·:[ Horse Crazy ]:·
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I started poking around the net yesterday looking for songs about or relating to horses. And found some interesting ones that I’d never heard of. Turned out to be quite a bit of fun. So I’ve decided to create a list of horse songs that I like…

Here’s the first installment:

• Since She Started to Ride/Jonathan Richman - Sample lyric “Well I don’t see her much since she started with horses, no I don’t see her much, since she started to ride…”
• The Buckin’ Song/Robert Earl Keen - This one is very very silly. But I must have a very juvenile sense of humour, because I laughed myself sick when I first heard it
• Saddle Up/Aerosmith
• Red Headed Stranger/Willie Nelson
• Horse With No Name/America
• Tennessee Stud/Johnny Cash

Old horseman’s wisdom is that you don’t hand feed treats to horses or else you’ll encourage your horse to bite. This is really the same as suggesting that if you don’t want your horse to buck, you shouldn’t get on his back. Does he buck because you got on his back? Well, yes. But horse training is the process of teaching horses to behave in ways that are acceptable to us, and not necessarily natural to them. If you want your horse to stop biting, you have to teach him not to bite. If you want him to take treats politely, you have to teach him to take treats politely.

Some simple rules for giving treats. If the horse behaves badly, don’t reward that behaviour with food. If your horse behaves rudely and it results in a treat, he IS going to repeat that behaviour. He’s not being bad. He really has no concept of “bad” or “good”. Only what works and what doesn’t work. If you structure his training so that what you perceive as “good” (polite treat taking manners) works for the horse, and what you perceive as “bad” (biting or snatching at treats) doesn’t work, your horse will be happy to cooperate with your training plan. Horses have no pride. They just want that treat, and they will do whatever it takes to get it. Just make sure that politeness is what it takes.

Put a treat in your closed fist. Present the back of the hand to the horse. If he moves towards the food at all, remove your hand and tell him no or “aaack”. Don’t hit him (which might be interpreted by the horse as either teasing or a rough game on his part, and horses play rough better than you do!). Just wait until he settles and present the closed hand again. When the horse stands still and stops trying to grab your hand, turn it upright and open your hand. Do this with your hand touching his muzzle so he can’t lunge towards it. Move quickly and positively. Control the food.

Do NOT snatch your hand back in fear after you’ve opened your hand. Control the way you present the food so that it’s not necessary to do that. That’s why I suggest opening your hand against his muzzle. The horse should not move towards the treat AT ALL. If necessary, move fast when you see that moment of stillness and jam that treat into his mouth (with a flat hand!) before he can move towards you. Be sure to keep your fingers clear.

Will this work with every horse? Yes. This is positive reinforcement training. It works with all animals, and with humans too. When behaviour is rewarded, it’s repeated until it becomes a habit. The only limitation to the training is in the skill of the trainer. Be deliberate, practice your timing, and never EVER make an exception and reward the horse for bad behaviour.

If you think this isn’t likely to work with your horse… King is a five year old Arabian. His treat taking manners are excellent. He doesn’t bite. At the sight of a treat, he likes to pose with his nose tucked in and flutter his eyelashes hopefully. Lest you think this is just because he’s a “nice” horse, as a yearling King was a completely untrustworthy, barging, aggressive biter, who felt the need to be in human space (as in “on top” of the human). He was verging on dangerous. Hitting him just tended to rev him up. The cure for the aggressive biting in his case was to turn my back on him and step away whenever he tried to bite. His biting was actually just overly aggressive play behaviour. Losing a human’s attention was not his goal. When his behaviour didn’t work the way he expected it to, he stopped.

Once the worst of the biting was over, we worked on treat taking behaviour. He was prone to dive over the top of a wall or fence at the treat. Very unnerving if you had any attachment to your fingers. One big treat bag and an hour of feeding him from the other side of the fence put him enroute to good table manners.

So does handfeeding treats “cause” a horse to bite? Well yes… if you don’t teach him acceptable treat taking behaviour. Just as getting on an unbroken horse without preparatory training will “cause” a horse to buck.

I’ve been reading a book called Excel-erated Learning: Explaining in Plain English How Dogs Learn and How Best to Teach Them.

It’s by a Psychologist/Animal Behaviourist who runs a clinic for problem pets. Basically a dog psychologist I guess. Anyway, the book is really about learning theory. Despite the title, it’s really NOT in plain English. But still very interesting once you wade through the jargon.

I’m in the chapter on behaviour extinction. On the surface, this is a very simple idea. If you stop rewarding a behaviour, the behaviour goes away. However, there are some interesting variations and side effects attached to extinction.

Extinction bursts for example. The animal will become anxious and frustrated during the extinction process, which results in really strong bursts of the fading behaviour. Stronger even than normal. The animal will (sometimes literally) throw fits of behaviour at you.

Say you teach your horse to step on a mat. You reward it consistently. One day you abruptly stop rewarding the behaviour. The horse will gradually stop stepping on the mat. But every so often the horse will do a tap dance on the mat, or paw at it, or pick up the mat and toss it at you. The extinction bursts will gradually decline as well, until the behaviour disappears

It can be tough to ride out those extinction bursts if you are actually trying to get rid of a behaviour. On the other hand, you can use extinction bursts to strengthen a behaviour that you want as well. Withhold the reward long enough to get an extinction burst with stronger than normal behaviour, and you can then reward the improved version of the behaviour. Basically you are making the animal try harder for their reward. Raising the bar.

With behaviour that you actually want to extinguish, you also need to be aware of spontaneous recovery. During a training session, the behaviour might disappear. But when you come back for another session the next day, the behaviour will have returned.

There is one situation where spontaneous recovery can be useful. If you have accidentally punished a behaviour that you want to retain. If that happens (and we’ve all done it… drop something really loud right when the horse is offering a perfect behaviour for example), instead of trying to work through the problem, stop. Leave the horse alone until the next day. If the behaviour was well learned beforehand, it will have spontaneously recovered when you pick it up again.

Extinction speed and anxiety levels in the horse are affected by what sort of reinforcement schedule was being used prior to the extinction process. If a behaviour was on a continuous schedule (every behaviour reinforced every time) then withholding the reward will result in a high level of anxiety and relatively quick extinction process.

If the behaviour was on a variable reinforcement schedule, then the horse will show a much lower level of anxiety, and will keep trying the behaviour for a much longer period of time.

To turn this around and look at it another way, this explains why a variable reinforcement schedule actually instills behaviour much more strongly than a continuous schedule which is not exactly intuitive when you first learn about reinforcement schedules.

Interesting article in the December edition of The Horse magazine. It’s by Animal Behaviourist Sue McDonnell, and discusses “licking and chewing”. This is a behaviour that natural horsemanship trainers often refer to as a sign that the horse is learning or thinking about something, or possibly a sign that the horse accepts your leadership.

McDonnell disputes this to some degree. She feels that it’s a physiologic reaction to a sudden reduction in panic/fear/stress. So when you take pressure off the horse, you get sudden licking and chewing as a sort of relief reaction.

She thinks it may also be consistent with displacement behaviour. If the horse is wants to escape and cannnot, then the energy is redirected into feeding motivation (thus triggering salivation/chewing). This sounds to me like the sort of stress relief you see horses getting from stall weaving. Or in people when they chew fingernails etc.

She also talks about the differences in the stress levels of horses trained with punishment and those trained with positive reinforcement. Not surprisingly, she is finding that those horses trained with positive reinforcement are far less anxious, and are happy to repeat the trials. While the horses trained using punishment became reluctant to continue.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about training philosophies. And I guess I keep coming around to the fact that it’s all about the trainer, not the horse. I think I can afford to say that, since I have had King to deal with, so no one can suggest that I had an “easy” horse.

King WAS a tough horse. But I made a lot of mistakes. Some mistakes I made over and over and over. Sometimes I expected him to be bad and he was. Horses will live up to your expectations most amazingly. Sometimes I failed to listen to what he was saying. Actually MOST of the time I failed to listen. When a horse is acting up, they are telling you something. And generally they are not telling you that they disrespect you. I’ve grown to hate that phrase. It’s a cop-out.

I don’t even try to ascribe motives like “lack of respect” to horses anymore. Makes life so much easier. Horses do what they do. They don’t see their behaviour as “right” or “wrong”. They just see “works” or “doesn’t work”. They are very direct. No malice or scheming. They just live in the moment, doing what works. If their behaviour stops working to their advantage they’ll stop doing it. It’s all about behaviour, not motives. I don’t care if a horse “respects” me. I just care that they give me X behaviour when I give them Z cue. Every behaviour I want, I teach. That’s it.

So I teach behaviour that is perceived by people as respectful. Makes the people happy. Gives the horse a useful tool for coping with people. Good for everyone.

If a horse is “misbehaving”, they are just doing something that either has worked in the past, or that they are hoping will work now. If it’s the former, then it’s definitely a failure of the handler because they allowed the behaviour to work. If it’s the latter, then the handler must be certain that it doesn’t work and thus perpetuate the behaviour. So either way, the responsibility is that of the trainer/handler. Not the horse.

Respect of course, is part of the equation. But it’s not something you can control directly. It develops on its own. And unfortunately, my idea of respect and exactly what it is may be completely different from someone else’s idea. I don’t wany my horse to fear me. I just want him to do as I ask when I ask it. In large part because I want us both to be safe. He can’t run over me and endanger my person. Nor can he jump out in front of traffic, or fall off a cliff, or step in a hole when it can be prevented by obedience to my cues.

The other side of it though, is that I don’t want him to suppress his personality. To stop making any choices at all. A horse should have input and the ability to communicate to you if necessary. When we are out on trail, I want my horse to look at the footing and say “Whoa! Something wrong here!” before we step into a swampy spot and bog down, or fall into a hole, or whatever. I want him to tell me that there is a bear on the trail ahead and it might be a bad plan to proceed. It’s what makes us partners on trail, and not a person on a robot.

I just love winter. Ugh. The water trough froze. I was planning on getting a float de-icer for it anyway, but Jen didn’t realize that I needed the trough right next to the barn so I could run the extension cord out to the de-icer. So the last time she was here, she moved it back to the old spot and filled it right up.

A half full, frozen steel water trough is not to taken lightly. It’s been snowing like mad out there, so today Jen helped me and we skidded it bit by bit back beside the barn and then filled it and set up the new de-icer. Hopefully it will work.

The boys looked like snowhorses when they came in tonight. King, being gray, ends up looking sort of magical with snow all over him.

I’m reading the new clicker training book from Alexandra Kurland. The Click That Teaches: Riding With the Clicker.

The further I get into this, the more I love this training method. I’ve read her previous two books. But I seem to be getting more out of this book than I did with them. Perhaps because I was at that clinic with Alex in September. It’s still fresh enough in my mind that I’m absorbing it better this time.

One thing I really like about clicker training is that nothing is assumed. In traditional training methods, trainers really are “traditional”. Often no one questions just WHY they are doing what they are doing. They were taught something, and they just do it that way because that’s the way it’s always been done. Which is not to say that the methods are invalid necessarily. But no one looks at them with fresh eyes.

Clicker training is developing constantly. Ideas are pulled from dog training, from marine mammal training, and from human learning theory. Reading the Clickryder list, you can see people experimenting all the time with new exercises, and hashing out ideas.

Alexandra Kurland’s Clicker Center
Clickryder Mailing List

Yesterday I had a lovely session with King (my reactive, young hooligan Arabian). It was one of those days when you suddenly realize that your horse has taken some kind of giant leap forward for absolutely NO specific reason.

I’ve been working on getting him to come to the mounting block and line himself up. The cue is just me standing on anything (I’ve been using a stepstool and various buckets). So far I’ve been doing this all at liberty with no halter or tack of any kind. But yesterday I tacked him up for the exercise.

Turned him loose in the paddock and stood up on the stool. He marched right over, parked, and nickered at me. I got on him, got off, moved the stool, went through it all again. He never missed a step the whole time. And I never laid a hand on his reins through it all. Even mounting. He was a champ.

So finally I got on and started riding. Well. I guess he was in a very good mood after the mounting block exercise (which he really seems to love). Because he was SO amazingly wonderful to ride. I was doing one-rein stuff for a while which was good. But I suddenly realized that he was paying more attention to my seat and my voice than to my hands. So I dropped the reins completely. Buckle on his withers. And we rode like that. He walked, circled, stopped, BACKED UP, did turns on the forehand in both directions, and trotted. All exactly where I wanted him to go (well… the circles were not very round, but they WERE circles). We’ve never practiced this before. And he was just so incredibly soft. Every so often when he did something really well and knew it, he’d nicker.

A couple of times I was so overcome by it all that after clicking him, I sort of flung myself around his neck and kissed him. Luckily, he loves that sort of thing, and went into pose position and nickered (he’s a chatty guy in case you can’t tell!) a few times, while I had my little emotional moments.

After we were done, my cousin dropped by. So I took her out to show her the mounting block exercise. And he was thrilled to do it again. But I hadn’t tacked him up. So I jumped on him bareback and bridleless (which I’ve never done with him before). He walked forward, stopped when I asked, backed up, turned on the forehand. He wasn’t quite as accurate bareback as under saddle, but I suspect that was because my weight shifts and leg aids were different. But he was trying very hard to do what I wanted.

Unfortunately my cousin knows nothing about horses, so she just saw this calm steady horse ambling around a paddock doing a few easy things. I don’t think she really understood the magnitude of it all.

I’ve decided to teach King to park. By that I mean that I’d like to be able to stand on a mounting block and have my horse come to me, and line himself up beside the mounting block so that I can just step on. He already stands nicely beside a mounting block, but I have to lead him to it, position him, and then ask him to stand. I’d like him to do all that. At LIBERTY.

Yesterday I tried standing on a bucket and asking him to step into position without a halter or bridle of any sort. He was loose in his paddock. I put the bucket near him, and stood on it. We had been playing the stick to me game, where he has to stay in leading position without a halter or lead rope. He’s very good at that game, so he just transferred it to me on the bucket and came to stand beside me. Then I asked him to step forward by putting my hand under his chin. He did that. But he swung slightly out of position and I couldn’t get him to step back towards me.

Today we worked on it again. It went very well. I managed to get him to sidepass towards me by putting my hand on his withers and asking him to come towards me. On the first try he was a little confused, so I clicked him when he just rocked his body towards me. The second try he stepped right over so I clicked and jackpotted him. He knows that a jackpot is a big deal and that he’s made an exceptionally good move. So he really responds to those.

After a few tries he was lining up perfectly. But I discovered that if I got down off the step stool, and moved it forward he would stay frozen right in the spot I’d put him. So he was viewing it as a “pose” rather than locking on to me as his reference point. So after that I moved the stool after every successful setup and asked him to come to me. He was quite confused at first and just stood licking and watching me. I had to coax him to move. He got better and better each try though.

So then I tried getting on a bucket instead of the step stool. It became apparent that he still had the wrong idea. He was now using the step stool as a reference, not me. So now I went back and forth between the bucket and the step stool. He hasn’t quite figured it out yet, but on the last changeover, he trotted over to me on the bucket. So that was good.

His setup is perfect though. Once I get him to come to me, I just put a hand on his withers and can move him forward or back or to either side. He’s just like butter. And he knows when he’s in the right spot too, because he goes into his pose position with his neck arched and waits while I sort of fling myself over his back. He didn’t move a muscle even once anytime I was putting my weight on him. Even when the dog or the cat spooked him a little. He flinched slightly but didn’t even come out of the pose.

What a smart guy. Geez I love this horse!

On an impulse, I threw a saddle and bridle on Twister today. I was standing there looking at his roly poly little self and realized that I had a few spare minutes.

He was very good as usual. I’m quite sure he was happy to be tacked up and have some attention for a change. He sure looked perky and interested. But he hasn’t been ridden for months, and he’s still very very green. He’s probably only had perhaps 20 rides in his life.

I spent most of the session teaching him to stand at the mounting block. He wasn’t trying to get away, but he didn’t seem to understand what I was asking and he doesn’t square up very well, so he gets really unbalanced when you try to step up. We did a lot of up-down-up-down with clicker while he got the hang of standing up straight and not staggering away from the mounting block (I just hate it when horses stagger when I get on… we need to prevent that from happening in public LOL!).

When he was finally comfortable with that I got on and just walked around the ring with him for a while. He was spooky today, which I’ve never known him to do under saddle before. But they are good spooks. More like startles without his feet really moving. Very well behaved though otherwise. He backed nicely for me, and does quite good circles. He has a very soft mouth.

However, he has NO withers at all. And that, in combination with his exceedingly ahem… ROUND barrel, meant that the saddle did not want to stay on top of him. I found it was quite a precarious feeling. Of course it was King’s saddle and is not a perfect fit on Twister. I actually should try the Aussie saddle on Twister, because it’s meant for a flatter backed horse… which Twister definitely is. You could set dinner for four on that back.

But I’ll tell you… every time I ride Twister I realize how incredibly far King has come. King squares up and stands like a statue for me to mount. Even on trail with me torquing on him trying to heave myself up… he stands there like a rock. And he just feels way more polished than Twister somehow. His gaits are more rhythmic, and he’s always balanced under me. Poor Twister really felt like he was having to work to stay upright. Still, he’s a good little horse. Wants to be a good boy.

King was utterly APPALLED to see me riding Twister. He ran around the paddock yelling at me… “You’re on the wrong HORSE mom! HEY! You’re making a big mistake!!!!”

So… I’ve told you guys the good ride stories. Now you get to hear a bad one…

I took King to the Thames River Valley ride this weekend. It’s a three hour trailer ride, so King was a little stressed by that right off. But he behaved pretty well once he’d had a drink and I’d set up a pen with electric fence. He was noisy as usual (he’s noisy at home too, so that’s no big deal). But no bucking in the pen this time.

We saddled up King and Dante on Saturday night to take them out for a short jaunt around the camp and the field. Both of them were bouncing all over the place. So Sue sent her son to ride Dante for a bit to take the edge off. I got off King and let him go without us. The last thing King needs is to tear around like a fool. Anyway, in the end they decided that Dante’s problem was a combination of Virginia’s saddle fitting badly (so they put Dante’s regular saddle back on him) and a pair of easy boots that were slicing into his coronets. So after that things went okay. Seemed like everything was going to go fine.

A friend gave me a cap for my truck. It’s an older one, and it’s not meant for a Ford truck, but it does fit very well anyway. So I put a mattress back there, and slept in it on Saturday night. Bloody near froze to death. I know this is Canada - but it’s August for crying out loud. It went down to something like 10C (50F). I didn’t sleep much.

We didn’t start until 10am, so there was lots of time in the morning. I took King up towards the vetting area, and that’s when the fun started. He went airborne all of a sudden. Bucking and kicking. I hustled him away from the people and horses that his feet were whistling past and tried to work him down to something manageable. But he was a total basketcase. I was really embarrassed because there were probably a good 30 people standing around just watching the performance.

The vet came over to do him finally and asked if he was settled down. I was pretty cautious… “maybe”. He told me that if he didn’t sort himself out pretty quickly he was going to be excused from the competition. Oh joy.

Anyway, we got through the vetting, and he was passably well behaved. Not good, but he didn’t kill anyone anyway. His pulse was only 52 mind you, and the vet commented that “it hasn’t affected his pulse much”.

I put King back in his pen and later was passing the vetting area while getting ready when I overheard them all talking about bees. Apparently some sort of nest was in the ground and a couple of riders had been stung shortly before. So I talked to the vet about it. We figured that King must’ve been stung. Probably repeatedly. I was too busy trying to stay alive and I must not have noticed. Another case of me needing to pay attention and listen to my horse. Sigh.

Anyway, I tacked him up, and discovered in the process that he was totally freaked out by flies - obviously thinking they were more bees (hornets, wasps, whatever). I sprayed him with every last bit of bug spray I’ve got. Drained the bottle. But he still didn’t want to go anywhere near the vetting area. The start was right next to it, so that was a bit of a problem. I managed to get him past it and started around the big hay field. It starts with a very steep downhill. We weren’t much past the start when King started bucking again. I got hold of one rein and doubled him around, but he started going around and around, and almost went down. I actually considered LETTING the little hellion go down, but released when I realised that we’d probably both go for a good long tumble down that hill. Of course as soon as I released him - with his head already handily down there - he started again. The first one was just a crowhop, but they got progressively bigger, and on about the fourth one, I packed it in and bailed off on the uphill side. He ran a little loop, and came right back to me of course. He’s always happy to see me right after he tries to kill me.

I led him around the open field until we got to the trail entrance at the forest where I got back on. I’d probably been on him about a minute when he started again. He’d try to buck, and I’d double him around. Or he’d try to bolt, or he’d shy… but mostly he just bucked. For about three miles solid I’d guess. From then on it was a bit more episodic. He’d be good for a short distance, then try to buck, then be good again. Amazingly, he bucked mostly in places where the footing was good, and he wasn’t in danger of falling off steep banks. Nice little sense of self-preservation that horse has.

There was a vet check at the six mile mark, and his pulse was 48. The PR tech said “geez, that’s one of the best heart rates I’ve seen all day”. Then we had to trot out for the vet, and Virginia trotted Dante at the same time. King swung around and tried to kick him in mid-stride. Missed Virginia by about a heartbeat. The vet finished checking him over and gave him A’s for everything except attitude. She was going to give him an A- but I had to open my big mouth “yeah, at least an A-, rotten little sod”. So she gave him a B. That’ll teach me

At that point, we were already so behind time that I couldn’t see how we were going to make it. It took us 2.5 hours to do the first six miles because I was getting so little forward motion from King, and we were only allowed a maximum of 3.5 hours. The time we spend in the vet check is on the clock. So by the time we finished that and gave the two of them something to eat, we had less than an hour to do the final six miles.

This is NOT a flat ride either. The hills - particularly the downhills - are really intimidating. Some of those downhills are so steep that I’d have to sit on my behind, slide, and grab branches to get down if I were walking it myself. Of course King managed it all without a slip. But it’s slow to navigate stuff like that, and you really have to make time in between the hills, the water crossings, and the muddy sections.

Anyway, I decided not to pull, because King needs to know that he can’t act like that and get away with it (bees or not). So off we went on the second loop - knowing that we couldn’t finish in the time allowed. He bucked a couple of times at the beginning of the second loop, but they were pretty halfhearted crowhops. Then he settled down and went to work.

From then on, things went pretty well. He’s getting extremely agile on trail. He watches where he puts his feet, and can trot through scattered rocks, over roots, logs and various debris without touching it most of the time. He passed rusty old truck caps, abandoned tarps, and all sorts of weird things in the woods without much other than a head tilt and big eyes. He had to cross water multiple times, and really only hesitated a bit on the first loop. The second loop he just plowed right on through. He’s still quite worried about mud, but he should be, and I give him lots of time to work his way through it. He’s learned to really move through tight twisty trails too. We were going through the trail almost like a motorcycle. He leans right into the turns and just flies. His trot is getting bigger all the time.

And of course once we started to get forward motion, we got LOTS of it. He was very strong by the time we hit the finish. And it became extremely apparent to me that I had a whole lot of horse under me at the end. It felt like he was just getting started. Twelve miles is not nearly enough to tire him out anymore - even with a lot of hills (I didn’t know about those hills when I entered him, or I probably wouldn’t have gone).

The electrolyte thing is turning into something of a joke. King crushed the syringe completely this time. He gets anxious because I don’t squirt it out fast enough and bites down. So I ended up pouring it into the side of his mouth (where the bit fits) right out of the bottle. He keeps his head way up so it’ll stay in and just guzzles the stuff. If I’m too slow with that, he tries to snatch the bottle out of my hand. I’m thinking of getting a little section of tubing to put on the end of the syringe (the new one that I’ll have to buy…) so I can regulate the dosage a bit better. The concern now is not that he won’t get enough, but that he’s going to overdose on the stuff.

Quite a few people told me that I should probably do a 25 mile ride with him next time - just to tire him out enough to make him think twice about wasting too much energy on foolishness. Anyway, he had all A’s at the end. I didn’t get a pulse rate though, because we were overtime, and thus disqualified.

We were just two out of many though. Quite a few others didn’t finish in the time. Both in the 12 mile ride and in the 25 mile CTR competition. The ride is very tough because there are a lot of little obstacles to slow you down. So even the experienced horses and riders had to push very hard to finish in time.

One really bad thing at this ride… a rider is in hospital with a broken vertebra in her neck. She’s not paralyzed, but word is that she’s going to be in hospital for a long while. The accident was a bit strange. There was a llama in a field beside the trail, and it kept charging horses as they came by. Her horse spooked at the llama, flew backwards down a bank and flipped over backwards. The rider had to be taken out by ambulance.

Luckily the llama was not on the twelve mile trail. He was on the longer loop. So we didn’t have to face it down.

As awful as King was, it was quite obvious that he LOVES being out on trail, and that he knows it’s a competition. Once he settles down, he goes into overdrive. Ears forward all the time, all I have to do is ask him if he’s ready, and he trots right out. I don’t have to use any leg at all on him - he seems to operate totally on voice commands during a ride. Good thing too, because I don’t have much leg to use by the end of it all

Despite all the bucking and craziness, I only came off that one time when I bailed out. I can hardly believe that to tell you the truth. Most of the time I seem to come off way too easily. But lately I’ve been sticking through stuff. Virginia was running around afterwards telling everyone what a fabulous wonderful rider I am. Very embarrassing, because I’m not at all. I think it was just that with her low self-confidence level she was impressed that I wasn’t scared to ride the little devil.

Dante didn’t really fare quite as well as King on this ride. His pulse was in the high 50s at the midpoint, and his capillary refill was slow. So we had to double up on electrolytes to get him drinking again. He improved some on the second loop. But at this ride, King was definitely acting fitter at the finish.

I was a little worried that King’s behaviour might shake Virginia a bit. But she was okay. Dante is quite well behaved. What really shook her was hearing about the rider who went to hospital. The accident that she’s trying to deal with was a horse that flipped on top of her. King, for all his maniac stunts, never ever rears.

Anyway, it was a little disheartening, but it all ended reasonably well for us. I just hope the llama victim is okay.

Well, I’m back. Tired, sunburnt, and a little sore today. But essentially in good shape

It was a really long week. My friend, Shirley, from Oklahoma arrived on Sunday night for a visit. The farrier came on Wednesday morning and right after he was finished, we jumped in the truck and drove up to Lac Tremblant in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains - north of Montreal. About a 6.5 hour drive. My family has a summer cottage at the north end of the lake. There’s no road access, or hydro, so it’s very remote and quiet. We got there Wednesday evening, and then had to leave again early on Friday morning.

We got back at about 3 in the afternoon, tossed all of King’s gear in the truck, and loaded him up to go to the ride. I had to vet horses on Friday night, and again on Saturday. As I led King out of his stall though… my heart sank. He’s pulled that same shoe again. Always the right front. He was shod Wednesday, and sometime between then and Friday afternoon, he got it off. Since April, I don’t think he’s managed to go a full six weeks without pulling that right front.

When I got there though, a farrier was working on some other horses on site. So he put a used shoe on King for $10. I gave him $20, because King was so awful. Jumping around like a fool. I apologized afterwards for his behaviour, and the farrier said “Oh well, it’s to be expected. He’s a thoroughbred.” I was a little startled and said “um no, he’s an arab”. He looked sort of doubtfully at him and said “part thoroughbred?”. “Nope, full arab”. I can’t believe how often I have this kind of conversation.

My friend Sue and I were scheming to get Virginia back on a horse in competition on Sunday. Virginia has competed fairly often, but due to a series of bad experiences has lost some confidence. Sue is the owner of Dante, who some of you may remember as the horse I rode in the Ride n Tie a few weeks ago. He’s like riding a big old sofa. He’s quite overweight, and his nickname is “The Cement Truck”. So we figured that Virginia would gain a lot of confidence riding him. He can be quite bouncy, but he is a good-natured sort of guy, and always comes back to you when you ask - no matter how excited he is.

Virginia has been resisting because Dante is not exactly a drop-dead gorgeous horse. He’s actually built very well, but he’s part Appy, part Arab, and got the Appy head, the Arab short back and high tail, Appy legs and huge feet, and shorter Appy neck. His colour is sort of a washed out bay with occasional white freckles, and a lot of white around the eye. Make all that overweight, and he’s not a real head-turner.

Anyway, I promised her that she could ride with me, and that I’d take good care of her. I was planning to go as slow as possible, and told her that if we didn’t make the time, I wouldn’t care. So she finally gave in and agreed.

So Saturday after vetting was done, Sue and I went over to pick up Dante and bring him back. Unloading him at the ride camp, he managed to stomp on my left foot but good. Left a big purple mark on the top of my foot. I did a bit of hopping around and cursing, but a bit of ice and elevating the foot brought the swelling down. We took the two of them out for a short hack, and they got along very well. The deerflies were really bad though, and King was wired for sound. He felt like a ping pong ball bouncing around. Dante was great though, and I could see Virginia relaxing and beginning to enjoy herself. King actually bounced right off Dante a couple of times and Dante didn’t even seem to notice. He’s got to weigh about 1400lbs right now. Mind you, King is not exactly dainty these days either. He’s 1100 lbs on the weight tape.

I vetted King through on Saturday night, and his pulse was 40. 40!!!! Holy cow is that low for a young horse. At the Dufferin ride his pre-ride pulse was 56. I figured that he must have been half asleep or something.

Sunday morning, King was wired for sound again. He knew exactly what was going on and he was really excited. No patience at all. Jen drove up to help me, and I was REALLY glad to see her. She brought food, and hot chocolate, and gatorade. And she helped out all through the day. It’s wonderful having a pit crew. Especially good having Jen, who King knows and trusts.

At the start, we had to go down the road about 300ft, and then turn and go about 500 ft along the edge of the camp. King spooked at all the road signs. He didn’t care about the cars, but the signs were obviously horse killers. Then we turned right to go down along the camp (all of this in full sight of everyone in camp), and King started to buck. Buck, buck, buck, ALL the way down past the camp. He wanted to go, and he was NOT willing to be held to a walk. I stuck through it all, which was something of a relief after promising Virginia that all would be well…

He settled down after that though, and we managed to get into a nice steady trot. Dante was excellent through it all. We did two 7.5 mile loops. So it was the same distance as Dufferin. But we had an hour less total time to do it in. 4.5 hours instead of 5.5 hours. That includes a half hour break at the midpoint. So 4 hours riding time. He and Dante were both in great shape at the end of the first loop. King pulsed through at… 40!!! I couldn’t believe it. I actually asked the PR tech to repeat it. 40 pulses are excellent even in a very experienced horse. At Dufferin last month, King was 56 at the start, and 52 at the mid check.

Dante’s gut sounds were kind of quiet on the upper quadrant, and they told her to get more electrolytes into him. So we gave him an extra dose. King had been getting electrolytes since the night before, and he was eating like a pig on trail (grabbing tree leaves on the fly), so his gut sounds were excellent.

We got saddled up and started out on the second loop. King went out okay for the first few minutes, but once we got around the camp again, he just put on the brakes. “Nope” he said “I’ve done this already, and I’m not doing it again”. So we sort of stopped and started across the Girl Guide camp. One of the other riders came along in the other direction and laughed when she saw us. “I see the two chunky chickens are running out of steam”. Dante was not looking too eager either. Both King and Dante sort of stood out of the crowd of lean little distance horses just for sheer size. Both overweight, and both big tall horses.

Virginia was a bit concerned at first, she asked me if I thought King was okay. With a 40 pulse at that vet check though, I knew he was just being King. Once he finally committed himself, he went along fine.

Seeing some mares pass him on trail helped a lot. He’s absolutely enamoured of every mare he sees. And it finally did trigger some bad trail manners on his part. He tried to go along with a mare who passed, and kicked out at Dante on the way. Definitely a case of something better coming along. She was, of course, a CHESTNUT mare. King’s favorite. So, he’s going to need a red ribbon in his tail from now on.

Dante tried to roll in some sand we were going through. She didn’t notice, I guess she was looking at something else. Dante got his head down, and was already starting to buckle his knees. I said “he’s going down!”, Virginia asked “what?”. I got a little frantic and said it again. I guess she misunderstood and thought something was wrong with him. I should have actually said “he’s going to roll”. So she jumped off. It stopped him anyway. She’d never had a horse try to do that, so it never occurred to her what might be happening.

At the water stop, we got out the electrolytes, and gave Dante his dose from the syringe. I had about three doses left in a little plastic juice bottle. Dante got one, and I went to give King his. Well, the boy has decided that he really LIKES electrolytes. So he tried to grab the syringe from me. Trying to bite it with his teeth. After I finally got it in without destroying the syringe (he bit one syringe before the start in the morning and cracked the plastic), he went for the bottle. So I let him lick it. He got hold of the mouth and tipped it up and drank the whole thing. Horses typically HATE electrolytes, and you have to struggle to get it down their throats. Trust King to be bizarre though.

He and Dante drank well at every single water stop. At least a gallon each time for Dante, and King probably drank at least 2 gallons each time. No problems with drinking and eating for these two.

By the last mile though, King was definitely tired. We did this ride considerably faster than Dufferin, and he has not been ridden enough in the last few weeks. Mostly just around home. He heard a horse whinny as we were coming in, and made this funny noise which sounded like he was going to answer, but was just too tired to bother. Dante has a lot more miles on him, and is older. So he was doing better at the end. We finished with 2 minutes to spare.

Final pulse for King… 48. Final pulse for Dante… 46. So King was 40-40-48. Dante was 52-52-46. Both had great gut sounds at the end, and went through with all A on the scorecard. King was not too energetic in his trot out though. He was definitely tired.

King and Dante both got completion ribbons. I got the horsemanship award, Dante and Virginia got the best condition award. Sue was beaming at that.

Shirley got an appreciation certificate for working as a timer all weekend. It was her first time at a horsey event, and she did an excellent job. Especially considering that I sort of abandoned her for the entire day.

Virginia was pleased as punch with herself (and was trying to figure out how to talk Sue into selling Dante). She wants to ride him at the next ride - Thames River Valley. She’s offered to trailer King down to that one. It’s a three hour drive, and I can’t afford the gas on top of entry fees etc right now. So I might be doing the twelve mile ride there on August 15.

The vets commented to me that King was going to be “another Cob”. A great compliment. Traverston Cob is an older endurance horse. I think he’s around 17 or so now. He’s an ArabXCob cross. Tough as nails, big-boned, competitive, and highly attitudinal. He’s very sound, and has finished most of the rides he’s ever entered. He’s been to the Pan Ams, and Canadian Championships, and was shortlisted for the World Championships. He has around 2600 miles in OCTRA miles, and 3800 miles in AERC. Picture of him here:
http://www.octra.on.ca/images/random/3.jpg

I went to a six mile Ride n Tie on Sunday. Beautiful day, sunny and cool. My partner was supposed to be Kathy (my vet friend), but she begged off at the last minute due to a sore back.

Anyway, there was a young woman by the name of Manon looking for a partner. We borrowed a horse. A big fat cement truck of a horse by the name of Dante. He’s an appy/arab cross. His owner, Sue, told me that he was going to be quite excited at the start but would get tired soon enough.

We were going to let Manon ride him at the start, but after she rode around the grounds for a few minutes it became apparent that she was not comfortable with him. He was pretty bouncy. So I got on… and that’s where our next problem became apparent. He’s so round and fat that it was quite difficult to get on him without the saddle slipping. I tightened the girth a couple of times, but he’s learned to puff himself up. Getting on an excited horse on trail is hard enough at the best of times - the last thing you need is the saddle slipping.

Anyway, off we go to the start. Lots of horses and runners milling about. This is only Dante’s second ride, so he was getting more and more wound up. Sue and her husband were competing with another of her horses, Sam. Dante was determined to stay right with Sam, but that was not going to work too well, because that team tends to place right up at the top, and we didn’t think Dante would tie safely out on trail, which meant that we were going to end up at the back of the pack. In Ride n Tie, the trick is to go ahead with the horse at a pretty good clip, then stop and tie them to a tree and run ahead. The runner behind then catches up, unties the horse and rides past the runner again. Sort of like leapfrog. Because we were planning to stay together, we were at a big disadvantage (not to mention that I’m nowhere near fit enough to actually RUN through rough trail in the bush for the three miles that my half of the distance would require - walking that far is enough to wreck me for a couple of days)

When the trail was opened, I let Sam go ahead and Dante was not at all happy. We sort of went sideways down the trail, bounce bounce. He may be fat, but he’s STRONG.

Manon was ahead, jogging slowly and steadily. I tried to keep Dante back, but eventually had to pass her so he could blow off a bit of steam. As luck would have it, Sam was tied along the trail and we passed him. All of a sudden Dante didn’t want to move at all. Kind of like riding through molasses. Then a couple of minutes later, Sam and Sue’s husband Mike came blasting past. Now Dante thinks he’s rocket powered again. Bounce bounce.

Manon caught up with us shortly after that, still jogging steadily along. At the end of a mile, I jumped off to let her ride for a while. Dante freaked out as all the horses ahead disappeared. I got his attention and turned him around to see that there were more horses coming up behind. Manon jumped on him, and suddenly he wanted to go again. He reared a couple of times. Not high, and not at all wildly… looked like a very controlled levade. But definitely enough to scare Manon. So she got off and I got back on. About another mile later Dante suddenly decided that this was work, and he was tired. He poked along behind Manon as she continued to jog steadily along. Once Dante settled down, he began to do an absolutely wonderful smooth trot. At least I think it was a trot - it was so smooth that you couldn’t rise to it at all. I ended up sitting to it the whole time. Just before the vet check at three miles, I got off and Manon rode into the check. Dante was pretty tired by then.

It finally occurred to me to ask Manon just how fit she really was. “Oh, I’m in the military” she tells me. “I have to run cross-country three times a week”.

We came out of the vet check probably somewhere around 10th place (out of 12 teams). Dante and I just ambled along behind Manon, who was still steadily jogging down the trail (rough, twisty trail with lots of downed trees). We passed one walker shortly after the vet check. We passed another about a mile out. Then at about five miles we passed two junior teams who made a rather desperate effort to stay ahead of Manon. They did several changes of rider, and managed to pass with their horses a couple of times. But they were pretty tired. So after about a half mile, Manon left them behind too.

By now, I was starting to feel alternately guilty (for sitting on that big lazy armchair of a horse) and awed (by Manon’s fitness). But I did eventually have to get off, because the rules are that whoever rides out at the start, must run (or walk) in at the finish. Unfortunately there is a VERY steep hill at the finish. I had to hike up that while Manon rode. So I didn’t actually get away with being a complete couch potato.

We finished sixth out of twelve teams. If we’d tied Dante, even if I’d only walked my part of it, we’d have done far better. We were way ahead of any of the teams who had stayed together, and had passed several teams who were tying.

Manon can be my Ride n Tie partner ANYTIME. That was the easiest six miles I’m ever likely to do

Sue, Mike, and Sam I Am (who is twenty this year) won handily.

Abridged version… for those who don’t want to read the whole novel…

King was AWESOME. He finished the ride within the time, behaved like a pro, turned a lot of heads, and now has become generally known within the association as “The Diesel”. I am thrilled (an understatement!) with him, only mildly sore, and have a sunburn.
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Okay, now for the full report. And if you don’t want to hear me brag about the boy, you need to stop reading here….

We arrived at about noon on Saturday. King trailered well, and unloaded like a gentleman. He was fascinated by everything, but not overly
stressed that I could see.

There were lots and lots of people who knew about King, but had never seen him. So I took him around to visit everyone. Lots of compliments. Art (one of the vets) told me that he is a “really NICE big horse”. Kristen commented on his legs, and told me that she’d looked at King’s older full brother when she was horse shopping, and that King was bigger and nicer than him.

After I’d walked him around for quite a while, and he’d had some lunch, I saddled him up and just rode around camp and messed around with him.
He was pretty good, slightly tense, but obedient.

Wendy loaned me some portable pipe panels to make a corral. It’s safer than electric, mainly because if you have a horse get loose and run through camp, they don’t generally take out a solid fence, but often run right through electric in their panic. I set up my tent right next to the corral so I could hear him if anything wrong. When I told Ajay that today, she just howled with laughter. “Like you could ever miss hearing him…” This is where “The Diesel” comes in to the story. King has a very loud, throaty voice. He sounds like he ought to be a big draft stallion. And he talks all the time. A complete chatterbox - even at home. Now think of him in the middle of a field of 80 or so horses all in separate corrals. Every horse that made a noise all night, King had to answer. I didn’t get a lot of sleep. Nor did anyone in the surrounding trailers and tents

Then at about three in the morning I heard a tremendous clang and crash, and King whinnied quite loudly. A horse had run right through steel pipe panels and run through the camp. Past King, but not into his corral anyway. It took the owner about ten minutes to get that horse caught, and there was quite a commotion. But King was fine about it. And that escapee was okay too. He was in the 25 mile ride on Sunday and did just fine.

On Sunday morning, I was in the tent getting changed, and I heard a voice say “Oh LOOK at YOU…”. Being a doting mom, I had to go and see who it was. Dianne owned a stallion by the name of Sky Night. He sired King’s dam, Trillium Hegira. She’d never seen King, but knew I had him. She said “Someone told me that you’d brought him, and when I came around the corner and saw him, I knew who he was instantly. He’s gorgeous, and he’s the spitting image of Night.” We talked for a while, and she told me that King was far better than his mother, Hegira. She was just thrilled with how he looked, and said that King has Night’s legs. That was a big compliment, because everyone I’ve ever heard talk about that stallion mentions his legs. That was his best feature. Later in the day, Dianne told me that there wasn’t a horse in camp that had legs half as good as King’s She really was thrilled with him, and I heard her telling people that he was from her old breeding. Dianne turned out to be the lay judge vetting the mileage horses, so she got watch him all day. Every time she saw him she flashed a big grin.

Anyway, enough about how handsome he is We started out in the morning, and King was in a group of about 8 horses. One of the women was Aileen, who was at that clicker clinic where King made a complete jerk of himself, so she was pretty leery about being anywhere near him. However, it was apparent almost immediately that King was going to be one of the better behaved horse in the entire bunch. He never jigs and bounces. Just walks right out and covers ground. He never breaks until I give him a cue, but it only takes the slightest movement to get him to move out into a trot. In fact, I can’t actually say “trot” in a sentence without him moving out.

For the first loop, Aileen and I ended up following a big, fit, three-day event horse (a Morgan/TB cross) who really should have been in the competitive ride. He was way too fit to be doing the mileage ride. He had a huge trot, and neither King nor Tuffy could really keep up with it and maintain a good steady rhythm. King kept wanting to break into a canter, and Tuffy just got really rough and uneven. At the end of that loop, King looked great, and was still very fresh. He jammed his face into the water and drank like a champ - it’s usually very hard to get horses to drink enough on their first few rides. (There are people who say that the first and most important trait of a successful endurance horse is that they eat and drink well under stress.) His pulse was 56 (he was 52 at the preride check). Ajay had made up some beet pulp with apples and carrots for him, and we let him chow down on that. He ended up with beet pulp up his nose, coating his halter, under his chin, and even on the panels and the side of the trailer. He was hungry - as in absolutely RAVENOUS.

The second loop Aileen and I went out together, and we went out late because King HAD to finish his dinner. Her Tuffy (short for Tuff Rugged Rascal) is a Quarter Horse, and he decided that he only wanted to do a QH jog. And a walk was even more to his liking. King was following Tuffy on this loop so it was a very slow loop. And to make it even slower, some guy came along on a bicycle and told us that someone is off her horse, and has lost her saddle. So we backtracked to find her. We found her wandering up and down the trail leading her horse. Her saddle was lying beside the trail, with a broken girth and stirrup leather alongside. Apparently she leaned sideways to avoid a low-hanging branch, and her saddle slipped and went under the mare’s belly. In the resulting kerfluffle, the stirrup leather somehow broke too. Both she and the mare were just fine. But I think she must’ve been lost. It was not a marked trail we found her on. Anyway, I took her girth, Aileen put the stirrup and leather into her saddlebag, and we told her to put the saddle on the mare, lead her, and follow us. The saddle fell off about every 20 strides (nice looking Ortho-flex saddle… ouch), so this was kind of a long drawn-out procedure. We got her back to camp, but we’d lost a lot of time by then and it didn’t look like we were going to make the deadline. The second vet check was just a trot-through. King still looked and felt good. So we stopped at the water trough, and he went submarining for a while. He likes to bury his face and blow bubbles in new water first. Then he sucked back several gallons very noisily and was ready to go. Tuffy was spooked by the water trough and didn’t drink anything.

So we went off on our third loop. King went in front so we could make up some time. Initially he gave me a nice easy trot on the flat, and the occasional gallop up hills. But he seemed to gain confidence on that last loop, because by the halfway point we were getting a really nice big trot, and I wasn’t pushing him at all (though Tuffy wasn’t looking any too enthusiastic back there…). Then all of a sudden, it was like a light bulb went on. We came to an intersection in the trail. He wanted to go left, but the white ribbons marking the trail were to the right. We had a little argument and I got him turned right. He suddenly turned and looked right at the white ribbon. “Aha!” he says… “we’re following the white ribbons!!!” So then, every time he saw a white ribbon, we got a little burst of speed. From that point on, he just got stronger and stronger. He went into cruise, and we came in to the finish at a big trot under a very strong hold. We had 20 minutes to spare. He was just as pleased with himself as he could be.

That was double the longest distance he’s ever done under saddle before. And several hours longer too.

At the final vet check, his pulse was 44. That’s an excellent pulse for any horse, not just a beginner. He was tossing his head around the whole time, so it would have been lower if he’d stood calmly. He vetted through with all A’s. Fit to continue. Dianne said he looked just great.

After the finish, he went through two big batches of beet pulp with grain, apples and carrots added, and three flakes of hay in about half an hour. He was stuffing huge wads of hay into his mouth and chewing doubletime. He looked like he hadn’t seen food in a month.

He ate, he drank, he dealt politely with lots of horses (some of them moving pretty fast) on trail , watched where he put his feet (so no more tripping), moved out freely, bold as could be, and vetted well.

After an hour and half in the trailer coming home, he went out in the pasture and bucked and galloped around with Tango and Twister like he hadn’t done a thing all day.

Looks like a million bucks out there tonight. I love this horse. He’s just amazing. And I’m sort of bubbling over with excitement still. Dunno how I’m going to get to sleep tonight…

Oh wait! I almost forgot about Rocky the Raccoon. One of the riders brought along the baby raccoon that she rescued. They figure it was about 12 hours old when she found it. She’s raised it on a bottle. I think he’s about 2-3 weeks old now. He’s totally and utterly adorable. Does this squeeky little chatter/purr thing when you rub his tummy or behind his ears. And he has fingers. He tries to wrap them around your finger when you touch him. He’s just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. She’s going to keep him she says. He wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild anyway, since he will have no real contact
with raccoons as he grows up.

Well, King got his first pair of shoes today. He’s four this year, and ready to start going out on trail a bit. Since I plan to trailer him out to some places that can get rocky, and there is little or no rock in his pasture, he needs a little protection.

Since he’s never been very good for the farrier, I decided to focus on it beforehand. Every day for the last month, I’ve been asking him to pick up his feet, cleaning them out and then tapping them all over with the hoof pick to get him used to the idea of the nails being hammered in. We also worked on stretching out his front legs one at a time and holding. That was to get him used to the idea of resting his foot on the hoof stand. The last time the farrier was here, King tried to sit down when his foot was placed on the stand. Very odd.

Anyway, he did make some progress. And today was a big relief. He was really quite well behaved. He really hates to have his feet picked up, but he didn’t struggle, and he didn’t react at all to the hammer tapping on his feet. He wasn’t perfect, because a couple of times he did shift a little. But he didn’t actually pull away. He wasn’t quite so good with his hind feet, and I must admit that I didn’t work anywhere near as much with them because he was only going to be shod in front. So I guess we’ll have to work on them next.

I think he likes his new feet. He was running around like a fool in very short order.

King seems to finally be settling down and growing up a bit. He’s always been such an intense horse. Everything has always been such a huge big deal with him. He loves to work, but he’s a perfectionist. And if he doesn’t get what you are asking, or if he anticipates your next request wrong, he gets really mad. So we’ve always made a bit of progress, and then suddenly we have a big flipout temper tantrum. He goes from being a superstar, to a raging little hellion in the blink of an eye.

It’s been kind of a long haul for me, learning to see signs of stress before we hit the tantrum stage. Generally he doesn’t tell you until he’s in crisis, and then it’s sort of too late. The problem is that I tend to zone out while I’m working with him. I get very focused on what I want to be doing, and forget to look at how he’s responding to the cues.

But lately, he’s staying calmer and more focused. There’s a lot less headshaking and hopping around than there used to be. He still loves to work, but it’s like he’s recognized that it’s not the end of the world if he guesses wrong. Now if this will only translate to under-saddle work once the doctor clears me to ride again, all will be well (famous last words).