instead of invert.

Has anyone tried this exercise? If so what were the results? Does anyone have other suggestions? My plans for him over the winter is to do in-hand work on stuff like this to help his posture, so having a few tools in the box would be helpful.

Coriander is the cuteness

2011-10-16T09:44:00.001-04:00

Well, hello over there. Do you have any treats, perchance?

I'll just come over and see, shall I?

You getting those treats handy?

Cause I'm here and my mouth is empty.

Nom nom nom

Mmm, that was good!

Oh, dang it! Where'd she come from?

Oh my aching back!

2011-10-13T12:02:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: I am not a physical therapist or a doctor, if you are in substantial pain you should contact an actual professional to help you.

When I was 26, after a year of ever increasing pain, I had to have back surgery. My L5 disk had herniated and was pressing on my spinal cord, creating tremendous pain through my back and down my right leg. During the episodes of acute pain and the subsequent rehabilitation I learned a lot about how to deal with back pain and how to prevent it from coming back.

There are two common causes for back pain: muscle spasms and disk problems. If you are having an acute muscle spasm (usually brought on by overuse), the best thing you can do is rest and massage until the muscle relaxes, at which point you can begin the strength exercises I'll talk about below. Making these muscles strong and putting them in regular work will help you avoid muscle spasms in the future.

If your problem is with the disks (pain down the leg is a tell-tale sign) then the very first exercise you should do is a very simple one: Lie down on your stomach on the floor with your hands next to your sides (a hard surface is very important). Seriously, that's it. What you're doing is putting the curve in your back, helping the disks move back where they belong. The next step is to prop yourself up on your elbows or a pillow, finally you can push yourself up on your hands to get the most arch in your back.

I can't tell you how much time I spent lying on my stomach before my surgery, it was hours and hours and at times was the only thing that gave me any relief at all.

If you aren't in acute pain, you can start to incorporate some low impact abdominal exercises. The first one you should learn is the pelvic tilt, it specifically targets the muscles of your lower abdomen and is not physically taxing. Start with one set of ten and gradually add more until you can can do three sets of 10.

When you are comfortable with this exercise and can do it without arching your back, you can start lifting your feet an inch off the floor with the tilts. Start very slowly and stop if you can't keep your lower back from coming off the floor.

The next low impact exercise you should add in is the "dead bug" exercise. This is a relatively easy exercise that will work your upper and lower abdominals together.

When you've built some strength from the dead bug exercise you can add in some curl ups for your upper abdominals. Again, start slow with a set of 10 and work up from there.

You might be ready at this time to add in some more intensive lower abdominal exercises like the one below. BUT- I recommend doing this exercise with a bent knee, not a straight leg like the video shows. That's really hard!

This last exercise works the upper and lower muscles of your back at once. As with the others start slowly and deliberately, begin with 10 repetitions before working your way up.

My current ab routine consists of 60 curl ups, 40 leg lifts, and 200 back extensions 3-4 times a week. I'll be doing these basically until I'm dead, since if I let my abs go I'm in pain. Period. Sometimes I'll add in some abdominal twists and a medicine ball for some added punch but I didn't do that until the early exercises built up my core enough so I don't hurt myself.

Okay? If you try these (for at least two months) and they don't work, then you can complain to me that your back hurts. If not, well...

Bonus pic of the day:

Zombie polo player

Lovely blog award

2011-10-11T10:43:00.001-04:00

My thanks to Grey Horse Matters, Rose Valley Ranch, Minus Pride and TBA for nominating me for this award. It's nice to be appreciated, consider yourselves nominated right back.

New-to-me blogs I'm recommending (most of these are on my sidebar):

Reflections on Riding - this is my dressage trainer's new blog. Her help with Coriander's training has been invaluable. We don't agree on everything, but life would be boring if we did, right?
Memoirs of a Horse Girl
All Horse Stuff
Pork Belly Acres
Two Horses
My Country Genes
All Gear No Skill
Song of the Black Horse
R Lil Bit of Cash
Beautiful Mustang
Calm, Forward, Straight
Snarkyrider
Ride A Good Horse
Sweet Horse's Breath
Eventing-A-Gogo - Gogo is breathing her last breath today. Head over and give Andrea your support, it's been a very difficult road for them.

A couple things about me you don't already know:

I am obsessed with zombies and the fall of civilization. In my mind they are the same thing, in the case of a zombie attack civilization as we know it would end. If civilization fell we would be protecting ourselves against our fellow human beings in much the way we'd protect ourselves from zombies.
I get headaches, A LOT. I've always wondered if maybe it's because my neck knots up like boat rigging. While we were in Hawai'i I got two massages and they really worked on my neck, softening up those knots, then I took over and worked on it myself. The good news is I've been mostly headache free for two weeks now (a record!) just by keeping those knots at bay.
Speaking of that here's a little trick I was taught to stretch your neck: Lie on your back and put your hands behind your head, lift your head forward until you feel resistance and then press backwards with your head using 5% strength for the count of 15, relax and pull your head forward again. Repeat this three times and you'll find that your neck has stretched significantly further between the initial stretch and the last one. Pushing back against your hands is key.
My favorite food right now is a turkey submarine sandwich with lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayonnaise, spicy mustard, and provolone. Yummy.
My biggest pet peeve is people complaining to me about their back pain. I've had back pain, I've had back surgery, if you complain to me I will tell you what you need to do to be pain free. If you hear my advice and give me a bunch of excuses as to why you can't do some simple situps I can only assume you like the pain and will therefore ignore your complaints (This just happened to me again recently, just do some core exercises, darn it!).
I have a large white streak in my hair due to vitiligo on my face, it's underneath so it's only noticeable when I put my hair up. When I was a kid I would tell people I was struck by lightning. Most people nowadays just think I do it on purpose, it does look kind of cool. Sadly it raises my risk for skin cancer to something like 100%. Sunscreen and hats are my friends.
I have very long toes, they are so long that people like to call them monkey toes. I can interlock my toes like you'd interlock your fingers, some find this a bit disturbing...

I'll just leave you on that note, shall I?

Indian summer

2011-10-09T14:37:00.001-04:00

I don't know the origins of that term, but it sure is fitting for today. I was supposed to have a two day clinic with Alexandra Kurland but she had to cut it short due to a horse emergency at home, so I ended up with a free day to spend with my Quarters.

It was too hot to ride and they were both over-due for a trim so that was the task of the day. Plus it gave me a chance to get a pic of those nasty frogs I was telling you about.

Here's Gwen post-trim:

Left fore

Right fore

I'm aware that the left looks better than the right. There was some bruising under the bars on the right and I think that made her a little sensitive, she didn't want to stand still for long. I'll have to go back tomorrow and tidy that foot up a bit more.

Can you see the black lines around the hoofwall on that foot though? That's the left over crummy foot from last winter- when she wasn't on any supplements. That cruddy wall connection is 100% caused by diet. I think that in a month or two that nastiness will have grown out and she'll have nice, tight white lines.

I didn't get any pics of Coriander's feet because he was even less willing to stand still when I was done (Mark was working in the barn overhead and I think he was getting nervous) so you'll have to settle for these pictures instead.

Here he is playing with Butch (cleverly hidden behind Gwen)

And here's a not-so-great condition photo

Here he was last fall for comparison- he put on some more muscle this year!

A couple of super sweet people nominated me for an award too, I'll get that post up later this week.

Nutrition woes

2011-10-05T12:20:00.001-04:00

The Quarter's frogs look like CRAP again. This is so disheartening. Over the past year I've gotten the nutritional aspect of thrush hammered into me over and over and over again. Sometimes, if not most of the time, thrush is a side affect of what goes in the horse's mouth and not what goes on the horse's hooves.

Let me just say that again: Thrush is not only a product of the horse's environment, poor nutrition is a deciding factor

I put my horses on California Trace in April and started seeing results in May, it was working and I was happy. BUT my horses didn't like it and I had to mask the flavor with anise seed powder to get them to eat it. Since it's also pretty expensive and only available over the internet I decided to look for some other options.

I went looking for something local, found DuMor Hoof (which I chose over Farrier's Formula after looking at the ingredients), and they ate that for about two months.

I don't know if my horses are especially hard keepers or what, but all the frog growth they'd gained while eating California Trace was lost while they ate the DuMor- and that was with me spraying on oxine and dusting with No Thrush nearly every day. Basically the topical treatments just kept the thrush from eating the live frogs, it didn't helped the callused frog grow out at all. The only good thing about it was that the Quarters liked the taste. Basically it was a giant waste of money, time to move on.

While I was in Oregon somebody recommended the Figuerola products to me so I decided to try out Equinesaver.

They've had this for the past month, while their winter coats have started growing in nicely and they love the taste, I haven't seen any sign that their frogs are improving (still treating with topicals, mind you). Knowing that copper and zinc are super important for coat and hoof growth I took a closer look at the ingredients on the bucket. Holy crud! The amounts of copper and zinc in Equinesaver are miniscule at best, no wonder their feet haven't been improving!

So after kicking myself for taking them off something that was working, last night I bought some more California Trace and should have it by the end of the week.

The moral of the story is that I've decided I'm tired of taking wild guesses about my horses' nutritional needs and have signed up for Dr. Eleanor Kellon's NRC Plus course. The class runs from November 7 through January 9 if anyone is interested in taking it with me.

Aloha!

2011-10-02T20:55:00.000-04:00

I thought you might enjoy seeing a few pictures from Hawai'i:

What I did in Hawai'i:

Ate little bananas
Ate Spam
Had a massage
Swam with dolphins
Went snorkeling
Took a surfing lesson
Took a gazillion pictures
Lusted over orchids
Got a violently red sunburn
Had a great time!

We got home around midnight on Friday and the first thing I did was go out and check on the Quarters. My husband thought I was a crazy person, but priorities are priorities. It took me a while to find them in the dark, but once I did I brought them up to the barn to eat and get their body checks. They are A-Okay!

It comes out that I left at the perfect time- I snuck in a ride on Thursday before I left and tacked up Gwen to be ponied. She was feeling a little on edge and actually bucked and pulled the rope out of my hand while we were cantering. I asked for a canter again a little later and she pulled the rope out of my hand again. Apparently somebody was going into heat that day, I can't think of a better time for me to check out than when she's feeling hormonal. She was back to normal again today. I didn't ride Coriander because it's been raining like crazy here lately and the ground is horribly wet and muddy, but since my rides on her don't go anywhere I got on her. She had some slight bobbles, like forgetting that leg pressure means go forward, but for a week off she was really good. I was happy with our short ride.

Coming home from Hawai'i really brought home how close we are to winter, I figure I've only got about a month of daylight left where I can work with her during the week. It'll be interesting to see how far we get before daylight savings time. In the meantime, I'll be busy catching up with what everyone else did while I was gone!

Establishing a pattern

2011-09-21T11:08:00.002-04:00

Since the 13th when I got my nerve back again, I've been trying to get on Gwen at least once every other day. She's doing quite well. I'm doing quite well. Her soft attitude about carrying me around has come back, there's no more giraffe neck when I stand on the mounting block or slide onto her back, and my heart no longer pounds like a frightened bird every time I'm looking down on her. We've got our mojo back.

I'm trying something a bit different this time- I'm setting up a pattern so that she knows exactly what to expect when I'm sitting on her. Initially I slid on, clicked and gave her a treat, slid off. Then I added in a neck flexion in each direction (not to my knee, just to 3 and 9 'o clock). After that I added in a step forward, then two steps forward. Yesterday I added in a hip yield to the right and she was right there, tonight I'll see if I can add one to the left too.

So far I haven't asked her for anything new, just going back over the things she already knows. I think this is good, it gives me a chance to really carve those essential skills into stone and it gives her confidence. Best of all, I think she's actually enjoying it. She marches right over to the mounting block now, ready to go, and when I slide off (which is relatively quickly since it only takes about 3 minutes to go through the pattern) she looks at me like, "is that it?"

"Are you really leaving for the day?"

I think it's best right now to leave her wanting more. I have plans to add the other hip yield then ask her to walk forward and follow her nose in each direction, after we get those I'll ask her to back up. Any other suggestions? Other than picking the poo out of the run-in, I'll be doing that tonight.

Unfortunately (fortunately) her lessons will be on hiatus for a week. The husband and I are going on a little vacation to celebrate our wedding anniversary next week. I'm a little bummed about leaving her when we've been making such progress but it's not often that you get a partially expense paid trip to Hawaii (husband has a work conference there and I'm piggy-backing on it), so it was too good an opportunity to turn down.

Aloha everyone!

The Head and Not the Heart

2011-09-19T11:03:00.002-04:00

I recently got a copy (i.e. I begged for a free review copy) of Natalie Keller Reinert's novella, "The Head and Not the Heart." In the spirit of the environment in which it was written, I cranked up The National on my computer and settled in for a little reading.

I felt this story was about self-discovery. The main character, a young adult, is forced to take a long, hard look at her life and decide if what she's doing and where she's at is really what she wants out of her life. Like what happens to so many of us, it takes a complete change in environment to help her find what's really in her heart.

To me, the strength in Natalie's writing is in how well she knows her subject and how accurately she can impart it to the reader. Even if you didn't know Natalie, you could tell from reading this story that she really knows horses, when reading her descriptions of horse handling and riding you feel like you're right there with the character. You feel a kinship because she gets horses the way most of us get horses- deep in our guts, like they are a part of us. Take this excerpt for example:

"I had my forehead pressed against Saltpeter’s skull, the swirling patterns of his white and gray hairs a spiral between his dark eyes, and his forelock parted on either side of my head and tickled my ears, and I could feel his warm, moist breath on my hands, cupped beneath his chin and holding him gently, gently, so that he wouldn’t get claustrophobic, overwhelmed by human affection, and would just share that simple, silent moment with me. Horses only spoke when absolutely necessary, and wild horses would never speak at all; sound would give away their location, and horses only want to be known to their kin. A barn full of confident, foolish young horses was alive and rowdy with whinnies and neighs; a horse alone with a human was often quiet, protecting them both from the outside world."

Nice, right?

Throughout the book it was obvious that Natalie was having a bit of fun with names. The protagonist's name is Alex, her boss and lover's name is Alexander. I'm sure there's some kind of symbolism in there about how Alex originally felt like a cog in the Alexander machine but I'm allergic to symbolism so I won't get into it. She also had an entertaining name for a lecherous old man who takes Alex out to dinner but you'll have to read it to find out. I don't want to give away any more of the book to you.

Overall, I was impressed by this debut novella; I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of her work in the future. You can pick up an electronic copy for Kindles here or you can get a pdf from here. Natalie's blog, Retired Racehorse, can be found on my blog roll.

How to remove a horseshoe

2011-09-15T11:14:00.003-04:00

I think everyone who has a horse should know how to remove a horseshoe. For those of you whose horses are shod you never know when something will happen and you either a.) won't be able to get in touch with your farrier, or b.) your farrier will be too busy to come out when you need them. For those of you whose horses are barefoot, you probably know someone whose horses are shod and will run into the above situations.

You really only need two tools to remove a horseshoe: An old rasp and an old/cheap pair of nippers.

Any trimmer or farrier could supply you with the old rasp (I've got one you could have) and they might have an old pair of nippers they'll give you, otherwise just buy a cheap pair. Cheap nippers are cheap because they don't cut particularly well but that's okay, you don't need them to cut to remove a shoe.

Get the horse on a hard, solid surface like a concrete floor, rubber mat, pavement, or a piece of plywood; plop some hay in front of their face (this will take a while); and grab that rasp. While the horse stands on the foot, use the narrow edge of the rasp to carefully saw off the nail clinches. Hold the rasp parallel to the hoofwall and saw downwards on the clinches one-at-a-time until they are just shiny little squares flush with the hoofwall. Try to take off as little hoofwall as possible. It's very easy to dig a ditch in the hoofwall while you're rasping those clinches so check often to make sure you aren't doing this- if you are then you need to change the angle of your rasp.

Make sure not to position yourself directly in front of your horse's leg. It's very easy to get clocked in the head by a knee if you don't watch what you're doing.

Once all your clinches are off, pick up the leg and carefully place the teeth of the nippers between the shoe and the hoofwall at one heel behind the last nail. Don't cut into the hoofwall! Once you've got the nippers positioned pull the handle down and inwards toward the toe. When you've got it loosened a little switch sides. Keep switching sides until those last nails start popping out of the hoof, then position your nippers in front of those nails and continue on until all the nails have loosened up enough for the shoe to come off.

Voila, you've removed a horseshoe!

What is nice about this method is that you don't have to do any banging on the hoof to get the shoe off. If the horse is laminitic or suffering from an injury, reducing the amount of tools pounding on the foot really makes a difference.

This first video shows a slightly different method. Notice that she just rasps the whole hoofwall to remove the clinches. This works but it kills your rasp and takes off a lot of excess hoofwall. I would also NOT recommend using a claw hammer like she shows unless you absolutely have to. It would be too easy to not get it anchored well, pull too hard, and end up with a claw hammer in your face or your horse. EEK!

This second video is hawking a product, an emergency shoe pulling kit, and shows how to use a tool to pull the nails out one by one. That's fine if your horse doesn't mind the banging, but it's not necessary. I put it up because I enjoyed watching this woman with her nicely manicured nails and shiny tall boots pull a shoe without even using gloves to hold the rasp. She's more hardcore than she looks!

Hopefully you'll be lucky and never have to do this, but in case you do- it doesn't hurt to keep a rasp and nippers on hand!

Back in business

2011-09-13T12:47:00.001-04:00

On Thursday I sucked up my courage on got on Gwen again. I slid on, C/T, slid back off onto the mounting block, C/T, three times. She was wonderful and fabulous and only wanted to know which side her treat was going to come from.She didn't even wait until I was settled before her questing little muzzle started sniffing around for food. Just the cutest.

I did wuss out and use the bareback pad instead of the saddle.

I know what you're thinking, "in what world is choosing a bareback pad instead of a saddle wussing out when getting on a nervous mare who's greener than grass?"

Here's the thing, my Ansur- which I love- is kinda tall. I can't just slide into it gracefully, I have to wiggle into it. I can just slide on top of the barepack pad with a minimum of fuss, so until she's rock solid with mounting and dismounting again I want it to be as smooth as possible. I'll probably introduce the saddle when I she's ready to start moving forward and do hip yields again.

I put the old Crosby back on her Saturday and ponied her off Coriander, we did a bit more trotting and cantering this time. Uphill, downhill, and round the hill. I'm trying to get her used to the feel of a saddle over varied terrain and movements. No more bucking when the saddle surprises her!

We trotted downhill and I got a chance to be impressed with Coriander, he's really learned how to regulate himself going downhill which was made clear by Gwen's cluelessness. We started trotting downhill and she just couldn't stop herself from picking up speed until she was passing us. That made Coriander cranky and he shot a hind hoof at her, over which we had to have a conversation. No starting fights when the human's on your back!

After the ride I put the pad on her again and got on a couple more times. She was calm as a cucumber and I was feeling pretty confident. Unfortunately Saturday night the local town shot off some fireworks less than two miles from their pasture, and she's been a mess ever since. Hopefully she'll be back to normal tonight.

If not I'll be standing there shaking my fist at the sky shouting, "why fireworks, why?"

Speaking of bucking, I've been watching a lot of capriole lately, remembering just how heartily she can buck, and thinking that the capriole looks a bit like bucking. I bet she could capriole with the best of them. Future plans...

Hurricane aftermath

2011-09-09T14:39:00.003-04:00

Our region got hit pretty hard by Hurricane Lee. We didn't get wind but we got rain, lots and lots of rain. The basement of our rental house flooded but other than that we made it through okay. Unfortunately our neighbors to the Southeast were not so lucky.

Owego and Binghamton are about 45 minutes away from us and are very depressed areas economically. Cleaning this up is going to be a nightmare, I don't know where the money is going to come from.

Between this year's massive flooding in the Northeast, the fires and terrible drought in the Southwest, and the tornadoes of the Southeast (did I miss flooding in the mid-West?), I don't think anyone can deny that the weather we're having just ain't right. Climate change is happening WAY faster than it's supposed to and in my opinion it's time that we start thinking carefully about how this might be caused by our actions. And that's all I'll say about that.

I have the Ansur!

2011-09-07T13:12:00.001-04:00

And it is beautiful!

I received it last Saturday and have been holding off on posting about it so I could give an educated opinion. So far my educated opinion is that I love it. It's very comfortable for me (though it did take a few rides for my legs to get used to being under me instead of in front of me) and best of all Coriander seems to be pretty happy with it. Our mutual communication is clear as a bell in this saddle too, he has been super responsive to my tiniest signals, especially at the halt: I exhale and start to sit and he's already stopping. It's also easier for me to feel my diagonals, something I've always had a hard time with.

We had a lovely experience with it last week when I put the Ansur on him and ponied Gwen with one of the Crosbys. I wanted her to get some more dynamic movement with a saddle on so we did more trotting and even tried a canter. There I was on Coriander who had a lovely rocking-horse canter on the buckle and Gwen was cantering away right next to us. It was wonderful.

I'll just ignore that he was a bit pitchy last night, though it did give us a chance to work on halt/trot transitions going downhill. If he's going to buck at the canter then by golly he's going to work until he doesn't feel like bucking anymore. Don't feel bad for him, he was mad at me for not going where he wanted and it was a lot cooler than the last time I rode so he was feeling uppity. It was just one more test for the saddle- which stayed in place through it all.

I am having issues with my girth, I can't seem to get it tight enough. It doesn't have any elastic and has lots of loops to keep the flaps down, that makes it a little hard for me to tighten it adequately from the ground and I can't do it at all from the saddle. I've reached down mid-ride and found the girth that was tight when I got on hanging loosely under his belly. Shockingly the saddle still felt stable with only a little slippage. Still, I've just ordered another girth so that problem should be fixed next week.

Gwen's worn it too, though I haven't gotten on her yet. I tacked her up with it last night, brought her to the mounting block and asked for neck flexions. Then I leaned over the saddle a bit, slapped it and moved the stirrups around. She was feeling a bit spooky and I was feeling a lot chicken so I didn't swing a leg over. My timeline for that is sometime in the next two weeks, when she's feeling soft and I'm feeling confident it will happen. Or I'll stock up on Valium, whichever comes first.

So far so good, I'm hoping for many years of happiness with this saddle!

The hoof mechanism

2011-09-06T11:12:00.000-04:00

Now that you know what the back of the hoof is made of you can understand how the hoof mechanism works. In a nutshell: When the horse weights a foot, that weight pushes down and expands the digital cushion which flattens out the live frog and pushes the lateral cartilages outwards. When the weight is taken off the hoof the live frog springs back to its original shape and the lateral cartilages move back in.

Makes sense, right? Check out Cheryl's collage below for a visual aid.

The hoof mechanism needs certain conditions to work correctly, for instance the foot must be disease free and the shape of the capsule (hoof wall) must allow the hoof to expand and contract. That means no thrush, no imbalance, and no contractions of the hoof wall- any of those will impair the hoof mechanism and will result in negative impacts on the joints.

If the digital cushion is too thin then too much pressure is placed on the live frog, it can't absorb all of it and transfers it to the heels, they can't absorb it either so they get crushed. At the same time, the shock that should have been absorbed by the digital cushion gets sent up the leg, creating joint pain all the way up to the back.
If the live frog is weakened by disease it can't flatten and spring back into shape, this causes pain and doesn't adequately push apart the lateral cartilages, this will also put too much pressure on the heels. Again, this will increase the shock sent up the leg.

See how this all works together?

You know how they say that each hoof acts as an ancillary heart for the horse? I estimate that it is the hoof mechanism that serves that function. Remember how I said the lateral cartilages are full of blood vessels? The hoof mechanism essentially "pumps" those lateral cartilages, moving the blood up and down the legs.

"But but but," you say, "I thought that was the frog."

Not a chance, the frog doesn't have any blood in it so how could it pump any? Speaking of frogs, here's another bit of info that might blow your mind, it certainly almost caused a mutiny in Oregon: The callused frog, the bit that touches the ground, is not essential to the hoof mechanism. Chew on that for a minute.

Are you leaping around and shouting now? So were we. Cheryl's theory is that the callused frog, the bit that touches the ground, is only there for comfort and protection- it's the live frog that acts as a trampoline supporting the hoof mechanism.

This theory actually gave me quite a bit of relief. You may recall that I had to cut Coriander's frogs off after his awful thrush infection last fall. I was sweating bullets that I was causing him harm by doing so, except that after I did it he was instantly more comfortable. It makes sense now, I treated his live frog and healed it from the thrush and then I took off the uneven pressure created by the nasty remains of the callused frog. Voila! Sound horse, without any frog touching the ground.

Here's another thing that might shock you to read me saying: Shoes don't shut down the hoof mechanism, they only hinder it. There's a good reason why farriers don't put nails close to the heels, they know that they move outward and won't hold the nails. If you have your horses shod ask your farrier to show you the heel wear the next time your shoes are set, you'll probably see marks in the metal from the heels moving in and out.

Does that mean I'm rethinking keeping my horses barefoot? Nope. I still don't like shoes because of the added concussion landing on metal adds to the joints, that they take away the heels natural independent suspension, that they open up the hoof wall to fungus and bacteria via the nail holes, and mostly because they force the horse to stand on their laminae (via the hoof wall). Again, I believe horses should stand on their soles, not the hoof wall.

If this has piqued your interest, Dr. Bowker has an article you might want to read here.

The back of the hoof

2011-09-01T14:20:00.003-04:00

You may or may not have noticed that my previous hoof posts were suspiciously lacking in some pretty important structures. I was aware of their absence, the problem was that I still didn't really understand how they worked. Fortunately I got some insight in Oregon.

Have you ever heard that the hoof should be divided into thirds as shown by the photo below?

Photo from Yvonne Wells

There's a reason for that: The back 2/3 of the hoof absorbs shock.

Since horses weigh quite a bit it makes sense that most of the foot should be devoted to energy dissipation, right? Okay then. Three important structures make up the back of the hoof: the digital cushion, the live (sensitive) frog, and the lateral cartilages.

The Digital Cushion

You could think of the digital cushion as the horse's gel insole, its only function is to absorb shock. When horses are born the digital cushion is simply a mass of fatty tissue, as they grow and move that fatty tissue becomes denser and cartilaginous. This is a good thing: thicker, tougher digital cushions are better able to withstand the pressure of a thousand + pound horse running around on them. Below is a picture of a nice, fat digital cushion- it's the white bit between the red of the coffin bone/corium and the grey of the frog.

Photo from I don't remember where, probably one of Cheryl's

Digital cushions need lots of heel first landings to develop but, sadly, a lot of domestic horses don't get them. Due to containment practices (stalling), shoes, and untreated disease lots of domestic horses suffer from poorly developed digital cushions. You can check your horses' digital cushions like this:

Photo from the Natural Hoof UK

They should resist your fingers when you squeeze, if they're soft and spongy then you've got a problem. The good news is that any horse at any age can develop strong digital cushions given the right conditions. The Rockley Farm blog gives some great examples of that. Whenever they show pictures of their rehab horses' improved heels what you're actually seeing is the development of the digital cushion.

The Live Frog

The live frog sits directly underneath the digital cushion, it is made of a solid, rubbery material that acts like a trampoline and produces the frog callus that we are so used to seeing and fretting about (at least I fret about it). Can you see how it's folded up like an accordion? That allows it to stretch and flatten under the digital cushion as the horse weights the foot, when the foot is unweighted the live frog springs back to its original shape.

Photo from Cheryl Henderson

I included this second photo so you could place what you were looking at in the above picture. Like the digital cushion, the live frog is also susceptible to negative forces, especially thrush. With bad cases of central sulcus thrush the live frog will get eaten away, weakening the structure and thus destroying an essential part of the hoof mechanism (I'll describe the hoof mechanism in another post).

Photo from Cheryl Henderson

The Lateral Cartilage

Raise your hand if you've heard of the lateral cartilages before (as if I could see you). I'm guessing most of you aren't raising your hand. That's too bad because they are quite important, not only are they key factors in the hoof mechanism, but they also contain lots and lots of blood vessels (and one exciting revelation- read on).

Each hoof has two lateral cartilages that are set up as mirror images of each other around the bones and digital cushion. They are located inside of the corium and have multiple attachments: They attach to the hide above the coronet band, the coffin bone, and P2.

Collage and photos by Cheryl Henderson

Here's the exciting revelation: The bars of the hoof grow from the lateral cartilage.

Okay, so maybe that's not as exciting as winning the lottery but it's still an important finding. It means that one side effect of leaving the bars alone and letting them overgrow is that they "jack up" the lateral cartilages which displaces them, squishes them, and basically keeps them from doing their job. Here's a rule of thumb for you: if you have to trim the walls then you will also have to trim the bars. If the horse isn't moving on enough abrasive footing to self-trim the walls then they aren't self-trimming the bars either.

Get it? Got it? Good.

A random bit of "what the...?"

2011-08-30T08:02:00.000-04:00

As a quarter horse owner I signed up for America's Horse Daily: a service from the American Quarter Horse Association that sends me a quarter horse related email every day. This popped into my inbox this morning. At first glance I was impressed that she was still jumping even though she lost her stirrup, then I looked closer.

Ick all around is all I can say. Is this how most people are taught to jump these days?

Pop quiz

2011-08-26T18:54:00.000-04:00

The Quarters got their teeth done today and I took advantage of my vet getting a new portable x-ray machine to get a look inside Gwen's front feet (We'll get Coriander next week after I have a chance to trim him).

Here's the right fore:

And here's the left fore (the clubby one):

So here's the pop quiz: What do I need to change when I trim that left fore?

PS- I got the thumb's up to do some posts based on some things I learned at school, I'll try to get those up next week.

OSNHC

2011-08-24T12:47:00.003-04:00

I'm back! Did you miss me? Heh, heh. I finally got home yesterday afternoon (half a day late, thanks to San Francisco weather) and am now feeling rested enough to cobble together a post. I spent all last week at the Oregon School of Natural Hoof Care in Jacksonville, Oregon learning even more about the ins-and-outs of hooves and trimming.

If you want to learn more about hooves and trimming I whole-heartedly recommend taking their Whole Horse course. I chose this school because after all my research I felt that Cheryl Henderson was the person I could learn the most from and I wasn't disappointed. You might find some naysaying if you google her on the internet but don't believe everything that you read, Cheryl is a trailblazer and in her hunt for knowledge she's taken on many a horse that everyone else had given up for dead- she has guts like you wouldn't believe.

Anyway, back to my experience. I arrived late on a Friday evening, we pulled up to a house that looked like a hotel and were escorted inside. Cheryl had us drop our bags by the door before we walked through an enormous kitchen and out the back. We walked out onto a huge back deck overlooking a pond with a waterfall and a yard full of little lighted butterflies twinkling in the flowerbeds. I asked if we were in paradise and one of my fellow students told me that yes, we were (he'd been before so he already knew).

That set the scene for the whole week. Between Cheryl's beautiful landscaping, the hot tub, the sauna, and the scented oil massage I got it was like staying in a resort. Then there was the learnin'. Everyday started with a lecture and then it was out to the barn for the hands-on experience with the help of the co-instructors. My class was made up of a group of people who had never trimmed, those who had already established a clientele they trimmed for, and one world class farrier. I even shared a room with Laz's new trimmer over at Sweet Horse's Breath (it's a small world after all...). It was a diverse group but we all got along like gangbusters, so much so that our class was named "Harmony."

Over the course of the week I trimmed four horses. The first was a 38 year old! pony who was blind, had no teeth, and was a total sweetie for me. Stupid me forgot to get pictures though. Then I trimmed a donkey:

Me, getting to work

Cute little donkey foot

And a paint mare that was brought in. She was also super sweet for me (there's a picture of me trimming her floating around somewhere, I'll post it when I get a copy), which was a good thing because her feet were quite overgrown and needed some work.

Paint mare pre-trim

Paint mare post-trim, check out the bruising, also the imbalance. This is why pictures are good.

Here I am taking a breather while Sparky got a White Lightning soak after I trimmed him. This little guy came in obviously feeling quite bad. He showed signs of DSLD and what we thought was a pretty bad sheath infection so we spent the day convincing the owner to get a vet out ASAP. Fortunately the guy took our advice and got someone out the next day. Diagnosis: Terminal cancer. That was that for Sparky, poor guy, but at least he's not in pain anymore. So it goes...

Despite that note of sadness it was a great week and an incredible experience. There's a post or two I want to make about what I learned but I want to ask Cheryl for her permission first- so keep an eye out for those. In the meantime, I'm off to trim a horse tonight!

New client and other news

2011-08-10T10:36:00.001-04:00

I got a phone call from a new trimming client out of the blue last week, my first referral! It seems that my first client has been happy enough with my work to tell her friends. Owner called me up and asked if I could come right out since her horse hadn't been trimmed in 24 weeks, seems her old trimmer canceled on her and then never returned her calls to reschedule. After this information I didn't know what to expect, I see two reasons why a trimmer wouldn't reschedule- either the trimmer is a flake or the horse/owner is crazy. On first impression the owner isn't crazy, but she made sure to let me know that her little arabian mare can be "tempermental."

Fortunately for her, this mare proved to have nice feet if a little overgrown. Unfortunately feet this overgrown need the nippers and I'm not very good with the nippers yet, so it took awhile. She was quite good until I got to the last foot, the right hind, and then she cow-kicked at me. It was halfhearted and it didn't seem like she wanted to hit me, I think I'd just hit the limits of her patience. Sorry girl, next time I'll be faster.

Right fore, long toe and excess wall produced a little flare in the front.

Left hind, the owner was very worried about this flare. No big deal, ex-trimmer just hadn't given her any quarter relief. I rasped it off and she was fine.

A bit of excess foot here, the mare also had some thrush as you can see by the central sulcus crack.

While I was out the owner asked if I'd also trim her pony. Apparently she'd had two different people trimming her horses, one for the arab and one for the pony? I didn't quite understand that, but since I was already there I said sure. Pony was absolutely adorable, a little 30 year old shetland that had taught all the kids in the area to ride. She had an interesting trick I've never seen before, when she finally picked up her front feet she wouldn't bend her knees, she just lifted her leg straight backwards. Smart little pony trick! I just flexed her fetlock and her knee followed. I could tell that she's foundered in the past, there was a dish in her front hooves and the coronet band dipped down towards the ground in the front. Definitely some coffin bone remodeling going on in there (sorry, no pictures, I was tired by that time). She also had some massive heel growth so I took those right down. Her already compromised coffin bones didn't need that kind of stress put on them!

The owner's timing was a little funny seeing that I'm leaving for trimming school on Friday but it is what it is. I get back on the 23rd and then go and trim my other client on the 24th, I plan to put my new knowledge to good use right away!

In other news my saddle is supposed to be finished on the 24th! I'm very excited and hoping, hoping, hoping that the Quarters like it. I've been kind of putting off getting back on Gwen until the saddle comes, I've sat on her twice since the bucking incident but haven't really been pushing it at all. With any luck she'll like the saddle and I'll finally have some stirrups to use on her. Stirrups can do quite a bit for your confidence.

Oh, and I have a funny story to share: One day last week I let the Quarters loose to graze after their dinner, while I was standing with them I heard a mourning dove call and started calling back to him. After a while I switched to pigeon coos just for fun. To do a pigeon coo you have to open your mouth and vibrate your throat, something I was a little out of practice on. While I stood there practicing, Gwen picked her head up from the grass to look at me. When I kept going she walked up to me and put her muzzle right on my mouth, "are those sounds coming from YOU?" By this point I was laughing too hard to keep going so I don't know if she got her question answered sufficiently or not. She's too cute sometimes :)

Two years: Observations

2011-08-08T15:06:00.003-04:00

At the end of the first year of having the Quarters I thought I knew them, at the end of two years it seems that my earlier estimate of their personalities wasn't quite on the mark. You may recall that I was keeping them at a shabby boarding barn with mostly every day turnout. I thought that their biggest issue was Gwen losing her mind at being left alone and Coriander charging at other geldings over the fence. What I found out after I moved them to pasture board was that they were actually constantly stressed in that old barn, and that their personalities changed quite a bit once they could finally relax.

For one thing, Gwen is an absolute sweetheart, she really is. I know that I do a lot of writing about how reactive and flighty she is but you couldn't find a more cooperative, eager-to-please, downright affectionate horse than her. Another thing I've come to notice more and more in the last year is that she's actually quite curious and likes to explore. She's still not quite comfortable going out by herself but if another horse comes along she's in the lead checking things out. She's gaining confidence and growing much bolder. In all, she's a super fun horse and I just love getting to work with her.

Coriander is also not what I thought he was last year. For the first year he was my "easy" horse, the one I didn't have to worry about other people handling, the one I could ride. I took him a bit for granted. In this second year I've had to devote a lot of attention to him, he's taught me about thrush and how to be a better trimmer, he's taught me how to be a more effective rider, but most of all he's taught me a whole lot about compromise. Coriander has very strong opinions, opinions he will defend forcefully if need be, that I need to pay very close attention to because most of the time he's right (don't tell him that though, his ego is already pretty big). I've also learned this year that Coriander is playful. I never saw him playing during the first year I had him and it didn't strike me as odd until this spring when I noticed him playing with Butch, lately I've seen him initiating play with Gwen. It's nice to see him relax and enjoy himself.

They're also teaching me some interesting things about herd dynamics and dominance. Food hierarchy in the pasture goes like this: Butch then Rocky then Coriander then Gwen. Butch is definitely the Boss Hoss, he can eat wherever he wants, whenever he wants; Gwen is the exact opposite, everybody can push her off her food; yet Gwen appears to have become the herd matriarch. When Gwen decides it's time to graze somewhere else she'll just go- and the rest of the herd follows. For this reason I keep Gwen in the halter when I take the Quarters out for walks. Coriander will follow her anywhere, but if she's loose she'll decide at any time that she needs to return to the barn. At a gallop. That's not exactly safe, so she stays in my hand. I also think it's nice to give Coriander the chance to explore places on his own that I'm normally directing from the saddle.

This development is very interesting to me because it basically throws dominance theory on its head and, to me, proves Mark Rashid's passive leadership theory. Gwen is on the bottom of the hierarchy yet the herd loves her and will follow her anywhere. I'll be keeping that in mind the next time someone says you have to dominate your horses to be the boss.

This is why it's so wonderful to have horses, they have so many good lessons to teach us!

Two years!

2011-08-04T14:27:00.002-04:00

The husband and I are in the middle of moving to a bigger and better apartment so I've been too busy packing boxes, moving boxes, and unpacking boxes to post anything or read any blogs lately. Unfortunately I also missed posting about my two year anniversary with the Quarters.

When I've got more time I'll write a real post, but in the meantime:

Mah ponehs- I luvs dem!

Forward Foot Syndrome

2011-07-28T09:40:00.004-04:00

This post is for in2paints (and anyone else who is interested): A moderator for one of the listserves I read posted this last night and I thought it was a really good explanation of forward foot syndrome and how to fix it. Walt's words are in black. You can find some more info about it on Jenny's page.

With all the rest, one additional problem all newbies to trimming face is semantics. Those of us who are used to talking "horse" and "hoof" throw terms around easily, and for the most part we understand each other -- but it takes some time to reach that condition. Some say it's almost like being suddenly dropped into the east end of London where cockney is spoken. Cockney is the nonstandard dialect of English spoken by many of the residents, who understand each other, but to those who haven't been there for long it almost sounds like a foreign language, and it takes some getting used to. Well, talking horse isn't quite like Cockney (though some of our spouses may think so). But I'll grant you that "lowering" heels and "bringing them back" at minimum sounds like a dichotomy. Just stick with it, and "horsespeak" will eventually rub off on you.

Meantime, the two primary dicta of hoof care are "bringing the toe back" and "lowering the heels". These two actions alone go far in assuring proper foot function. They are both "little things", easily accomplished, but are extremely important for proper foot function, and unfortunately, many trimmers fail to do so. I'll try an explanation without graphics -- which can be hard for both of us. As the foot continues to get little or improper trimming, the toe tends to grow long and the heel forward. The heel would actually be growing high, but the forces pulling everything forward also bend the heel tubules and bring the heels forward instead of downward. Other symptoms develop, eventually, like curvy, laid-over bars, and a long, thin, pencil-like frog. This condition is known as Forward Foot Syndrome (FFS).

Let's get to the heel -- too high / too far forward. The easy one is lowering the heels -- that means they've grown too long (but their tubules are still straight, not bent forward -- more on that in a moment). Some trimmers allow long heels in order to induce a certain "way of going" for the horse, for appearance sake while moving, mostly. Problem is, a high heel forces the coffin bone's tip to tilt downward. Coffin bone should be close to ground parallel so that the horse's weight bearing down on the sole is evenly distributed over the broad expanse of the sole. A lowered c.b. tip puts most of the weight-bearing load on the sole under the bone tip. That's got to hurt, it pinches the sole itself, and ironically, it can cause a heel-first landing which we DON'T want in this case -- because it's an attempt by the horse to ease his discomfort in the toe area. So keep the heel height down to a point where when the foot is properly balanced, the c.b. is ground parallel. Where is that point? You'll end up finding it on your own horse, but you gotta start somewhere. There is a lot written
about heel height, and several plausible methods for keeping it just right: I think a good place to start is to trim it down to the point where a healthy frog will touch ground at the same time the heel buttresses do so. If the frog isn't suitable as a reference, you can carefully scrape all the dead sole you can get to out of the Seats of Corn, and trim the heel buttresses to be on the order of maybe 1/4-inch higher than that live sole plane in the Seat.

Now how about bringing the heel back? This is a little more complicated. As FFS develops, the toe grows long, the white line actually starts to stretch around the toe, and the heel is pulled forward. But the heel starts out growing at a downward angle. It keeps on growing if not trimmed or worn, and with FFS, it makes a rather sudden direction of growth change from down to forward. From then on, it continues to grow (tubules get longer), but the direction has become forward. Consider a broom: prepare to sweep, and hold it vertical on the ground as you press downward. Because of the broom's "tubules", let's call them, being vertical and supporting each other, there is good resistance to downward pressure. That's what we want in healthy heel buttresses. Now lean the broom at an angle and continue to press straight down. The broom "tubules" now bend en masse along the ground, and there is little resistance to your pressure. That's what we DON'T want to happen to the heel tubules in an FFS foot.

So what if they do bend forward, you ask? Well, the horse still supports himself on his heels, but because the lowest point on an underslung heel (which takes the horse's weight as he moves) is not on the ends of the tubules where the strength lies (the broom analogy?), but rather somewhere part-way down the tubules, the part that's actually on the ground, where there is no supporting strength. We need to correct the condition, which can take some time. The objective is to get tubule ends in ground contact so they can do their work. Proper trimming of an underslung heel requires shaving off a little at a time -- you'll be taking off what amounts to the side of the buttress -- until you've created enough shorter tubules to begin to take the horse's weight comfortably. You cannot just rasp off all the bent-forward heel tubules.

This heel buttress repair procedure is much more complex and time-consuming than taking back the toe, but both are necessary in an FFS foot. It's a major reason for not allowing FFS to develop in the first place, and all it takes to prevent it is rendering a proper trim. At EVERY trim, take the toes back and trim the heels, even if it's just a very small amount. For maintenance trimming, you can regularly take the toe back with vertical rasp strokes, removing the outer layer between roughly 2:00 to 10:00. Remember, because of the toe angle, you're actually removing very little of outer wall layer tissue. This, together with a rocker will help keep breakover back toward the frog tip, but you're also leaving the inner wall layer intact and at full strength to help support the horse as he moves.

I know that this has been rather heavy. I hope it's clear enough for you. Don't worry too much -- this isn't rocket science, it's mostly just common sense.

Walt

ZOMG! White things!

2011-07-27T11:59:00.000-04:00

The temps have finally fallen below ridiculous here which means I can get back to work. My first order of business was to ride Coriander. I was a bit worried about how it would go since he hasn't been ridden in a week but he was pretty good. My lesson about no unrequested forward appears to be sinking in- we only had to circle twice. We had some interesting transitions though, we're still working on getting a specific lead so I've been trying to incorporate a lot of canter transitions into our rides. I asked for a right lead first and got the left, then I asked for the left and got the right. Either he was feeling contrary or my body control was out of wack. I'm guessing the latter (it's always the human, right?).

After our ride I got Gwen out and fed them dinner, then I hooked her up for some ground driving. I'm really enjoying doing this with her. If she's never comfortable being ridden I could still have a ton of fun with her ground driving. How cool would be it be if she could do all the upper level dressage work on the lines? Pretty darn cool, and she would find it easy. I may just do that anyway...

Back to business- Mark was trimming trees in our normal area so I took her out to the other Christmas tree field, the one she's never been all the way through and finds a little nerve wracking. She was nervous when we walked in (we have to walk in a little alley through a hedge), but she quickly got over her nerves and put her "exploring hat" on. I actually had a hard time turning her around to come back because she wanted to keep going! Love that.

She had a bit of a scare on the way back though:

"ZOMG! There's a WHITE THING on that trailer!"

She did her best "Arabian in a halter class" impression: Arching her neck, snorting, bugging her eyes out of her head, spinning and bending all over the place. If it was a shiny white thing I would have ushered her away from it (because of her sensitive eyes), but this wasn't shiny so we got to play Touch The Goblin instead. Can you step toward it? Yes, click and treat. How about closer? Closer still? Finally she got right next to it and I asked her to target on it. As soon as she did that, the fear was gone and she discovered that there was grass all around it. "What white thing? All I see is green." Love that too.

Here's what I don't love:

Gwen's getting rubs from her fly mask.

She has SUCH sensitive skin that I'm not surprised by this but I wish it weren't happening, we're still right in the middle of bug season and I don't want her to get eye or ear problems from the bugs. I've still got the old style mask that don't have the ear covers that I could put on her, but I don't like how much more difficult that thick, white mesh is to see through than the finer, black mesh on the new ones. For now she's wearing Swat eyeliner until her face heals (the clear Swat, not the pink stuff). She's been very good about letting me put it on but now I'm concerned that the Swat will damage the skin around her eyes.

Ugh, I love summer but I could do without the flies!

If I could turn back time

2011-07-22T11:21:00.000-04:00

(Is Cher singing in your head now? Sorry about that)

Due to the heatwave I haven't done anything with the quarters. I hose them off, let them loose to graze, feed them dinner and call it a day. Nothing interesting to say there.

What is interesting is that the hot, humid weather affects my ankle much more than the cold. It aches, and when it aches I sometimes find myself wishing I could go back in time and not try to get on Gwen that day.

But maybe it happened for a reason.

If it weren't for my broken ankle I would not have noticed the BO's ever-increasing hostile attitude toward me my horses when I did, I would not have looked on Craigslist on the exact day that Mark advertised his pasture board, and my horses wouldn't be in the great place they are right now.

Even though that experience is not one that I'd like to live through again, I would not go back in time and erase it. I like where I am right now, I like where the horses are right now, and I wouldn't want to change it.

How about you? Are there any experiences that you initially thought you'd like to go back and change but finally decided you wouldn't?

When it's too hot to ride...

2011-07-17T14:13:00.001-04:00

Go for a walk!

"Are we going over there?"

Coriander is content to follow his sister

Probably because of all the noms

"How do you like this pose?"

"Hurry up, I want to go this way!"

Gwen got a little sweaty

"He budged!"

Scary, scary jump of death

Not so scary after all

"What jump? All I see is this yummy grass."

"Hey, I know where we are! Let's trot!"

"Thanks for the walk and the noms!"

You don't know what you don't know

2011-07-14T12:56:00.001-04:00

My apologies if this post ends up being kind of boring but I feel like I've got to get this out...

It's come to my attention recently that I haven't been doing this clicker training thing quite right. Well, really I should say that Coriander has told me I'm doing it wrong. In a nutshell- he doesn't get it. Figuring this out has kind of knocked me for a loop. Where did I mess up?

After conducting some research it all boils down to the fact that I didn't really understand what I was doing either. I was incompetent and I didn't even know it. Maybe you've heard of this before- the four stages of competence:

1. Unconscious Incompetence
The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit.
2. Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit.
3. Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration.
4. Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become “second nature” and can be performed easily. He or she may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

This recent bombshell has slung me right out of stage 1 blubbering and shivering into stage 2. Now I'm trying to claw my way into stage 3 by learning as much as I possibly can. The funny thing is while I was doing my research I ran into this description of the horse's stages of clicker training from Katie Bartlett's site:

All You Can Eat Food Bar Stage: The horse thinks the trainer is a walking food bar. The horse can be greedy and can be pushy. He only sees what this food bar can do for him.
Trigger Stage: The horse makes a connection between the bridge sound and the food. It might be easy for some folks to think that this stage means the horse has figured out what this training is all about, but I don't think so (yet). Mugging can be just as obnoxious if it isn't stopped, but he is coming to see there is a sequence. At this point, they may appear to get it, but the horse tends to be inconsistent and easily frustrated.
Lightbulb Stage: The horse makes a connection between a behavior causing the bridge (click), which triggers the food vendor to vend. If the horse is emotionally immature and hasn't bought into the 'process', they may appear to have 'gotten it' but in reality, some personalities may be easily frustrated because they are struggling with: do they want the treat enough to do . They are coming to see this is their choice and that alone can be a new and unusual state for certain horses. At this point, some prior understanding of training will help progress the horse to the next stage. A trainer can *prevent* a horse from moving on to the next stage by increasing pressure instead of waiting for the horse to choose the correct response at this stage because the horse learns that if he doesn't do it, he will be pressured. In the worst case, the treat can become a bribe instead of a reward. This is a trainer issue, not a c/t issue. The only way to progress a horse thru this stage is to keep on keepin’ on with consistent training behavior so that the horse can 'buy in'.
Buy-In Stage: The horse develops an understanding of “learning” (not just a behavior causes the click but a particular behavior causes a click. He has developed some level of trust in the trainer - that the trainer will not ask for anything too unreasonable, even if things appear scary. I think this stage is where many repetitions often occur in order to refine a behavior. And at this state, the horse is beginning to see that there is an end to the means, in his own way.
Eureka Stage: The horse and trainer develop a dialog of learning where chains of behavior can be built without extensive repetitions because a dialog has been established between the horse and trainer. At this stage, the horse has finally learned to learn and in this last phase, the actual food motivator can become less important than the dialog and the game. Some people may not make a distinction between Buy-In and Eureka.

It appears that Coriander's been stuck in stage 2; amazingly, I would put Gwen in stage 3. I think because I've taught her more behaviors than Coriander she's had more of an opportunity to "get it." She also has a much more cooperative personality than her brother does. Not to say that he's not cooperative, he just needs more of a reason for doing things than she does. Consequently he's a great teacher. Love your horses for all their characteristics, folks. You never know what they'll be worth.

Anyway, back to my research. I bought a copy of Karen Pryor's, "Don't Shoot the Dog," and I'm SO happy I did. The title is a bit of a misnomer- this is not a book about dog training, there is some dog training in it but that's not the focus. The point of the book is to explain what operant conditioning and positive reinforcement are and how to use them to train any being with a central nervous system. Including people. Get a copy, you won't be disappointed.

Since I'm still casting my net far and wide to find the best sources of knowledge, I was excited to find this excellent quote from Bob Bailey that Mary just posted on her site, "Animal training: Simple, but not easy," along with the trailer for one of his operant conditioning videos (that video is on its way to me now). Boy is he ever right about that. I can't wait to watch that video.

In the meantime I'm going to continue playing with Coriander, trying to get the light bulb to turn on. First up, advanced targeting. Wish me luck!

Thrush update

2011-07-08T11:37:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted pictures but it's been a while since I felt like their frogs were post-worthy. If you recall I first was alerted to Coriander's ridiculously awful thrush infection last November and I've been treating him for it ever since. At the same time Gwen was also afflicted. We've had some ups and downs and a whole lot more learnin' on my part about foot health, nutrition, and thrush remedies since then.

These photos are from yesterday. Yeah, the trim looks not so great- I've still got a bunch to learn about how to use my tools (I'm going to trimming school in August, YAY!)- but my horses are sound and soundness is more important than looks. You can see that Coriander has still been landing toe first and has been pulling the front of his feet forward. It's been driving me crazy. I'd pull his toe back and he'd just pull it forward again by slamming down toe first. Finally, *finally*, as his frogs have come in he's started to land heel first most of the time.

Coriander's left fore- the clubbed one

Coriander's right fore

If it looks like his heels are high keep in mind that his frogs are still growing in, making it look like his heels are taller than they are. Though I do have an interesting (shameful) story about how I learned why Coriander has a club foot. I had been easing the heels on that club foot down the to same height as the heels on his right fore. Well guess what? When I finally got the heels down to the same height he went lame. I happened to be perusing the internet looking for something else when I found a farrier who talked about assessing the horse's entire body balance for soundness. He specifically mentioned looking at how the knees lined up. I went out and looked at Coriander's knees and - Lo And Behold!- his left knee was a 1/4 inch lower than his right knee. Whoops! I guess his left foot is clubbed because his left leg is shorter. Good to know.

And here are Gwen's feet. Note that she still has a crack down the middle of her frog. Her frogs don't look as good as Coriander's for one reason: He'll let me soak his feet and she won't. For that reason I've had to change my treatment tactics. I got a spray bottle, filled it with a 40:60 oxine to water ratio, and started spraying their frogs with that every day to every other day. I started doing that three weeks ago and can already see improvement. The crack between her heels is starting to fill in nicely. Other interesting things are starting to happen as a result of the spraying too- like the ditch around Coriander's left fore frog. It seems the tip of that frog wasn't healthy so now it's gone. Fascinating.

Gwen's right fore

Gwen's left fore

I want to note that even though her frogs still look thrushy she's sounder than her brother, a true rock cruncher. For a while I didn't understand why until I took a closer look at the back of their feet. Take a look at how much more robust the back of her foot, or the digital cushion, looks compared to Coriander's. I don't know if she got more exercise when she was a baby than he did or if there's a genetic factor going on but the difference is huge. Either way, I've got my fingers crossed that someday the back of his feet will look that robust.

Something else I want to add about thrush:

I trimmed my client horse this week and was dismayed to hear the owner tell me she'd stopped treating his thrush "since it's been dry." Um no. Whether it's wet or dry doesn't really make a difference. If your horse has thrush you need to treat it until it's gone. Period. That might take months but you have to persevere and keep after it despite the environmental conditions. I also told her she needs to get him on a mineral supplement to assist his grass diet. There simply aren't enough minerals in the forage around here to produce healthy hooves. I've come to learn that when it comes to thrush, what goes in the horse's mouth is just as, if not more, important as what you put on their feet.

Persistence pays off

2011-07-05T22:39:00.000-04:00

After my last post it probably seemed like I was coming to the end of my rope with Coriander. Fortunately our ride on Friday was fantastic, followed by two more good rides on Sunday and Monday. I'm focusing on transitions and keeping walking to a minimum. We're doing walk/trot transitions, trot/canter transitions, walk/canter transitions, and halt/trot transitions. I even think we'll be working on halt/canter transitions soon.

He seems much happier with this new arrangement. I'm making him use his mind and figure out his balance to answer all sorts of interesting questions. Things like: Can you trot downhill? Can you trot downhill without speeding up? Can you canter downhill? Okay, he can't quite get that one yet but he's almost got trotting downhill without speeding up in the bag. I was worried that these questions would be too difficult for him but he'll never figure them out if I don't bring them up, so I'm bringing them up.

My dressage trainer wanted me to work on turn on the forehand with him so we went into the ring Sunday and did a ton of those. We did trot to a corner, halt, turn on the forehand, trot away. We did walking a square with a turn on the forehand at each corner. We did 180s with turns on the forehand. He was getting so good at it that he figured out how to do a turn on the forehand without halting first. That was pretty cool. Things are looking up with him.

I got back on Gwen Monday- using the bareback pad. As soon as I slid on she jerked her head up (she had been feeling quite mellow) and skittered back a step or two. I waited a second for her to relax before I gave her a treat, then I dismounted. By the time my feet hit the ground she was about 5 feet away from me. It's obvious that she's still feeling a little traumatized. Still, I hope that experience was positive enough to make a difference.

My husband finished my cavaletti over the weekend! I brought them straight out to the pasture so the horses could get a look at them.

You're supposed to walk through them this way, right?

You gotta love the curiosity of horses, bring out something new and they're all over it like green on grass. These are PVC pipe cavaletti with interchangeable heights of either 6 or 12 inches. Super easy to make once you get the three-way connectors. They are pretty light so they knock over really easy which might not be the best if they learn they can just drag their feet through them. But so far they seem to be picking their feet up. Gwen even trotted over one!

In other news, it appears that MiKael is on the mend! Between her, Kate and everyone else, too many bloggers have getting hurt or ill lately. Let's have a happy and healthy July!

Not just a passenger anymore

2011-07-01T14:09:00.000-04:00

My last couple of rides on Coriander have been miserable. Unfortunately I haven't been able to ride him enough lately to establish the new protocol so every time there's a break between rides he reverts back to the old pattern of rushing off whenever he pleases. The pattern where it was okay to ignore me in favor of following his own agenda.

He seems to be particularly bad about it this week, the only reason I can think for it is that, ZOMG, Gwen's in heat. Apparently he feels a pretty strong need to get back and protect his mare. Too bad she's started clinging to Butch when she goes into heat (maybe that's part of it too). Either way, he feels the need to rush off A LOT. We did A LOT of circling in the each direction until he'd stop and give to the rein. Immediately after I released him he'd rush off again. All I wanted was for him to stand still for the count of three, it's amazing how long it took circling in each direction before he'd finally stop moving his feet for that long. Half the time after that I'd ask him to walk on and he'd take off trotting so we had to do it all over again.

Lest you think that maybe I was unconsciously cueing him - I was being very careful about my legs and energy level, trying to broadcast to him very clearly "stand still" by stopping my body and not touching him with my legs at all. I was even trying to avoid thinking anything other than what I wanted right at that moment in case he was picking up my subconscious cues. But honestly, I sincerely doubt he was paying enough attention to me to pick up those tiny cues. I mean, come on, the horse is ignoring my clicks, that's how tuned out he's gotten. Because of that I've put clicker training him on the backburner, he knows full well what the click means he just doesn't care.

All I can say is thank goodness I learned how to use single-rein riding because I couldn't do this without that technique. The beauty of riding with a single rein is that it's really hard for the horse to brace against it, unlike riding with two reins where the horse can use his skeleton to brace against you. Let me tell you, Coriander started out with one hell of a brace, but he got tired, and as he got tired he started to soften- just a little bit- and listen. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Still, I hope he gives this up soon because it's getting really old.

Because I'm having to do this I've had to rethink a lot of my work with him and I feel like I've come to an epiphany, possibly even a paradigm shift. For most of my life I've been content to just go along for the ride, but Coriander is proving that he needs more from me. As my dressage trainer told me, which I unfortunately didn't understand at the time, "you need to ask him for more, he can do it. He wants to do it." I think I get what she was trying to tell me now. He needs me to keep his mind busy, otherwise he's going to find another way to amuse himself, which means I need to change the way I ride. For him I can't be a pleasure rider, I need to have a purpose to give him a purpose. The easiest way I can think to do that is transitions, LOTS of transitions, then we'll add in lateral work. It's time I started getting picky, really picky.

Maybe I'm already on the right track: After I finished working with both of them and was walking down to the bottom pasture to find Gwen's missing flymask I saw him looking at me, I passed him and he walked after me. I stopped and waited for him to stop next to me, which he did, so I clicked and gave him a treat and scratched him in his favorite spot behind his ears. It was the first time all day that he paid attention to me.

All the time in the world

2011-06-27T22:21:00.000-04:00

I asked Gwen to line up with the mounting block on Thursday. She said thanks but no thanks. That was okay, I was kind of expecting it anyway, she was traumatized by the bucking episode too. I brought her out on Friday and she was a little... erm... unfocused, so I started with some Connected Groundwork exercises. I found something interesting when I went to do the heartgirth press (pressing with my whole forearm behind her front leg), on her right side she immediately walked away from me. On the left she stayed and bent around my arm. Curious, I massaged the inside of her front legs and her armpits- the right side felt swollen and tense compared to the left. I asked her to line up with the mounting block again and she was happy to do so on the left but swung her hips out on the right. I don't know if she tweaked something or if I hit her on the way off but she's definitely sore on the right side. I'll wait until she's feeling better before I try to slide on again. She'll let me know.

Kate G. came out on Saturday and showed me how to start her with ground driving. We started with a long leadrope attached to the halter at both ends. Using my dressage whip we asked her to go forward and turn while we were at her shoulder, gradually we added another lead rope and moved our way back until we were at her hip. She did fabulous and finally started to understand that I meant for her to follow her nose. We'd been having a bit of a misunderstanding before where she thought she could just turn her nose but continue moving off in another direction. That had a lot to do with how we got into the bucking situation. I didn't feel comfortable debating this issue from her back so I'm glad to have found another way.

Sunday I got hammered by a frack-a-lackin migraine (grrrr) but fortunately felt good enough to go out and play with her today. She did a great job of remembering the lesson from Saturday and we were able to pick up where we left off. Here's another benefit of ground driving: Even though she wanted to stop every three steps and graze I insisted that she keep moving, walk forward, and turn. That was another thing I was worried about debating from her back- I let her graze while I sat on her for a long time just to get her comfortable carrying me around but eventually I have to get more demanding than that. It's good to know that she won't get upset about it when the time comes.

And... guess what? I even ended up all the way behind her at one point and she was still listening! We might be ground driving for real sooner than I expected. Time to drag out the lunge lines!

I feel like we're starting back at the beginning again, but that's okay. For one thing: Every time we have to go back to the basics, they'll just get that much stronger. For another: I'm not in a hurry. She's seven now; with any luck I'll have at least 20 more years to play with her and get her trained. I've got all the time in the world.

Keep on keeping on

2011-06-23T14:22:00.000-04:00

I put the saddle back on Gwen Saturday. She was fine about the pad and fine about the saddle

(interesting side note: I had put the saddle down with the pad upside down over it so the white, fluffy side was visible. Guess who spooked at it? White things are probably always going to be a problem for her. No white horse trailer for me.)

but when I reached under her for the girth and pulled it up she started walking away from me. It would seem that the girth is the main issue- whether she got bruised from jumping around or if it was the feeling of the girth that inspired the bucking in the first place, I don't know. She did eventually stop and let me tighten it up, though I left it a little loose, and then I backed off and let her stand around wearing it for a while. She went straight into chill mode so after a few minutes I grabbed my target and went to see if she'd follow the target over the stream.

Not a chance. She was quite cute about it actually. She followed me until she saw where I was headed and then just stopped and said, "it's okay, you go on ahead, I'll wait over here," and stood off to the side looking all dejected. Coriander, in the meantime, thought it was great fun. Unfortunately he wasn't the one that needed it.

I went back to the barn and swapped the target for some baling twine and used that to lead her over the stream- I wanted to give her a chance to buck and get a little silly but I didn't want her to step on a lead rope and jerk on her face while she did it. I needn't have bothered, she was perfect. We walked down to the water very slowly, stopping after each step, until we finally took one step over the water. We did this a few times in each direction, speeding up until I we built up enough steam for her to take a little hop over the water.

No bucking. Hmmm...

I guess it's time to go back to getting her to target over the stream and see if we can build up some more speed. I feel like I'm in a really weird place right now- I WANT my horse to buck so I can tell her that's what I DON'T want. Strange.

We're also learning how to lunge in preparation for ground driving. Lungeing makes me physically ill so I've been avoiding it up to this point but it's time to suck it up and do it anyway. I'm going to try it Hempfling style, walking a smaller circle inside the horse's circle, and see if that helps a bit with the nausea and dizziness I feel. Either that or get some Dramamine.

In case you aren't familiar with Klaus Hempling here's a short video that shows a bit of his philosophy on lungeing. Take note of his posture- that's something I've been trying to improve on myself.

I also have to learn how to ground drive. Kate G. is coming by this weekend to help us get started, meanwhile I've started doing some research. There's a good intro here that I like and Kate from A Year With Horses has a nice post about it here.

Anyone have any pointers they want to share? I'm open to everything right now.

Don't worry, I'm fine

2011-06-17T10:23:00.001-04:00

Okay, I figured out what my problem was and why correcting him for that behavior bugged me so much. It had a whole bunch to do with me and my past experiences and blah, blah, blah... nobody wants to read about that. So- moving on.

Gwen bucked me off yesterday.

See, that's why I made that the title of the post. So you wouldn't immediately start worrying. I really am fine, just a few bruises, of which I'd have a lot fewer if it weren't for that *&%^$# western saddle!

Evil hunk of leather

All you western riders can say what you want about english saddles, but if you're coming out of an english saddle it lets go of you gracefully. If you're coming out of a western saddle, especially over the front, that %$^&;* thing decides it needs to get in a couple punches of its own. Ouch.

That mare can BUCK. I could take Gwennie on the road as inspiration for rodeo broncs everywhere; they would stand there and watch her in awe. I have not been bucked off in years, despite the efforts of many, because I somehow have the uncanny ability to stick through bucks. Not hers. That mare goes UP! and she keeps going. I stood up and dusted off and she was still bucking. It was impressive.

So what happened? I hopped on her in the pasture without locking up Rocky, that's what happened.

What's that? You want more detail? Well, we were having a grand 'ole time, Gwen really felt like moving yesterday so we ambled up the hill away from the herd and towards the barn. I was asking her for turns every once in a while. She was happy, I was happy, riding her walk is like riding on silk. It was great. And then Rocky decided to ruin the party. She came up while we were heading toward the barn. Gwen felt like she had to get away from Rocky, which meant going over the little stream and heading for the barn. I tried my darndest to get her headed away from that little stream, because I knew full well she'd jump it and if she jumped it she'd start bucking. When it's between me and Rocky, Rocky wins, so Gwen went over that little stream. She jumped it, started bucking, and I hit the dirt.

I did not get back on her. I know that breaks all the rules and that now she knows she can buck me off, etc., but I'll just have to see how that shakes out. She wasn't bucking to get me off, it was a reaction to how the saddle felt when she jumped. She really doesn't mind having me on her back, having me up there means she gets attention and treats, which is pretty cool. I also have never overstayed my welcome on her back, between those things I don't foresee bucking to be a big problem of hers.

Of course I could be wrong... As her punishment I pulled the tack off without giving her any praise or affection and then I got Coriander and did some groundwork with him right in front of her without giving her any treats or attention at all. He did great, btw, he's learning how to pick up his shoulders and not lean into circles.

Anyway, current game plan is to put the saddle up on her again and get her to do some more dynamic movement. I realized yesterday that she's never bucked with the saddle on and now I'm wishing she had, that way she wouldn't have been so surprised by the feeling. I'm also thinking it's time we learned how to ground drive, that would have helped a lot too. When I really needed control of her nose and hips I didn't have it. That was bad.

Oh yeah, and that *&^%&* Rocky is getting locked up from now on.

A response

2011-06-16T00:38:00.000-04:00

I started writing this as a response to Muddy K's comment but it got really long so I decided to make a post out of it instead. You asked a good question that I hope I understood correctly. Here's my answer to the question I think you asked:

I didn't like having to do this with him, it doesn't sit well for me to use negative reinforcement. But when I asked myself if I would be comfortable asking someone else to ride him- with him just deciding to run off whenever he pleased- I wasn't. It wasn't safe and he was escalating. Visions of him bolting across the hillside were swimming in front of my eyes.

All I want him to do is wait for me to say okay before he transitions up; when he transitions up without me asking for it he has to circle. I could just ask him to halt but I'd probably have to pull on his face to get it and I don't want to do that (he's been ignoring my seat aids too). What I'm trying to do with the circling is get my message across with the least amount of punishment. When HE finds the stop we stop, I don't keep pushing him past that point to add an exclamation mark. I've never found that making the horse move past the point where they want to stop just to "make it your idea" works very well for me. Been there, tried that, decided not to buy the t-shirt.

Most of what I do is trail ride and sometimes we get in situations where I really need him to run these things by me so he doesn't get hurt. I'm not doing this to be punitive or controlling, I just need to him to get the message that he needs to get my permission. The last thing I want to do is kill his exuberance and make him hate being ridden- if I'd gone out today and he'd run off to the other side of the pasture to avoid me I would have written about it and warned everyone to never do this. Believe me, I was looking at him for signs that I'd done wrong by him, he's not shy about letting me know he's ticked at me. But he wasn't, he let me put the halter on like he normally does, walked beside me up to the barn like he normally does, let me tack up while he stood loose eating hay like he normally does, and when I rode him we only had to circle twice. Plus he actually stopped for clicks for the first time in weeks, he had been blocking me out to such an extent that he wasn't even stopping for treats anymore (This was quite distressing for me, I went out and bought the premium treats I know he loves and he wasn't even stopping for those- prompting some serious self questioning on my part.).

It's possible he could still be ticked at me or he could be accepting that I'm standing my ground and making boundaries, I'll probably never really know. What I do know is that if I need to do something to save my bones from getting busted I will. I can't afford to get broken again like I was last year.

Will he run off again eventually? Yes.
Will I fall asleep at the wheel and let him? Sadly I probably will.
Is there a better way to do this? Probably.
Do I know what it is? No.
If I find a better way will I use it? Absolutely, and I'll be sure to let everyone know so they can do it too if they want.

A monster of my own creation

2011-06-14T22:45:00.000-04:00

I trail rode on a lesson horse yesterday. It was... um... interesting.

My lesson mates decided they wanted to do a trail ride instead of the ring lesson. That was not a problem for me- I'm much more comfortable out on the trail than in a ring. The issue was that the horse I was riding had no brakes, which became most evident when the trainer decided we needed to canter everywhere. The horse I was on got more and more worked up until I practically had to stand on the reins to get him to stop. I really don't like to have to do that.

I, of course, got all smug thinking that my horse is better than that. He stops when I sit back and pick up the reins. But then I remembered: Oh wait, no he doesn't.

He used to, but somewhere along the way I got lenient and started letting him get away with little things until finally he decided he didn't need to listen to me anymore. He started walking off without me asking him, trotting off without me asking him, and finally galloping off without my input. Worse, he'd started bucking when I asked him to canter. That is SO not okay.

But how do I address this problem? Even better question: How do I address this without alienating him? After all, it's my fault he started doing this. He was only doing what horses do- test the boundaries and push them as far as he could. I certainly don't want to punish him for that, that would be completely unfair. On the other hand, I have to do something about it because he's getting unsafe.

This is the part of horse training that nobody really wants to do, I certainly don't want to do it, but avoiding it is how you get into trouble in the first place. I want to work in cooperation with my horses but it takes two to cooperate; if the horse ain't listening I don't have anyone to cooperate with. I needed to prove to him that I was worth listening to.

What I want him to do is travel at the gait I choose on the buckle. If he wants to transition up he can suggest it and then I'll let him know whether it's okay or not. Right now he decides he wants to trot and just starts trotting, saying "la la la, I can't hear you."

Here's what I decided to do: Any time he rushed off without me asking for it he had to circle. I picked up the buckle in one hand, slid my other hand down, picked a point on his neck, and held the rein there until he gave to the pressure. Then I released and give him a chance to stop on his own. If he didn't, I did it again until he decided to stop. In the beginning it took quite a few repetitions before he started looking for the stop. When he found it we stayed in the stop for a while before I asked him to walk off on the buckle. Once he figured out that anytime he rushed off he'd have to circle he settled down and started listening.

Over all I think this worked really well, we got a canter without the bucking and a nice walk back to the barn without any rushing off.. He wasn't happy with me and I can't blame him for that, when you're used to getting your own way you naturally resent the person who changes the rules, but my mechanics weren't making him upset. And, as you can see from the post-ride photo below, this wasn't physically taxing for him.

certainly not dripping with sweat

For me there were two very important pieces that made this work: 1. the RELEASE and 2. NOT GETTING EMOTIONAL. Neither of these is particularly easy for me to do, especially the emotional part, but I desperately need to learn this. I actually have to thank Coriander for giving me the opportunity, this is something I need to get a handle on before I have to do it with Gwen. At least I can make a few mistakes with him and not get dumped for it.

Dinnertime?

In positive news, Gwen led calmly up to barn and ate her dinner in a relaxed manner while the rest of the herd was completely out of eyesight. That was a pleasant surprise, she's never done that before.

For my fellow bitless fans

2011-06-12T10:27:00.000-04:00

For your viewing pleasure.

Uta Graf riding Le Noir bitless:

Jaw flexions

2011-06-09T10:19:00.002-04:00

As promised, here is some video of Coriander's jaw flexions.

Of course there are multiple ways to do this, I'm using this method because it directly translates to single rein riding mechanics. This is my process: I put up a "tai-chi wall" with the rein, then I steady my hands while putting a little pressure on his mouth, and then I wait for him to give his jaw. When he gives the jaw I click and immediately drop the reins. The release is key, if you don't release the horse will just stiffen up and brace against you.

You can see right at the beginning of the first video where I should have clicked and released but didn't. Coriander certainly noticed, he gets a little grouchy when he knows he did something click-worthy and doesn't get clicked. Then he got totally distracted by the horses across the way- they're what he's staring at so intently. At one point I waited two minutes for him to relax his jaw. Lucky for you I didn't include that video, it's more boring than watching grass grow, but I did want to mention it to prove how patient you need to be sometimes to get a response from your horse.

Notice how his mane flips over to the right around his poll? His neck is crooked, he always carries his head a little to the left, which makes jaw flexions to the right a little more difficult for him. I'm considering getting a chiropractor out to look at him but I want to work on the jaw flexions a little longer before I do that. How cool would it be if they straightened his neck out?

The grain-free experiment

2011-06-06T12:38:00.001-04:00

Remember when I said that learning horse nutrition was going to be my next adventure? Well I've had a bit of a crash course in it since the Quarters moved last August.

The two horses that they moved in with, Butch and Rocky, don't get any grain- they eat grass in the summer and hay in the winter and that's it. When I moved the Quarters in they adopted the same diet, from August to April they didn't eat anything other than forage.

After I wrapped up my hoof series I began some preliminary nutrition research at safergrass.org and started learning about mineral deficiencies. As soon as I knew what to look for I started seeing signs of it all over the Quarters. Coriander's mane and tail showed drastic sun bleaching and his coat just didn't look right. Plus his frogs JUST WEREN'T GROWING despite repeated oxine soaks and No Thrush treatments. Gwen was even worse: her hoof walls were losing integrity and going SPLAT, she wasn't shedding and her hair coat had developed hooks at the end. Not good. Not good at all.

What I didn't realize when I stopped feeding them grain is how mineral deficient upstate NY is. The grass and hay they were eating was markedly deficient in trace minerals like selenium, copper and zinc. Want to know what your area is like? You can check the average NGS geochemistry by county in the US here.

It was time to get some minerals into the Quarters, but what was the best way to do it? I'd been reading barefoot trimmers rhapsodize about the benefits of California Trace, and decided to give it a try. When it arrived I measured out a serving in my hands and fed it to the horses. "Oh, what's this?" They said. "Nom, nom, no... PHhhbbttt!" So much for the company's claim that horses love their product. I tried mixing in some anise seed powder to make it more palatable (they love licorice), but they weren't fooled. It appeared I needed to find something to mix the CA Trace with so they'd eat it.

I recalled that Gwen had done well on my Father-in-Law's "Cornell Mix," so I decided to get some of that. When I went to buy some we ended up talking about pellets and I ended up leaving with a bag of Nutrena Empower Balance too. I don't really understand how it works, but that "Cornell Mix" makes coats shine like mirrors and helps keep weight on hard keepers. The Nutrena feed is specifically designed to supplement grass diets and has pre/probiotics in it to support their digestive systems.

I've been feeding these three mixed together since the beginning of April and have noticed marked improvements in the Quarters. Coriander's frogs have FINALLY started growing and his coat looks better than ever (and feels like crushed velvet). Gwen finally shed out and her coat is looking good as well, even better, her hooves have improved immensely. You can actually see the line where her hoof wall has grown in better and tighter since I added the minerals to her diet (Amazingly she's been rock crushingly sound the entire time, I don't know how she does it.).

Gwen's left hind

Gwen's left fore

Here's a picture of Coriander looking awesome in his ungroomed shiny-ness.

Shiny!

It appears that genetics plays a part in this. Even though they're half-siblings, Gwen showed more acute symptoms of deficiency than her brother did. I wish I had a clue why that happened. Butch and Rocky haven't had grain in forever and neither of them shows the marked mineral deficiencies that mine did after only a few months. They may be helped by their breeding, Rocky is a mustang/morgan (I incorrectly called her a quarter horse a few months ago) so it's possible that her mustang heritage makes her hardier. BUT, her coat has barely any shine and her hair feels like straw. Butch shows a bit of shine in the picture with Coriander but he lacks the sheen that Coriander has and he still hasn't shed out completely. To help them out a little I bought a salt block with added selenium and other minerals for the pasture and hung up Gwen's old Himalayan salt block where they could get at it. They might get a bit more of what they need this way.

Obviously I still have a TON to learn about nutrition, right now I feel like I'm throwing everything at them but the kitchen sink hoping that they're getting what they need. To remedy that, I'll be taking Dr. Kellon's nutrition course over the winter and boning up on knowledge from Getty Equine Nutrition.

In short, the grain-free experiment failed completely. I feel awful that I did this to them and am keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't do them any lasting harm. My poor horses, they had no idea I'd turn them into guinea pigs...

A borrowed Classic

2011-06-02T13:30:00.001-04:00

I happened to mention to Kate G. that I'd bought an Ansur and was waiting rather impatiently for it to arrive when she said, "Hey, I've got an Ansur Classic. Would you like to borrow it?" Why yes, yes I would.

The first time I popped it on Coriander I put a nice, think pad under it- to give him a little extra protection in case he needed it. I walked him over to the mounting block, put my foot in the stirrup and prepared to swing my leg over.

*First mistake: Putting my foot in the stirrup to mount.

It slid right down his barrel and I plopped back onto the mounting block. I got down, put the saddle back, and then just lifted my leg way up over his back and got on without the stirrup. We then ventured out to the back fields so I could get the feel of it.

*Second mistake: Putting a thick pad under it.

I felt like I was sitting on a skating rink, I just couldn't get that saddle to stay put in the middle of his back. The next time I took it out I put the thick pad away and got out one of my regular, thinner pads. This worked better but there was still some slippage. This time I determined that I didn't have the girth tight enough (I have a rather bad habit of riding around with my girth too loose. I reached down after cantering during a lesson a few weeks ago and found I could put my fist between the girth and the horse, whoops.) Can you tighten a dressage girth while you're sitting in the saddle? I couldn't figure out a way to do it so I left it alone and tightened up the girth more for the next ride.

*Third mistake: Using crappy leathers.

With the lighter pad and the tighter girth the saddle finally stayed put. But now I had another issue, I couldn't get my stirrups even. I think I adjusted my stirrups 5 or 6 times that ride until I finally remembered that I was using my cruddy, spare pair of leathers with a ton of random extra holes- there was probably no way I was going to get those stirrups even.

For the next ride I pulled my good leathers off the Crosby and put those on. Finally! I could get my stirrups even. Feeling successful, I decided to take Coriander out for a longer trail ride. Twenty minutes in my left knee started to ache. Then it started to hurt, ALOT. I had to pull my foot out the stirrup and keep shaking my leg out to ease the pain. That wasn't cool.

I've decided that the Ansur Classic isn't for me. It was super comfy under my bum but I think the lack of a twist was pushing my thighs out wide and putting too much torque on my knee, causing the pain. This saddle was really much wider than anything I'm used to sitting in. I also don't think Coriander liked it that much. He started taking off as soon as I settled in the saddle, something I thought we'd taken care of months ago. He'd also shoot off down the trail ALL THE TIME, especially when we were heading for the barn. This was something quite new for him. Either he really liked the way the saddle felt so he wanted to move, or he really didn't like it and wanted to get back as soon as possible so I'd take it off. It was odd, that's for sure.

The Classic on Coriander

The underside of the Classic = no gullet here

Fortunately the saddle I'm waiting on isn't built like the Classic. It has a twist, which I like, and a gullet, which Coriander seems to like, so we should be just fine. There's still the seven day trial period if it really doesn't work out, but I'm pretty confident it will.

Here's a bonus pick of Coriander playing with Butch, something they've taken up just recently. I need to bulk up on my super spy skills so I can get a better picture next time. You know playing horses- they stop as soon as they know a camera is nearby. I'm happy that he's got a play buddy, but I wish Butch would leave his fly mask on. There's now three missing fly masks floating somewhere around the pasture.

M.I.A.

2011-05-31T15:02:00.000-04:00

That was me: Missing In Action. I took last week off from work and sort of avoided the computer for the duration. As a result I'm way behind on keeping up with my fellow bloggers. My apologies, I'll catch up this week.

As for what happened last week: Monday I had my first ride on Scout since my last lesson on him went bad. I apologized to him for how badly that last ride went and promised that it wouldn't happen again. Fortunately he seemed to accept my apology and the lesson went really well. He did try to spook at random things and counterbend all over the place in the beginning, but I asked him to do some jaw flexions and he soon forgot all about his usual shenanigans. It really worked!

On Wednesday I climbed up on Gwen again. She was fine, if a little on edge. We walked down the driveway, she ate a bit of grass, and then we turned around and walked back to the barn. I asked her if she wanted to stop and graze on the way up but she didn't. She got up to the barn and said, "okay, you can get off now." So I did, and gave her a hug for her effort.

On Thursday, Kate G. came out and worked with Coriander and me. I asked her to help me with jaw flexions and teaching him the pose. When I told her what I wanted the pose for, getting him to lift his back and engage his abs, she told me a different tactic would work better. Instead we did some microshaping with him- we focused on watching for a tightening of the pectoral muscles without having the legs move. Most of the time this leads to the horse rocking their weight back, by focusing on the pectorals first you can eventually get the horse to engage the abs and lift the back.

So we stared at his chest for a while, which worked and he seemed to enjoy it, but she wanted to give me a different method to get him to raise his back. She asked him to back into a solid barrier, the wooden section of the fence, and once he was against it she asked him to back again. Since he couldn't go backwards anymore he was forced to tip his pelvis and raise his back. She cautioned me to ask for very little at this point, he's not used to it and could get very sore very quickly.

I think this is really cool, I now have two good methods to help get his back and abs stronger. For those of you reading who don't clicker train, you don't need food treats to do the second method, but it helps ;-)

I really need to get some video to show the jaw flexions, they're kind of hard to describe without seeing it. There's a good article here where you can read more about it, though you might need a membership to see it. Let me know if you really want it and can't click through the link.

The dentist never made her visit Thursday. Between schedule conflicts on her part and me freaking out about getting Gwen next door during the forecasted severe thunderstorm we decided to reschedule for August. Now I've got a few more months to get her used to being next door and I have more time to play with her and the bit.

Phew! I think I'm all caught up now. For anyone who might be wondering about the mysterious hip-shoulder-shoulder exercise I've alluded to before, this came in my email this morning: John Lyons hip-shoulder-shoulder exercise part 1, part 2, and part 3.

There's a light...

2011-05-24T21:52:00.000-04:00

I had the vet out today to give the Quarters their vaccinations and physicals. On a gut feeling I asked her to check Gwen's eyes while she was out.

The good news is Gwen's eyes are fine, BUT she had a very negative initial reaction to the test light. When the vet tried to look in her right eye she LEAPT away. Interesting. The vet said she'd never had a horse do that before. So even though her eyes look perfectly healthy it appears that she's very light sensitive.

This explains a lot. White is very light reflective, if she's light sensitive and a glare came of the Great White Trailer of Death and flashed her in the eye it would have been quite painful- which would explain the bolt and her not wanting to go near it again.

My vet suggested that I take her out with a fly mask on to help cut any glare that might hurt her eyes and I'm going to give that a try. It probably won't help with the Great White Trailer of Death because she's already afraid of it but it might help somewhere else.

In the meantime I'm working on keeping myself calm when she's upset like Racheal suggested. I took the Quarters next door so Gwen could get a look around before they have to go over on Thursday (horse dentist requested stalls and those only exist next door), and she was pretty good about it. There was one moment in particular, though, where I felt her getting anxious about something. I concentrated on keeping myself calm and sort of blank: she looked at me, looked at her brother, saw neither one of us was bothered, sighed and started grazing. It's a start.

Thank you! That was a bit of advice I really needed.

Gwen says thanks too

One step forward, two steps back

2011-05-22T10:21:00.000-04:00

When the clinic ended Monday I was all fired up and ready to go (As Wolfie said I was pumped), I had a plan and I was ready to put it into action!

The last time I hopped on Gwen was on May 10, she had into heat the weekend before so I thought she would be out of it and safe to get on. Not so much. She was a bit spooktastic- I sat through three of them before I decided to get off while I could still do it under my own power and give her a few more days to come down from the hormones. When I pulled her out after the clinic it had been a week since I'd gotten on her and I wanted to take her for a little walk to feel her out before I put my bones up on her.

Good thing I did! Just that morning Mark moved his big, white trailer from below the pasture to above the barn. As soon as Gwen saw it she flipped out, pulled the lead rope out of my hand, and bolted down the driveway. When she stopped running she then commenced rearing every time she stepped on the rope.

Well great, all it takes to unglue my mare is introduce a new, inanimate object into her environment. To top it off, she's now rearing in response to pressure. Excellent.

I followed her, caught her, brought her back in view of the Great White Trailer of Death, and asked her to lower her head. She did, but it was like she said, "fine, I put my head down. Now can I get out of here?" I took her farther away from it and asked her to lower her head again. She sort of responded so I called it a day and put her back in the pasture.

Wednesday I tried to do some CAT work with her and the Great White Trailer of Death but she wasn't having it. She knew that the signal was to lower her head but she was having none of it, she kept throwing tantrums. Fortunately these tantrums weren't "hook a sailfish on the open sea" tantrums, they were more "throw your head up and down in anger" tantrums, I guess I should give her a little credit for that. But I ended up feeling incredibly frustrated with her, and she was quite frustrated with me. I left her that day feeling like I didn't want to see her again for at least a week.

As I drove away I asked myself what the heck was wrong with me. I mean, this is Gwen, her default mode is scared, it's not like I should be surprised by this. Why was I so frustrated?

When I thought about it, I realized I wasn't frustrated, I was disappointed. Actually, I was crushed. She'd been doing so well that I'd allow myself to have dreams of riding her out on a trail or even going to a show someday. Her bolting away from that trailer totally killed those dreams. She wasn't just startled by it, she was terrified. I can't take a horse out on the trail like that. Sure, I could get her used to a certain trail and get her reasonably safe to travel on it, but what if a tree falls down between rides? She'd be out of there in a flash.

I needed to reevaluate, I needed to accept her for the horse she is and not the horse I want her to be. I also needed to get our relationship back on track.

On Thursday I walked into the pasture with a bucket load of treats, the bit, and some tools to teach her the color game. I didn't take her out, I didn't even put her halter on - I just focused on having some fun. That was exactly what I needed to do, at the end of the day we were happy spending time together again.

On Friday I dug out a mat (aka a piece of plywood) and set it down under the barn and then placed a line of cones out to the driveway. I asked her to stand on the mat, reinforced her like crazy for it, and then had her step around the first cone and back to the mat. We worked our way down the line of cones coming back to the mat every time to get reinforced. As we worked down the cones, the Great White Trailer of Death came into view, she'd get a glimpse of it and then we'd turn around and walk to the mat. This worked out well, plus it touched an one of my goals for her- standing on the mat (you reinforce the horse like crazy for standing on the mat and eventually the horse will associate the mat with comfort and well-being, something Gwen needs).

Saturday I continued where I left off on Friday, only this time I moved the mat out from under the barn so it was only 10 feet away from viewing the Great White Trailer of Death. She was much better. PHEW! Progress.

It's possible that the more times she works through her fear of something new in her environment she'll stop being so scared of novelty, but I can't bet on that. What I can bet on is that she's going to be who she is, no matter what.

May clicker clinic

2011-05-18T15:38:00.002-04:00

It's been an interesting time over here and I've been falling behind on posts. First Blogger went down, then my home computer kicked the bucket, and then I went to a clicker training clinic with Alexandra Kurland last weekend. So I've been away a bit, but now I'm back.

I can't quite explain how lucky I feel that I found clicker training which led me to Alex who just happens to come to my backyard three times a year. Last weekend was my third clinic with her and it most definitely won't be my last (someday I may even find a way to get Coriander to one, that would be fun). It's not just that she's such a wealth of information (because she is), it's also the community that you become a part of by going to her clinics, plus it's just plain neat to see how people's horses develop from clinic to clinic.

There was one horse that the owner was trying to help achieve balance and self carriage, through using simple rein mechanics she picked his inside shoulder up and produced some of the most amazing trot I've ever seen in person. There is something to be said for straightness!

There was another horse there that was absolutely lovely on the ground but once his owner got on his back he didn't know how to stop.After spending two days trying to find the stop, Alex helped the owner to discover that the whole issue stemmed from the horse being sticky about disengaging his hips and backing up smoothly. So interesting.

There was an adorable morgan mare that I totally tried to steal and the sweetest arabian mare in existence who really showed her owner that she needed to be aware of what her body was doing.

There was also a giant rescued saddlebred who came to his new owner with aggression and fear issues who showed us all the power of consistent, patient work.

And then there was Kate G., who's been helping me quite a bit, who brought her own horse that drags himself around on the forehand. It was amazing that through simple turning exercises combined with single steps forward and back she was able to get him to rock back, free up his shoulders, and raise the base of his neck.

One of the best things about these clinics is that I always leave them with a plan and an arsenal of new tools. I went into the clinic looking for ways to help Coriander build muscle in his topline and help him be more balanced with better body carriage. With Gwen my goal was to find more techniques to help her become a safe riding horse. I got what I was looking for and more, here's my updated plan for the Quarters:

Plan for Coriander:

pose
lateral work via Why Would You Leave Me? and 3 Flip 3
backing
jaw flexions via single rein
picking up the shoulder via single rein

Plan for Gwen

matwork
lateral work via Why Would You Leave Me? and 3 Flip 3
pose
hip/shoulder/shoulder
left and right/ color game

I'm not going to go into detail about what all these things are, those will be the subjects of later posts once I really start integrating the exercises, but I did want to give you a visual on why I'm introducing a pose. Take a gander at the video below:

This mare is posing: Notice that she's raising the base of her neck, engaging her abdominals, raising her back, and tucking her pelvis. This is collection in a nutshell and it was made by free-shaping her posture. I started Coriander with this yesterday by waving my hand under his nose- thinking that there was something in my hand he arched his neck by raising it at the base and shifted his weight backwards, click/treat. It didn't take long before I could see out of the corner of my eye that he'd started engaging his abs too. That was pretty exciting, it's like pilates for equines. I'll have to see if I can get some video of my guy doing these, it'd be cool to compare the beginning steps with how he'll look in a few months.

I'm very excited and ready to get to work!

Gwen and the bit

2011-05-12T10:51:00.000-04:00

The dentist is scheduled to come by at the end of the month to float the Quarters' teeth. The last time she worked on Gwen she wasn't able to get the speculum in her mouth so she asked me to get Gwen used to a bit. With that in mind, I went out and purchased one of these for her:

full cheek so she couldn't pull it through her mouth, double jointed so it wouldn't stab her palate, and a lozenge in the middle that couldn't be sharp against her tongue in any way. I bought her a headstall, took off the caveson and popped this puppy on it. Then I went in her stall, waited about an hour for her to open her mouth and then put the whole shebang on her head.

ZOMG WAS SHE EVER MAD!!!!

She tore around her stall, trying to spit it out and rub it off, pawing in anger. I pulled it off as soon as I figured she wasn't going to calm down about it. I tried again a couple days later with the exact same results, and the added bonus of her starting to become difficult to halter. So I shelved it.

A couple months later I found a different bit through Craiglist and decided to give it a try. It has a solid rubber mouthpiece like this:

only this bit isn't loose ring, it's a weird kind of full cheek. Instead of having little balls at the tips, this one bends out at the tips. She hated this one *slightly* less, but she was still storming around her stall in anger and I was freaking out she'd find a way to hurt herself with those sticky-outy bits on the full cheeks. So I shelved it.

But now it's time for Gwen to revisit the bit. Remembering that she seemed to hate the solid mouth slightly less, this time I bought Happy Mouth's mullen mouth loose ring bit:

BTW- these don't taste like apple, I tried.

and I've completely changed my approach. Knowing how much happier she is when I don't restrain her in any way when introducing new things, I'm just taking the bit and pockets full of treats out to her in the pasture. On the first day I started by holding the bit out and asking her to target it with her nose. Then I touched her on the face and neck with it. She didn't mind that, so I laid it on my hand and clicked her for letting it touch her lips. I left it for the day when she went ahead and picked it up in her lips. She got a click and treat for that plus tons of praise.

The second time I went out, I did just a little bit of targeting with it and then continued where we'd left off before. Very soon into the session she picked the bit up in her teeth. This freaked her out. She raised her head in the air, lips all ascew, mildly panicking because she couldn't figure out how to get it out of her mouth! Finally she tossed her head and sent the bit flying. I admit, I laughed. It was too funny to see how happy she was to figure out how to drop it. I went over, picked it up, and started at the beginning again. She surprised me by quickly progressing back to picking it up in her teeth, where again it took her a moment to figure out how to let go. I decided that doing that twice was good enough for the day, so I gave her a hug and left.

Hindsight being 20/20, I can see that if I hadn't started her with the bit by tying it in her mouth she probably wouldn't have been so upset about it being there, even when she did it herself. But I can't change the past, maybe her being able to gleefully toss the bit across the pasture will help her forgive my mistake.

I hate working on a deadline, but I'm hoping that by the end of the month she'll have decided that it's not so bad to have something in her mouth. Those molars are in need of some attention!

Forward HO!

2011-05-09T12:30:00.000-04:00

One of the cool things about where I board is that there's an orchard directly across the road that I'm allowed to ride in. It's mostly an apple orchard but they've got a bunch of different trees growing over there, peaches, cherries, pears...

I think this might be a peach tree

I wanted to try to get some good pictures but Coriander didn't really feel like stopping so most of what I got was taken on the fly or while he was eating.

Coriander: "If we're not moving, I'm eating"

He was feeling quite forward that day and was extraordinarily hot off my leg, itching to run. We came up to this line of trees with a nice grassy lane next to it and I let him go. Yeeha, that was fun! Apparently streaking across the field allowed him to catch up with his brain, because after that he calmed right down. It's amazing what a good gallop can do!

Galloping, HO!

Speaking of forward- we've been having quite an issue with that in the ring. As in we have none. Out on the trail he's electric and powers ahead with purpose, surround him with a fence and he shuts it right down. This is a problem, without forward you've got nothing.

The fault is mine (obviously), I've never been a very active rider and I've been letting him lollygag around without any rhyme or reason, now that needs to change and I need to get his bum in gear. Naturally, my dressage trainer has been talking whips and crops.

But you know what? There's got to be a better way. So I reached out to the clicker training community and asked for advice. What I got back was so brilliant that I want to post it here for you to read:

I worked on this with one of my mules (Murry). She tended to offer only the
least amount of energy as needed while ridden in the arena. I tried clicking her
for responding to my leg, but I found that didn't really help. I tried carrying
a whip and I would click if she offered an adequate amount of forward energy
with a light touch of the leg, and if not then I would lightly tap with the
whip. That also didn't help that much, especially if I was not carrying the
whip.

What worked was clicking Murry for offering her own energy, **in the absence of
the cue**. I asked with leg for her to walk faster than at a crawl. She wasn't
allowed to mosey along. If she slowed down to a Quarter-Horse-Shuffle, I would
ask her to go a little more forward with my leg. Then I would leave her alone
with my leg, and follow passively with my seat (no pushing or swinging or
exaggerating the walk). I didn't click until she offered a little bit of her own
energy. There were glimpses of moments when she offered a little more tempo, a
longer stride, a lift at the base of her neck, or a lift in her shoulders.

It took three rides for her to start offering what I've called a "parade walk."
She lifts her neck and telescopes, her long ears knife back and forth through
the air, and she is moving along with great energy. She loves it because it is
her own idea. Alex says that every behavior you train should have an aspect of
free-shaping to it. Free-shaping is what makes the horse really "own" the
behavior. It has really changed the way she relates to leg cues. When she is
really "on" she will offer passage-y trot departs from a halt, with only a
breath of leg as the cue. It is such a dramatic difference!

www.EquineRevelation.com

So I've been trying it. I started by clicking him for offering his awesome walk out on the trail, hoping that would help him make the association. Once we got in the ring, I messed up at first by trying to click for too many things. I'd click for good forward, then I'd click for bend, then I'd click for turning on the forehand. It was too much and Coriander was confused, "what exactly are you looking for, human?" So on Saturday I changed my tactics, I clicked for him choosing to go forward on his own and that was it. If he got super pluggy I asked him for a bunch of transitions until he livened up and then I'd find a time to click him for moving out on his own. It worked SO well! We even got a couple of canter strides on both leads for the first time ever!

I'm going to keep this up until he's consistently moving forward on his own inside the ring, then I'll choose specific rides to click for bend, or for contact, or anything else. I think the key will be to only reward for ONE behavior per ride to avoid confusion. I'll let you know how it goes.

Long Toes in Horses: A Pain in the Butt?

2011-05-05T08:16:00.001-04:00

I just got a tip about this article from The Horse:http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=18195&eID=329716.

Your equine athlete's performance hasn't been blue ribbon-worthy as of late. Or maybe your broodmare's gaits are looking a little off kilter. Could long toes on the hind feet be to blame? According to the results of a recent study, the answer in some cases is yes and sometimes the solution can be very simple.

"The hind limb stance in (horses with long toes) is one in which the load-bearing surface of the hoof appears to be too far forward in relation to the coronary band and to the fetlock and cannon bone," said Richard A. Mansmann, VMD, PhD, hon. Dipl. ACVIM, professor emeritus at North Carolina State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, where this study was completed, and owner of the Equine Podiatry and Rehabilitation Practice in Chapel Hill. "These horses tend to 'stand under themselves' with their hind feet, meaning that at rest the foot is placed further forward than normal in relation to the vertical axis of the limb and the main mass of the hind quarter, giving the horse a sickle-hocked appearance."

Armed with that information, the research team set out to determine if long toes could be a cause of gluteal (the muscles that run along the back of a horse's hindquarters on either side of the tail) pain in horses, and if corrective trimming and/or shoeing could correct the problem and eliminate the pain.

Mansmann noted that the term "long toe" is too subjective to use in a research study because of varying opinions on exactly what constitutes long. Thus, the team determined the hooves' breakover distance as an objective measure in the study. They did this by measuring the horizontal distance between the tip of the horse's coffin bone and the dorsal-most point at which the hoof wall or shoe came in contact with the ground, as seen on lateral radiographs. He added that for the average-sized horse, the ideal breakover distance is likely between 0 and 20 mm.

The researchers evaluated 77 client-owned horses that were either examined by a team member in the field or were presented to the private practice from April 2006 to December 2007. The horses were either low- to medium- level performance horses or nonpregnant broodmares of various breeds, ranging in age from 4 to 24 years old. All of the horses had at least one set of lateral radiographs taken of their hind feet and on the same day Mansmann palpated their gluteal muscles.

The team split the horses into two groups: 67 shod horses and 10 barefoot horses.
In the group of shod horses, 50 out of 67 tested positive for pain (i.e., displayed an exaggerated response to palpation that consisted of one or more of the following: buckling of the hind limbs, pinning the ears back, threatening to kick the examiner, or kicking at the examiner) and 17 horses tested negative (did not react to palpation).

The average breakover distance for horses that displayed a positive response to palpation was 24.2 mm, while the average breakover distance for negative horses was 18.8 mm. The researchers noted that "although small, the difference in mean breakover distance between positive and negative horses was statistically significant."

In the group of barefoot nonpregnant broodmares (all housed in the same environment and not being ridden) all 10 displayed positive reactions to palpation. The average breakover distance for this group of horses was 25.6 mm.

To evaluate whether corrective trimming or shoeing could resolve the gluteal pain, the team reduced the breakover distance in all the painful horses' hind limbs and reevaluated the animals:

Only 24 shod horses (of the 50 that had been found painful) were available for a follow-up evaluation four to six weeks after corrective trimming or shoeing; however, all of those horses showed reduced gluteal pain. Twenty of the horses were negative for a reaction to palpation and the remaining four were only mildly positive (the researchers noted that all four of those were negative to palpation after another four to six weeks and a second corrective trim). The new average breakover distance for these horses was 10.9 mm.

All of the barefoot broodmares received follow-up evaluations one week after corrective trimming. Eight of the 10 were negative for reaction to palpation and two were mildly positive. The average breakover distance for these horses after corrective trimming also was 10.9 mm.

"Excessive toe length in the hind feet might be accompanied by pain in the gluteal region," Mansmann wrote in the study. "Shortening the toe can alleviate this pain within days or weeks."

The team added that "in cases where the toe length or gluteal pain was adversely affecting the horse's comfort or function, one could also expect an improvement in the horse's gait and performance after remedial trimming or shoeing."
So how can you tell if your horse's feet are causing him gluteal pain or if they might require evaluation?

Mansmann explained that most horses in need of a hind end evaluation will display behavioral problems including not performing as expected, not being willing to move off the leg, or stopping at jumps. He also noted that these horses might display signs of a sore back. Additionally, "any horse where their hind foot coronet is slanted such that an extended line (following the coronary band line) hits them behind the elbows should be evaluated," he said.

He added that most farriers, with the aid of the veterinarian and hind foot radiographs, can evaluate and adjust the breakover for a particular horse if needed.

The study, "Long Toes in the Hind Feet in the Gluteal Region: An Observational Study of 77 Horses," was published in the December 2010 Journal of Equine Veterinary Science. The abstract is available online.

Click here to read my post about this topic.

Want to see some excessively long hind toes?

Yowzers

I trimmed this horse a few weeks ago, took an inch of excess material off those toes. Horse felt so good he started playing with the owner's dog when I finished. Unfortunately that dog got hit by a car and has been in critical condition since then so the owner hasn't been able to call me back out.

Everyday clicker training

2011-05-03T09:24:00.001-04:00

At the last clicker training clinic, Alex said something that really stuck with me, "sometimes I click to say thank you." I realized that I do that too, I think every clicker trainer does. I feel that anytime I c/t my horses for a well-ingrained behavior I'm doing it to say thank you.

When I arrive at the pasture and go out to see my horses, the first thing I do is touch them and c/t. If they are really involved with grazing they'll wait for me to approach them.

Gwen was faking me out- she galloped over to me as soon as I put the camera down.

But typically they approach me. Either way, my horses are never hard to catch.

Food?

If I need to halter them, I'll c/t after I buckle it on. Then I'll reinforce them for walking nicely next to me up to the barn. I prefer to walk shoulder to shoulder with a loose lead and enough room to raise my elbow between the two (or three) of us. I'll usually c/t every 15-20 steps if they're in the correct position, a little extra reinforcement never hurt anybody and I find it helps keep their attention on me.

I don't c/t while I'm grooming them, I tried it a while back and found that it made them fidget, but I will occasionally c/t them while I'm tacking up. I'll c/t Coriander for letting me put the bridle on and I'll c/t Gwen for bridling and for standing still while I cinch up the saddle. Then I walk them over to the mounting block, where I'll c/t them for standing still while I run the stirrups down and check the girth again.

When mounting I very rarely click them for standing still before I get on, but I do click and treat every time I slide into the saddle. With Coriander I wait until I've got my feet in the stirrups to click, but for Gwen I click as soon as I'm upright on her back. I was having issues with Coriander a while back because I was clicking before I got my feet in the stirrups, he'd eat the food and start walking off before I was ready, so now he has to wait. This has worked very well for me, they both stand like stones now.

I also click and treat every time I dismount. My hope is that when I fall off, because it's going to happen, that my horses will be so used to looking for the treat when I hit the ground that they'll immediately turn to me instead of running off into oblivion. With any luck, I won't have to test out this theory anytime soon.

When I'm putting them back in the pasture for the night, each horse has a different routine. Coriander will walk through the gate, wait for me to ask his hips to move over so I can close the gate, and then stand and wait for me to take his halter off- I click and treat him once for this "loop." Gwen is different, she likes to walk in the gate and directly over to the water to grab a drink, I'll wait for her to finish and then I take her halter off and c/t. I think she does this because she knows I'll hold Rocky off so she can drink her fill without getting harassed, so I haven't gotten picky about this behavior.

Rocky tends to throw a bit of a monkey wrench in my training with her issues, sometimes I have to tie her up so I can get my horses in and out of the pasture. She likes to hover over the gate and snaps at my horses if they get too close to her- so they do their best to avoid her. She's an interesting horse, that Rocky, she bites and kicks at my horses all the time but is still terribly attached to them, especially Gwen. She might be the topic of another post someday.

Anyway, back to my horses, because of our end-of-the-day routine I never have to worry about them bolting away from me or pulling other sorts of nastiness when I turn them loose. That's not to say they never gallop off when I let them go but they always wait until I've given them their treat and walked away before they run off.

I feel that continuing to c/t these behaviors that they know well helps to create mutual respect between us. They know what I expect of them and I know what they expect of me. Obviously I'm not teaching them anything because they already know these behaviors, but I really like having a way to say "thank you" that they understand and appreciate.

Weather and hooves

2011-04-29T13:22:00.001-04:00

I may have mentioned before that it's been raining here. A LOT. We've had 8 inches of rain this month, historical averages for the month of April here is 3 inches. You can imagine that it's a tad muddy out there.

There was a brief dry period at the end of March/beginning of April when Coriander's hooves starting building a callus while growing in a little extra sole to fill in some of his winter concavity.

I think I need a quick aside here: Concavity in hooves is terrain dependent. Hooves that live and work in soft footing (like deep snow) will have greater concavity than hooves that live and work on hard footing (like rock). Pete Ramey has a nice article that explains it better here: "One Foot For All Seasons."

Back to Coriander: I was just beginning to get excited about the change in his concavity when the sky opened up and dumped all that rain on us for a month. The firm ground he had been walking on turned into mush and has stayed that way. Suddenly Coriander was all ouchy when we walked on the driveway.

Does thrush have something to do with this? Probably. But I think the bigger problem is all that water softened up his soles. Do you know what it feels like when you're in water long enough for your feet to get all pruny and then try to walk around on rough ground? It hurts because your feet got all soft. That's exactly what's happening to my horses right now.

While trimming his feet last weekend a chunk of sole peeled right out from under his toe, it was the callus that he'd made in the few days it dried out had coming off. I thought, "well crap, now we have to build that up again." But it's not going to happen until we stop getting rained on.

Considering that, I've got two options: Boot him or leave him be. Since we only ride on the driveway from about 50 yards per ride and then spend the rest of the time slogging through muddy trails or riding in a muddy arena, I've decided to leave him be. Sure he's a little sore going out, but I just let him go slow and pick his own way; once we're off the driveway he's perfectly fine. When we're on the way back I just dismount when we get to the driveway and then walk back to the barn with him.

I'm hoping this post will help some of you barefoot owners out there who might be dealing with the same thing right now. When you are committed to keeping your horse barefoot you need to pay attention to changing weather conditions and how hooves might adapt. It's not a good thing, it's not a bad thing- it just is the way it is.

PS- I am very disappointed in American news right now. I cannot fathom why they are giving as much, if not more, news coverage to a WEDDING on a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CONTINENT than they are giving to the TORNADOES that have devastated OUR OWN COUNTRY. For shame!