baby steps

This sweet red mare has been…. Full of surprises for me over the last year and a half. Some surprises have been exceedingly pleasant — like when she pulled a literally flawless show jump round out of thin air at Loch Moy last October!

Others, tho… Hm. Less so lol… Tho ya know, another massive benefit in keeping this blog going — even when the minutiae feels mundane, repetitive or even boring — is that it helps me from having to learn the same lessons twice again and again and again. 

Doozy + her ponies, serene in the snow!

For example, there’s a whole post from Doozy’s earliest time with me about “restarting the restarting.” Recall, she almost immediately came down with a massive cellulitis infection and likely related hoof abscess just weeks after coming home. Then, upon recovery, acted like she’d never seen ANY of the farm before in her life (despite the prior weeks of careful hand walking and introductions to all the various spaces). 

ice ball season is the worst

My initial reaction at that time was surprise, annoyance and frustration — bc from my perspective, the mare had more than enough preparation and experience to be civil despite a little time off. But, ya know. Tell that to the mare LOL… 

So I fixed my feelings and reframed my mind and we just went back to square one and reestablished all the little skills and behaviors I wanted to see in the mare, and it was all good.

you can really see how much height these things can develop

And history basically seems to be repeating itself this season for us. Conditions are decidedly not favorable — cold weather, bad ground, howling wind… We’ve been limited to exclusively riding indoors for quite a while at this point, and then Doozy had the better part of the last two weeks off after bruising a foot on some hard packed ice balls in her shoe. 

also tis the season for rechargeable hand warmers! i got these Ocoopa nuggets for Christmas

So when we were able to snatch the big indoor all to ourselves during relatively mild weather, I was eager to start putting the pieces of our ‘standard wtc ride package’ back together. 

Doozy had… other thoughts LOL. She was eager to spook at…. Everything. Weird noises. Weird silence. That closed door…. that open  door…. Bright spots and dark shadows, and literally everything in between. 

pretty mare isn’t grown up yet lol

Not gonna lie, it’s really easy for me to get baited into all of that, tho. To get baited into working the mare through whatever distraction she finds —- schooling her past the door, working her into the corners, not letting her get all screwballed and contorted every time she passes the gate… Except. Guys. Literally none of that really matters at this exact moment, ya know? 

more to come on this experiment…. first ride left me with some concerns

It’s like… 20*F outside, the ground is trashed, nothing is happening any time soon. If the mare needs to hand walk a lap or two around the ring, fine. If she needs to stay on a small circle, FINE. What I **don’t** need to do is make a big deal out of this corner or that mirror or those piled up hoses. None of it matters, Doozy isn’t actually afraid, we can actually just ignore it.

she is so friggin busy omg… note the chompage tho

Bc at this particular moment, having not been schooling regularly, really all we need to do is put together a few minutes of trot in each direction —- finding our salvation in steady rhythm and inside supple bend. That’s… literally it. And go figure, when I kept the message really really consistent, and really really clear (trot in this steady tempo with consistent inside bend), Doozy was able to take a deep breath and stop looking for monsters. 

We don’t have to get drawn into chasing after every squirrel, ya know? 

mare we just want you to be happy!

Tho ya know. We still had to take a fairly extensive walk break after changing directions bc omg everything is different now aaaaahh.. cough cough, ahem. 

But. Eh. Fiiiiiine. I reminded myself that we have all the time in the world, including time to compose ourselves as needed vs feeding into the feelings. And then after the walk break, mare was able to pick up another little 2min stint of trot without any explosions or interpretative dance steps. Good girl!

mare thinks her happiness can be found among the treats in that coat pocket LOL

Actually, overall, the quality of the work itself was quite high — exactly where we left off from our last lesson with Trainer C. Which is honestly a GREAT feeling bc the whole set of recent little micro-breakthroughs was all about getting reproducible work from the horse with consistent rider inputs. 

Which… If you can ignore all the other shenanigans related to having had a little time off, and being slightly stir crazy from the weather… Well, it’s what we’re still getting! Woo hoo! 

At this point, just being able to get on and go through the motions reasonably consistently is good enough haha… And who knows, maybe we’ll eventually get a reprieve from all these arctic blasts?? We’ll see, I guess!