The last six years my horses have been in self care. This came about due to the poor care that my mare was receiving and due to her special needs (Cushings/Insulin Resistant), this was liable to kill her. Her condition woke me up to the fact that many BO’s are just stupid idiots who want to get away with the very least they can do.

I fed twice a day, washing sugar off beet pulp, cleaning stalls, managing blankets and I did it when I had 7 horses (the schoolhorses mostly) and they were stabled 30 minutes away – I drove on ice, through storms, and even through a couple of tornados to do my duty to my horse companions. I lived at the barn for a week during the worst ice storm this town has known – when my own house did not have electricity for 8 days.

When I ended my stint as Barn Manager, I was totally exhausted in mind and body. I had been pushed to the brink and over by two selfish, “Christians” who lied and stabbed me in the back – hoping that I would have no other choices and that they could destroy me (they didn’t). There was NOTHING left in me so I tried to pay someone to feed my horses and that ended up being a screw up.

After I moved my horses (yet AGAIN), Big Guy fractured his pelvis and I was once again in self care mode – mucking his stall daily, buying shavings, cracking out ice, etc.. and dealing with the stress of another critically ill horse when I had, I thought, nothing left to give – but yet something was still held in reserve and I was able to give it to him with the help and support of husband. So last winter was not any easier though I was paying for feeding and supposedly full-time care (ha!).

Now I am down to three horses – all “easy” maintenance with no particular special needs. I am looking forward to taking this winter off from my responsibilities, because I am PAYING for that. I am PAYING for someone else to crack ice, put on blankets, feed my horses, etc… and though I cannot forgo all responsibilities, I am determined to be with my family this Christmas while we also have my children’s birthdays.

It is not that I don’t love my horses… but there must be a balance between my family obligations and my love or things just go bad all the way around.

The bitter cold has arrived. We went out at lunch yesterday to get horses’ blanketed. Cold sprinkles of rain were blowing into our face and the wind crept down the back of our necks. I had to fumble with the latches with numb fingers.

Big Guy wouldn’t stand still but a carrot changed his mind.

ZZ decided the flapping orange blanket was once again a winter panther so I had to halter her while reaching under her belly for straps. She only gave a half-hearted kick with the back leg straps so that is a great improvement and I contribute it to all the leg lifting work.

Released to the “wild” she took off doing her obligatory bucking around to try to dispose of the Orange Panther and when it didn’t work setteled a bit until Big guy decided he needed to bite the Orange Panther off of her back (“You cannot wear Orange, darhling… it simply won’t do with your coloring.”)

He was on her right side, head facing tail, reaching around her butt with his neck and biting her behind her left foreleg at the buckle. Grabbing and biting it, she started to spin, attempting to get momentum so she could give him a good walloping kick, but since she kept spinning, and his neck was pinning her hindquarters she couldn’t get the retraction needed to strike.

This must have gone on for like 10 minutes while Hubby and I watched, scratching our heads and going WTF? Does he have a Death Wish?

After they settled, pony decided to try to scare me into thinking she might be colicking (after all perfect colic weather with the degrees dropped, cold wind, and rain). I forced her to drink some water and checked on her later in the day and thankfully, that was a false alarm.

About two months ago, some signs started appearing in the neighborhood – apparently Madison – a beautiful Sheltie had gone MISSING!! Madison must be dearly loved by her family because HUGE signs – like bigger then a Realtor’s For Sale sign appeared in front of every housing division with her 8×10 photo and a reward for $1000!

I wasn’t very hopeful for her return – personally, I guessed she had been stolen. A dog that lovely and obviously well cared for just doesn’t go “missing” because someone left the gate open and she’s not of a breed that naturally roams or jumps fences.

However, as of this week an update on the big signs “MADISON IS HOME… THANKS TO ALL WHO HELPED.”

yeahhhhhhhh!

happy story for me to post.

On horse front, weather has grown very cold and wet, down to 33 tonight so I just got back from the feed store with some feed, shavings for pony’s hut, and a jar of homemade honey for the kitchen pantry. Going out to blanket and check on everyone – providing carrots to the soggy horses.

We are still in the process of re-financing the house. This is an exercise in seeing if I can produce a heart attack before December 15th.

The financial responsibility of The House has been a 12 year period of frustration so I am not surprised by this. Anything that can go wrong has gone wrong; any “surprise” bill that can be sprung upon me, has been (I hope); any promise made by a third party, has been broken….

However, it has me all thinking about my longer plan which is to sell this house when my son enters his last year of high school or his first year of college (if he elects to stay local). This happens in approximately 3 years. My daughter would be entering high school.

If we sell the house then, do we stay here? Hubby would resoundedly say yes, because he loves the stability of his job – the people, the sameness and the safeness of it all. I am not so sure.

This difference of opinion caused a deep fracture between us when we were engaged, almost destroyed our marriage, and only resolved when I submitted to the yoke and allowed myself to be hitched to his star – because the fact was that his career earned triple what mine did.

Although, I have not regretted the stay here, I do not see myself living out the rest of my life here.

Retirement has been preying on my thoughts because we will not have much money and most likely we both will need to work as long as we can for as much money as we can, with the best benefits we can get. I also feel we need to get a home that can be paid off, that can ease us through the retirement years, and that would provide some self suffiency.

While hubby’s current job does give an excellent income and I know they will never be able to fire him (fire him and the entire company will deflate like a balloon – yes he is that needed), the benefits suck and it means remaining tied to this area of the country.

There is the responsibility of the horses (a home for them where I am no longer beholden to the kindness of idiots), the dogs, and of course my family of growing teen children, and hubby’s own enjoyment.

I know Hubby’s nature better then he does… he is in the process of stagnating and of course loves it!

But I am the Chaotic force he married and I’ve been long denied. I am not making any bets about what will happen in three years but once this house is sold, there most likely will be a rumble…

Yesterday, during some of my liberty work with all three of the horses, an incident occurred that gave me a thought I wanted to share here. ZZ pinned her ears and chased Pandora, because of wanting to dominate the interaction I was having with the three of them. To do so, she had to dash by me and both horses took off in a sudden flurry of pounding hooves.

Because hubby was videotaping, I could later review it. I was standing calmly as they went by and only took one step to the side to allow the passing of the excited horses.

This is the reason why working more then one horse together is not for everyone. A person, who was recently in my mind, would have thrown up both her hands and shrieked while hopping backwards. I have seen her do it when startled by her own horses  – and even when ZZ kicked backwards when I was fastening a leg strap on her blanket. This attitude of energy – the ”presence” is not calming or authorative to the horse.

What is unfortunate is that there are too many of us approaching our horses – timidly, hesitantly, in a fear posture of slumped shoulders, looking down, and with a collasped rib cage. Your horse recognizes this body language far more clearly – he is an animal that survives with phenomenal eyesight and communicates to his own kind through body postures.

While watching one of these recent videos from Hempfling, he discusses (and shows in slo-mo several times) the excited passing of the stallion, but watch his calm, upright posture that quietly asks the horse to stop and come back to him after being startled by the deer. Would you have reacted with such calm?

Hempfling talks about dominating the stallion and this may turn folks off because that has become an emotionally charged word for some. However, I encourage you to watch what he does and ask you what he is doing… to me it translates better as a Calm Authority figure who sets the boundaries, the work, the direction but yet allows the student to play and translate what is required into his own expression. It is not surprising to find that Hempfling has been a teacher and a dancer before entering the field of horses.

Just the other day I had a comment on my Youtube video in re: to ZZ’s leading series – it was that I should hold the rope closer at the halter. This showed me clearly that the viewer had not bothered to read any of HI or my philosophy – as well just missing the point.

In this video, Klaus shows the segment of the stallion bursting forward while he keeps float in the rope (a term used across the ocean by Dorrance); then he shows a clip of another person who instead pulls back on the rope when the stallion takes off.

Can I say even more that this is about Trust? A trust that the handler must have in himself and his abilities – and a faith in the horse that he will respond. That trust-faith-reciprocal belief cannot be found in the person who borderline fears the horses’ exuberant nature.

During the physical exercise, take note of his upright and expanded chest, the shoulders, and the hips under the shoulders in an tall, dare I write “majestic” manner? Again, authority is translated into presence.  His body posture, even to us less capable humans, says I Know what I’m About.

The bow work is being sent to my friend Pilgrim… and for those who say that work isn’t for me, other activities – Yoga, Tai Chi, Martial Arts, and even Running encourages the physical Presence of Balanced Energy.

I’m going through and deleting some older videos on YouTube – which may effect the journal by showing “video not available” – so I’ll be going through and re-editing the journal throughout the week.

For example, this older entry about Pandora, the pony, chasing the Tiger, had a video that I recently added into the blog entry.

I spent the day having hubby do lots of filming my work with the horses. Boy, I didn’t realize how long we had stayed out there!

I think some of it went well, but as usual when you are looking for a certain thing to be shown on camera, the HORSES DON’T DO IT! Children and animals are the most difficult to work with according to Hollywood insiders.

Humph. I do think there are some interesting videos but will be far too long and have to be trimmed back. My computer also has issues as it is jammed with too many video files so I have to burn those off onto cd’s so I can free up space; hopefully, by Sunday some new ones will be up for you to see:

Sharing Territory – with Big Guy; then adding ZZ and Pandora in and sharing with all three. There’s some interesting herd behavior as they work around me and some of it gets exciting for a bit (of course started by ZZ when shoving Pandora about).

Working at Liberty – the dirt arena is almost as big as a small dressage arena, and I spend some time working all three so you can see – how do you approach; how do you engage the horses’ attention; how horses drift off then re-connect; letting the activity become Horse-Led; tackless leading; driving from behind; and shaping acceptable behavior.

Targeting – using a target for clicker training, how to do it, what you can use, and practical uses for targeting.

Playing – horses taking off in the big field; Big Guy rolling; various horse behavior videos.

Preparing for Mounting – video of leaning over ZZ’s back in preparation for mounting.

Whoa-Slow-Go in the Roundpen – some beginning video of teaching ZZ how to do this; video of Big Guy who is more experienced with this half-halt game.

Still to do or complete:

Intro to Head Down – the examples weren’t as good as I would like so will re-shoot those. How to teach in the roundpen using Clicker Training.

Retraining for standing while mounting – Big Guy.

Big Guy under saddle – looking for standing square, better halts, moving forward, preventing behind the bit behavior.

A very funny (to me) thing happened last weekend that I meant to blog about. As I’d posted, I noticed a few weeks back that Big Guy had his mojo back and was telling Little Girl how the Cow Ate The Cabbage. After being boss, then feeling too badly to be boss, and having ZZ take over and be just a Supreme Bossy B*tch, Big Guy decided he had had enough and it was time to put her back into her place, which was definitely junior to him.

The switch of power became very apparent, when I had both of them in the back pasture to graze a bit and came up to get ZZ to work her. She would not MOVE because BG had not told her to move! She stood there, ear cocked, one eye rolled back to him, like “uh, BG, mom wants me but you didn’t tell me I could go with her…?”

BG casually strolled up by us grazing and was lording it over both of us. By grabbing his halter, I got them both down to the roundpen and let him back to grazing while I worked her.

That just tickled my funny bone, seeing this very dominant filly become submissive and agreeable… of course, horse groups don’t have hierachies, they all rule the group by committees, votes and meetings.

As I wrote in the last blog entry, Debbie has come out several times during my working the horses. She has gotten to meet ZZ, who is new to her, and I have given all the appropriate warnings about the Man Eating Mare of Diomedes. 

Perhaps it is not a testament to my training, but I still don’t trust ZZ with anyone. She reacts quickly and thoughtlessly like a child, and if you are not on your toes, you could get hurt. It also reaffirms in my mind though that pursuing an idea that I had of getting an apprentice to help me would be wasted – they wouldn’t be able to help me with ZZ and if they did, I would worry that they would either get hurt by her – or hurt her in their anger and frustration with her strong minded ways.

With Debbie about though I’ve had to explain more about what I’m doing with ZZ and thus vocalization gives more planning and meaning to the ideas that I have been working on.

About two months ago, ZZ drew a line in the sand. This line was – “I don’t like you over my back and I will not tolerate it. If you persist, I might have to kick you to hell’s half acre and back.”

After doing so well with some of her other training, this was obviously going to be a bit of stumbling block. If this had been five years ago I would probably have fought it out with her, won, and then she would have retaliated when I least suspected it – that is the way of how some of these mare horses think which earns them this reputation as being marish – translated to mean – not biddable to human desires.

I pulled back and we went back with me leaning over from the ground. I found out that there were some days she was okay with it and other days, when she pinned her ears and said “I don’t f*cking think so….”

Right now I’m back in the round pen, leaning over her back, no halter or lead rope. Sometimes I get up on the mounting block and I do it on both sides. When she walks off we go do some other work – such as Whoa-Slow-Go game to help her understand the type of body movement I want – balanced, using the hindquarters, and her head in a easy position.

And some days she tells me she has had enough of that.

And so our life, and training, is slowly progressing on a timetable that is not strictly hers – not strictly mine – but with some goals that may be met — or not — as she goes bucking across the roundpen, telling me she has clearly had ENOUGH of being told to GO!

 

Bitter cold wind arrived today. Have blanketed Big Guy so he can graze the pasture in comfort. ZZ seems pretty furry so unless it gets’ worse she can go without. Possible snow flurries (not sticking) today but we’ll see.

Usually November is mild, after a rainy cold October, and then December we get hit again. This is only increasing my suspicion that winter is coming early and going to hit hard.

Need to root around and find my gloves… have located ear muff band…