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I really didn’t intend for this to be Henny Drama week, but ya know… if the shoe fits…

A couple weeks ago I tied Henry at the washrack and walked over to turn the hose on. As soon as I did that I heard scrambling, turned around, and my horse was no longer attached where I had left him. He’d sat back and somehow wiggled completely out of his halter within all of 2 seconds. Weird behavior for him, he ties very reliably, but he’s also kind of dumb so I figured something just startled him and didn’t think much more of it.

Then two days later, same thing happened again, except this time he broke my gorgeous Kentucky Bridleworks halter. Luckily it was at the end of the strap so it’s still usable, but… still. He broke it. This is why you can’t have nice things, horse. I tied him back up and proceeded to bathe him, and he continued to be 100% terrified of…

wait for it…

THE HOSE.

The same hose I’ve been using for like 6 months now. Plus, ya know, he’s 10. He’s seen plenty of hoses in his life. But obviously it is an anaconda of the Henny-eating variety.

The next day I took him over to the other washrack, thinking maybe I was just missing something in the first washrack with my human eyes. Surely he wasn’t really that scared of the hose. But no, same snorting and staring sideways at that hose (sorry – anaconda) too. Obviously Henry now thinks that all hoses are deadly.

My best guess is that he came across a snake in his pasture and is feeling hyperaware of anything snakelike right now. We did see a big fat grass snake cross our path a few weeks ago when we were out hacking in the back forty, and even though his turnout is the one closest to the barn, I have no doubt that there are some snakes out there too. I know a rat snake lives under the office… maybe that’s the one he’s seen? Either way, he’s pretty convinced that hoses fall into the same category of slithery danger.

On one hand I have to roll my eyes at him, because my goodness horse IT’S A FREAKING HOSE. On the other hand, I kind of don’t mind him being super wary of anything snakelike near his feet. I’ve had a horse bitten by a rattlesnake before and it’s fun for precisely NO ONE, so if his reaction to all things snake is to get the hell out of dodge, I’m ok with that. So for now I’m not tying him in the washrack (because if he breaks my halter again I might have to beat him with it. I kid. Or do I?), and I have to be slow and deliberate about how I pull the hose around near Henry’s feet. Hey, maybe he knows something I don’t. Or maybe he’s just kinda dumb. Jury’s still out.

Sooo I did an oops and forgot that I’d already committed to a Real Life thing on the day of the show, therefore the dressage show didn’t happen after all. My bad. I forget that real life exists sometimes. But we did manage to get a dressage lesson in on Saturday, and omg Henry was AWFUL.

I think it’s 99% because I’ve been riding him in his hackamore for two weeks… he came in from the field with a Bitey Face injury to the corner of his lip and it took forever to get it to scab up sufficiently to where the bit won’t rub it. Now he seems to have forgotten what a bit is. The other part of it was probably that we always go to Trainer’s to JUMP. He was extra grumpy when we walked over to the dressage arena instead. Who needs a mare when you can have a seriously over dramatic gelding?

The whole lesson was pretty miserable really. It was hot and humid as balls, I had rivers of sweat rolling into my eyes the whole time, and SOMEONE was just about as uncooperative as possible. It was like he’d forgotten everything we’ve worked on for the past year. The whole point of the lesson was to practice test B, but we didn’t make it all the way through it. Ugh. He’s been so damn good lately, too.

Trainer sent us home with a few bits to play with to see if maybe that would help (we’d been talking about experimenting with bits with him anyway), first of which is a Myler. We tried it yesterday and he was ok… still a bit turdish (that’s totally a word) but definitely not as bad as Saturday. Granted, I think the turdishness (also a word) has everything to do with the brain and nothing to do with the bit.

We’ll keep playing around this week and see if I can find the horse I had two weeks ago. Or exorcise whatever demon seems to have crawled up his butt. Lord knows I don’t want to take it with us to the show this weekend.

Sadie had her 15 day check yesterday and she is IN FOAL to Diarado!!!

And thank goodness for that. I know this wasn’t the originally planned cross, but I’m pretty excited about it… I think whoever buys it will end up with a really interesting prospect. The Diarados are generally quite ammy friendly and nice athletic attractive horses, and they’re popping up in the higher levels of every jumping discipline. There’s a lot to like about that. Plus he’s another stallion that doesn’t have a red gene, so no chance for chestnut. Win/win.

So, no full sibling to Presto next year, but a Diarado is a pretty damn amazing consolation prize. Fingers crossed of course that the pregnancy sticks and results in a healthy foal, yadda yadda yadda. Maybe she’ll decide to make a filly this time? She’s 2 for 2 in the colt department.

As for the little man himself, Presto has been doing a bit better. There’s not much to report with him really, rhodococcus is a slooooooow recovery that’s more about managing the side effects of the antibiotics. There is a bit of improvement though, so we’ll take that.

For those who were asking for a second chance at shirts, I’ve relaunched the store with a few little tweaks, mainly a minor design change, more shirt options, and lots more color options. I tried to find a place with tech shirts but that just didn’t work for lots of reasons, so I’m sorry but I couldn’t accommodate that request! I did find out that It’s a Haggerty’s can embroider the logo on a custom sunshirt though… I’d be happy to send the file to anyone that’s interested in that. It makes me really happy to see so many people rallying around my little dude and wanting to support him. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – y’all are the best. ❤

I was really proud of myself on Friday as I started my pre jump session warmup. I’d spent half an hour moving my jumps around and setting up something that gave me a lot of options for coursework but also still left me the option for a fairly difficult (or so I thought) exercise involving a corner and a skinny. Considering I only have 5 fences, that’s an accomplishment.

I got on, went through my favorite “Crazy Eights” exercise to start, strung a simple course together, then went for my “difficult” corner/skinny and angle exercise. Henry hopped right through the damn thing on the first try without batting an eye, and I’m pretty sure he was very smugly laughing at me the whole way. Obviously I bore him. I really thought the vertical right turn to corner left turn to skinny might be at least interesting to him, but no. The most reaction I got out of him was a spook at the corner as we cantered past it for our line of angled fences.

As we were walking around the field to cool out, I started brainstorming other exercises I could do, which then led me to what I thought seemed like a fun blog hop idea! What are your favorite exercises? Flatwork or jumping or both!

On the flat my two most-used exercies are canter squares to get his front end up (the joys of a downhill horse), and canter spiral in to walk, which helps keep him rocked back on his hind end a bit better in the down transition. Let’s be honest, the only way we can accomplish a canter-walk transition right now is on the spiral in. But it definitely helps, as do the squares.

For jumping, as I mentioned above, my favorite one is what I’ve dubbed Crazy Eights. I think I saw someone else refer to it as Count Up. Either way. Basically I just have one tiny fence or a single pole on the ground that I canter on a circle, and each time I go over it I start counting strides from further away. So on the first pass when you’re one stride away you’d count one, on the second pass you’d count down from two, on third pass from 3, etc all the way up to 8 from each direction. The point is to be more aware of your rhythm and where you are in relation to fence, and it helps hone your eye for a distance. The key is that you’re not allowed to change the canter to make your count correct. If I start my count to close or too far away, then I’m just wrong… I don’t get to pull or kick and make it work. As someone who really loves to mess with the canter, this exercise is excellent for my self control.

Very interested to hear what everyone else likes!

As I was handgrazing Henry the other day, I got to thinking about how different he and Sadie are to handle. Not that Sadie is difficult, but she’s definitely smart, and if she thinks you’re a pushover she will both literally and figuratively walk all over you. Henry is more like an old lesson horse (albeit one who’s had too many cookies and is probably a bit spoiled but let’s ignore that). He’s just kinda there, and he might glare at you but he’ll do pretty much whatever you want without argument as long as it doesn’t involve putting anything in his ears.

Sadie, on the other hand, can smell dominance from a mile a way. If you’re assertive, she’s very simple. But if you give her an inch, she’ll take a mile. Her general temperament has a definite “Hmmm… how sure are you?” theme. This was illustrated really well when she was at the vet clinic with Presto, because the guys that cleaned the pens were very clearly terrified of her. They would slowly tiptoe into her pen, keeping their eyes on her at all times, and if she moved toward them at all, they would go running. I don’t totally blame them, she is a BIG horse that had a sick foal by her side, but I’m pretty sure Sadie found their terror to be hilarious and it became a game to her. Yet if I went in there she was a total lamb and I could move her backwards just by pointing my finger at her (which I’m fairly certain the workers thought that was some kind of majikal horse whispering voodoo). Mare ain’t stupid, she knows who’s alpha. And if you’re alpha, she’s great. If you’re not, you aren’t going to enjoy her very much.

Yet once you’re in the saddle she’s so easy and simple that it’s borderline ridiculous. At her first trail ride as a 3yo, fresh from the breaker, she was the bravest, quietest, easiest horse in a big group of seasoned trail horses. I can’t leave just anyone holding her unattended, but I’ve always been able to throw literally anyone up on her and say “keep your hands down and you’re golden”. And she was. A blind geriatric monkey could ride that horse. She loves to work and the answer is always yes. The more difficult it is, the more interested she is. She’s the most pleasant, happiest mare I’ve ever ridden. And she is definitely more rideable than Henry. I’d classify both of them as fairly easy horses to ride but he is more sensitive and naturally more tense than she is, thus he requires more tact.

Yet if you spent 5 minutes with each horse on the ground, almost everyone would probably guess that Henry was much easier to ride. I’ve noticed over and over that it seems like a lot of people think that temperament and rideability go hand in hand. You see it a lot with people that buy babies… “oh he’s so smart and quiet, he’ll be a great ammy horse.”. Enh… well… maybe. I personally have not seen a strong enough correlation between temperament and rideability to ever bank on that.

The only really reliable indicator I’ve seen is a genetic one, and it’s why rideability was so important to me in choosing a stallion. Some lines have strong reputations for making horses that are easy to train, ride, and are forgiving of mistakes. Others are known for creating quite the opposite. In that case I don’t care how good the temperament seems, I don’t want one.

But really, you don’t know what you’ve got until you swing a leg over and put them to work. I’ve had one that was super stupid on the ground but super easy to ride, and I’ve had one that was bombproof on the ground but a total moron to ride. That’s the extra fun part about breeding, buying a young horse, or buying sight unseen: it’s a surprise! Whether it’s good surprise or a bad surprise, well… that depends.