True to form, Henry seems to have settled in just fine at the new place. He might be the weirdest horse on the planet, but he’s definitely a good traveler, which I’m really thankful for.

I got him all settled in on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday I hopped on. We pretty much just walked the perimeter of the giant hay field since the ground was still a little bit hard from how dry it’s been lately, but I just could not resist taking this giant green space for a spin. Plus Henry’s shoes were barely hanging on, so we couldn’t do much more than walk anyway.

The farrier came out the next day (thankyousomuch for making a special trip just for us) and got his feet all fixed up, plus it rained about 1.25″. I wandered back out into the field the following day and it was perfection. Just soft enough to be springy, but not so soft that we were leaving divots. Since his feet were fixed now, we trotted a lap both ways (I LOVE the little hill way in the back of this pasture, it’s so hard to find hills around here!), then I let him canter. He proceeded to try to run off with me (not that Henry runs particularly fast) and buck me off (not that Henry actually bucks), yet somehow, in the midst of all this spectacular flailing, he reached down and snatched a bite of tall grass. Henny is back, y’all, and I think he’s feeling just fine.

We’ve also been wandering around the property meeting all the various creatures. I have yet to be able to convince him to walk within 50′ of the baby cows (aka moo-demons) but he seems enthralled with the miniature donkey. Every time it brays he stands at full attention and stares at it. He’ll drag me over to it while he’s grazing but stop about 15′ away and just watch it. He can’t figure out this tiny mystical long-eared creature.

On Saturday I clipped him, because I already officially Cannot with his hairy self. I did opt for a chaser clip (or Irish clip, depending on who you ask) this time instead of his normal full clip. It looks a little goofy but I figured it’ll require a bit less blanketing and help keep his back/butt muscles a bit warmer, so practicality won out. At least for now.

It pretty much kept raining all weekend, so we were stuck riding in the arena. It’s only half covered, but the good thing is that it’s all fine sand, so even after a huge deluge it’s still 100% rideable in there. In fact, I think it’s actually better when it’s soaking wet. The driveway gets muddy long before the arena does. We did a dressage ride on Saturday (spoiler alert: having a couple months off did not make either of us a dressage whiz) and then yesterday I set up some trot and canter poles to work over. He was super excited as soon as he saw the poles, probably hoping they meant it was jumping time, but not yet. Hopefully next weekend, assuming all continues to go well.

For now he’s still relegated to his big covered round pen turnout, but once it stops raining and dries up a bit, he gets to start going out in a paddock. Under heavy supervision, of course, because Henny.

How’s this for a throwback Thursday? I got an email in my inbox from Photobucket the other day, which I totally forgot I even had. Ten plus years ago that was where I uploaded all my pictures, but it’s been forever since I even logged into that account. Looking back through all those albums was a trip! Here were a few of my favorites… I hope you find them as entertaining as I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I took a half day off of work so I could move Henry to his new babysitter barn. Best case scenario, he still has another week or two until he can go back into regular turnout, and he has to be on soft footing for a couple months, plus a few other short term high maintenance care issues that add up to a lot of supervision, so I essentially had to find somewhere that can babysit him 24/7 for a while.

I have to give a huge shoutout and many thanks to Equicare for taking such good care of Henry for the past 5 weeks.  He looks fantastic, is happy, and didn’t lose a stitch of conditioning despite his layoff. It was icing on the cake when I showed up yesterday to pick him up and they had cleaned my trailer, bathed him, and had all of his stuff cleaned up and ready to go. Great service means a lot, and they went above and beyond several times. They’re really great, everyone local to me should check them out.

Henry loaded, traveled, and unloaded well, except for all that screaming for his Equicare BFF Chico, the mini horse. Really Henny, of all the available equines to fall in love with, it was the mini?

He’s getting eased back into turnout slowly, so he went in the round pen yesterday afternoon. I really expected him to be a lunatic but he mostly just walked around and then tried to make friends with the mares over the fence.

I did make him trot a few laps for me so I could see him move, then left him alone to roll and hang out and stare off into the distance wide-eyed (he’s particularly good at that). Then I unloaded all of my stuff, which quickly took over the tack room. Sorry, everyone else. The sad part is, there’s a lot more at home and in my trailer, I just figured I’d start with the bare minimum.

He’s getting new shoes today, and then hopefully I can get on and see how he feels. It’s finally supposed to rain a little bit over the next week, which would be great. This barn has a HUUUUGE hilly (for Texas) hay field to ride in, and the soil is pretty sandy. If we could get some rain, it would be soft enough to ride out there. I’m beyond ready to get back into the swing of things, and I think Henry is too.

 

 

Ah, gadgets. What a can of worms that topic is. I’ve used my fair share of them in my life, although granted I haven’t touched any in a really long time and don’t particularly care to. But fear not, I’m not here to lecture anyone on the evils of draw reins or german martingales. I’m here to talk about what a struggle it is to try to fix a horse that has been over-gadgeted, or gadgeted incorrectly.

Draw reins especially are very common. More in h/j-land than in eventing or dressage, but you still see them a lot. It’s not even uncommon to see them on the racetrack. I’ve gotten more than one horse OTT that had the tell-tale “break at the 3rd vertebrae, duck the nose behind the vertical” signs of one that has spent time in draw reins. But all of them have paled in comparison to Henry.

When I first got him, anything more than the lightest feather touch of contact would send him practically nose to chest. To the point where sometimes I wondered if he could actually see the fence he was about to jump, it was so extreme. Of course, you can chunk the reins at a horse like that all you want, but that doesn’t fix the problem. Once one learns that the answer to contact is to come BTV, it’s a very hard thing to undo. Add on top of that a horse that’s really mouthy about the bit and fussy in general, and I had quite the issue. He didn’t like contact, he didn’t like pressure, and he was more than happy to go around BTV.

First I had to take the bit away completely and just get him more rideable in his body. Six months later I was able to add a bit back into the equation, and while it was for sure a thousand times better, his immediate reaction to contact was always to tuck his nose in. He thought that was the right answer, and how to make the pressure go away. We struggled with it for SO LONG… what contact we could manage was really a fake contact, he wasn’t truly in my hand. We could fake it enough to put in a fairly passable dressage test, but it wasn’t really correct.

To be honest, I never thought we would fix it. I never thought that tendency would go away, it was so deeply rooted in him. It really didn’t hit me until one day this past summer, when we were struggling with a few things in a lesson and his reaction was to come ABOVE the bit (like a normal damn horse, hallelujah)… he hasn’t ducked nose to chest in a while. In fact, if you didn’t know how he used to be, I don’t think you’d be able to tell by riding or watching him. We’ve finally made it to square 1.

NOW he can finally learn real contact. NOW he can really be ridden forward into the hand. NOW he can balance himself properly. NOW he is tremendously more rideable. Sure, he still hasn’t really mastered impulsion plus contact, not completely, but the BTV tendency is gone. He no longer seeks nose-to-chest as his safe refuge. He’s finally at the point where most horses start out… it only took 2.5 very long years. The struggle, it has been very very real.