I had a great weekend with my horse, he feels fantastic very forward.
I have been starting each of our rides by lunging him, then lunging him with side reins. When i use side reins i do not tighten them so that they pull on the bit they are basically as loose as they can go but G is very receptive to this he will slow his walk and focus on pushing forward with his hind end not pulling with his front. He will play with the bit a lot more while in this frame, he does great at a walk the trot he is still very high headed but thats ok i love how you can see the wheels turning in his head when he is walking with the side reins. Such a smart boy.
Our rides were pretty good as well he is very forward and not stiff at all from his "owie" as my 4 year old calls it, mostly due to the stretched we do prior to most rides. He was very quick to respond to my cues to take up contact witht he bit at the walk and the trot which was a pleasant surprise.
However, he is dropping his shoulder again. We will be riding at one end of the arena and he will just drop his shoulder and cut in which makes me crazy there is no amount of leg that i can put on him to push him back over. I dont know how to fix it which makes me sad and even more anxious to get working with a new coach. We will get it eventually.
His injuries are healing up great everything is healed and the hair is slowly starting to come back in that area i dont think there will be any scar tissue or any discoloration of his hair.
Now on to Lilly. Lilly was Jens horse the girl who passed away last week, well she has mud fever or mud rash or what ever you want to call it on her 2 hind legs. Lilly is a big horse and she is not a fan of people scrubbing the scabs off of her legs, and it has not been getting done properly so i volunteered to step in and go out every day to scrub her legs and put the ointment on them. First time i did her legs we couldnt even finish because i was far to exhausted from trying to dodge her tail and kicks aimed for my face as well as attempting to hold her leg. The second time wasnt so bad she was kicking out but not so much at me and i was able to get almost ALL of her scabs off. Last night when i went out the 3rd time i was out there by myself so i was going to try to do it if she was irritable i was not going to push it and put myself in harms way, so i went out and caught her and put her in the cross ties. She was AMAZING i want this horse she is so calm most of the time and really wants to make you happy... when shes not kicking at your face lol. She let me scrub her legs and put the ointment on with barely a tail swish.
Lilly makes me sad though it really makes you see how cruel some race horse owners could be... Lilly cannot neigh she cannot nicker she cannot make any sound other than a heart breaking deep breathing/raspy throat sound, her vocal cords were cut when she was on the track. It was explained to me that some owners do that to their horses so you cannot hear them scream if they fall on the track. That is discusting, and something i WILL be doing more research on.
Anyways i wont be doing much riding now until the weekend
I have been starting each of our rides by lunging him, then lunging him with side reins. When i use side reins i do not tighten them so that they pull on the bit they are basically as loose as they can go but G is very receptive to this he will slow his walk and focus on pushing forward with his hind end not pulling with his front. He will play with the bit a lot more while in this frame, he does great at a walk the trot he is still very high headed but thats ok i love how you can see the wheels turning in his head when he is walking with the side reins. Such a smart boy.
Our rides were pretty good as well he is very forward and not stiff at all from his "owie" as my 4 year old calls it, mostly due to the stretched we do prior to most rides. He was very quick to respond to my cues to take up contact witht he bit at the walk and the trot which was a pleasant surprise.
However, he is dropping his shoulder again. We will be riding at one end of the arena and he will just drop his shoulder and cut in which makes me crazy there is no amount of leg that i can put on him to push him back over. I dont know how to fix it which makes me sad and even more anxious to get working with a new coach. We will get it eventually.
His injuries are healing up great everything is healed and the hair is slowly starting to come back in that area i dont think there will be any scar tissue or any discoloration of his hair.
Now on to Lilly. Lilly was Jens horse the girl who passed away last week, well she has mud fever or mud rash or what ever you want to call it on her 2 hind legs. Lilly is a big horse and she is not a fan of people scrubbing the scabs off of her legs, and it has not been getting done properly so i volunteered to step in and go out every day to scrub her legs and put the ointment on them. First time i did her legs we couldnt even finish because i was far to exhausted from trying to dodge her tail and kicks aimed for my face as well as attempting to hold her leg. The second time wasnt so bad she was kicking out but not so much at me and i was able to get almost ALL of her scabs off. Last night when i went out the 3rd time i was out there by myself so i was going to try to do it if she was irritable i was not going to push it and put myself in harms way, so i went out and caught her and put her in the cross ties. She was AMAZING i want this horse she is so calm most of the time and really wants to make you happy... when shes not kicking at your face lol. She let me scrub her legs and put the ointment on with barely a tail swish.
Lilly makes me sad though it really makes you see how cruel some race horse owners could be... Lilly cannot neigh she cannot nicker she cannot make any sound other than a heart breaking deep breathing/raspy throat sound, her vocal cords were cut when she was on the track. It was explained to me that some owners do that to their horses so you cannot hear them scream if they fall on the track. That is discusting, and something i WILL be doing more research on.
Anyways i wont be doing much riding now until the weekend
Hopefully you are not offended by unsolicited advice! I would say that you need to focus just as much, if not more, on the outside rein as the inside leg. The outside rein tells his shoulder where to go and keeps it from popping in/out. At least, that is what I've done to fix my shoulder problems going around corners!!
ReplyDeleteRegarding Lilly's vocal cords being cut, it's a common side effect of tie-back surgery, in which the horse isn't getting enough oxygen because one of the airway flaps doesn't get out of the way during exercise (roaring is one symptom of that). It's pretty common on the track, though you will hear people argue both for and against it. I knew horses that had it done and couldn't whinny anymore and didn't suffer any quality of life issues as a result. Here's a good article if you're interested:
http://www.vetmed.vt.edu/emc/clinicalservices/docs/AirwaySurgery_KS.pdf
I would never get upset about any advice given on my blog i love it! Im fairly new to a lot of this and i understand things work differently for everyone but everything is worth trying to get the results that i want i will keep that in mind this weekend when i go out to ride! Thank you so much.
DeleteHonestly im not sure how i feel about it at the moment like i said i would like to do some more research on it, but it does not seem to bug her any now but it has been years that she has been off of the track and i didnt know her then so i dont know if it EVER did bug her. I will read that article when i have a change thank you!