Surviving Week One

Mr. Magnum's status: Exhausted

My status: Done early, even prepped food for tomorrow.

Weather: Below freezing, water in the barn is shut off and we are hauling buckets - what the heck Florida?

What I discovered: Despite what I have learned at the Otterbarn you do not have to put seven layers of duct tape over the toe to keep a hoof wrap on overnight, just one or two will do fine

New things that irritate me: Trainers who leave their reins/sidereins/martingales all attached for you to figure out how to undo when it's time to clean eight thousand bridles at the end of the night.

Lesson with TGT today - productive after I said I didn't want to buy a horse and this was the one I wanted to work with; she looked a bit surprised, probably because this is the first time I've said anything disagreeable other than not jumping on the gadget bandwagon. We worked on giving up the base of his neck in a stretchy frame which worked beautifully to the left and painfully to the right. We kept our stretchy frame throughout most of the ride, they are determined Mags will stretch like their horses by the end of this. While I think that would be lovely, I hold very little hope - their 3 year olds go with their nose in the dirt already, I'm thankful when we can stretch two inches down and maintain it on a vibrating contact. 

Always working on a low outside hand and a vibrating/massaging inside hand. He has to look towards the center of the circle starting with the base of his neck - as soon as I get any softness, I need to rub his neck with my inside hand, which works to give him back the inside rein. To the right when he gets very tense and upside down I am supposed to pat him with my outside/left hand to encourage him to relax down. Very different than forcing the issue, it's hard to wait him out and rather painful. He has to maintain a powerful forward trot throughout, so we tapped him up quite a bit, often using the double tap from before. We also constantly transitioned trot/canter/trot, never walking, I don't think we've worked that long without a break ever; I'm too afraid of TGT to tell her I can't breath and that Mr. Magnum is killing me. Thank goodness clients came and we stopped so TGT could show them their horse. Overall it was successful to the left, I thought he was light and quite airy, if a bit low in his withers; to the right he was a miserable animal to ride and I wanted a horse upgrade.

Some other things TGT told me:  I am not allowed to let him stop and spook and instead have to send him sideways through his spooks and bend him to the inside since he normally spooks from the outside no matter which way we're tracking. He uses his spooks to get away from me - not really earth shattering news. He is never allowed to look to the left while tracking right, if he ignores my vibrating right hand I am supposed to shake my whole hand and bounce the bit rather wildly to get him to look right again. My right shoulder hasn't been this sore since before we started lessons with Bruce at the beginning of the summer. Also, before TGT got out there we had about a half hour walk warm up waiting for her - we used the last lesson with CPL who said to make him go extremely lateral every time he got hard on his right rein, so lateral that he was basically side passing around his circle with his nose far on the inside and big crossovers in back. It works in the beginning, but after a few times his hind end gets so tired that I don't think he could get off of my right rein. A nice tool to reinforce though because he hates doing it and just the threat is sometimes enough to make him think about roundness tracking right. 

Other Horses: Also warmed up Firstwish, Frosh and took Lofty out on trails, as well as lunged Finery with the draw reins and sursingle - nothing thrilling on the other horse front today. 

After riding Mags today I turned him out all booted up for the first time in 2 days since he's been such a wild man I've been afraid he'll get tangled in their fence with how hard he runs and tries to strike at other horses through the fence - so all protected he went out and acted like his Otterbarn self, which is to say he ate for hours until I brought him inside and never broke a walk. The swelling is completely gone from his eye - our injury count is staying at two thank goodness. He is living in his flymask whenever I see any bugs about. The barn owner still does not approve of my horse abusing, flymasking ways, but that's okay - we don't agree on bute either. I don't think she's noticed the flyboots he lives in yet. I wonder what would happen if she knew I put flydrops on him and they weren't natural?

I love clients who bring Xmas food - I learned that pumpkin bread is strong encouragement to take extra special care of a horse. 

Eating Ben and Jerry's until it's time for night check - dreading going out in the cold.