Things I am working on: Getting left behind

In my last lesson, my trainer pointed out to me that I tend to get left behind in the transitions. It's just for a moment, but it's noticeable, and I'm starting to understand how much it affects the overall quality of the transition.

In the w/t transition, my hands get just a split-second behind and Taran doesn't step right up into it - because I'm blocking the energy in front (duh) and he just can't do it. The same thing happens in the upward canter transitions, only it's worse because I also tend to lean WAAAAY back. I guess I think I'm sitting up and helping to get the weight off his shoulders? So now my body is hugely behind the motion and well, again, I'm blocking the energy.

Taran's tail expresses displeasure at my leaning in the t/c transition.

I also sit behind the motion in canter and in the medium trot. To me, it feels like I'm sitting straight, but one look at a still shot and it's pretty obvious how far I'm behind. I wish we had mirrors so I could check myself, because it's really hard to know when you're off if you feel like you're correct! I think I'm compensating by leaning, instead of using my core to stay with the motion.

Leaning obviously makes the medium trot better.

In the downwards transitions, I look down, roll my shoulders forward, and lean back. In my head, the leaning back is weighting his haunches so he'll sit more in the transition, but the looking down and rolling my shoulders just makes me brace against him and dumps him on the forehand. Oh, and I take my leg off too, because everyone knows you don't need any leg in a downward transition (haha). This has led to some spectacularly awful downward transitions with his haunches trailing in the next county, but hey, he's doing exactly what I asked!

You can also roll your shoulders and look down at any time - no need to wait for a transition!

So. I'm on a mission to do a better job of staying with Taran's motion. To help, I've come up with a mini-checklist for myself that I've got playing in my head as I prepare for transitions:

• Shoulders back, but bring the upper body forward so that I feel like I'm leaning just a smidge (this actually makes me sit up on the vertical).
• Engage the core - think of pulling my pubic bone up toward my chin with my core (that's the image that works for me, ymmv). 
• Elbows relaxed and following but NOT rounding the shoulders (this is haaaaard).

And then in the gait, especially in the canter, I check to see if I feel like I'm leaning slightly forward every time I go past A/B/C/E (I'm not really forward, I'm sitting up straight - it just feels that way right now).

Hopefully with some vigilance on my part I'll get better, but man, it's HARD to retrain your body to get rid of those bad habits. Fortunately, when I'm right, Taran goes better, so it's good positive reinforcement!

What are you working on right now?

P.S. For those of you who played the "Guess how much Brego's shoes cost" game on Friday, Alli was correct with $600. My bank account is still whimpering. 

Friday fun: How much were Brego's shoes?

I got the bill for Brego's hoof wall resection, and it was as expected. But then I got the bill for his shoes, and I almost had to breathe into a paper bag to control the hyperventilating. Let's just say I didn't know that shoes could even cost that much, ever.

They don't look that fancy, do they?

What kind of magical shoes are these, you ask? They're to support his feets while the resection grows out. Here's the details:

• Handmade heart-bar shoes in size Brego
• Fronts only
• With clips

For size comparison, that's my thumb. 

Just how much did they cost? Here are a few clues:

• The most expensive shoes I'd ever had before were a full set, with clips and tapped for studs. Brego's were nearly three times as much.
• My college apartment was cheaper than these shoes.
• You probably pay less for board than these shoes cost.
• I could have bought a new pair of (not custom) tall boots.
• A set of 4 new trailer tires is less than these shoes.
• I could have bought a plane ticket to Europe (in the off season).

So, with armed that knowledge, leave your guesses in the comments! Whoever gets closest gets to send me a donation toward the cost of Brego's fancy footware.

Just kidding. Mostly.

16th century dressage trivia: Sweat scrapers

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I've been researching dressage in the 16th century. Currently I'm reading (and in some cases, attempting to translate) all the books I can get my hands on. There are probably fewer than 20 surviving books on horsemanship that were written before 1600, so I have hope that someday I'll get through them all. Unfortunately, the majority of them are in Italian, Spanish, or German, so it may take me a really long time (every try to read medival German in Gothic font? It makes for massive headaches). Luckily a few were translated into English, and that's what I've been focused on thusfar.

Every so often, I come across a particularly interesting bit of information that seems worth sharing, so I've decided to start a series of posts on random bits of trivia. The first installment has to do with sweat scrapers.

Did you ever wonder how sweat scrapers got their current form - a long, curved metal "blade"? (Ok, if you're fancy you probably have a rubber one with a handle... I'm talking about the plain aluminum ones.) It turns out that the first sweat scrapers were swords!

"You shall ever when he hath ridden and cometh in much sweating, presently have him into the Stable, and first rub him down with clean wisps. Then taking off his Saddle, with a Sword-blade whose edge is dulled, you shall stroke his neck and body clean over, leaving no sweat nor filth that can be gotten out..." (Markham p. 21)  

So if you ever lose your sweat scraper, just get out that trusty dulled sword you've got laying around. It'll work just fine!

Markham, Gervase. A Discourse of Horsemanship. London, 1593. (Leaflet of 1656 reprint shown)

Brego hoof update: "It looks GREAT!"

Warning: more graphic pics. Heck, let's just go with the disclaimer that for the next 9 months, if it's a Brego hoof update, there will probably be graphic pics included. You're welcome.

Let me start this post by saying that my version of "It looks great!" and my vet's version of "It looks great!" are two very, VERY different things.

My version: A completely grown-out hoof with no defects, ever again.

My vet's version: The following:

Surgery +1 day

Surgery + 3 days

Surgery +5 days. You can see the new tissue is starting to grow in from the top.

1 Brego foot requires: 1 5x9 surgical pad, ~40 gauze squares, 1 roll of vetwrap, 1 triple layer duct-tape boot, and 1 roll of ela$ticon. 

Home and hoovering as usual!

Tomorrow I get to do my first solo bandage change. Luckily Brego's super good about this, but still, it's a 5-step process and that is one BIG foot. He's 100% sound and about ripped my arm off coming out of the stall this morning, complete with head tossing and squealing. Clearly he feels quite good, despite missing the better part of a hoof!

The Blue Chicken

Years ago, we used to board at a place that had a variety of critters running around. One day, a boarder's three year old daughter came running up to her father, yelling "DADDY, DADDY, I SAW A BLUE CHICKEN!!!" Her father said something to her like, "A blue chicken? Now honey, we talked about this..." at which point she grabbed his hand, dragged him around the barn, and started pointing. "See Daddy, there's a WHITE chicken (pointed to a white chicken), a BROWN chicken (pointed to a brown chicken), and a BLUE chicken!" She was pointing at the resident peacock. 

Saturday evening, I went out to feed the horses and found this guy perusing the chicken coop:

Yes, that's exactly what you think it is.

We've had some other weird things show up at our house, including a bull, the neighbor's horse, and countless snakes, but I never thought we'd have a resident peacock. He spent the night in our oak tree, but was hanging out in our neighbor's garage by Sunday morning (I know this because they called me to ask if we'd lost a peacock.)

He dropped back by Sunday afternoon and hung out for a while, and this morning I heard him in the greenbelt. Apparently he doesn't have anyone he "belongs" to, but given he can fly over our neighbor's 8 foot fence, I don't think anyone will be able to "keep" him.

Anybody got a good recipe for blue chickens?

Brego's hoof wall resection

WARNING: Graphic pictures. Do not continue if you don't want to see.

Brego had his hoof wall resection yesterday. According to my vet, it was NBD for Brego (of course, he had good drugs on board and lots of people taking care of him). For me, it was super nerve-wracking - I was so worried they would get in there and find something really bad. Plus, I wasn't there for it, so I had to wait for updates as my vet could send them.

The procedure went off with no problem. He got a special set of custom shoes for support, and then they started removing the hoof wall. As they started digging, they discovered that the entire hoof wall, all the way down, was dead - there was no connection to the laminae underneath. When they got to the top of the hoof, they didn't find a keratoma, but instead a pocket of damaged and infected cells. That area got cleaned and debrided until nothing but healthy cells were left.

The theory that the vets (there were four in attendance) and the farrier have is that years ago, Brego either had some tiny bit of infection or foreign body travel up from the toe all the way to the coronary band, or he had some slight damage to the coronary band. He blew out an abscess in exactly the same spot almost two years before we got him, so this whole thing probably started back then. He then went two years with no abscess, blew one out last spring, then went ANOTHER year with no abscess, then six months, and then it really became a problem this year. But, guy has been walking around with a compromised hoof for quite some time, and he's so stoic that nobody even suspected.

As for recovery, the plan is a little up in the air. He's staying at the hospital for the next week, and right now his hoof is just wrapped with daily bandage changes. We may continue with daily changes once he comes home, or we may put a hoof cast on him. He'll definitely be on stall rest or in a very small paddock for a while, but whether that is weeks or months we won't know until we see how he progresses. Once we are sure the hoof is growing back in normally, the vet wants him to get as much (careful) movement as possible since movement helps the hoof grow. Total time to grow an entirely new hoof is 9-12 months, but he should be able to return to at least light work long before that.

So, please keep your fingers crossed for an uncomplicated recovery and a beautiful, perfect new hoof!

And now the moment you've all been waiting for... the gory pics. Seriously, if you don't do blood, please don't look.

Cutting guides for the resection. You can see just how many abscesses he's blown out in the last few months.

Starting to nip out chunks.

So much hoof to get through!

Here's what it looked like after they nipped out some of it. That black section in the middle is dead hoof that doesn't connect to the laminae underneath. 

After using the nippers, they got to work with the dremel (I would have had to leave for this, gah). You can see how many holes there are down the hoof wall, and how much dead area there is under it all. Poor guy.

Did I mention there was an audience?

Hoof wall resection complete. The white part is laminae.  Note how his coronary band is pushed up and bulging? That's where the root of the problem was.

Post-debridement under the coronary band. You can see that it's no longer bulging and the coronary band looks more even all the way around.

Today I get to FaceTime with my vet during the bandage change so I can see everything up close and personal. Ah, the magic of technology!

Taran confo shots: BEEFCAKE

It's been a while since I've posted any confo shots of Taran, which is kind of a bummer because DAMN he looks amazing. I know, I say that every time... I keep thinking that he's done changing but apparently not!

Here's the last pic I posted, in April:

April 10, 2016

He looked pretty good in April, but the angle and the fact that he had his neck so arched helped hide a few flaws.

His May pic isn't as nice - he's standing with his head cocked toward the camera so his neck looks a little weird, but you can still see how his topline is getting stronger (especially right behind the saddle) and his butt is continuing to round out:

May 22, 2016

 Unfortunately I missed out on a confo shot from June, but here's the July shot:

July 19, 2016

I swear, he looks like he's gained 50 pounds of muscle! His topline is really starting to get stronger - that divot under his withers is filling in and so is the area right behind the saddle - and he just overall looks much bulkier. His neck is a little hard to see because of his mane, but that big under-neck muscle seems to have all but disappeared.

For comparison, here's what he looked like back in December. 

I did end up changing his feed about a month ago. I'd switched him from TC Lite to TC Senior in May, but for whatever reason he didn't really seem to like the TC Senior (weirdo). So I switched him back to the Lite in mid-June, added a flake of alfalfa AM and PM, and started him on Platinum Performance. He's also been getting a lot of trainer rides in July, so that's helping him build strength and muscle too. Whatever's doing it, his body is still changing SO rapidly!

Anybody else got confo shots over time to share? If so, do a blog post! I love these progressions!